Presidential hopeful Herman Cain made an appearance on ABC’s The View this week and had to deflect staggering ignorance from host Joy Behar. Discussing Cain’s assertion that some blacks are “brainwashed” not to consider any conservative ideas, the very first sentence out of Behar’s mouth was “The Republican Party hasn’t been black friendly over the many centuries in this country.”

Sadly, the coffee klatch program is what passes for as “intelligent” conversation on TV these days. Behar’s blather is ignorant in a million ways and indicative of the historical illiteracy of the far left in this country.

First, of course, this county hasn’t even been a country for “many centuries.” We are only about 235 years old as a nation! Most people don’t claim two as “many,” but only as “a couple.”

Second, the Republican Party has also not been around for “many centuries in this country.” The party is only about 155 years old.

Third, when the party itself was started it was derisively called the “Black Republicans” by Behar’s beloved Democrats because it was so friendly to America’s blacks. The party was founded with a pro-black agenda, its primary goal being the abolition all blacks from slavery and assuring them civil rights. In fact, for many decades after the Civil War and on into the 1900s most black Americans were Republicans, not Democrats. The very first blacks elected to Congress ran as Republicans. Blacks being Democrats is a relatively new development in our history.

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In case anyone was wondering, or cares: I am not a Republican nor a Democrat. I don’t like either party. Never have. I am an independent.

I don’t like the Democrats because they are statists. They are for big government and more taxes. They are also for mob rule. They want a democratic society, not a Republic. That is a disastrous recipe. Big government always leads to tyranny, democracy lacks the limited government structure of a Republic, which makes it harder for corruption to prevail. Democrats seem to love corruption. They wallow in it like pigs in their own dung. That’s why they seek to undermine our limited-government constitution at every point. You can go back to Tammany Hall right up to today to see their disregard for the rule of law. Rangel and Waters were merely caught. They are far from outliers.

I dislike the Republicans because they don’t practice what they preach. They’re supposed to be the party of smaller government and lower taxes. But they are just like ’70s Democrats now. Aside from the Bush tax cuts, they’ve expanded government and spending to obscene levels. When the Democrats came into power they just made the Republicans look conservative by contrast.

Less terrible is still terrible. The Republicans share the blame for our debt. But what I really dislike about Republicans is how elitist they are. They cherry pick their primary candidates before the people can choose. They ram their picks through. The public is given a token choice, but the party rigs the results. A great example was the primary race this week. Delaware says it all. (more…)

The Democrats and their activist old media are running in circles and working themselves into pretzels trying to define the “Tea Party” movement. It can be quite entertaining to watch.  They really have no idea what is happening right in front of their eyes. The media would have an easier time reading Mandarin Chinese than they would deciphering the signs at a Tea Party rally.

You could argue that they don’t want to understand what they are seeing because that means they would have to admit that Democrats have lost the beloved grass roots that they claim to have had forever, and I would not disagree. But, for the moment, let’s just say that they are really trying hard to figure this out and it’s just not sinking in to their brilliant Ivy League minds.

Let’s give them a little hint:

Sunday on Meet the Press, Dee Dee Myers, the former Clinton press secretary, took a stab at defining the Tea Party movement. “I’m not sure exactly where this is going….is it a third party, is it part of the Republican Party?” (more…)

Once upon a time former Governor, Presidential candidate, and Chairman of the Democrat National Committee called the GOP the “White Party.”  CNN commentator Lou Dobbs took Dean to task for his language.

So was Dr. Dean, and those among the Left who share his understanding of history, accurate?  Is the GOP the party of white people?  Let’s test the good doctor’s diagnosis.

Fifteen questions follow.  The correct answers are provided at the end. No peeking!

Question #1.  During whose administration did the signature of an African-American first appear on U.S. currency? During that of a Republican or a Democrat President?

Question #2.  Was the first African-American diplomat appointed by a Republican or a Democrat President?

Question #3.  Was the first African-American popularly elected U.S. Senator a Republican or a Democrat? (more…)

Remember when the Left was the champion of the Little Guy?  When they hated the “undemocratic” Electoral College and passed the 17th Amendment to force the direct election of Senators?  When Andrew Jackson effectively invented the modern Democratic Party by throwing open the doors of the White House to the people and defying Supreme Court orders?

Well, that was then and this is now, because here comes Kurt Andersen in New York Magazine to tell us that the problem with democracy is… you guessed it:

So now we have a country absolutely teeming with irregular passions and artful misrepresentations, whipped up to an unprecedented pitch and volume by the fundamentally new means of 24/7 cable and the hyperdemocratic web. And instead of a calm club of like-minded wise men (and women) in Washington compromising and legislating, we have a Republican Establishment almost entirely unwilling to defy or at least gracefully ignore its angriest, most intemperate and frenzied faction—the way Reagan did with his right wing in the eighties and the way Obama is doing with his unhappy left wing now.

Just as the founders feared, American democracy has gotten way too democratic. (more…)

Judicial Watch issued its  Washington’s “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians” for 2009″ list a couple of weeks ago and I’ve been waiting for MSM coverage of this story–as President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Tim Geithner, Eric Holder, Charles Rangel, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, John Murtha, Roland Burris, Rep. Jesse Jackson, and John Ensign are this year’s trophy winners.

For the record, Ensign is the only Republican and President Bush has never been on the list. I wonder if the Ds and Rs were flipped, if the MSM would have covered the story because I have not been able to find anything on this story from the major networks.  I found the story handily on the FoxNation but nowhere else in the MSM.

After Senator Harry Reid, in 2005, called the Republican Congress the most corrupt in history, he may want to look at the 2009 list and retract that statement.  It’s refreshing to see that the United States government is so well represented on this list, including the President, Speaker of the House, Secretary of the Treasury, Attorney General, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, House Financial Services Committee Chairman (Frank), and Chairman of Housing, Banking, and Urban Affairs (Dodd).

Furthermore, Obama has been on Judicial Watch’s Most Corrupt list each year since 2006—in 2008, and 2007, and 2006 (dishonorable mention). (more…)

If you live in Chicago and your only source of news is the venerable Chicago Tribune, it would take you a while to figure out that something happened in Massachusetts Tuesday night. One would think that an editor might place a story with the following lead – oh, I don’t know – front page, top of the fold, maybe?

In a stunning blow to Democrats, Republican Scott Brown ended the party’s half-century grip on the Senate seat once held by Edward M. Kennedy, coming from nowhere to give the GOP the crucial 41st vote needed to thwart President Obama and his agenda, possibly starting with healthcare.

It ended up on page fourteen.

Allow me to repeat: page fourteen. An election that stunned both parties, sent a thundering message to the President and his party, threatens the very existence of the signature piece of legislation that this administration – and the Chicago Tribune – believe is vital to the health and welfare of Americans is a story that, in the judgment of what used to be the beacon of Midwestern values, less important than finding Asian carp DNA in Lake Michigan yet again. (more…)

Who knew that George W. Bush had such powers over the natural world? According to some pundits, Hurricane Katrina was Bush’s fault, as was the tsunami in Indonesia and now – if you believe James Ridgeway in Mother Jones – that Bush’s policy is responsible for the devastating effects of the 7.5 earthquake that decimated the poor country of Haiti.

But during the eight years of George W. Bush’s presidency, we could depend on such ridiculous musings as Mr. Ridgeway displayed. I haven’t done enough research to determine if Bush was the most reviled president in our nation’s history – that might well have been Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican President — but it’s not that hard to figure out that his coverage by the media was historically the most relentlessly hostile.

I first started writing my op-ed columns during the Clinton administration and while I may have disagreed with most of his policies I never stooped to the insulting, vitriolic language routinely leveled at President Bush. What also amazed me was the lack of outrage by the president and his administration officials. There is always the possibility that I might have missed their fury because the mainstream media was unlikely to report anything other than leftist propaganda. But I was a columnist for the only New York newspaper that covered Bush honestly and without bias from 2002 to 2008, when we died as a print publication. (more…)

Susan Swift, aka “Susan from Glendale,” first came to national attention last fall via the Rush Limbaugh show.  You can see and hear her conversation with Rush here.

In 2008 the GOP suffered a heart attack.  For years, a graying, obese GOP abused the  body politic and ignored the warning signs: fat-laden budgets, feeding at the earmark trough, sedentary legislative agenda, self-abusing scandals, and stubborn disregard of pleas to stop.  In a too-little-too-late act of desperation, the elderly GOP reached out to a young, vibrant woman.  Like electroshock therapy, Sarah Palin got the GOP’s heart restarted briefly, but she could not cure the political atrophy sufficient to overcome a leaner, energized Democrat challenger.  The near-fatal seizure in November was the culmination of years of GOP arrogance and dysfunction.

Fifteen months ago, concerned Americans watched the GOP coronary on election night as a stunning wake-up call for the nation’s larger health.  They realized the dangers posed by the only political party left standing, the Democrat party and its devotion to collectivism, high taxes and coercive nanny-state government.

They have watched Democrats shred core American principles as they bludgeoned their way to control over private businesses and financial institutions, and enacted incomprehensibly huge pork barrel legislation.  Now they watch in horror as Democrats work to steal control of the nation’s healthcare system and to impose energy standards poisonous to private enterprise and based on overtly corrupt and fraudulent junk science. (more…)

The special election in Massachusetts on Tuesday for the open Senate seat once held by Teddy Kennedy is the hottest political story of the day. The race is so close that no one is sure who will win but signs are starting to point to a Republican Scott Brown’s victory. And it doesn’t help when Patrick Kennedy, son of the late Lion, doesn’t even know Coakley’s first name.

Cue the Associated Press with a Saturday puff piece on Democrat Martha Coakley that tries to sell her as an “historic candidate” perhaps in order to help push her over the top just before the polls open on Tuesday.

Written by Steve LeBlanc, the AP headlined its piece, “Coakley Hopes for Historic Win in Kennedy Seat Bid.”  The subtitle explains why her candidacy is “historic.” It reads: “Coakley aims to hold off GOP surge for Kennedy seat, become 1st woman elected senator in Mass.”

What puffery. The days when it was noteworthy that a woman was elected to high office are long past. For decades we’ve had women elected in just about every position in politics from the city and state level all the way to the highest offices. In fact, the only two jobs that have yet to see a female elected to them are president and vice president, though we have had credible candidates for both. For all else, women have long since shattered the glass ceiling. So, how “historic” could it be that we might have yet another elected female Senator? Aren’t there several female senators now serving? Of course there are – 16 of them, in fact. (more…)

Fifth in a series.  Find parts one, two, three and four here.  And don’t miss this important update.

There’s an old saying in New England, something one utters when another person grabs your chair or bar stool and plops himself into it before you were ready to leave:  “You wouldn’t jump into my grave so fast.”

Well, hold the phone.  As everyone in the State of Massachusetts and the country knows, Ted Kennedy was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor in May 2008, and as the months went on into 2009, the prognosis was: terminal.

With the imminent vacancy of Kennedy’s seat a foregone conclusion, Martha Coakley began ramping up her campaign for his seat… as early as January 2009.

The Boston Herald first reported on this story on September 25, 2009:

Attorney General Martha Coakley has run a shadow Senate campaign for months, shelling out $126,000 from her state campaign account for expenses likely tied to her Capitol Hill bid, including $15,000 for Web site upgrades just days before Sen. Edward M. Kennedy died, records show.

The spending spree began in January but ramped up the last two weeks of August as Coakley funneled $31,000 to consultants, fund-raisers and a Web design company in preparation for her foray into the high-stakes Senate race.

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One of the tricks that the Old Media consistently uses to paint conservatives as walking on the dark side is to call Republicans who lean left “moderates,” while those who lean to the right are “right wing” or “hardcore” Republicans. This media-speak reserves the harsher words for conservatives and makes anyone on the right seem like an extremist, yet paints the center-left as being on the side of the angels.

It’s a subtle flavoring of rhetoric that leads the reader to a prearranged conclusion as opposed to a reporting of the facts. A recent Time Magazine article by Tim Padgett on the Republican primary Senate campaign in Florida between the fading Gov. Charlie Crist and the surging former house speaker Marco Rubio is a perfect example.

To Time the primary fight between Rubio and Crist is apparently one of light versus dark, the evil extremist “right wing” siding with Rubio against the nice, “inclusive” moderates supporting Crist. But with this characterization, Time is misrepresenting the political battle between Rubio and Crist. Unfortunately for Time’s agenda, the argument in Florida between Rubio and Crist has little to do with moderates, inclusion, or big tent politics but has everything to do with economics. Rubio is a fiscal conservative while Crist, the incumbent governor, has been a profligate spender. (more…)