Political musings

I haven’t had much time to post lately, and so I’ve had a lot of ideas that I’ve had simmering in the back of my mind.  It’s time to unload, and the following ideas are mine and not necessarily those of Bearing Drift:

The leftists who were “anti-war” protesters during the Bush years and then disappeared when Obama continued those wars have now reappeared as today’s “occupiers.”

It sure is nice of the “news” media to consistently refer to Obama’s $450 billion tax-and-steal bill as his jobs bill without putting the word “jobs” in quotation marks.

The Democrats and their “news” media love to characterize votes consisting of all Democrats plus one or two RINOs as “bi-partisan.”  So, in that vein, the Senate vote that defeated Obama’s “jobs” bill was bi-partisan because 2 Democrats joined all of the Republicans in voting against it, while the vote in favor of the bill, consisting entirely of Democrats, was entirely partisan.

The problem with Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan is that it calls for a national sales tax in addition to the national income tax.  Even if he were miraculously able to pass that plan into law, as soon as the Democrats regained control of the government they would immediately jack up both tax rates.  I like the idea of a national sales tax, but only if we repeal the Sixteenth Amendment authorizing a national income tax.

Shortly after Rick Perry entered the presidential race I wrote that the nomination was his to lose, and he has worked tirelessly since that time to do just that.

The GOP base is looking for a new Reagan to defeat the current Carter and repair his damage.  Reagan was special because he combined three winning traits:  reliability in his core conservative principles, the charisma to inspire, and the experience and qualifications to lead effectively.  The three current top-tier candidates each have two out of these three traits.  Romney has the experience and qualifications and has developed the charisma to inspire, but he lacks the reliably core conservative principles.  Cain has the reliably core conservative principles and the charisma to inspire, but he lacks the experience and qualifications to lead.  Perry has the experience and qualifications and the reliably core conservative principles, but he lacks the charisma to inspire, coming across alternatively as arrogant or awkward and unprepared.  Romney will probably prevail, and we can only hope that he governs based on the conservative principles that he’s now advocating.

Shifting focus to Virginia, none of the challengers to George Allen have the slightest prayer of winning the nomination, and the longer they continue their quixotic campaigns, the more damage they do to their viability as candidates for future offices.  Jamie Radtke may have already passed the point of no return.  George Allen is going to be our nominee and is already our de facto nominee.  The reason for this is that he is broadly acceptable to the large majority of the Republican base, however much the other candidates might want to deny this obvious fact.

Bob McDonnell is one of my very favorite public servants.  He has been a principled leader with an extraordinary record of accomplishments over the past two decades, and I have been privileged to know him personally since the beginning of his political career.  But sometimes even the best of us get one wrong.  In a recent press release expressing disappointment in FEMA’s denial of an application for earthquake relief, Governor McDonnell (or whoever wrote the release in his name) referred to disaster relief as a “core function of the federal government.”  Sorry, but no.  Natural disaster relief is a function of state and local government and of private charities and community organizations.  The Framers of the Constitution listed the core functions of the federal government therein, and natural disaster relief was not included.  FEMA is one of the many wealth-redistribution programs of the federal government that would appall the Framers if they could see what the federal government has become over the past several decades.

It is always leftists who make an issue of race.  Obama was nominated by the Democrats specifically because of his race.  He was utterly unqualified for the presidency, had never accomplished anything of any significance, and had never taken a stand on any complex issues.  He was nominated only because he was, in the immortal words of Joe Biden, “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”  Leftists see people as members of collectives.  Conservatives, by contrast, see people as individuals and evaluate them based on their individual merits.  When leftists call conservatives “racists,” they are trying to deflect attention from their own racism.

The left is the modern home of antisemitism.  There is a strong antisemitic bent to the current “occupy” rallies, as there is always an antisemitic bent to leftist events.  In fact, antisemitic literature is routinely distributed at such events, and this has been going on for years.  The reason that you didn’t know that is because the “news” media intentionally refuse to report it for fear of hurting their own movement.  If you doubt me, look no further than the effort in San Francisco to ban circumcision.  Leftists succeeded in getting a ban on circumcisions on the election ballot until a judge struck it because it violated the state constitution.  But while that effort was underway, the leftists distributed a blatantly antisemitic comic book depicting a stereotypical Jewish man as the villain:

America’s best days are not behind us, and our country is not in decline.  There is nothing fundamentally wrong with our country.  The problem is entirely the statist policies implemented by leftists like Barack Obama, and the cure is to repeal those policies and restore freedom.  For the sake of my kids, I hope and pray that we elect leaders with the backbone to do so.

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About the author

Ken Falkenstein

Ken Falkenstein has been a staffer in the United States Senate and the Virginia House of Delegates. He has managed political campaigns. He was a military intelligence analyst in the U.S. Army in West Germany during the Cold War. He is currently a civil litigation attorney with Poole Mahoney, P.C. in Virginia Beach. But his concern for his kids' future is what most informs his writing.