Scandals Built On Liberalism

By Joe Gruters

The three (and growing) major scandals rocking the Obama administration may well help Republicans in the 2014 mid-term elections and beyond. But they are more important than that.

The scandals give conservatives the opportunity to spell out a different vision for the country that extends far beyond political gain, and will allow Gov. Scott to more clearly separate his conservative vision for Florida from whoever his Democrat opponent will be.

All three scandals have in common that they rely on the depth and power of the federal government to make them so invasive. They are driven by the corruption of ideological federal bureaucrats and the Obama administration. But that corruption would not have such an impact without the overreaching, intrusive scale of the federal government.

The IRS scandal is one of the most frightening for the average American, because everyone (who works and pays taxes) has to deal with the IRS and has some justifiable degree of fear of the powerful government agency. It’s now obvious that the IRS was wielded as a weapon against political opponents of the president and we may have just uncovered the tip of the iceberg.

The Obama administration also used federal government wire-tapping powers to go after hundreds of reporters, supposedly in search of leakers. It’s not hard to harken back to the dark days of the Nixon administration, who also used powerful government agencies against political opponents. But the government is much larger and more powerful than it was under Richard Nixon, making the threat that much bigger.

In the newest potential scandal, it now looks like the EPA also was playing politics with fee waivers. Lawmakers are launching an investigation into charges that liberal groups in support of Democrats were given preferential treatment in obtaining government records and conservative groups were blocked from them.

Benghazi is the least obvious. But it involved the huge bureaucracy of the State Department and the probability that the U.S. government was running weapons from the Libyan rebels the administration armed to Syrian rebels it wanted to arm. Most importantly, it displayed a morally vacuous disposition within the administration when the right thing collided with gaining political advantage. The administration chose politics over the lives of Americans.

There are two levels every conservative needs to understand and articulate. 

• First, the one consistent to all of these is the disturbing size and power of government over every American and its ability to insinuate itself into even the smallest aspects of our lives. Bureaucrats with agendas can make life miserable for individuals, companies, organizations. Everyone.

• Second, each of these scandals represents a place of corruption in the Obama administration. But taken altogether, they represent a breathtaking atmosphere of corruption throughout the administration.

The worst case scenario is now breaking: A frighteningly large and authoritative government with power over our lives and businesses combines with a corrupt presidential administration that is uses the massive power of the American government against the American people.

It has often been rightly said that a government big enough to give us everything we want can take everything we have. We are seeing that threat rise right now. It is for this very reason that conservatives believe in small government. Democrats represent ever bigger and more powerful government, a menacing prospect. We Republicans represent smaller government, one that cannot threaten its own people so readily.

This is not a solely federal issue.

Gov. Scott will be facing an opponent next year that is saddled with a Democrat Party that supports and fights to strengthen every one of these agencies against the average American. Those views infiltrate state-level thinking also. Scott represents the opposite. With ready help from Republicans in the Legislature, he has fought to shrink Florida’s government apparatus that intrudes on average Floridians, and shrink the footprint of taxes and regulations that weigh down companies’ abilities to grow, expand and hire.

The difference in worldviews are obvious and can be hammered home over and over, at the highest levels of political campaigns and over the fence with neighbors.

Thanks for being informed and engaged.

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Why We Can’t Give Up

By Joe Gruters

Yes. November was disheartening for Republicans, conservatives, traditionalists and all those who want to see a free and prosperous country for generations to come.

But disheartening can’t mean giving up.

We can’t continue in the current direction. Republicans know that.

We don’t need to.

In the fifth year of the Obama presidency, we have a barely sputtering economic recovery nationally, always on the brink of slipping back into a recession. We have a record number of people on food stamps and other welfare programs. Democrats will continue to say things would be worse without their interventions. But that embarrassingly weak defense can be defeated, and must be.

We’ve printed, borrowed and spent trillions more than we collected, all in the name of compassion and stimulating the economy. The economy stinks and we have record numbers of people not working, slogging along at the bottom of the economy with declining hope. The March employments numbers were dismal, well below even modest expectations. That is failure, but not just politics. It’s awful for the future of the country.

By the end of Obama’s second term, if Congress remains status quo, Democrats will have added $10 trillion to the national debt, on top of George W. Bush’s $4 trillion, which was bad enough. We don’t just need Republicans, we need actual, honest-go-gosh, principled conservative Republicans.

They must overturn the worst elements of Obamacare. Once it is fully implemented next year, it will be revealed for the bait-and-switch con we all suspected it was but were never sure because nobody actually knew what was in the bill. The opposite of what was promised will come to be in several areas: health-care premiums will go up, not down; health care will begin to be rationed, not expanded; doctors will be harder to find, not more plentiful; and jobs will be axed in the industry. We may never overturn Obamacare by name, but we can gut it, cutting out much of the government-takeover elements that will ruin our health care system.

Social Security and Medicare are headed for the shoals. The demographics against them are too strong without changes in the programs. Romney made the case, but he faced too many other problems. It’s a steep climb, but it must be done. People like Paul Ryan, who lives in a Democrat district in Wisconsin, has taken it on repeatedly. That’s what we need more of.

The reality is that these things can be done because we are right. But it will take a lot of work and devotion on our part. We’ve already had victories when the raw facts became overwhelming. For instance, most conservatives were skeptical of the man-made climate-warming hysteria and political control agenda behind it.

Carbon emissions have been continuing to increase since 2000, but the planet has not heated up since then. Some politicized scientists, many in the media and hysterical fringes like Al Gore may still keep yelling that the sky is falling. But they are already being marginalized by the plain facts. There is no real movement anymore to make the ridiculous changes that Kyoto and other insanities once proposed. Green energy won’t go away, but as long as it’s subsidies are kept under control or, dare we hope, eliminated, it’s a net positive. If the market will sustain it, great. Otherwise, chuck it.

The good news is that Republicans continue winning at the state level and conservative ideas are rising triumphant whenever tried. Florida is a perfect example, as our economy, which was worse when Gov. Scott took office, has roared past the national recovery — such as that is. If it were not for Republican-run states such as Florida, Texas, South Carolina, North Dakota and so, the nation would probably be in a recession.

Conservative economic policies work — when they are tried.

We must make sure they are tried again. Too much rests on it.

The direction has been to institutionalize massive government programs and intervention in the economy while steadily sapping the American people of the very qualities that made the country great: love of freedom, risk-taking, hard work, personal responsibility, faith.

We must change this direction. We fight for change, from top to bottom. Because Greece, Spain, Cyprus are our future if we don’t.

It starts next year, to maintain and expand our control of the House in Congress and try to pick up seats in the Senate — with conservative Republicans.

Thanks for being informed and engaged.