A Subtle Way for Establishment Republicans to Sabotage Trump

posted by Brian Parsons at American Thinker 

The 1978 comedy Animal House depicts the charades of the rag-tag Delta Tau Chi fraternity of Faber College, clashing with Dean Wormer to maintain their university charter.  Opposing Delta Tau Chi is the neighboring prestigious Omega Theta Pi fraternity.  In one notable scene, frat pledge Chip Diller, portrayed by Actor Kevin Bacon, is hazed in ritual embarrassment by his senior Omega brothers.  As he kneels on his hands and knees, his cloaked initiators paddle his bottom, at which time he winces and pleads politely, "Thank you, sir.  May I have another?"

This scene embodies conservatives' repeated abuses for a perceived seat at the table of national politics.  Will conservatives bend the knee to their initiators once again, or will conservatives drive policy from the bottom up?

In 2012, when Congressman Ron Paul couldn't get a fair shake in the corporate press or the Republican presidential primary debates, his campaign concocted a strategy utilizing the party's own rules that would force the national party to take action.  To be nominated at the Republican National Convention, get a floor speech, and have the leverage to change the Republican Party's platform required a plurality of five state or territory delegations to the convention.  Though Congressman Paul couldn't win statewide primaries in a fixed media game, he could win delegates to the national convention by focusing on states where delegates were unbound to candidates.  That is what he did.  He visited states where delegates were unbound and dispatched an army of active college students from his Young Americans for Liberty organization to campaign in those states.  His strategy was successful.

By the time the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida arrived, Congressman Paul had amassed a plurality of delegates from six or seven states and territories.  Though he never held enough delegates to take the party's nomination for president, he did hold enough to push his ideas into the mainstream.  What would follow was a demonstration to the grassroots of conservatism that their votes are wanted, but not their voices.

Then–RNC chair Reince Priebus, House speaker John Boehner, RNC lawyer Ben Ginsberg, and candidates Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan instituted a loyalty pledge requiring all delegates to the national convention to devote their delegate vote to Romney/Ryan, thus binding votes that state legislatures did not.  When delegations like those of the Republican Party of Maine refused to sign the loyalty pledge, the RNC had many delegates forcefully removed from the convention and replaced with their hand-picked representatives.  Contested voice votes that were taken while entire delegations weren't present changed the national rules.  The delegate threshold for the nomination was increased from five to eight.  The insurgency was over.

Nearly twelve years later, the RNC power brokers are once again making their moves to stifle the voices of the working class and grassroots America.  Having lost their stronghold over local and state parties during the Trump administration, power brokers are lining up to elevate Florida governor Ron DeSantis.  We're beginning to see much of the same playbook as in 2012.

Not content with addressing clear electoral fraud that has bolstered leftist majorities, power brokers have adopted the mantra that Trump can't win.  The reality is that Trump not only gave the best administrative performance in at least forty years, but also had one of the best Republican presidential campaign performances since before the Civil Rights era. 

In what ways do we see the same playbook unfolding?  Having recently re-elected Mitt Romney's niece to the chair of the National Republican Committee, the press is giving Donald Trump the Ron Paul treatment, which is to say pretending he doesn't exist.  Not the least of these media outlets is FOX News, now spearheaded by Rupert Murdoch's liberal son and failed vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan.

Similarly, in the mold of Uncle Mitt and Reince Priebus, Ronna Romney McDaniel is now promoting the National Republican Committee's pursuit of a loyalty pledge, binding campaigns to support whomever the press elevates to the nomination as a prerequisite to participate in debates.  Let's hope this loyalty pledge goes farther than the loyalty of Florida governor Ron DeSantis.  In 2018, DeSantis couldn't slap on another piece of Trump flair fast enough.  Now he treats MAGA like leprosy. 

As many pundits have noted, the changes instituted in the 2012 RNC power-grab by team Romney hampered the RNC's ability to wrestle back control of the party from MAGA and helped make Trump the president in 2016.  When delegates opposed casting their nomination votes for Donald Trump, they were left without recourse because of the prior rule changes.  Having been on the losing end of the rule changes, the RNC is prepared to take a new strategy and establish a loyalty pledge of candidates before the primary process, as opposed to during the nomination process.

The question arises: is the RNC prepared to demand the loyalty of power brokers to Donald Trump should he once again ascend the field of contenders?  Trump is nothing if not a champion fighter.

And we Know, On the Fringe, and more- March 4

 

The long goodbye filled week for NCIS LA is finally over! Just have to wait on the spoilers and the interviews.

Here's tonight's news:

America First—In Defense of Democracy

The leftists are terrified by actual democracy, as is seen in their ruthless suppression of populists on both the Right and the Left.

by Tim Meisberger for American Greatness 

A lot of my friends in the America First movement seem suspicious of “democracy.”

They hear leftists and RINOs go on and on about “Our Democracy™,” as if it were something owned by these factions alone. Consequently, “we are a republic, not a democracy!” has become almost a catchphrase in our movement. I would like to push back against this impulse a bit, and argue that as a populist movement, we should not yield this term and concept to the Left, which seems to be on a mission to change the meaning of the word to reflect their twisted ideology.

The founders did create a constitutional republic, but it was also a representative democracy, with the power of government held by the citizens, and the dangers inherent in unfettered dugguemocracy restrained by a constitution and the individual rights it protects. I do agree that we are not currently a democracy of any sort. If we were actually a constitutional republic and a representative democracy, as the founders intended, things today would be quite different.

“Representative” is a key modifier in describing democracy as the founders intended. In a representative democracy, ordinary voters may cast a secret ballot, but the votes of representatives should never be secret, as their mandate requires their votes reflect the wishes of their constituents, and voting publicly enables accountability. 

 Although the Democrats like to pretend that they are democratic, the current object of leftist “elites” is the creation of an oligarchy of “experts” through a marriage of corporate and government power, which ironically is quite close to the actual definition of fascism. The leftists are terrified by actual democracy, as is seen in their ruthless suppression of populists on both the Right and the Left. They call this “liberal democracy,” in a desperate attempt to confuse the public, and expropriate the legitimacy conferred by actual democracy (which means rule by the people).

The leftist ideologues who control the Democratic Party have spent decades intentionally miseducating students and the public about the actual meaning of “constitutional republic” and “representative democracy.” Through shameless gaslighting and propaganda, they aim to rebrand their agenda as something positive for the public by defining it as “democratic,” and respectful of human rights. This is an old trick, pioneered by communists during the Cold War, when almost every authoritarian dictatorship (including Communist China and North Korea) labeled their regime “democratic.”

Of course, the leftists’ actual program is the establishment of an unchallengeable, elite-led, authoritarian government. It’s clear that the leadership of the Democratic Party, and some leaders of the Republican Party, no longer believe in the foundational pillars of our constitutional republic. Despite gaslighting and propaganda to the contrary, through their actions and statements they demonstrate daily that they no longer support majority rule or self-government; or rule of law and equal justice; or individual rights like freedom of speech and freedom of religion. 

So, my plea to the America First movement is that instead of rejecting “democracy,” we instead reject the leftists’ attempt to redefine the word and concept into something perverse and ugly. It is self-evident that without majority rule, we will have minority rule; and without self-government, we will be governed by others. That is not at all what our founders intended or wanted.

We, as populists, are the real democrats. We believe that all men are created equal, that every citizen should have equal influence in government, and that all are entitled to equal justice under the law. We should reclaim the word democracy, and re-educate the public on its real meaning, and then use it as a cudgel to beat the leftists, pointing out their hypocrisy, and their egregious violations of the founding principles of our constitutional republic.

Silly Saturday - Open Thread

 A sparkling Saturday afternoon to all. We have had six and a half days of politics. It is time to find our bones that are in need of silliness! 

As with any thread of this nature I offer, food is a must! 

 Staying with open thread traditions of having a musical offering and staying with the silly theme…

Next in silliness, the differences between men and women. 

Speaking of men, it has been said they cannot ‘decorate’. This is inaccurate. They can. I can show you the proof. :-))

As I have an obsession with corny word play…

Last, but by no means least, for technology challenged **waves hands in the air**…

By now everyone should understand the gist of the thread. Show us what you have…humor wise.  

Racial Preferences At Our Service Academies Are Not Essential To National Security

Racial preferences compromise combat effectiveness, dilute merit, and are unfair.

Gen. Arthur E. Brown Jr & Gen. Ronald R. Fogleman for The Federalist

During oral argument in the college admissions racial preferences cases (Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard/UNC), Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts inquired of United States Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar whether the service academies should “rise or fall” with the court’s ruling regarding Harvard and the University of North Carolina. The solicitor general, joined by the Department of Defense (DOD) general counsel, had claimed in briefing that the continued use of racial preferences at the service academies is a “national security imperative,” prompting the question.

The chief justice asked, effectively, whether DOD seeks an exemption for the military from any ruling against Harvard and UNC banning racial preferences’ further use. Prelogar’s replies fell short of asking for a military carveout, but she left the door open, reiterating the military’s alleged “distinctive interests” in using racial preferences and her claims that they are a “truly compelling interest” and “critically important” for the military.

Not addressed in rebuttal arguments were the reasons why there is no compelling national security imperative and how racial preferences are harming our military.

DOD surrogates have made the extraordinary claim that officer-enlisted racial demographic parity, pursued by using racial preferences in military officer accession programs such as the service academies and ROTC, is essential to national security. But their evidence, inappositely grounded in our Vietnam experience, is lacking.

This far-fetched argument was first made in the 2003 case Grutter v. Bollinger, which the current court has been asked to overrule. It was contrived to meet the high legal bar (“compelling national interest”) that “strict scrutiny” of extra-constitutional practices requires be proved to justify the suspension of the constitutional provision in question, here the equal protection clause. The claim is disproved by the last two generations of our military’s more relevant history.

Lest there be any doubt, America can be defended without suspending the equal protection clause. Warfighters respond to their leaders’ orders regardless of racial differences. They do, however, need and deserve the best-qualified leaders, regardless of race.

Our experiences commanding at platoon, company, battalion, and brigade (Gen. Brown) and at wing, air division, numbered air force, major command, and combatant command (Gen. Fogleman) levels led us to conclude that the troops are interested in three characteristics in their leaders: competency, moral courage, and character. The color of a leader’s skin or ethnicity is not what determines unit morale, esprit, and effectiveness.

DOD Practice Undermines Claim

DOD’s current practice also undermines its claim. If DOD’s argument were sincere, the Army’s monthly Unit Status Report (Army Regulation 220-1, Chapter 5) would require reporting officer-enlisted racial demographics in military units. Designed to facilitate Pentagon monitoring of operational units’ readiness, and revised as recently as August of 2022, all personnel reporting metrics are silent about racial demographics. That’s because the Army knows officer racial diversity is irrelevant to combat effectiveness and readiness.

Military officer racial diversity would still exist without preferences. According to DOD in 2020, Army (our largest service) active-duty officers were 27 percent racial minority (12.3 percent black). Highly qualified minority officers have been part of our military’s success for many decades.

Beginning in World War II, increasingly large numbers of outstanding minority officers have served in our military, many — on the basis of merit — reaching flag-officer rank. Today, minority outreach and recruiting programs reach many highly qualified minorities, and, with augmentation, would attract minorities in even greater numbers, without the need for demeaning preferences.

Racial Preferences Are Divisive

Racial preferences in the military are divisive, erode morale, undermine unit cohesion, compromise combat effectiveness, and hurt recruiting and retention of highly qualified people. Experience at West Point has shown they are costly, dilute merit, and thus degrade leader quality. The best-qualified officers want to serve but also want to be treated equally and fairly on the basis of merit. Also, they know even slight differences in leader quality can determine mission success or failure and life or death.

Continual focus on race (and use of preferences) undermines a unique, battle-tested, cultural norm that is essential to combat success — the “selfless servant warrior ethos.” Warfighters must totally subordinate the self (including subgroup identities) and unqualifiedly commit to the mission and teammates regardless of racial differences. Trust that such commitment is uniformly reciprocal is the glue that binds warfighters into teams, a sine qua non for unit cohesion and effectiveness in lethal combat.

A military carveout would also offend our republic’s founding principles. Public trust and support for the military would erode if the military, alone, were to operate in open contradiction of a standard so fundamental as race-neutral, equal protection of the law. This is especially true given our military’s performance in the last 40 years, where there is no evidence that officer racial demographics have affected combat effectiveness.

The public disfavors racial preferences (74 percent, including a majority of blacks, oppose their use in college admissions). Credible combat veterans, in large numbers, have publicly explained how racial preferences are harming the military. Under those circumstances, allowing the unnecessary, dangerous, and extra-constitutional use of racial preferences in service academy admissions would undermine the public’s critically important trust.

Solicitor General Prelogar wisely declined the invitation to request a military carveout. Our nation would be better served if the court were to require our service academies, along with Harvard and UNC, to adhere to race-neutral, equal protection of the law.

Deception and Failure

From Wilson to Roosevelt to Biden, and beyond.

by Lloyd Billingsley for American Greatness 

White House physician Kevin O’Connor recently proclaimed that Joe Biden “remains a healthy, vigorous 80-year-old male who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.” The Delaware Democrat quickly raised doubts by stumbling up the stairs of an aircraft, a feat he once performed three times on a single ascent. 

Dr. O’Connor failed to reveal how Biden’s mental competence test had turned out, or even if he had taken one. As on the fitness side, the evidence is already out there. 

Joe Biden is sometimes unaware of his own location and mounts a public search for people who recently died, such as Rep. Jackie Walorski. Biden is also famous for spouting gibberish beyond any comprehension, such as here, here, and here, to cite only a few. 

For all but the willfully blind, Joe Biden is not mentally and physically fit to exercise the duties of the presidency. To be fair, the Delaware Democrat is not the only White House occupant ever to be in such a condition. Consider, for example, Woodrow Wilson. 

In April of 1919, in Paris, Wilson had his first stroke and “it was concealed,” from the public, as the late Paul Johnson noted in A History of the American People. That year, Wilson launched a speaking tour and on September 25 suffered a second stroke. On October 10, a third stroke left the president’s  entire left side paralyzed. 

Physician Gary Grayson said Wilson was “permanently ill physically, is gradually weakening mentally, and can’t recover,” but refused to declare the president incompetent. Vice President Thomas Marshall declined to challenge Wilson’s ability to perform his duties, and Wilson’s second wife Edith stood guard, Johnson writes, “like a Valkyrie.”  

Edith wrote instructions about appointments and forged Wilson’s signature on bills, prompting Sen. Albert Fall to proclaim, “Mrs. Wilson is president.” When Fall told Wilson people were praying for him, Wilson asked “which way?” As Johnson notes, that was taken as a declaration of mental sharpness. So the farce continued, and “the great Wilson presidency ended in deception and failure.” So did the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. 

In 1921, FDR was stricken with polio and was “anxious that press should not know how severely paralyzed he had become,” as Hugh Gregory Gallagher explained in FDRs Splendid Deception: The moving story of Roosevelt’s massive disability and the intense efforts to conceal it from the public, published in 1985. At that time, a full 40 years after Roosevelt’s death, most Americans believed the four-term president had been fully able-bodied. He wasn’t. 

Back in the day, FDR’s close associate Louis Howe “constantly misled reporters” and worked out “a scheme to transfer Roosevelt without reporters discovering just how ill he really was.” FDR made it a rule that photographers were not to take pictures of him looking helpless, and the press went along. A fall from a podium in 1932 failed to turn up in news reports, and no photographs were taken. Once in the White House, Gallagher notes, FDR imposed rules, “which were always obeyed.” 

The Secret Service “built ramps for his use at every point. These were not simply ramps for the president’s chair; upon occasion, the Secret Service would actually raise the entire level of a street to the level of the building entrance by means of temporary but extensive wooden trestles and scaffolding.” These extensive measures allowed FDR to appear to “walk” from his car into a building without undue effort. Despite the massive efforts, things did not always go as planned. 

During the 1944 campaign in New York City, Roosevelt rode in an open car for more than four hours and was “seen by millions, looked cheerful, animated, conversing, waving, throwing his head back with that famous contagious laugh. . . . It seemed evident to all that day in New York that he was as strong, as resilient as ever.” The press and the public had no clue what was happening behind the scenes. 

“At points along the parade route the Secret Service had commandeered garage space,” Gallagher recalled. “As the presidential cavalcade passed the garage, the president’s car was turned out of the parade into the warmth of the heated building. Secret Service agents quickly lifted the president from the car and stretched him out full length on blankets laid on the floor. They removed his clothes down to the skin. He was toweled dry and given a rubdown. He was redressed in dry clothes, brandy was poured down his throat, and he was lifted back into the car. The pit stop was quickly done and the president was soon back in the cavalcade.”

FDR won reelection, but after his inauguration speech on January 20, 1945, “he never stood on braces or walked again.” Two days later, FDR departed for Yalta, where it would become clear that the president’s disability was not merely physical. For Gallagher, an admirer who approved of the president’s deception, “the man who seemed so little crippled by his handicap was, in fact, severely emotionally crippled.” And as his paralysis progressed, so did the inevitable mental incompetence. 

As World War II played out, FDR showed “a curious indecision” and “distinct difficulty in organizing his thoughts.” He would stare into space, slack-jawed, and took no briefings. During 16 months of decline, “only a very few persons on his immediate staff were aware of how marked it had become.” 

As his condition worsened, FDR outsourced foreign policy to pro-Stalin advisor Harry Hopkins, who lived at the White House. Under Hopkins, the policy was to give Stalin everything he wanted, asking nothing in return, in the hope that all would turn out well. It didn’t. 

Stalin kept control of Eastern Europe, so the Soviet dictator acquired more territory than under the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939. On the home front, FDR bloated the federal bureaucracy to gargantuan dimensions. So historians can be forgiven for thinking that FDR’s presidency, like Wilson’s, ended in deception and failure. That prompts serious questions about the current White House occupant.  

In 2020, Biden said he hadn’t taken a cognitive test, and scoffed at the suggestion he needed one.  In September of 2022, Dr. Nicole Saphier, a professor at Cornell medical school, noted Biden’s lapses and wrote, “It is not indecent to ask for full transparency of physical and cognitive fitness of our political leaders, and called for Biden to take a cognitive test at his next physical. If he did, the results were not released. 

Woodrow Wilson had Edith and FDR his Harry Hopkins. For his part, Joe Biden is the hapless puppet of a politburo on the far reaches of the Left. Consider Biden’s nominee for comptroller of the currency in the U.S. Treasury Department.

Saule Omarova, a native of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, attended Moscow State University on a Lenin Scholarship and remains an apologist for the Soviet Union.  The former Komsomol promoted a centralization of American banking based on the Soviet model. 

Omarova also wanted to take economic and climate policy away from Congress and create an unaccountable bureaucracy called the National Investment Authority. Based on her record, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) could think of nobody “more poorly suited to be the Comptroller of the Currency,” than the Moscow State alum. 

As a presidential candidate, Biden had to walk back his previous position on criminal justice. It’s now hard to find any domestic issues where Biden differs in substance from the woke agenda of his handlers. The Delaware Democrat also displays deference to powerful foreign adversaries.

As a presidential candidate in 2019, Biden said the Chinese are “not bad folks” and not even competition for the USA. In 2023 Biden let China fly a surveillance balloon over most of the country, including strategic military bases, before finally shooting it down. 

Without a mental test, the White House proclaims Joe Biden healthy, vigorous and fit to “successfully” execute the duties of the presidency. In effect, this is a proclamation that the Delaware Democrat has been an unqualified success. From the open border all the way to the gas pumps and grocery shelves, embattled Americans know it isn’t so. 

Call it the Pangloss presidency, an ongoing disaster proclaimed to be the best of all possible worlds. And for all but the willfully blind, a Pétain presidency is also going on in the United States of America. 

In Conrad Black’s phrase, Joe Biden is a waxworks effigy of a president, physically and mentally unfit for duty. This deception is not splendid and the failure already evident. The aftermath will likely be much worse than anything that took place in the wake of  Woodrow Wilson or FDR. 

Move Over, 'Ultra MAGA,' There's a New 'Fascist' in Town: MSNBC Absurdly Slaps Label on DeSantis

Mike Miller reporting for RedState 

In this episode of Everything Is Fascist…

Just when you thought Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans have the market cornered on fascism, irrelevant MSNBC host Alex Wagner and some random Ivy League guest slither into the headlines to play the fascism card on Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Even more hilarious, the reason is utterly absurd.

First, a word on the whole silly “fascism” blast thingy.

Having labeled everything related to conservatism “racist,” it appears that the left has become almost blaśe about the ad hominem, and decided that “fascist” sounds far more ominous — and mysterious — to low-information Democrat voters, most of whom are no doubt clueless as to its meaning and history.

A widely accepted definition of fascism reads:

Many experts agree that fascism is a mass political movement that emphasizes extreme nationalism, militarism, and the supremacy of both the nation and the single, powerful leader over the individual citizen. This model of government stands in contrast to liberal democracies, which support individual rights, competitive elections, and political dissent.

See any irony, there? Let’s do a two-question quiz to find out.

Which party does “supremacy of the nation (centralized government) … over the individual citizen” better describe, the Democrat Party or the Republican Party? Second question: In contrast, which party “supports individual rights, competitive elections, and political dissent”? I bet you got both questions right.

Now, on to the nonsense at hand.

As reported by NewsBusters, on Thursday’s episode of MSNBC’s Alex Wagner Tonight, the hollow-headed host and Columbia Journalism [ROFL emoji] School Dean Jelani Cobb came together to agree with Marxist-derived Critical Race Theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw that Ron DeSantis is a fascist.

Raise your hand when you’ve stopped guffawing.

At issue for these geniuses was DeSantis’s Higher Education Reform program, the purpose of which, as reported by my colleague Streiff, is to eliminate the cancers Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity (DEI) from Florida’s public universities and colleges. How “fascist,” huh?

Here’s Wagner (emphasis, mine):

There is the, sort of, discreet conversation about what happens to Florida. But I think that it is worth stepping back for a moment and looking at the tactics that are being employed here, and not mincing words about what is going on.

Setting aside the sort of endgame of what happens in the university system, Michelle Goldberg had a piece in the Times that basically compared what Governor DeSantis was doing to what an autocrat like Viktor Orban in Hungary is doing.

We had Kimberlé Crenshaw on the show and she basically said that we should stop calling it a cultural war, this is fascism. This is what it looks like when you have the state trying to control and suppress its citizens. Do you think that is an overstatement? Where do you stand on that?

Um, yeah — it’s not only overstatement extraordinaire, Alex; the rabid left, and by extension, the Democrat Party continues to do its damnedest to control and suppress conservative content, rewrite history and literature, and convert the Justice Department, FBI, and IRS into enforcement arms of the Democrat Party. I can go on, but you get the point.

Jelani Cobb was all in, of course.

Yeah, I don’t, actually. I don’t think that is an overstatement and I think that if we were actually, you know, looking at what the long-term objectives are here, it would be astounding, and terrifying for people.

But you know, in fact it is being framed as culture wars, people thinking oh this is, you know, basically like the equivalent—the political equivalent of a sports rivalry. You know, we’re not thinking of this in the long term in terms of what its implications are for free expression.

And—which is also weird because one of the things that they’re using, the rhetoric that they are using is that this is actually an attempt to bolster free expression. And, you know, that is the, kind of, the height of cynical politics as it relates to this.

The most amusing part about the left is its complete lack of self-awareness about the depth of its hypocrisy, which knows no bounds — most of which is employed to pander to or exploit the Democrat base. Anyway, let’s go back to Alex for the wrap-up, which defies reality.

But you know, one of the things about the measures that the governor and his allies are taking is that they are so, they are both at once extreme and totally vague, right? You can’t engage in activities that are divisive or inclusive, or divisive, you know?

Oh, we know, Alex — And trust us. Far better than your leftist mush-brain is capable of grasping.

DeSantis Dunks on Squish Republicans Criticizing His Fight Against Far-Left Ideology

Bonchie reporting for RedState  

Ron DeSantis is firing back after several Republicans took aim at his governance, describing Florida’s fight against far-left ideology as “big government.”

In mid-February, Larry Hogan criticized the popular GOP governor, calling DeSantis’ attempts to remove critical race theory, queer theory, and pornography from schools “authoritarian.” New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu echoed the same sentiment, calling it “big-government authoritarianism.”

And while those two sniping at DeSantis isn’t necessarily surprising, Mike Pence also recently joined the fray, going after the Florida governor for ending Disney’s self-governing status.

“I fully support what Florida did about protecting kids under the third grade,” Pence told CNBC’s Squawk Box. “I have concerns about the follow-on. Disney stepped into the fray. They lost. But then [with] the taxing authority — that was beyond the scope of what I, as a conservative, limited-government Republican, would be prepared to do.”

Yes, we know you wouldn’t have been prepared to do it, Pence. That’s exactly why you aren’t a serious contender in 2024 and should save your time and your donors’ money.

But I digress. The theme with all these criticisms from the right toward DeSantis is that they claim to understand the problems Americans face, not the least of which is the indoctrination and abuse of children, yet they aren’t willing to actually join the fight. They’d rather go on CNN and throw stones from the sidelines at someone who is delivering results.

DeSantis isn’t taking the attacks lying down. While speaking to donors, he fired back, calling the squish Republicans in question “potted plants” who aren’t “making anything happen.”

Hogan, Sununu, and perhaps to a slightly lesser extent, Mike Pence, are what the Republican base revolted against in 2016. There is no appetite for the mid-2000s strategy of shouting “small government” over and over, while prioritizing corporate handouts and foreign wars.

Besides, there is a stark difference between overreach at the federal level and federalism at the state level. GOP voters elect conservatives at the state level to actually get things done within the bounds of state authority. They don’t elect state governors and legislatures to make excuses about why they aren’t willing to get things done.

Even the more libertarian elements of the GOP are going to have to come to grips with that reality (or vote Libertarian from now on). The days of Republicans being able to just cut taxes and call it a day are over. DeSantis recognizes that, but he’s also obviously acting out of conviction. He belives woke ideology is harmful, especially to children, and he’s going to stop it no matter how much the fence sitters cry. If only more Republicans had the same gumption.

Texas' Proposed 'Get Married, Stay Married, and Be Fruitful and Multiply' Law Has People Talking and Heads Exploding

streiff reporting for RedState 

 

Texas state Representative Bryan Slaton introduced a bill in the Texas state legislature that would cut the property tax bill of all married couples, especially those with children.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis may have gotten a lot of hate over the “don’t say gay” law, but the “get married, stay married, and be fruitful and multiply” bill introduced by Slaton is bringing out the crazy on the left.

I’m 100% in favor of the bill because I am biased toward large, two-parent families. And, like Ronald Reagan, I believe, “If you want more of something, subsidize it; if you want less of something, tax it.” I think we’ve gone out of our way to make family formation difficult for too long. In fact, the “means testing” of benefits seems calculated to produce single mothers with multiple children. As a society, we penalize families who prefer to have one parent at home and make subsidized child care available. Children who are homeschooled are, in most school districts, unable to participate in sports, extramural activities or even to use educational programs in the public library available to public school students. The federal tax code bakes in a “marriage penalty” that makes it more advantageous for a couple to live together than get married.

The US population is below the rate needed to sustain it without significant immigration. So in my mind, we should all get behind anything that encourages Americans to get married, stay married, and have kids.

Slaton’s bill offers the following tax relief:

(b) A qualifying married couple is entitled to a credit against the taxes imposed in a tax year by a taxing unit on the residence homestead of the couple in which both spouses reside. Subject to Subsection (c), the amount of the credit is equal to the amount, expressed in decimal form rounded to the nearest hundredth, computed by multiplying the amount of taxes imposed by the taxing unit in the applicable tax year on the qualifying married couple’s residence homestead by 10 percent.
(c) A qualifying married couple with four or more qualifying children may substitute the following, as applicable, for 10 percent when computing the amount of credit to which the couple is entitled under Subsection (b):
(1) 40 percent, if the qualifying married couple have four qualifying children;
(2) 50 percent, if the qualifying married couple have five qualifying children;
(3) 60 percent, if the qualifying married couple have six qualifying children;
(4) 70 percent, if the qualifying married couple have seven qualifying children;
(5) 80 percent, if the qualifying married couple have eight qualifying children;
(6) 90 percent, if the qualifying married couple have nine qualifying children; or
(7) 100 percent, if the qualifying married couple have 10 or more qualifying children.

The bill has also caused heads to explode because of how it defined marriage and family.

1) “Qualifying child” means a child of any age who is:
(A) a natural child of both spouses of a qualifying married couple born after the date on which the qualifying married couple married;
(B) an adopted child of both spouses of a qualifying married couple adopted after the date on which the qualifying married couple married; or
(C) the adopted child of one spouse of a qualifying married couple adopted after the date on which the qualifying married couple married if the child is the natural or adopted child of the other spouse and that other spouse was a widow or widower before the date on which the qualifying married couple married.
(2) “Qualifying married couple” means a man and a woman who are legally married to each other, neither of whom have ever been divorced.

I like the fact that it encourages adoption. I suspect the “never married” part is to prevent people from running the same type of scam that used to take place with federal income taxes, where couples would get divorced in December and remarry after January 1 to avoid the “marriage penalty.” Still, in a country where allegedly half of all marriages end in divorce (there are a lot of reasons why this is probably a bogus number, but that is a different story), it has raised some ire.

The biggest cause of panty-wadding is the definition of a “qualifying marriage.” When we’ve reached the point where a Supreme Court justice is afraid to define “woman,” we need some moral clarity like Slaton’s description to bring us back to sanity. I’m sorry, but homosexual and transgender people will never be a “married couple,” as far as I’m concerned, no matter what the Supreme Court says. It seems to me that as long as we’re using tax codes to reward and punish behavior, limiting a property tax abatement to couples engaging in heterosexual behavior is justified; see the Reagan quote.

Slaton, apparently, has a history of proposing bills that never go anywhere, and, as of this writing, there are no co-sponsors for the bill. Of course, I’m not a lawyer, so I won’t even guess how this would play out in court. But, as we’ve moved past equal opportunity to a racial and sexual spoils system where it is legal to discriminate against disfavored classes, it is evident that the whole “equal protection under the law” thing is no longer operative.

Even if this bill’s purpose is only to make a statement, I applaud Representative Slaton’s effort. We need to talk about rewarding marriage and childbearing and disfavoring divorce and bizarre sexual appetites.

The Text of the Bill

Texas HB 2889 by streiff at redstate