The Intransigent Conservative

Thursday, January 31, 2013

Thursday's Thoughts

View the story "Thursday's Thoughts (1/31/13)" on StorifyThursday's Thoughts (1/31/13)http://theintransigentconservative.blogspot.comStorified by Brian Empric· Thu, Jan 31 2013 16:33:36Sheila Weber (@MarriageWeekUSA), Executive Director of National Marriage Week USA & Let’s Strengthen Marriage, writes that marriage “builds the economic stability of children, supports the raising of a healthy next generation, and is a cornerstone for the economic health of our nation.”

“In mid-January, the Pew Research Center told us 72% of all adults ages 18 and older were married in 1960; but today just 51% are—a record low.

“This means fewer folks are getting married, or staying married—not a great sign since research proves children (our future citizens) do best when raised with both parents.”

“… marriage is more or less holding its own among the white upper middle and upper class, but falling off a cliff among the white working class and lower class.”

“The Institute for American Values reports that 40 percent of all American babies are born outside of marriage today… less than 5% of white college-educated women have children outside of marriage, compared with approximately 40% of white women with just a high-school diploma... The National Center on African American Marriages and Parenting reports that 72 percent of all African-American babies are born outside of marriage.”

“Whether you are married or not, Americans should be supportive of promoting marriage prior to childbearing and the strengthening of marriage at all socio-economic levels.”
A new path to upward mobility-get married and stay marriedMarriage, we have just learned, is a major cause of the growing great divide among American upper and lower classes. Last week, in advanc...RNC chairman Priebus details how Republicans are going to renew our party, grow our ranks and win more elections:

“To start, we must take our message to every state and every community. As I told the committee last week, we must stop looking at elections through the lens of ‘battleground states.’ Being a ‘blue state’ is not a permanent diagnosis. Republicans want to be a party for everyone, everywhere.”

“Election year ‘outreach’ is insufficient. We're going to stop simply reaching out — and work on welcoming in as we build a permanent, lasting presence across the country.”

“Republicans are the party of opportunity and liberty, and freedom is an ever-fresh, revolutionary idea. It brought settlers to our shores and continues to attract newcomers to America. No one comes to the United States in search of a superior government bureaucracy… We're the party that says the individual can make better decisions than the bureaucrat.”

“But those principles mean nothing if voters don't hear them. Too often, Republicans have let ourselves be defined by others before defining ourselves. No more. We're taking our message of freedom and opportunity where it hasn't been heard before.”My latest – “The Republican Party's future” http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/The-Republican-Party-s-future-4230572.php We have a lot to do, but it can be done. Pls read and RTReince PriebusRobert Stacy McCain reports that the National Review Institute’s “Future of Conservatism” Summit attempted to dispel the omens of doom.

“Facts are stubborn things, John Adams once observed, but perhaps even more stubborn is the sense of panic that has gripped Republicans since Obama’s re-election. No sooner had the votes been counted than shell-shocked Republicans began making a lot of earnest noise about ‘demographics’ and ‘culture.’ These seem to be code words of a kind. When a Republican says ‘demographics,’ he means, ‘Brown people don’t like us very much,’ and ‘culture’ is Republican code-speak for, ‘Young people really hate us, don’t they?’”

“The GOP panic reaction to those numbers has been wildly disproportionate. Hispanic voters comprised just 10 percent of the electorate, according to the exit polls, and 81 percent of voters were over 30, but the Republican demoralization since November has been so complete that they can’t seem to stop obsessing over ‘demographics’ and ‘culture.’”

“If there are Democrats today who don’t enthusiastically endorse same-sex marriage and abortion on demand, they’re awfully quiet about it, and the fanatical extremism of the Left has apparently intimidated even conservative Republicans, who are now increasingly fearful of being identified with ‘social issues.’”
"Is this 'prudence' or panic? Are Republicans prepared to surrender and call it a victory?" http://spectator.org/archives/2013/01/28/when-will-the-republican-panic #tcotRobert Stacy McCainS.E. Cupp writes that universal background checks are not as simple as liberals have made them out to be.

“We all want to stop criminals and the dangerous (or potentially dangerous) mentally ill from getting weapons… At the same time, NRA head Wayne LaPierre reportedly plans to tug at that thread a little in his Senate testimony this week, when he will argue, according to a Washington Post report, that ‘background checks will never be universal because criminals will never submit to them.’”

“As Glenn Kessler reported in the Washington Post this week, a 2004 survey of inmates in state prisons who were incarcerated for crimes committed with handguns found that only 11% bought their guns from licensed gun dealers. The vast majority acquired them from friends, on ‘the street,’ or stole them.”

“Next to ‘Will this actually solve the problem?’ the question least often asked when issues of gun control are bandied about is, ‘Whom will this punish?’ And when it comes to law-abiding gun owners, there is often little consideration or sympathy.”

“Unlike gun safety courses, which rightly ask that gun owners prove they are responsible, background checks ask that they prove they are not criminals, effectively putting the burden of proof on law-abiding citizens… though the background check may not discriminate on outward appearance, it does prejudicially read criminal intentions into law-abiding citizens who primarily just want to hunt, target shoot and protect their families.”Gun Owners Are People, Too by @secupp Read it online at http://thesecupp.com/2013/01/gun-owners-are-people-too/ http://thesecupp.comS.E. CuppVictor Davis Hanson (@VDHanson) writes that Europe is proving that socialism doesn’t work.

“Almost a decade ago, Europeans and many progressive Americans were lamenting how the United States was going to miss out on the 21st-century paradigm symbolized by the robust European Union… The European Union avoided foreign conflicts and embraced soft power. Its declining military budgets and centralized transnational government ensured that it could address climate change and fund ever-expanding entitlements… President George W. Bush was not just hated in Europe, but caricatured as the symbol of backward, free-market capitalism, rank American consumerism and U.S. imperialism abroad.”

“Yet European Union prosperity has now proved a phantom — one conjured up by accounting gimmickry, borrowed German money and corrupt EU apparatchiks.”

“The European Union may be worried that President Obama’s United States is becoming more like the EU at the very time many in Europe are starting to take a second, kinder look at the old free-market model of the United States. An America of low taxes, low unemployment and robust growth once meant a huge market for European goods, as the United States drove a prosperous world economy and had enough cash to protect the Western world.”

“Mr. Obama has loudly promised a pivot in the U.S. security profile toward the Pacific region. This change represents the unspoken reality that socialist redistribution has reduced Europe to near-irrelevancy… In short, Europe got the European Union of its hopes and the changed America of its fantasies — but both are rapidly becoming its worst nightmares.”HANSON: Obama’s America looks a lot like the #EU: Europe proving #socialism doesn’t work: http://bit.ly/UzTLRRThe Washington TimesDaniel Henninger writes that Obama’s goal is to make Republican ideas intolerable, and to annihilate and delegitimize the GOP. “If the opposition is looking for one word to shape its role now, it would be this: Dissent.”

“Better late than never, Speaker Boehner now sees that Barack Obama's notion of political competition is Mad Max inside the Thunderdome: ‘Two men enter, one man leaves.’”

“When he won, the rationalization was that it was all a shrewd if brutal campaign strategy. But it kept coming. What is striking about the Obama technique is that it's not so much criticism as something closer to political obliteration, driving his opposition out of the political arena altogether.”

“Even among the president's supporters, one is hard put now to find anyone who doesn't recognize that Mr. Obama's original appeal to hope and change has given way to search and destroy.”

“The good news is that John Boehner and Paul Ryan recognize that their relationship with this White House is not as partners in anything. They are prey.”

“The original argument for the Obama presidency was that this was a new, open-minded and liberal man intent on elevating the common good. No one believes that now. This will be a second term of imposition.”Henninger: Obama's Thunderdome Strategy http://on.wsj.com/TZia5hOpinion & CommentaryEdward L. Glaeser (professor of economics at Harvard University) writes that conservative policies have greatly benefited urbanites, and encourages Republicans to seek their votes.

“After the presidential election in November, New York Times exit polls found that Republican candidate Mitt Romney had received only 29 percent of the big-city vote to President Obama’s 69 percent. That gap prompted Paul Ryan, Romney’s running mate, to conclude that it was ‘the turnout especially in urban areas’ that ‘gave President Obama the big margin to win this race.’ Ryan was right: the GOP has an urban problem. And it’s partly a self-created one. The party, nationally and even locally, has focused on winning suburban and rural votes and has stopped reaching out to city dwellers.”

“Cities have suffered from the GOP’s departure. For one thing, any group or place benefits from being the object of political competition: swing groups in swing states, such as Cubans in Miami and autoworkers in Ohio, receive political attention and favors, while solidly Republican or Democratic constituencies get taken for granted.”

“But handouts and other pandering are far less valuable than the other asset that Republican-abandoned cities have lost: the particularly Republican perspective, with its focus on economic freedom, competition, and law and order.”

“Forty years ago, conservatives and liberals disagreed about how to fight crime. Conservatives looked to more effective policing; liberals, believing that poverty caused crime, bet on redistributive social policies. The past decades have overwhelmingly vindicated the conservatives. The expansive government programs of the liberals’ Great Society coincided with rapidly rising urban crime rates. Cities became safe again only when they embraced tougher—and smarter—policing.”

“The Right has correctly promoted choice and accountability as key principles in making schools better. Great enterprises, from law firms to restaurants, spring up in cities because cities’ agglomerations of people produce free-market maelstroms, which encourage vigorous competition and innovation.”

“Republicans have good ideas to share in other areas of urban policy as well. For example, improving city services while reducing costs is a priority in these budget-strapped times.”

“The GOP clearly needs a heftier percentage of the urban vote, but winning it by means of fiscal pandering or redistribution isn’t the way to go—partly because such a strategy would cost rural and suburban votes and partly because it would be wrong. A better approach is to offer the good ideas that cities desperately need. Republicans have plenty.”The GOP and the City by Edward L. Glaeser, City Journal WInter 2013Conservative policies have greatly benefited urbanites. Why won't Republicans seek their votes? After the presidential election in Novemb...