Sweet Hypocrisy

By Joe Gruters

Here’s an inconvenient truth: If you were hungry

or needy in this nation and there was not the

thick welfare net to land on, you would pray that

your neighbors were conservatives. And that

would be particularly true if you were a minority.

 

Ben Cohen’s Amend-O-Matic Stamp Mobile in Sarasota last week.

 

The Hypocrisy Machine rolled into Sarasota last week in the form of the Amend-O-Matic StampMobile piloted by Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream. Cohen is a well-known liberal and big Democrat financial donor, but his contraption runs under the banner of “Stamp Money Out of Politics.” Run a greenback through it and it will deface it with the banner in red letters.

Cohen alone has donated more than a $155,000 of his own money to Democrats since 1988. Unions donate tens of millions to Democrats. Hollywood and coastal elites contributes tens of millions to Democrats. And then there are the boundless in-kind donations of the national media, which are not IRS reportable.

But that is not the money, Cohen wants to stamp out of politics. That money is OK. It’s corporate donations that he is after, and he is perfectly comfortable using his large amount of corporate-derived money to fund his own PR machine limiting it for others.

Specifically, he is after the Citizens United decision that reaffirmed that money equals political speech access. Cohen utilizes that concept, of course, he just doesn’t want those he disagrees with to have the same freedoms. All Cohen really wants is to stamp conservative money out of politics.

Cohen comes through a long line of hypocrisy on the left when dealing with money.

Consider charitable giving. Liberals proclaim themselves to care more about the poor and needy than conservatives — and that is the nice way of putting their rhetoric. But it turns out that only appears to be the case when they are using other people’s money, such as taxpayers that include corporations. And conservatives know instinctively that keeping the poor trapped in welfare nets is not compassionate.

Arthur C. Brooks, in his book, Who Really Cares – America’s Charity Divide, combed through mountains of data to find this reality:

“Liberal families earned an average of 6 percent more per year than conservative families, but conservative families gave more than liberal families within every income class, from poor to middle class to rich. Despite their lower earnings, conservative households in America donate 30 percent more money to charity each year than liberal households.”

A Google study found an even greater disproportion between conservatives’ giving and liberals’ giving, suggesting that conservatives give about twice as much.

Democrats know these stats and try to slough them off on church giving. But even when that is backed out, conservatives still give more. But, we are told, liberals care about those in need! Here’s a stat from Brooks: “A religious person is 57 percent more likely than a secularist to help a homeless person. If liberals gave blood like conservatives do, the blood supply in the U.S. would jump by about 45 percent.”

Hypocrites.

Brooks looked at other data and found people who give charitably express less prejudice than non-givers toward African Americans, Latinos, and Asians.

It should be noted that when Brooks began researching his book, he assumed he would find that liberals were more generous. That was, and is after all, the well-crafted Democrat and media stereotype. The facts ended up forcing him to change his mind and the conclusion of the book.

Brooks looked at the macro level. On the micro level, Vice President Joe Biden is one example among many of the hypocrisy. While safely ensconced in his Senate seat, he typically ponied up about one-tenth of one percent to charity, sometimes less than one-hundredth of one percent. Essentially, nothing. The generous liberal in reality.

Once Biden was running for vice president, he managed to up his giving all the way to 1.5 percent. So even while doing it for crass political gain, he still came up with less than half of what a typical conservative gives — who makes only a fraction of Biden’s income.

Ditto for President and Michelle Obama, whose giving ranged from four-tenths of one percent to 1.2 percent until he ran for office and became president. This, from two stalwart liberals purporting to want to help the poor and needy.

Hypocrites.

Even with the Obamas and Bidens increased giving when running for office, Mitt Romney still gave more than both combined in raw dollars and as a percentage of income. In fact, he gave away 29.4 percent of his income in 2011, which is one big reason his effective tax rate appeared so low. He gave it away!

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is a big Democrat and Obama fan. Presumably he agrees with wringing more money out of American taxpayers to pay for big government. Yet Bloomberg reports that while Facebook is reporting $1.1 billion in pre-tax profits, the company will not only not pay a dime in income taxes but will get about $429 million in “refunds.”

Hypocrites.

Here’s an inconvenient truth: If you were hungry or needy in this nation and there was not the thick welfare net to land on, you would pray that your neighbors were conservatives. And that would be particularly true if you were a minority.

What does this prove? Sanctimonious politics is not charity. Liberals accuse conservatives of being cold-hearted, but they are far less “compassionate” if it actually costs them something. Liberal bumper stickers and cheap slogans mean nothing because so many liberals are only generous when giving away other people’s money — not their own.

Hypocrites.

Thanks for being informed and engaged.

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Kondracke: “Kempism” Beginning To Emerge

Morton Kondracke spoke last week in Los Angeles at Occidental College at the first Kemp Scholar lecture, a new program created at the college from which Jack Kemp graduated. We have posted the thoughts of Mr. Kondracke previously, as he has become a bit of an expert on Jack Kemp in his writing a much overdue biography.

Last week’s Kondracke visit is reported here. The best part of the report comes when Kondracke got into specifics about Jack Kemp Conservatism, which he dubbed “Kempism”:

“Jack was the first and chief advocate for a new idea called supply-side economics,” Kondracke said. “He’s the one who sold Reagan on what became Reaganomics.” His new biography will argue that Reagan and Kemp, acting in concert on both domestic and international policy, won the Cold War. The book’s working title, he said, is Jack Kemp: the Quarterback Who Changed the World.

While Kemp was a principled conservative, “he also was an idealist, passionately dedicated to the well-being of all Americans, regardless of race or gender or income,” Kondracke said. “He thought that ideas could change the world, and he fought his battles on that level, even though that cost him during his political campaigns.”

Were he alive today, Kemp would not write off 47 percent of the electorate, as Mitt Romney did during last year’s presidential election, he said. Kemp opposed Proposition 187, the 1994 California initiative aimed at undocumented workers, and believed supply-side incentives could have a powerful positive effect on communities of color.

“As Newt Gingrich once said, Jack has showered with more African-Americans than most Republicans have ever met,” Kondracke said. “Jack honestly believed that the GOP could once again be the party of Lincoln, that if the economy provided jobs that extended into the ghetto, African-Americans would vote Republican.”

In the wake of Romney’s defeat, Kondracke added, “We have seen the beginnings of the emergence of ‘Kempism’” from such figures as Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin (who counted Kemp as a mentor), Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida. “What the Republican Party needs is what Jack provided—a conservative message that would appeal to average, ordinary citizens.”

It’s clear that Jack Kemp Conservatism is the definitive remedy for what ails the Republican party today; a solid message that appeals to and benefits every American.

Stay tuned to our efforts, whether here on the blog, via Twitter or via our Jack Kemp project email newsletter. We have some very interesting things in the works and the best way to hear about them will be via one of those three methods. We have made recent additions to the GPH Consulting team and together there will be new things you have not seen from a political consulting firm before.

Gingrich: An Immigration Debate Based On Reality

Today, Newt Gingrich published this very good op-ed on the immigration debate. I felt this was worth sharing in its entirety because of its depth.

By Newt Gingrich

Campaigning for president last year included the opportunity to participate in a number of memorable televised debates.

As I think about what the Republican Party must do to rebuild, a particular set of exchanges from these debates stick out as a lesson.

We, the candidates, were asked repeatedly what we would do with the 12 million illegal immigrants currently in the United States, “many of whom have been in this country a long time.”

I always laid out two critical pieces of any immigration solution: the urgent need to secure the border, and the creation of a guest worker program.

But it was also important to answer the real question with intellectual honesty.

There are 12 million people in this country who have come here illegally. It wasn’t our choice for this to happen, but their presence is a fact. So we must decide: Are we really going to deport all 12 million people, many of whom have deep ties here?

My position was that people who have come here recently, have no ties to this country, should go home. But the-size-fits-all deportation of 12 million people, without regard to their circumstances, would constitute a level of inhumanity the American people would never accept.

As I said in a Florida debate, “We as a nation are not going to walk into some family…and grab a grandmother out and then kick them out.”

In response to this call for discretion and humanity, while at the same time enforcing the law, several other candidates — including our party’s eventual nominee — had repeatedly accused me of amnesty.

At an earlier debate Governor Romney replied to my suggestion by saying, in essence, “Amnesty is a magnet…people respond to incentives. And if you can become a permanent resident of the United States by coming here illegally, you’ll do so.”

The Democratic National Committee actually cut an attack ad against Romney based on this very exchange, which you can see here.

The ad below was produced by the Democratic National Committee

It is difficult to understand how someone running for President of the United States, a country with more than 50 million Hispanic citizens, could fail to acknowledge that the American people should not take grandmothers who have been here 25 years, have deep family and community ties — and forcibly expel them.

When asked in a Florida debate if, in light of his criticism, his own immigration proposal would round up 12 million people and deport them, he replied, “Well, the answer is self-deportation.”

And we wonder why the Republican Party achieved historically low levels of support among Latinos in 2012?

As we study what happened last year, we’ve discovered the data support the intuition that this rhetoric can kill the Republican Party among Latinos.

An August 2011 Univision National Poll in collaboration with the Mellman Group and the Tarrance Group found that only about a third of likely Hispanic voters had an unfavorable impression of Governor Romney. Roughly a fifth had a favorable impression, a quarter weren’t sure, and the rest had never heard of him.

The poll showed that 41 percent of likely Hispanic voters were still persuadable — they were weak Obama supporters, or they were undecided or favored Romney. There was opportunity for Republicans.

An election eve poll of Latino voters found that a year later, only 14 percent thought Governor Romney “truly cares about Latinos.” 56 percent said he “does not care about Latinos,” and 18 percent said he is “hostile toward Latinos.” 66 percent, meanwhile, said President Obama “truly cares.”

When asked about Governor Romney’s statements on immigration, including specifically his claim that illegal immigrants would “self-deport,” 57 percent of Latino voters said it made them less enthusiastic about him. Only 7 percent said it made them more enthusiastic, meaning on that issue he was underwater by 50 points.

He went on to be defeated by wide margins among Latino voters.

In fact, if he had won even 36 percent of them, Governor Romney would be President Romney today.

I do not write this to single out Mitt Romney. He worked hard for a long time and his campaign was up against skilled opponents. But the sad fact is that the Republican Party for too long has failed to communicate to Latino Americans a positive vision for the future. Our slide among Asian Americans has been in the works for a generation.

I write this because as the current immigration debate heats up it is critical for us to recognize that words and attitudes really matter. Understanding what people hear matters. We may not mean to say what people hear we say. After decades in politics this is a lesson I have learned the hard way.

As a party, we simply cannot continue with immigration rhetoric that in 2012 became catastrophic — in large part because it was not grounded in reality.

Senator Marco Rubio has done an important service cutting through some of the baloney with the observation that what we have now is de facto amnesty. It is reality. The 12 million people are here, living and working. Many of them are bound together by the web of human relations — family, friends, neighbors — and the American people will not support mass deportation.

That is the reality — the starting point of the debate about what we, as a country, should do.

This does not mean we as Republicans should give up on our principles, or on the priority of securing the border.

It means we must recognize, as I tried to do in that primary debate, that politics is always an intersection of principles and people.

A party that appears to ignore people won’t get the chance to make the case for its principles — any of them.

You can sign-up for Newt’s emails directly.

America Missed

By Steve Parkhurst

As the new year is now underway, the personal shock of the 2012 election has still not set in for me. In my mind I keep re-playing this brief speech excerpt from Paul Ryan just before the November election:

PAUL RYAN: “Our commitment is really clear. We’re saying here are the solutions; here are the principles we’re going to use; here’s our proven bipartisan track record of actually delivering results and getting things done; here’s what we’re going to do. And I’ve got to tell you, 2013 could be a renaissance in America, in the world and in America. 2013 can be the year we get our economy growing, we start creating 12 million new jobs, we put these pro-growth policies in place and we reaffirm the American idea by electing Mitt Romney the next President of the United States.” – Full kudos to Breitbart for the video and transcript.

Time will tell, but as of now, I feel like America missed as great opportunity with a Romney Presidency. Not only would Barack Obama not be a President with nothing to fear as he will never again appear on a ballot, but we still do not have a credible business, a CEO-type in the Oval Office. We have an excuse maker with no track record of accomplishments and no history of being held accountable for failure. Mitt Romney may not have turned out to be the next Ronald Reagan or Calvin Coolidge, but he would have been a tremendous improvement over the current President.

Now, we’ll never know. This video keeps reminding me of the great opportunity we had in 2012 and beyond.

America missed.

Kondracke: In Kemp, a Republican Role Model

This column appeared at Roll Call:

The GOP needs to build a party that can speak to the majority of Americans

By Morton M. Kondracke

If Republicans hope to save their party from long-term minority status, they should do what I’ve been doing for the past two years: study the career of Jack Kemp.

I’ve been doing it as an oral history and biography project. They should do it as a survival mechanism. Or, better, as a way to build a party that can speak to a majority of Americans.

As opposed to 2012 GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, Kemp — the Buffalo Bills quarterback, New York congressman, original sponsor of supply-side economics, Housing secretary and 1996 GOP vice presidential candidate — believed that Republicans could and should go after every voter, regardless of race or income or even union membership.

Romney turns out to have been a total cynic. When he was caught in September saying privately to donors that Republicans had no chance of winning 47 percent of voters because they were “dependent on government” and thought of themselves as “victims,” he distanced himself from his own words, calling them “totally wrong.”

But then, in a post-election private talk to donors, he blamed his loss on “gifts” that President Barack Obama had given to various interest groups. He clearly meant what he said in September — that politics is just a bidding war.

Kemp was the opposite: a thoroughgoing idealist who exuded optimism and believed the GOP could win majorities by fostering hope, growth and opportunity for everyone.

He was so idealistic, in fact, that he genuinely believed that by producing sustained growth and prosperity, the GOP could once again become “the party of Lincoln,” the natural political home of African-Americans. That was unrealistic, but if anyone could have cut into Democratic dominance among blacks, it was Kemp. As a football player, one quip went, “Kemp showered with more African-Americans than most Republicans have ever met.”

A self-proclaimed “bleeding heart conservative,” Kemp sponsored enterprise zone legislation with Democrats to eliminate taxes in poverty-stricken neighborhoods, to attract investment and jobs.

He visited homeless shelters as a first order of business as Housing secretary, walked the streets of Los Angeles after the city’s 1992 riots and insisted on campaigning in ghettos and barrios during the 1996 campaign as Bob Dole’s vice presidential candidate.

In 1994, he denounced California’s Proposition 187, which would have denied government benefits to illegal aliens, and he advocated a comprehensive immigration overhaul to the end of his days. He died in 2009.

Even if there was no way for Romney to win more than 6 percent of black votes against Obama, a Kemp-like platform could have saved him from a 44-point loss among Latinos and a 47 percent loss among Asian-Americans.

As Republican pollster Whit Ayres wrote in his post-election analysis, “the handwriting is on the wall. Until Republican candidates figure out how to perform better among non-white voters, especially Hispanics and Asians, Republican presidential contenders will have an extraordinarily difficult time winning presidential elections from this point forward.”

Republicans are searching furiously for ways to get right with Hispanics after Romney’s “self-deportation” self-immolation. Kemp’s example offers a path. Some also are furiously denouncing Romney’s “gift” analysis.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s response sounds especially Kempian. “We need to get two messages out loudly and early,” he said. “One, we are fighting for 100 percent of the vote, and secondly, our policies benefit every American who wants to pursue the American dream. Period. No exceptions.”

That’s a good first step, but most Republicans have yet to find a way to sell conservative economics as an opportunity engine.

In his time, Kemp led his party away from an austerity politics focused on balanced budgets, lower spending and higher taxes toward growth politics based on permanent tax rate cuts.

He modeled his 1976 tax bill on President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 proposals and adopted Kennedy’s “a rising tide lifts all boats” slogan.

Kennedy’s measure, enacted after his assassination, lowered top tax rates from 91 percent to 70 percent. The Kemp-Roth bill, adopted and pushed through by President Ronald Reagan, lowered the rate from 70 percent to 50 percent. And, in 1986, a Reagan tax reform bill backed by Kemp lowered the rate to 28 percent and eliminated dozens of breaks and deductions.

America’s growth problems are different today than they were in Kemp’s era. “Stagflation” — simultaneous high inflation and unemployment — were the problem then. Now it’s high unemployment and staggering debt.

Today, Kemp surely would favor drastic tax changes to cut rates and eliminate the loopholes drilled into the tax code since 1986.

He was never much in favor of cutting entitlements, but I’d guess that, like his former intern, Rep. Paul D. Ryan, R-Wis., he’d favor reining them in to preserve social safety nets without encouraging dependency.

Kemp was never a believer in deep domestic spending cuts, either. Some of that needs to happen, but growth also requires spending on education, infrastructure and research.

The GOP today has a demographic problem, a messaging problem and — most of all — an attitude problem. The Kemp model could solve them all. He really believed in creating an opportunity society for everyone.

 

mortonkondracke@cqrollcall.com

Where Are Those Colorado Professors?

I’m just throwing this out there as I have not researched or conducted a Bing or Google search, but leading up to the election I heard and read plenty about those two Colorado professors. You know, the ones who had a winning electoral model going back to 1980. They had Romney winning in a landslide.

Have we heard from the professors since last Tuesday? Anyone? Bueller?

Tweet: Romney, Data, and Conveying Meaning

I saw this tweet tonight and it punched me square in the face. Direct, to the point, and probably 100% accurate as we start to get final tallies across the country from last week’s election.

Romney’s thoughts on loss show his myopic dedication to data over conveying meaning. #sigh

— Amy(@CAAmyO) November 15, 2012

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Why Obama Won by Gary Aminoff

Gary Aminoff, from Los Angeles, has an interesting column up at American Thinker about Obama’s victory. Over the next few weeks and months we are likely to hear many theories as to “why Obama won”. These reasons are as plausible as any. The column is well worth reading and sharing, but I thought this was really interesting:

…

How is it that we have raised one or two generations of uneducated Americans?  The answer, my friend, is not blowing in the wind.  The answer lies in the curricula of our schools.

For the past several months, in my capacity in the Republican Party, I have been speaking at middle schools and high schools around Los Angeles.  It has been very enlightening.

I love engaging with children.  Most of them are very bright and ask brilliant questions.  The questions give me insights into what they are most concerned about.  It also makes clear what they are taught — by either their parents or their teachers, or both.

To summarize — children, for the most part, believe the following:

a) Republicans care about only the rich — the top 1% — and don’t care about anyone else.

b) Republicans hate people of color and especially Latinos.

c) Republicans hate gays.

d) Republicans are racist.

e) It is the government that provides jobs.  (I have asked that question many times in classrooms or assemblies.  “Who is it that creates jobs in America?”  The answer is invariably, without hesitation, “the government.”)

f) Corporations are bad, and profits are very bad.  Business shouldn’t make profits; they should give any excess money they make to their employees.

g) Taxes are good; they provide the money for the government to take care of people.

h) Government should expand and take care of everyone in the country.

i) America, rather than being a force for good in the world, has been a force for evil.

j) Government has an unlimited source of funds.  (When I ask, “Where is the government going to get the money to do all these things you want it to do?,” the answer is “taxes.”)

These children will soon be voters.  How is it, in America, that we are raising children to believe that bigger government is better, that government is the engine that provides jobs, that profits are bad, that Republicans care about only the rich, that we are racist, and that we hate minorities and gays.

…

Read the entire column here.

Why Romney Lost

By Maurice Atkinson

Romney was a unique candidate with a unique opportunity.  We all knew he was wealthy beyond the scope of average comprehension which drew some suspicion from both the right and left.

I’m not bashing on Romney, but there were deficiencies in his campaign that nuked him. From my perspective, he never painted the picture but used 5 point broad generalities.

One of the things we did successfully on the emergence of Cain’s candidacy was “paint a picture”.  Cain’s message was well honed in sound byte, as only he can do.  However, it was understandable (i.e.., scrap the tax code, start over; surround yourself with strong people, etc.)  Romney could have done himself INCREDIBLY well if he had pulled a Ross Perot and aired a 20 min. Town Hall Meeting that clearly defined the problem and roadmap to the solution.

Additionally, he NEVER presented an adequate rebuttal to Bain attacks.  They were introduced during the Gingrich campaign as Romney was trashing Gingrich.   Sure he created jobs and the Free Enterprise System can be messy.  That’s the nature of business.  However, he never articulated an adequate response.  Having a Town Hall Meeting in the middle of the rust belt would have changed the whole thing (define the national problem, provide a roadmap to the solution), IMO.

Romney’s communications were SCREWED UP.  Sending begging letters via U.S. Postal service multiple times a week and endless emails begging money may help raise funds, but it doesn’t communicate an ACTION PLAN or show appreciation for the vast field of volunteers   Romney would have been better served mailing a bumper sticker to everyone and asking them to put it on their car.

Anyhow, now we have to recognize the losses and retool our message for 2014.  Voter EDUCATION (we have an ignorant electorate), Voter Registration and Voter Stewardship (GET INVOLVED in the process), will correct the course.  Yes we lost the White House, but we gained in Governors’ races across the country.  Over 30 Governors are GOP.

My ramblings, for what it’s worth.

This post originally appeared here.

America Needs A Leader

Another ad nicely done, I really like the way this ad sounds.