Power To The People: Will and Delingpole

Two videos, one from American Power the other from Powerline. First the shorter one, the the longer one:

Via American Power

Via Powerline

George Will Pistol Whips Mitt Romney

On Sunday, George Will compared Mitt Romney to liberal Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, the infamous robotic candidate for president who was pulverized by George H. W. Bush in 1988. (See the short video below for Will's comments.)

Tomorrow, George will stand apart from the rest of the elite GOP talking heads with some unvarnished truth on pretty boy Mitt Romney:

Romney, supposedly the Republican most electable next November, is a recidivist reviser of his principles who is not only becoming less electable, he might damage GOP chances of capturing the Senate: Republican successes down the ticket will depend on the energies of the tea party and other conservatives, who will be deflated by a nominee whose blurry profile in caution communicates only calculated trimming. Republicans may have found their Michael Dukakis, a technocratic Massachusetts governor who takes his bearings from ‘data’ ... Has conservatism come so far, surmounting so many obstacles, to settle, at a moment of economic crisis, for THIS?

The normally restrained George Will reacts in frustration to his disappointment in Romney by writing in ALL CAPS.

I'm shocked.

UPDATE: The rest of Will's column is already out...

The Republican presidential dynamic — various candidates rise and recede; Mitt Romney remains at about 25 percent support — is peculiar because conservatives correctly believe that it is important to defeat Barack Obama but unimportant that Romney be president. This is not cognitive dissonance.

Read the rest.

Obama's Death Panel: A Double Dose of Anti-Constitutional Outrages

Obamacare's death panel, a.k.a. the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), is a constitutional travesty:

The point of PPACA [Obamacare] is cost containment. This supposedly depends on the Independent Payment Advisory Board. The IPAB, which is a perfect expression of the progressive mind, is to be composed of 15 presidential appointees empowered to reduce Medicare spending - which is 13 percent of federal spending - to certain stipulated targets. IPAB is to do this by making "proposals" or "recommendations" to limit costs by limiting reimbursements to doctors. This, inevitably, will limit available treatments - and access to care when physicians leave the Medicare system.

The PPACA repeatedly refers to any IPAB proposal as a "legislative proposal" and speaks of "the legislation introduced" by the IPAB. Each proposal automatically becomes law unless Congress passes a measure cutting medical spending as much as IPAB would.

This is a travesty of lawmaking: An executive branch agency makes laws unless Congress enacts legislation to achieve the executive agency's aim.

And it gets worse. Any resolution to abolish the IPAB must pass both houses of Congress. And no such resolution can be introduced before 2017 or after Feb. 1, 2017, and must be enacted by Aug. 15 of that year. And if passed, it cannot take effect until 2020. It is transparently designed to permanently entrench IPAB - never mind the principle that one Congress cannot by statute bind another Congress from altering that statute.

...the IPAB is doubly anti-constitutional. It derogates the powers of Congress. And it ignores the separation of powers: It is an executive agency, its members appointed by the president, exercising legislative powers over which neither Congress nor the judiciary can exercise proper control.

[emphasis added]

Note that the author, George Will, assumes that physicians will be leaving the system en masse. In my humble opinion, he is correct in doing so.

In all the excitement over Anthony's Weiner, this important piece by George Will has been largely overlooked. Go read the rest and share it with your friends.

The Face of the Tea Party

George Will has found the ultimate Tea Partier: a man from Wisconsin who is putting everything on the line in an effort to unseat an entrenched incumbent...in DIY mode:

Johnson can fund himself. Asked how much of his wealth he will spend, if necessary, his answer is as simple as it is swift: "All of it."

The theme of his campaign, the genesis of which was an invitation to address a Tea Party rally, is: "First of all, freedom."

Johnson has the right ideas and the right priorities. He won the Wisconsin GOP's U.S. Senate nod in a landslide in last weekend's convention, and Rasmussen has him in a statistical tie with incumbent Senator Russ.

Keep an eye on this guy. Wonks and prognosticators say Russ Feingold can expect a comfortable win, but as George Will puts it, this is "a year in which incumbency is considered a character flaw."

Tea partiers turn on GOP leadership

Good news: The Tea Party movement is translating into tangible results. Those who promote smaller government are working successfully to remake the GOP.

Tea party forces are confronting the Republican establishment by backing insurgent conservatives and generating their own candidates — even if it means taking on GOP incumbents.

Music to my ears. John McCain showed us exactly where this country will go if the GOP continues to promote watered-down Democrats.

In Florida, where the national party has signaled its preference for centrist Gov. Charlie Crist in the GOP Senate primary, tea party activists are lining up behind former state House Speaker Marco Rubio in reaction to Crist’s public backing for President Barack Obama’s stimulus package.

And Marco Rubio has made quite an impression on ardent conservatives. George Will, the prognosticator of all prognosticators, has stopped just short of declaring Rubio the victor:

Rubio intends to prove that "in the most important swing state, you can run successfully as a principled conservative." He probably will.

As I watch Rubio build momentum, I find it hard to disagree.

Tea party organizers say their resistance to Republican Party-backed primary candidates has much to do with what they perceive as the GOP’s stubborn insistence on embracing candidates who don’t abide by a small government, anti-tax conservative philosophy.

Perception has nothing to do with it. The polls and the election results speak volumes. The GOP didn't just abandon the conservative base, the GOP abandoned the electorate. If it gets any worse, the Republican party will be irrelevant.

In a handful of states, tea party activists have zeroed in on House Republican incumbents and have launched primary challenges in protest of their past support for the controversial Wall Street bank bailout.

This strategy will save the GOP, and that will, in turn, save conservatism. The GOP can only survive if it is in tune with the values of this center-right nation. Conservatism can only survive if conservatives infiltrate the Republican party and eschew defeatist attitudes and third party impulses.

Via Memeorandum

Discussion: ABC, LCR: Tea Parties and the GOP - Mark Rubio, Real Conservative?