Why I'm Right

This blog is dedicated to the principles that I believe made The United States the most successful country in the history of the world. It is further dedicated to the desire and hope that we are smart enough to keep it. For now, it is a compilation of articles, columns and op-eds that I found to have interest or value. Hope you do as well. Please share your thoughts and opinions especially if you disagree. Just click on the "comment" link or e-mail me at stevemishket@att.net.

Showing posts with label conservatives. Show all posts

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Why I'm Backing Newt Gingrich

From Riehl World View blog
01/21/12

I'd rather go down fighting for what's right and what I believe in, than limp away like some over-compromised alleged conservative, but ultimately unprincipled clown, because when the call went out at what is widely considered to be a pivotal moment in American political history, I couldn't manage to stand up and be counted upon.

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Gingrich’s Virtues

by Andrew C. McCarthy
12/17/11

This is an excellent defense of Newt as well as a good summation of the Republican candidates.

If we convince ourselves that conservative candidates, effectively arguing conservative ideas, cannot persuade a center-right country to reject the most radical Leftist ever to occupy the Oval Office — we are nowhere.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Why the Right Fears Transforming America -- and the Left Seeks It

09/07/10
by Dennis Prager

One unbridgeable divide between left and right is how each views alternatives to present-day America.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Why Conservatives Love the Founders

May 16, 2010By James Lewis

A Salon writer wonders, "What's the conservative fetish with the Founding Fathers?"

It's because we read history, my sadly ignorant friend. So did the Founders.

Friday, April 30, 2010

… and everybody else who should be running the Republican Party and isn’t.

by Charles N. Hakes

04/30/10

To Ms. Palin & Mssrs.Gingrich, Steele, McCain, O’Reilly, Limbaugh, Anuzis, Boehner…

… and everybody else who should be running the Republican Party and isn’t.

Are you trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory? Get it together! For the sake of us who want to see the beginning of a string of Republican victories just make sure you keep your inner-circle head-knocking a private affair, and when it’s over that what comes of it is right and victorious. Stop making copy for the liberal MSM.

What our party needs first is a decisive win in November 2010 – a win so big that Washington shudders when it hits and the remaining Democrat politicians know they better reach across the aisle and hang on or they will be the next ones to get blown away.

If the Democrats remain in power in 2011 we might as well kiss goodbye our chances of the White House in 2012, along with making a major correction in America’s rampant gallop toward socialism.

The Democrats have made it clear by words and deeds that their mission is to govern, not to reflect the will of the majority. They will try to remain in power by any means possible.

The last thing America can tolerate is a repeat of November 2008 that resulted in so much damage inflicted by a year of liberal legislation that it will take conservatives years to set it all right again.

In 2008 we saw a fine gentleman, senior statesman, and war hero get folded, spindled and mutilated by a wet-behind-the-ears kid whose record, character, and clandestine promise was so terribly un-American that any other candidate would have been sunk before he walked out of the convention hall. It is to McCain’s credit that he did as well as he did against Machiavellian subterfuge and ACORN voter recruitment in a campaign in which his opponent lied about his funding intentions and then spent $17.53 per vote on his margin of victory.

Republicans blew the strategy which should have been to keep the campaign focus on who and what Obama was. He was allowed to promise undefined hope and change so that human nature could kick in and voters could plug in what they hoped for. His substance – his beliefs and associates not what he said -- signaled what he would do. Talk is cheap, and he got away with it.

Then Republicans blew the tactics by not calling Obama on his passive-aggressive grins and controlling finger fidgets during the debates. Instead, Obama was granted the credibility of being treated as an equal by a fine American when he should have been positioned as what he was – a neophyte pretender with a big voice and no substance and no experience except in Saul Alinsky methods. That big opportunity is now gone.

Every time Obama pontificated about the “failed politics of the last eight years” America should have been reminded of what he had been doing for the last 20.

The media gave Obama the best of camera coverage during the debates. After that happened in the first debate there was no excuse for letting it happen in the second. The media showed their unfriendliness. If they can’t be fair, shut them out. Ms. Palin did that beautifully. Learn from her.

It’s disgusting. The whole Washington crowd is similar to the old royal families of Europe – so mentally inbred they are producing idiots.

So make a wise choice of our poster-boy or girl who will go against Obama in 2012. Get someone with fire in their belly who will call him out on his deceit, background, beliefs, associations, behavior, and what he is doing to America. Get someone who will not leave him any wiggle-room to escape the truth. Give that person the best handlers you can put in his or her corner.

Get going in 2010. Complete the job in 2012! Americans deserve it, want it, and expect it. The time is now. Nobody gets what he wants in a compromise. There is no compromise for overwhelming victory. So get it together, Republicans. Do it now.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Party of 'No'...and Proud

02/09/10

By Matt Spivey

Imagine if someone told you that even though you are a Christian, in order to get along better with others, you need to put your religious beliefs on hold until 2012. Don't worry about that "salvation" thing for a couple of years. Or imagine if you were asked to love your parents a little less because your full-hearted devotion to them is getting in the way of showing your affection for others. Wait until the next election to prove your respect for your family.

Friday, January 15, 2010

Eureka, I Am a Conservative!

01/15/10

By Harold Witkov

For the longest time, average Americans were in a political stupor. But not anymore. In the past year, across this great nation of ours, an awakening has started. Individual Americans, by the droves, are experiencing their own political eureka moments and transforming into conservatives.

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Insist that GOP Make Repeal of Government-Run Health Care a 2010 Issue

12/27/09

By J. Robert Smith

Conservatives need to insist that the GOP press its opposition to big-government health care right through the 2010 elections. Think it's unnecessary to insist? Think again. Moderate Republicans have very little shark in them. In other words, while they may smell blood in the water, they're apt not to go in for the kill.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Rebooting the Debate

11/30/09

By Michael D. Harbison

I am now observing how conservatives willingly cede the defining moments of a debate by accepting, and even parroting, the terminology of the Left. As long as we continue to let the left frame the argument, the picture we attempt to paint will not matter. When the debate is defined by their vernacular (global warming, gun control, health care, and all the rest), we sustain an uphill battle in our quest to have our views understood. Our words should define our beliefs inasmuch as the Liberal terminology defines the beliefs of the Left.

Change We Can Believe In

11/29/09

By Victor Davis Hanson

Here is a sensible platform I could easily support. Somebody PLEASE adopt it.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Will a Litmus Test Save the GOP?

By Jillian Bandes
November 26, 2009

The proposal is called “Reagan’s Unity Principle for Support of Candidates” and the ten points stem from ten principles they think Reagan adhered to while in office. The “8 of 10” litmus test comes from Reagan’s stated principle that if someone agrees with you eighty percent of the time, then they needed to be considered a friend.

“We have to be tolerant and welcoming of diverse views, but a candidate must be with us most of the time,” said Bopp. “If they want our money, then they need to support our values.”

Friday, June 5, 2009

Conservatives Aren't the Extremists

06/05/09

by David Limbaugh

Mainstream conservatives are routinely mischaracterized as extreme by liberals and squishy Republicans, when it is America's liberals who are, by any fair measure, more extreme.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Universal Truth Depends on What Universe You Live In

05/20/09

by Victor J. Massad

Liberals and conservatives perceive the world in completely different ways, and subsequently live their lives in different universes, each of which follows a different set of laws.

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Wishful Thinking

05/02/09

by Randall Hoven

They (the Democrats) are not going to solve these problems with those "solutions," and they know it. All they need to do is convince you that they are solving those problems.

And that's the difference between liberals and conservatives in "public service." Conservatives think solutions should solve problems. Liberals know their "solutions" need only convince you they are solving problems.

Monday, April 6, 2009

Now Is the Time to Put Aside Childish Things

04/06/09

Steve Mc Cann

Now is the time to put aside childish things for the sake of the most magnificent nation in the history of mankind.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

These Differences Really Do Matter

February 03, 2009

John Hawkins

Liberals view the government as a force for good that should be used at every possible opportunity to reorder people's lives.

On the other hand, conservatives view the government as a necessary evil that should generally be used as sparingly, judiciously, and reluctantly as possible.

"Notes and Quotes" Archive

**“Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence.” – Justice Tom C. Clark (1899-1977) US Attorney General, 1945-1949
**"If the Constitution no longer matters, then the federal government no longer exists. The same document that restricts the federal government is also the document that created them and gives them their authority. Either it is in effect, or it is not." Gary Henderson
**"The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who, in the time of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality." Dante
**“When anyone gets something for nothing, someone else gets nothing for something.” -Anonymous
** "My desire to be well-informed is currently at odds with my desire to remain sane" Author unknown
** “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.” — Peter F. Drucker
** “If getting employer benefits without paying union dues is BAD, why is getting government benefits without paying taxes GOOD?”
** “It's not that ‘the rich’ aren't paying their ‘fair share,’ it's that America isn't. A majority of the electorate has voted itself a size of government it's not willing to pay for.” - Mark Steyn
** "One of the penalties of not participating in politics is that you will be governed by your inferiors." ~ Plato
**"Fathom the hypocrisy of a Government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured...but not everyone must prove they are a citizen."
**If it matters, measure it: How do you know how much you’ve slipped or improved in an area unless you measure it? How do you take something “to the next level” if you don’t know what level you’re already at? How do you set concrete goals without a sense of where you are and where you want to go? If the success of your venture depends on it, you need to find a way to measure it.
**The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them. - Mark Twain
**Political correctness is an approved form of censorship. Based on emotional appeals at the expense of reason, political correctness mandates that inconvenient truths or facts be swept under the carpet. Or else. Free speech, guaranteed to all Americans under the First Amendment, is on its way to becoming moot. The political, media, and intellectual elites who control the terms of national debate and the rules of civil society have succeeded in censoring opposing views, limiting debate, and demonizing dissent. Perception is on its way to becoming our new reality. Nancy Morgan
**Ronald Reagan once defined an economist as somebody who sees something working in real life and wondering if it will work in theory.
**"Fathom the odd hypocrisy that Obama wants every citizen to prove they are insured, but they don't have to prove they are citizens." ~ Ben Stein
**“America is the greatest, freest and most decent society in existence. It is an oasis of goodness in a desert of cynicism and barbarism. This country, once an experiment unique in the world, is now the last best hope for the world.”--Dinesh D'Souza
**No politician has any business talking about tax increases until ObamaCare is repealed. It’s the most comprehensively failed legislation of the modern era. Like a taxi that runs on plutonium, it’s costing us a fortune, and making us sick, even while it’s sitting there and doing nothing. Sold with fanciful promises and fraudulent cost estimates, it’s another expensive scheme to buy votes with taxpayer money, ending with a planned crisis the government will be only too happy to step in and “solve” by seizing even more of our wealth and liberty. Its passage stymied serious attempts at real improvements to our health-care system, including tort reform and allowing the interstate sale of insurance plans to increase competition. As with so many other delusional Big Government programs, the opportunity cost of passing ObamaCare, and passing up on reasonable plans that enhance individual liberty, rivals its staggering price tag. We’ll come trillions closer to a balanced budget by shredding it. -- Dr. Zero
**'If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel' -- Benjamin Netanyahu
** This is almost unbelievable. Barack Obama is more concerned about Jews building homes in Jerusalem than about Iran building a nuclear weapon. --Ben Stein
** I hope we have once again reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: as government expands, liberty contracts. --Ronald Reagan
** "As an American I am not so shocked that Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize without any accomplishments to his name, but that America gave him the White House based on the same credentials." - - Newt Gingrich
** An ideal Federal government in our country wouldn't take much from you, do much for you, or get in your way . --John Hawkins
** The banking crisis wasn't caused by a lack of regulation. It was caused by regulation that pushed banks to make bad loans. --John Hawkins
** An ideal Federal government in our country wouldn't take much from you, do much for you, or get in your way . --John Hawkins
**Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, "We don't know how lucky we are." And the Cuban stopped and said, "How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to." And in that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there's no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.--Ronald Reagan
** A final word on Tea Party numbers. The Obama Inauguration left in its wake 100 tons of trash on the Mall that required herculean efforts by the District and the Park Service to clean up. And it devastated the grass surfaces of the Mall that necessitated budgeting millions of dollars to repair. Saturday’s Teapartyers left behind a west lawn and Mall that could be used for the U.S.Open. The sparse trash that was left was neatly stashed in and closely around the too few receptacles provided. And police reported zero arrests.-- William Campenni
** There is no distinctly Native American criminal class...save Congress. --Mark Twain
** What this country needs are more unemployed politicians. --Edward Langley
** To be born a U.S. citizen is, as Cecil Rhodes once said of England, to win first prize in the lottery of life.
**"Free speech does not include the right to deceive". --Author unknown
** Although racism certainly exists in this country, it has become blessedly rare and marginalized. Some of the best evidence you can find for that is Barack Obama's election as President. Only in a country as colorblind as America could a black man easily win the Presidency when 75% of the votes were cast by white Americans. --John Hawkins
**I think we need a Constitutional Amendment that says: 1. Congressional salaries are tied to increased jobs, per capita income and increased GDP. 2. Any raise for any member must be approved by a super majority in his/her home district or state. --Tom Hall
**There is a certain irony in an administration denouncing ordinary Americans who get together to express what they believe and to confront authority, when that administration is led by a man who began his career as a community organizer, whose job, as I understand it, is to take ordinary Americans, get them together to express what they believe, and express demands against the authorities. So it's unbelievably hypocritical. And, of course, as we just heard, this only happens when you have a conservative protest. It is called a mob. If it's a liberal protest, it is called grassroots expressing themselves. -- Charles Krauthammer
**Government does not solve problems... it subsidizes them! --Ronald Reagan
**When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President -- I'm beginning to believe it.’ - Clarence Darrow
**The liberals will give free medical care to illegal aliens who are on welfare but will deny it to American citizens who have worked all their lives and made their contributions to American society.-- Charles Hakes
** Medicare is a huge, single-payer, government-run program. It ought to provide the perfect environment for experimentation. If more-efficient government management can slash health-care costs by addressing all these problems, why not start with Medicare? Let's see what "better management" looks like applied to Medicare before we roll it out to the rest of the country. -- Virginia Postrel
** You can lead a man to Congress, but you can’t make him think. -- Milton Berle
**We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are. --The Talmud
**You can lead a man to Congress, but you can’t make him think. -- Milton Berle
**We're getting too much lip service and not enough action from the Obama administration on nuclear power, and the impression is being left that we can run this big, complex country on electricity from the wind, the sun and the earth. ...Climate change may be the inconvenient problem, but nuclear power is the inconvenient answer. -- Lamar Alexander
**The government may very well come up with a health insurance product that is cheaper (to the consumer) and more effective than those offered in the private sector. Think about this though ... Could that possibly be because the government will be under no pressure whatsoever to make a profit on its health insurance? When you can operate at a loss indefinitely you have no problem undercutting your competitors. When you can call on endless government subsidies you can run anyone you chose out of business. -- Neal Boortz
**I'd like to quote from an e-mail I recently received from a reader named J. Pyle. In response to a piece I had written ridiculing the state of higher education, he wrote: "I remember when 'Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Studies' meant trying to figure out what's wrong with those people. In fact, if your child is majoring in something that ends in 'Studies,' you better not turn their bedroom into a den, because that one is coming home after college." --Bert Prelutsky
**People are gushing over the late Michael Jackson. I suppose they will honor him on a postage stamp, in a new “Famous Child Molesters” series, to go with Elvis from the “Famous Drug Abusers” stamp series. Meanwhile, men and women dying to protect an America pass with little but perfunctory notice. One wonders, in the black hours of the night, if this nation deserves protecting. -- Robert Hall
**I sincerely hope that when the president goes in for his annual check-up, the doctors at Bethesda will do a brain scan. Surely something must be terribly wrong with a man who seems to be far more concerned with a Jew building a house in Israel than with Muslims building a nuclear bomb in Iran. --Bert Prelutsky
**"Even if the majority agrees on an idiotic idea, it is still an idiotic idea." Sam Levenson
**The most hilarious thing about the Democrats' attempt to engulf the health care industry in the inky blackness of the federal government is their primary selling point: that a government takeover will actually lead to reduced costs. How's that plan working out with Medicare so far? Oh yeah, it's on track to bankrupt the entire country. So let's expand that -- what could go wrong? Well, besides all the features that usually come along with socialized medicine: reduced quality of care, long wait times for operations, and allowing old people to die in order to cut costs. Obamacare would lead to health care with the compassion of the IRS, the competence of FEMA, and the well staffed work force of our border patrol at a much higher cost, but on the upside, you won't live as long, so you'll have less time to complain about it. -- John Hawkins
**President Obama wants greater transparency from businesses, banks, the government — everyone except the union movement. This clearly benefits the union leaders, who will become less accountable to their members. But it’s hardly the change Obama promised to bring to Washington. — James Sherk
**Being politically correct is, unfortunately, not the same thing as being correct politically.-- Bert Prelutsky
**If increased government spending with borrowed or newly created money is a "stimulus," then the Weimar Republic should have been stimulated to unprecedented prosperity, instead of runaway inflation and widespread economic desperation that ultimately brought Adolf Hitler to power. -- Thomas Sowell
**“The big mistake of Republican leadership is thinking that going through the motions of listening to their ‘base’ is the same thing as actually listening to the base. They keep trying to drag us to where they think we should be instead of joining us where we are.” -- John Hawkins
** Torturing prisoners should never be our policy, both because it's immoral and because it's usually ineffective. But it's madness to declare that there can never be exceptions. Forget the argument about the "ticking bomb" and the terrorist who might have information that could save numerous lives. Let's make it personal. Whether you're left, right or in between, ask yourself this yes-or-no question: If torturing a known terrorist would save the life of the person you love most in the world, would you approve it? If your answer is "no," you're not a moral paragon. You're an abomination. And please make your position clear to your husband or wife, mother or father, son or daughter. Just tell 'em, "Sorry, honey, but I'd rather see you dead than mistreat a terrorist. It's a moral issue with me. --Ralph Peters
**The man who loves other countries as much as his own stands on a level with the man who loves other women as much as he loves his own wife. -- Teddy Roosevelt
**The prudent capitalist will never adventure his capital... if there exists a state of uncertainty as to whether the Government will repeal tomorrow what it has enacted today. -- William Henry Harrison
**The price of a postage stamp has gone up to 44 cents. The government says they had to raise the price because fewer people are using the mail these days. That's government thinking for you — "Hey nobody's buying our products . . . let's raise the price!" --Jay Leno
**If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand. -- Milton Friedman
**Since torture doesn’t work but waterboarding did work on KSM, doesn’t that prove that waterboarding isn’t torture?
**"The world is controlled by those who show up." --George Allen
**John Maynard Keynes, responded to a challenge about his changing views, saying, “When the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?”