An excellent point he makes in the essay is that the Declaration of Independence asserts that our Rights (a political term) originate not from our political relationship to a State, but from our religious relationship to the Creator, God.

He points out that the Left has been busy for decades trying to convince people that there is a wall of separation between Religion and the State, and that we should never mingle them.

The old aphorisms, “Religion and Politics Don’t Mix,” and “You can’t Legislate morality” are both products of what Alexander says is a dumbing down of American culture. I would agree. I remember my parents repeating the idea that you can’t legislate morality. It was something they learned in their youth, which was originally passed down from the Progressive movement in America.

If the 60′s did have a silver lining, it was that we learned to question everything. For the Left, it was about questioning the remnants of the Old Authority. For today’s generation, the tables have turned. Now it’s about questioning the authority of the established Left, whose chickens are, indeed, coming home to roost.

“If I had to choose in terms of being a Republican, I’d go with Rush Limbaugh,” Cheney said, adding that he believed Colin Powell had left the GOP when he threw his support behind Barak Obama in the general election.  “I assumed that that is some indication of his loyalty and his interests.”

Powell has expressed concern over statements made by Rush Limbaugh regarding his choice to support Obama for President. “I think what Rush does as an entertainer diminishes the party and intrudes or inserts into our public life a kind of nastiness that we would be better to do without.”

Apparently Powell hasn’t been paying attention. Barak Obama stooped to new levels of nastiness in his quest for the White House, using the courts to open sealed divorce records of his opponents. Obama is a pro when it comes to nastiness; he knows the Move-on Media won’t report it.

Frankly, I’ll take someone with a sharp tongue who defends this country over a smooth talker who destroys it from within any day.

Colin Powell exemplifies two of the problems the GOP has had in the last few years–first, Republicans who believe Big Government interests can find a home in the party whose platform includes a dedication to smaller government. Reagan’s Big Tent GOP isn’t that big. Powell said last week that “Americans are looking for more government in their life, not less.” I guess he missed the Tea Party in his neighborhood.

Second, Powell has also said he is a Right-of-Center Republican, though “not as right as others would like.” You can say that again, Colin. Since when was support for more government a right-of-center issue? Powell apparently thinks Republicans must act like Democrats in order to get elected.

Rush Limbaugh has stated over and over again that this isn’t true, that conservatism wins every time it is honestly tried. Dick Cheney supports that idea. “The suggestion our Democratic friends always make is ‘somehow if you Republicans were just more like Democrats, you’d win elections.’ Well, I don’t buy that. We win elections when we have good solid conservative principles to run upon.” Cheney gets it.

Specter: Kemp would be alive today

“If we had pursued what President Nixon declared in 1970 as the war on cancer, we would have cured many strains. I think Jack Kemp would be alive today. And that research has saved or prolonged many lives, including mine.”

Aside from the fact that we have found no cure for any kind of cancer, even with all our research, this reminds me of all those movies where someone joins up with the bad guys and then has to perform some evil deed against the good guys to prove his loyalty to the bad. Think Annakin Skywalker in Star Wars. As soon as Arlen Specter makes his move to the Democratic Party, he demonstrates his new-found convictions by accusing his former associates of killing one of their own, nevermind that government largesse has never resulted in any kind of cure for any disease. This is political posturing at its most despicable.

What the movies don’t show you is that people who would do this had evil in their hearts from the beginning. They were not coerced into the evil act, they were looking for an excuse. Arlen Specter has been waiting for this day, when he is finally free to voice the feelings of his heart.

Jack Kemp, who passed away this weekend from cancer, would be ashamed for Specter. And Specter should be ashamed, too. He obviously has always belonged where he is now–among the ranks of the liberal democrats.

You’d think that the Move-on Media would have figured out the dynamics of the American political landscape by now. And you’d be wrong. Despite years of reporting on current events and the critical issues of the day, the Liberal Media has yet to fully comprehend the American People. This come from inhabiting the places they do–vast echo chambers that reflect only their own worldview.

Arlen Specter’s announcement this morning triggered an analysis of the state of the GOP by Charles Babington of the AP. I suppose Charles is really trying to be helpful, but his analysis is so far off-base as to be laughable. “The GOP is a shrinking tent,” he exclaims. His conclusion as to why it is shrinking? It has moved too far to the right.

Charles writes,

Specter’s departure follows recent Republican losses in once-reliable states. While Barack Obama was cruising to the White House last fall, Republicans were losing long-held Senate seats in Alaska, Colorado, New Mexico, North Carolina and Virginia. A moderate Republican lost his seat in Oregon, and the same seems likely to happen when Minnesota’s long recount is settled.

Alaska is an excellent point for a closer look. Who lost the seat in Alaska? Ted Stevens. Remember Ted Stevens? He lost his seat because four weeks prior to the general election, he was convicted on charges of corruption. The news was devastating to the Republicans. But even with the conviction hanging like a dark cloud over him, Stevens lost by only a thin margin. So, were the voters voting out Stevens because he was too far right? Or were they voting him out because they were tired of the corruption in Government. The answer is clear to anyone aware of the recent Tea Party Movement. Everytime a Republican is at the center of even the smallest scandal during an election cycle, it is almost assured the seat will go to the Democrat.

If there is one thing the Democrats have learned about the Republicans, it is that Republican voters don’t readily tolerate monkey business on the part of their elected representatives. We like to keep things clean–to a fault. And they have used this to their advantage.

If the Republican tent is shrinking, it is because the regular Americans who make up the Republican Party are fed up with their elected leadership governing like Democrats, and abandonning Conservative principles. Arlen Specter is an example of the kind of Republican that is causing voter dissatisfaction with the GOP. He jumped ship to maintain his own power, not so he can continue serving the American People. He couldn’t care less about the People. (Of couse, the Move-on Media label Specter a “Pragmatist,” while Conservatives think of him as a political opportunist–or worse.)

Ironically, the Stevens case illustrates just how low the Democrats will go to secure a seat for themselves in the Halls of Power. Stevens conviction was dismissed by a federal judge last month, because of corruption on the part of the prosecutors who were all but sleeping with key witnesses. They withheld evidence from the defense during the course of Discovery, and acted so improperly that the investigation into Stevens has now become an investigation into the Justice Department’s prosecutors. The judge literally yelled at them in open court.

The Democrats have their own scandals that crop up as often as any in the GOP; it’s just that the Media are less apt to report it. Besides, America has come to expect immoral behavior from the Democrats. But it seems the message has got through, and the Republicans are starting to clean house. And though we may lose a few now, in the long run, as the GOP becomes more Conservative, its power and influence can potentially exceed anything it has experienced thus far.

Meanwhile, the Democrats are too preoccupied with Republican problems to be troubled with their own issues. If the Democrats continue with the status quo, they will see soon enough that worrying about the GOP’s tent was a case of looking beyond the mark. They should be shoring up their own house.

To tell the truth, I wondered if this was not the reality behind this case. It just seemed far too convenient for the Democrats to have Sen. Stevens removed from office at this precise moment in time, when they are l0oking for every advantage to use against the Republicans and increase their grip on the government.

As a result of this sham prosecution, Sen. Stevens lost his senate seat to Democratic challenger Mark Begitch. Begitch says that dropping the charges against Stevens is “not unreasonable.” But if Begitch had any integrity, he would offer Sen. Stevens his seat back, and apologize to the people of Alaska for being part of a lie. The corruption in this case is not with Sen. Stevens, as was revealed today, but with the Democratic Party and the Justice Department, which is still largely populated with Clinton appointees. Alaskans were deceived into voting for a candidate they probably would not have voted for otherwise. Stevens lost his election bid by only 3,724 votes,  46.7% to Mark Begitch’s 47.9%.

The Democratic Party has adopted several methods to win elections, including deception, fraud, and corruption. The Stevens Case is an example of how they will find any allegation upon which they can trump up charges of corruption against Republicans, and then use the precisely timed wave of outrage to ride into power. The argument over who the senate seat is ongoing in Minnesota between Democrat Al Franken and Republican Norm Coleman. With such egregious irregularities in the election results, how can any reasonable person just assume that Al Franken actually won? It is now coming to light that ACORN submitted thousands of fraudulent voter registrations, and were guilty of throwing the elections in several counties where they were operating. The Democrats are throwing any vestiges of integrity to the winds in their desperate grab for more power.

And what have they done with that power thus far? Flouted the will of the American People at every turn, and governed as though they were accountable to no-one and the seats of power are theirs by right. Their corruption will catch up with them, and the results will not be pretty. If they refuse to learn the lessons of history, that tyranny leads to civil unrest, and that the wrong response to that unrest will lead to greater conflict, they will create a downward spiral that will eventually lead to civil war.

While both parties have responsibility for the current situation in which we find ourselves, the Democrats are deceiving the American people in order to steal the elections and win back power. If they really had a better plan, they wouldn’t need to resort to such dishonest methods to win elections. But the fact is that they don’t, and so must rely upon unsavory means of winning. Once in power, they will use every means at their disposal, including the Courts and appeals to the International community to ram their radical agenda down America’s throat.

Recommended reading.

Not only was Gustav weaker than the Democrats had hoped, it missed our oil derricks in the gulf as well, which resulted in a drop of nearly $7 in the price of a barrel of oil.

What does it say about these people who have to hope for the worst to happen to people? There’s something deeply wrong there, and very disturbing.

The Utah Republican Assembly previously endorsed Jason Chaffetz for Congress. My guess is that they will continue to back Jason, and will oppose Jim Matheson.

Actually, it’s getting so most Democratic politicians are spineless wienies in the face of the Democratic leadership. The more of them we can send home in November, the sooner we can all get our lives back in order.

The DUV-PAC Board of Directors will include:

• Chairman, David Pyne (Salt Lake County Republican Assembly)
• Vice-chairman, Larry Meyers (Utah Republican Assembly)
• Merrill Cook (U-FIRE)
• Don Guymon (editor of the Grassroots legislative report)
• Chris Herrod (Utah House of Representatives)
• Lowell Nelson (President, Utah Republican Liberty Caucus)
• Mike Thompson (Utah County Republican Assembly and former State Representative)

I noticed no-one from the Sutherland Institute was on the list, which makes sense considering their recent statements concerning Immigration reform. It appears they are more “Doug Wright Republicans” than Conservatives. They have allowed themselves to be caught in the compassion trap, i.e. where Mercy robs Justice and the Rule of Law is set aside with flawed arguments about how the kids are innocent.

Their position on immigration is simply Liberalism hiding among Conservative ideas–kind of like how our mothers told us that the Devil will tell us a thousand truths if he can get us to believe one lie. Don’t buy the lie. It’s the ice cream with just a tiny bit of dog poop in it.

I don’t agree with everything in the DUV-PAC platform, but I think they deserve our support.

While I was on vacation, I finished reading Thomas Sowell’s marvelous book The Vision of the Anointed. It was a fantastic read! Many of my favorite current affairs books leave me wanting to strangle some liberal, just to make me feel better. So, I balance them with the heavy scholarly books, which are much more about principles, and take a lot longer to read. I get two benefits from these books–a grounding in true conservative principles, and time to cool off. Dr. Sowell’s book is a good balance of both.

In it, he explains that a good number of our population, especially of the academic variety but also many of those who simply have higher degrees, feel that they are exclusively qualified to lead us into the future; that only they have the vision to see what America really needs to be great. Right now you’re thinking, “Cool! A good book about Liberals.” Well, you won’t be entirely disappointed, but Dr. Sowell only occasionally mentions Liberals or Liberalism and does not point to them as the sole focus of his book. I came to realize, while reading the last few chapters of the book, that Dr. Sowell’s focus is on anyone who can be counted among the self-anointed, including Conservatives. No-one is immune from this self-aggrandizing vision.

Well, how interesting that Chris Cannon refers to the everyday folks here in Utah as boors (props to Brad Reneer at reneer.org). Here is a fine example of what Dr. Sowell writes about. Chris Cannon thinks the reason he was beaten in the primary was the low voter turnout. That Utahans don’t care enough to vote in numbers great enough to ensure a cannon victory. Well, after doing some analysis on the Utah County clerk’s Statement of Votes Cast, it appears that low voter turnout had little to do with Cannon’s ouster.

For example, in Provo’s 8th voting precinct, of 1366 registered Republican voters, only 6 made it out to vote and all 6 voted for Cannon. Conversely, in one American Fork precinct, the voter turnout was over 40%, yet Jason Chaffetz won that precinct with 60% of the votes.

Some other interesting results came out of Mapleton. You’d think that Mapleton would have been locked down for Cannon, but Cannon won in only two precincts there (I’m guessing the one in which he lives). Additionally, the Mapleton precinct with the highest and lowest turnout rates (24% and 16%) went to Cannon, but the 2nd and 3rd highest (21% and 17%) went to Chaffetz.

Overall, voter turnout was very low at less than 10%. But when the results are broken down by precinct, it becomes obvious that it would not have mattered if the voter turnout were higher. Cannon still would have lost. Perhaps Mr. Cannon should reflect on this truth. Over the years he has become one of the “anointed,” and out of step with reality. One of the things Thomas Sowell teaches us is those with the vision of the anointed find myriad ways to insulate themselves from reality. Chris Cannon is doing exactly that now.

I said in an earlier post that it was time for Mr. Cannon to step aside, in large part because he had reached the pinnacle of his power. Judging from his reaction to the election, I’m comfortable knowing I called it right.

(On a side note, I told Jason that we was going to win the nomination back at the Convention)