If Ted Kennedy had been Pro-Life . . .

The Right to Life is an issue that is close to my heart and close to the hearts of many conservatives. Most fiscal conservatives are also Pro-Life, and I think that you would be hard pressed to find a "Pro Choice" politician who is truly a fiscal conservative, budget hawk or fiscal watchdog. The GOP primary electorate is overwhelmingly Pro-Life. America is on balance a Pro Life nation. Indeed, in 2009 New Jersey elected an avowedly Pro Life governor, Chris Christie.

Despite the fact that America is a Pro Life nation, and despite the fact that the incoming GOP majority is a pro life majority, there is no 2010 mandate to move pro life legislation.

It will take several posts to address fully how the nation arrived at this intersection, but at this point, we have to start with the proposition that the focus on the right to life and abortion in the Roe v Wade era eventually forced the fiscal conservative train off its tracks.

What happened was that to millions of conservatives, the term "Pro Life" and "conservative" became synonymous. They are of course not synonymous. There is a very large intersection between the fiscal conservatives and pro-lifers, yes, but taking the Pro Life position does not make a politician a conservative.

As the GOP coalition began to unravel this past decade, I confronted a number of activists who equated Pro-Life and conservative. My answer to them was that they needed to look at a candidate's position not only on the pro-life issue, but also on issues related to the budget, taxes and free enterprise. I found myself posing the following rhetorical question:

"If Ted Kennedy were Pro Life, would that make him a conservative?"

That is a rhetorical question because the answer is obvious. If Ted Kennedy had been Pro Life, he would not have been a conservative, but a Pro Life Socialist. Uncle Teddy supported socialized medicine, heavy regulation of free enterprises, higher taxes etc. He tolerated high deficits. No, seeing the light and becoming Pro Life would not have magically converted Uncle Teddy into a conservative.

The fact that so many Republicans began to equate Pro Life with Conservative, was one of the factors that de-railed the fiscal conservative train. This is a thesis we will re-visit on a regular basis. We will re-visit it not because we should change our principles. Au contraire! The GOP is the Pro Life party. We are not going to abandon that plank in our party.

The point now is that the GOP has control of the House of Representatives. To understand the mandate that the voters handed the GOP majority, we need to understand the history of how we lost our way while focusing on a very very important issue.

The bottom line is that there will be no functional American government to protect the Right to Life if the federal government goes bankrupt.

From: Tim Howes

NEXT: FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS

It's Finance, Stupid

The focus will be on the House of Representatives, because the GOP actually won a majority of seats in the House. The GOP gained seats all across the map from the Northeast (New Hampshire, New Jersey and New York) to the South to the Midwest (notably Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin).

Because the GOP actually controls the House, GOP leaders will come into national focus. Presumptive Speaker of the House John Boehner will play a large role and carry a big megaphone. Other House GOP leaders will gain prominence.

The key here is that all appropriations bills must originate in the House. Thus, the GOP-controlled House can take the initiative on cutting the size of government through the budget process. It is imperative for the US to cut the deficit and cut it now. It really doesn't matter how good sounding the programs are, the numbers just don't add up. I don't care if you include a line item to send a dozen roses each to my wife, my mother and my daughter every day for five years or give money to straighten the teeth of underprivileged children in Appalachia or to build a statue to the memory of Mother Theresa. It doesn't matter how wonderful the cause, the fact is that the money isn't there. WE HAVE TO CUT THE DEFICIT TO ZERO!

That is the imperative.

Look, I am strongly pro-life. I always have been. My Parish Respect Life Committee will shoot me if they actually read this blog but the fact is that there is no mandate to pass social legislation in this next Congress. None. There is no mandate to address marriage, gay or otherwise. There is no mandate to address the right bear arms, or to arm bears. There is no mandate to address the right to life or a woman's right to choose.

The fact is that no matter how you might feel about the various social issues, there will be no American Government to protect either the right to life or the right to choose if we continue to run 1.4 trillion dollar annual deficits. There will be no American Government to protect the sanctity of marriage or the civil rights of any Americans if we go bankrupt as a nation. And bankrupt we will be if we run one or two more 1.4 trillion dollar deficits.

The number one focus must be balancing the federal budget.

From: Tim Howes

NEXT: IF TED KENNEDY HAD BEEN PRO-LIFE . . .

Republicans are on Probation

RNC Chair Mike Steele declared Thursday that Republicans are on "probation". As an attorney who has both prosecuted criminals and defended those accused of committing a crime, I have a pretty strong understanding of what he means. His comments help answer the question of what mandate the voters gave the GOP.

Probation comes as a sentence after one is convicted of an offense. Probation is an offender's last chance to prove that he does not deserve the more harsh sentence - imprisonment. If an offender completes probation successfully, he or she stays out of jail. If not, the court sentences the offender to jail or prison.

So what was the offense the GOP committed?

Chairman Steele's comments point us in the right direction: “Big government Republicanism is not innate to us, it’s not part of our DNA and yet we tried to force ourselves into that box and instead we wound up forcing people out of the party,”

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/11/04/rnc-chairman-steele-says-the-tea-party-has-put-republicans-on-probation/#ixzz14Qgrbsip

The GOP's offense was that it became an alternate statist party. The punishment was that people left the Big Tent, and the voters did not allow them to retain power. As such, the national GOP now has a chance to live up to its stated purpose. If it does not, then the voters will bring on another wave of change; the GOP will fail again, and the Republic will fall further into debt.

From: Tim Howes

The Marco Rubio Acceptance Speech

In his acceptance speech Tuesday night, Senator-elect Marco Rubio spoke to the issue of what Tuesday's election results mean. In his preamble, he opined:

"We make a great mistake if we believe tonight that these results are somehow an embrace of the Republican Party. What they are is a second chance, a second chance for Republicans to be what they said they were going to be not so long ago."

So far, Marco Rubio has summed it up most eloquently. The fact is that in 1994 Republicans went to Washington to change Washington, but instead they let Washington change them. The national Republican Party became a big-spending, budget-busting group. The only difference between the two parties was which statists would be in charge.

The failure of the national GOP has nearly meant the failure of our republic. Democrats, liberals, progressives, neo-socialists...it is their express intention to spend a lot of money on feelgood programs. If the GOP abandons its smaller government mission, then there is no check on liberal excesses.

So, no, this election was not an embrace of the Republican Party: It was an embrace of the libertarian ideals at the heart of the Republican ideals.

From Tim Howes

Welcome to The Republican Mandate

Good morning. It is Friday, just three days after the Election. The Republicans have gained at least 61 seats in the House and 6 in the US Senate. They gained 9 governor's seats. They gained at least 600 state legislative seats and 20 state legislative chambers.

Clearly there was a very strong Republican mandate.

But just what was that mandate?

The clearest element of the mandate is a rejection of the statist policies that President Obama, Speaker Pelosi and Dingy Harry shoved down the nation's throats. But what else did the American public demand?

That's not an easy question. It is an important question because mis-calculating the mandate would mean another "change" wave could hit Republicans from the left. Overreaching cost the Democrats their majority. Overreaching would cost the Republicans theirs.

This blog will examine how we arrived at this point and what that means for the next Congress.

From: Tim Howes