The Dawn of Hope: Time for GOP Soul Searching on Why it Failed

The Republicans were badly battered Tuesday night in the general election.  Without Florida's results, Obama cleaned Romney's clock 303-206.  That's quite a bruising in an election cycle that the Republicans should have easily won considering the miserable state of the economy. The Republicans lost Senate seats they should have won because of outrageous 'legitimate rape' comments by socially conservative candidates and they even lost a few House seats.

More to the point, the Republican Party is disintegrating because it literally has 3 factions that do not peacefully co-exist: 1. the New England styled Rockefeller big government Republicans 2. the social conservatives who tend to only vote their so-called intolerant values and 3. the spirited assortment of Tea Party reformers, Libertarians, Ron Paul supporters, Independents and other fed up conservative voting blocks who can no longer even hold their noses and vote for big spending, big government Republicans.  The GOP can no longer hold its fractious base together; hence, it's got a dwindling base and the problem has existed since 2006.

Let's start with Mitt Romney.  He really only had to campaign on 3 issues because in politics, the message is everything.  The American people, especially fiscal conservatives to Libertarian leaning types, are fed up with the endless wars, the nasty economy, the corruption in the District of Crime (DC) and mountains of spending and debt.  All Romney had to do to win was pounce on these 3 issues over and over:

1.  Support military spending sequestration and promise to bring foreign policy out of the closet and put it on the table for a real bipartisan debate simply because we can't afford the existing  foreign policy.  But what did Romney do?  He appeased the military gods and promised to increase military spending by over $2 trillion.  Military spending is not the same as defense spending.  We need to understand the difference because there are indeed legitimate national defense needs that do not include traipsing around the planet in a display of muscular military might that includes costly bombings, invasions, occupations, very expensive rebuilding, civilian death tolls and deadly drone bombings.

2. With an ailing economy, Romney should have focused on why America is bleeding jobs, namely that US corporate taxes are the highest in the industrialized world and Fedzilla's monstrous regulatory apparatus is strangling the economy by driving jobs offshore.  What Romney should have done was campaign on ending the corporate tax - that's right - reduce it to ZERO, and reign in destructive regulatory powers.

3.  Most Americans absolutely do perceive that corruption in the District of Crime is epidemic as well as a finely tuned system of patronage, crony capitalism, corporatism, bailouts and corporate welfare.  All Romney had to do was campaign on NO bankster or corporation bailouts and subsidies.

The fatal flaw of the Republican Party is that it truly believes that all it has to do to win elections is fire up the defense hawks and the religious right.  The formula is no longer working.  Even more interesting is that voter turnout was down 14 million over 2008.

Early figures show fewer Americans cast votes in 2012 race than in 2008

With 97 percent of precincts reporting, The Associated Press’ figures showed more than 118 million people had voted in the White House race, but that number will go up as more votes are counted. In 2008, 131 million people cast ballots for president, according to the Federal Election Commission.

Experts calculate turnout in different ways based on who they consider eligible voters. A separate, preliminary estimate from George Mason University’s Michael McDonald put the 2012 turnout rate at 60 percent of eligible voters.

Let's move on to the Senate.

Before the election results, the Democrats controlled the US Senate with 51 Democrats, 47 Republicans and 2 Independents who typically vote with the Democrats.  The day after the 2012 election, the Democrats will have 52 Senate seats and the Republicans are down to 45 (Politico).  The Republican Party is famous for running hardcore social conservatives in the US Senate, something they can get away with in a House race simply because the districts are carved out to guarantee perpetual Republican or Democrat victories.  A Senate race, however, is statewide and is highly susceptible to a myriad of factors.

Obama didn't win because of his job performance or popularity; he was re-elected because he was perceived as the lesser of the two evils.  The Republicans managed to reinvent themselves as the reincarnation of big spending, warmongering George Bush.  In 2008, I remember talking to Republicans who greatly feared John McCain because they felt that he was so mentally unstable that if he had the nuclear button to push, he'd push it.  Incredibly,  Republican Party has also succeeded in branding itself the socially intolerant War Party.

In 2010, the Republicans stood an excellent chance of winning 2 Senate seats in Colorado and Nevada (Harry Reid was facing a tough re-election campaign). But the social conservatives who dominate the Republican primary voting base nominated Sharon Angle to run against the seasoned and ferocious campaigner Harry Reid, and Ken Buck for the Colorado senate seat. Harry Reid was vulnerable and even a liberal commentator noted that a wet noodle could have defeated Reid. Both Angle and Buck lost. Why? They were not only pro-life but they were radically pro-life and both endorsed the position that human life begins at the precise moment of conception, that all abortion under any circumstances should be outlawed and that America needed a constitutional amendment defining human life as beginning at the precise moment of conception.  That is definitely not a position that appeals to most voters and it's also a position that is a guaranteed ballot box loser.

Christine O'Donnell, of the "I am not a witch" Sarah Palin endorsed variety, lost her Senate bid in Delaware but that was probably expected in a reliably blue state.

It's 2012 and the Republicans once again had an opportunity to take the senate.  In Indiana, Richard Mourdock defeated the aging veteran GOP'er Richard Lugar in a primary, and was considered a shoe-in.  In Misouri, Todd Akin stood an excellent chance of defeating Democrat incumbent Claire McCaskell in a general election.  But once Akin let loose with his now infamous "legitimate rape" comment, he started sinking in the polls.  Mourdock followed up with an Akin styled rape comment and his advantage started to also sink.  Both Akin and Mourdock lost.  In fact, McCaskill crushed Akin 54.7% to 39.2%.  How's that for a voter referendum on a contentious social issue?

Republicans will opine that their presidential candidate was flawed.  In reality, it's the Republican message that is deeply flawed.  Yeah, Mitt Romney was a flip-flopping candidate but that's not unusual with the political class.  What really sunk the GOP Tuesday night is the total lack of a viable message to solve big problems combined with social conservatives who scare voters away.

Moving forward, I do believe that the conservative movement has an awesome opportunity to rebuild the party and get rid of its destructive elitist command and control hierarchy that is arrogant and clueless beyond belief. I also believe that there is an energized youth movement to get the Republican Party back on track by advocating for less federal powers, less spending, less war and less civil liberty crushing legislation like the Patriot Act and NDAA.  The District of Crime has become a feeding trough for voracious corporatist pigs gorging on tax dollars as well as a gargantuan symbol of the concentration of wealth and power.

Winning the future and winning the hearts and minds of the people by advocating for peace, liberty and prosperity absolutely requires shoveling out the filth, rot and decay that has destroyed American conservatism and infested the Republican Party with a fatal disease.

Losing isn't the worst thing that can happen.  Losing should be a time for profound soul searching to figure out what has gone wrong and why.  Losing can be replenishing, cleansing and ultimately a good thing.  The Republican Party stands no chance of ever rising again until the day dawns when the GOP actually stands for something besides big government, big spending, big deficits, big piles of debt, big corporate welfare, big bankster bailouts and endless wars.

Conservatives, liberty activists, constitutionalists and fiscal conservatives now have an awesome opportunity. Will they blow it, again?

How Romney and the GOP Could Have Defeated Obama and the Democrats

Once again the Republican Party finds itself severely deficient in voter confidence. Frankly, most voters are terrified of the Republican Party because they fear its rabid neoconism, military worship, intolerant social conservatives and its fraudulent fiscal conservatism. Even the pundits recognize that something is radically wrong with the GOP.

Romney Needs a Game Changer

Charles Krauthammer: "His unwillingness to go big, to go for the larger argument, is simply astonishing. For six months, he's been matching Obama small ball for small ball... When you're behind, however, safe is fatal."

Go BIG? Krauthammer is a big government statist who vociferously and consistently defends US foreign policy even though it has bankrupted the nation.  The cost of US foreign policy is mindboggling (over $1 trilliion a year), especially in an election environment where Republicans are the clear underdogs as the voter base of the Republican Party continues to shrink.

It's probably too late for a Republican game change because, well, the Republican Party isn't interested in changing a damn thing. At least the creepy Democrats had the good sense to structure a campaign based on perceived change even if it was one big lie.

My crystal ball tells me that folks would have been willing to vote for REAL change if the Republicans offered it.  What is the kind of change that American voters could have believed in?  The simple truth is that folks really do want peace, liberty and prosperity.  Core issues that drastically impede peace, liberty and prosperity are:

1. Defense spending is bankrupting us and we need to kill the militarized empire before it kills America.

$1 Trillion for Defense

With over 1,000 military installations spread around the planet, here, America desperately need to massively shrink the money spent on foreign military bases and foreign wars.

A solution that would have won hearts and minds of the American people: We need a bipartisan committee to slash military spending by at least half. Military spending does not constitute legitimate national defense needs and we need to take the issue out of the closet and put it on the table for a real debate.

For a bankrupt nation swimming in unsustainable debt and an economy in the tank, this is nothing to be proud of:

Yes, America really does spend over 50% of all tax receipts on wars

Yet, Mitt Romney is campaigning on increasing military spending by trillions, here.

2.  We need to permanently end all corporate welfare and subsidies to all corporations because it's protectionist, fascist and breeds nothing by oligarchy.

3.  Abolish all corporate income taxes because it's double taxation, counter-production, anti-economic growth and with the US having one of the highest corporate taxes rates in the industrialized world, the US is no longer considered a friendly place to park capital and build a business.  Besides, many corporations are so big and powerful that they buy themselves tax breaks.

GE Filed 57,000-Page Tax Return, Paid No Taxes on $14 Billion in Profits

4. The Federal income tax or the 16th amendment must be abolished/repealed because it's nothing but a government tool of terror and tyranny.

Taxation is Theft and Tyranny. The Power to Tax is the Power to Plunder and Enslave

While I don't support the Fair Tax or a national sales tax, it's still a whole lot less intimidating and draconian than the income tax.  A national sales tax in place of the income tax would be a decent step in the right direction so long as the 16th was repealed.

5.  Entitlement reform should be a priority because:

Government Cash Handouts Now Top Tax Revenues

U.S. households are now getting more in cash handouts from the government than they are paying in taxes for the first time since the Great Depression.

Households received $2.3 trillion in some kind of government support in 2010. That includes expanded unemployment benefits, as well as payments for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and stimulus spending, among other things.

But that’s more than the $2.2 trillion households paid in taxes, an amount that has slumped largely due to the recession, according to an analysis by the Fiscal Times.

America simply cannot afford the entitlement burden, benefits must be cut, programs should be mean tested to achieve bare bones participation for the neediest and fraud must be addressed.

6.  The issue of the Federal Reserve and bankster bailouts MUST be addressed because bankster bailouts have plundered the nation.

Have You Heard About The 16 Trillion Dollar Bailout The Federal Reserve Handed To The Too Big To Fail Banks?

The ideal solution is to restore the value of the dollar by returning to the gold standard, as prescribed by the Constitution. The Federal Reserve is the biggest crime syndicate in all of human history because it was specifically designed to transfer wealth from the poor and middle class to the wealthy.

7. The massive federal regulatory state is an economy killing issue that Republicans refuse to address.  The Competitive Enterprise Institute does an annual study titled Ten Thousand Commandments, An Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State.  Astoundingly, the cost of federal regulations alone is a recipe for economic disaster, as reported by CEI. .

• Regulatory compliance costs dwarf corporate income taxes of $198 billion
• Regulatory costs tower over the estimated 2011 individual income taxes of $956 billion by 83 percent. • Regulatory costs of $1.752 trillion amount to 11.7 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP), estimated at $14.954 trillion in 2011.

Most of these regulations were dreamed up by bureaucrats seeking power and corporations seeking monopolies and protection from competition.

8. Ron Paul's budget was a blueprint for fiscal solvency as well as balancing the budget.  The GOP could have praised it and embraced it as a starting point.  Instead, the Republican Party condemned both Ron Paul and his exceptionally sane fiscal proposal to reign in federal spending.  His son, Sen. Rand Paul, laid out a plan to cut $500 billion in spending and was laughed at by Republicans.  Sen. Paul reduced his plan to $200 billion in cuts and was still laughed at by Republicans.

Neither Mitt Romney nor the Republican Party are addressing the fiscal issues.  Even Freedom Works, a conservative think tank, praised Rand Paul's budget proposal and criticized Paul Ryan's idiotic plan that doesn't even balance the budget until 2040.

Senator Rand Paul’s Budget Plan is Still the Best

Rep. Paul Ryan, the Republican Chairman of the House Budget Committee, has released his new budget plan called The Path to Prosperity: A Blueprint for American Renewal . His plan does contain some praiseworthy proposals such as cutting the corporate tax rate, repealing ObamaCare and ending forms of corporate welfare. However, it does not cut a single federal department and doesn’t balance the budget until 2040.

While the Ryan plan is certainly preferable to President Obama’s budget , it is not as bold as the budget plan introduced by Rand Paul, Mike Lee and Jim DeMint in the Senate. Rand Paul’s plan known as a Platform to Revitalize America would slash four federal departments and balance the budget within five years without raising taxes. Now, we’re talking.

Big problems required big ideas and big solutions. As always, the Republican Party continues to ignore the problems. For the Republicans, it's all about kicking the can down the road and spend, spend and spend.

When the GOP once again gets its ass kicked in a general election, they have nobody to blame but themselves.  If anything, the Republicans should have learned from the Democrats that Americans really do want change, REAL change.  

Why is Romney so Unpopular with Voters? Is it Romney or the GOP?

Mitt Romney is getting pummeled in the polls and it's being reported that he is even less likable than George W. Bush, here, a very unpopular president except among hardcore Republican loyalists. Even the online gambling site, Intrade, is giving Obama a 79.2% probability of winning vs. 20.9% for Romney.

Is Romney the problem or is the Republican Party the problem? Well, it's both. Romney may be a stiff, insufferable and insensitive dork but the Republican Party itself has morphed into a party that mostly makes folks cringe.

The Republican Party is actually stuck in a time warp while the arrogant and clueless elites who control the Republican Party tenaciously cling to the same tired old mantra that all it has to do to win elections is romance the religious right and get them to the polls to vote.  To be sure, the Republican Party has always suffered a profound deficit of solutions for our immense problems and its only bankable strategy has been to mobilize the dangerously unpopular social conservatives.

Well, the game plan is no longer working.  Who could ever forget the memorable cringe worthy moments from the Republican primary debates?

Newt Gingrich shouts 'kill them' on the debate stage and gets a standing ovation, here.  Ron Paul suggests invoking the Golden Rule and gets booed, here.

Rick Perry is cheered when he boasted that he was proud of his Texas execution record, here.

When a debate moderator raised the issue of just letting the uninsured die, the crowd went wild with loud cheers, here.

Gays in the military?  The Republican audience booed loudly, here.

What made me personally cringe is that I was once a Republican until I saw the Republican base for the bloodthirsty hate-filled psychopaths that they really are.  Is the Republican base the reincarnation of the Nazi Party?  It's a horrifying thought that may be closer to the truth than we care to admit.

I sincerely doubt that Romney shares the views of the Republican mob.  Unfortunately, he was forced to shamelessly pander to them to secure their primary votes.  Moreover, the Republican Party elites kept screaming over and over that Romney was the only candidate who was electable in a general election.  How utterly wrong they were!

The only Republican candidate with the testicular fortitude to directly confront the mob mentality with logic, compassion, humility and humanity was Ron Paul and the Republican mobs crucified him at the primary ballot box.  The fatal flaw of Mitt Romney is that the guy was so obsessed with becoming president that he literally refused to take a principled position on anything.

What happened later was even more horrifying as the RNC/GOP machine changed its rules to permanently guarantee that liberty and grassroots activists will never again be able to participate in the nomination process because all RNC and Republican power has now been concentrated into the hands of a few party officials.

Meanwhile, the Republicans continue to do what they've always done - create a campaign strategy that demonizes the other party, even if the other party is no different than the Republican Party except for the highly inflamatory social issues that most Americans are bored with anyway.  

Precisely because the Republican Party doesn't stand for anything except more of the 'same old, same old' tied old failed policies that got American into this economic nightmare, the Republican Party is doomed and possibly permanently.

While the Republican Party elites and the Republican base may be at odds, both are even more alienated from the American people and the magnitude of the problems that we face.

Finally, the Republican Party itself is a far bigger problem than the hapless and clueless Mitt Romney.

How Broken is the Republican Party and Did the GOP Nail its Coffin Shut?

Unquestionably, the Republican Party has embraced strong arm Nazi tactics to squash conservative leaning liberty activists who seek to restore America to constitutional rule that parallels the originalist vision of our founders. At first, it was the ruthless disenfranchisement of Ron Paul supporters and legally elected delegates by the RNC and state GOP machines that literally evicted liberty activists from the Republican Party because of our advocacy for limited government, fiscal solvency and the restoration of constitutionally mandated gold backed currency.   But now that Romney has been anointed the Republican nominee, the focus of the Republican Party has shifted to disenfranchising 3rd parties by using the judicial system  to remove its most formidable challenger - the Libertarian Party.

Republican Use Dirty Tricks, Crack Down on Ron Paul and Gary Johnson in State Courts

In Iowa, the Republican Secretary of State is attempting to remove Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson from the presidential ballot because leaving Johnson on the ballot “will cause “irreparable harm to other candidates and political parties who must compete against him.” In Virginia, Gary Johnson was successful in fighting a GOP attempt to remove him from the ballot.

In Oklahoma, the Republican Attorney General is attempting to remove Gary Johnson, Libertarian Party candidate for President from the ballot tying him to Americans Elect. Meanwhile, in Michigan, Johnson has to sue the Republican Secretary of State because she says he missed the filing deadline by three minutes.

In Pennsylvania, the state Republican Party is challenging validity of signatures even though more than double the required number were turned in. As for Ohio and Washington D.C, the GOP is suing to remove Libertarian Gary Johnson from the presidential ballot.

Washington State's turn-a-bout is fair play. The Libertarian Party is suing the GOP that is a minority party under state law, and therefore the party’s presidential candidate does not qualify for the ballot.

In Nevada, the GOP is worried about “None of the Above” because the state Republican Party “fears “none” could siphon votes from the Republican candidates.” “None of the Above” has appeared as a choice on all Nevada ballots since 1976 as a mean for Nevadans to express dissatisfaction with the choice of candidates. “None” cannot be declared the winner even if it receives the highest number of votes.

These are indeed extreme measures that validate the premise that the Republican Party has gone full blown neurotic as the GOP is increasingly gripped with raw fear. Is the GOP sufficiently insane to believe that the urge to vote is such an overwhelming imperative that liberty activists will just give up, give in, hold their noses and vote Republican?

History speaks a telling truth. While liberty activists have always been the black sheep of the Republican family, they used to just compliantly hold their noses and vote Republican - until 2006 when they finally had enough and mustered the courage to NOT vote Republican because the the lesser of the two evils is still evil. At this juncture it's even highly debatable if the GOP is even less evil than the Democratic Party.

Republicans were stunned when they lost the House of Representatives in 2006 but still remained confident that they would win it back in 2008 along with the presidency. Establishment Republicans were stunned again in 2008 when the GOP got walloped yet again at the ballot box.

Now that it's 2012 Republicans are once again euphoric that they can defeat the Democrats even while the polls are currently showing that Obama is leading. Furthermore, the Democrats appear to be holding the advantage in critical swing states because ultimately the 2012 election results will boil down to 4-6 critical swing states.

In 2008, 132 million Americans voted in the presidential election and Obama beat McCain by 9.5 million votes. With that kind of a gap, one has to wonder about the sheer folly of the decision of the Republican Party to evict a significant chunk of its already shrinking and dwindling base. The Republican Party already enjoys a deficit with the female vote and the youth vote, and these folks are absolutely critical to ballot box success.

If the Republican Party suffers another thrashing at the ballot box in November and I believe that it will and deservedly so, one has to wonder about the viability of a party that is massively out of touch with the American people.

Frick and Frack, Dis and Dat - Drain the Swamp and Vote Third Party

As a Ron Paul supporter, many of us have been frustrated with the anarcho-capitalist voluntarist wing of the Libertarian movement because many of these folks simply refuse to politically engage or even vote.  They make a perfectly valid point "why bother to vote when nothing ever changes".  It's tough to argue with such logic.  The more things change, the more they remain the same.  Americans keep voting for change but the change never comes.

To be sure, there won't be any change if Obama is re-elected or even if Romney manages to pull off a miracle and defy the odds in a race where he is a clear underdog.  The polls are not looking good for Romney and every major election pundit agrees that the advantage definitely goes to Obama.  Moreover, the gamblers at Intrade.com give Obama a comfortable probability of being elected of 58.1% to a 41.7% probability for Romney.  No one should knock the Intrade gamblers.  They beat every pundit in 2008 and by a wide margin.  Intrade predicted that Obama would win with 364 electoral votes, he got 365.  Nobody got that close.

So here we are again.  It's another presidential election year and the choices are miserable.  Well, they really aren't all that miserable and the Libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson, is a very decent candidate who shares a lot of Ron Paul's views.  Yeah, Gary Johnson isn't Ron Paul but who is?  Nobody.

For those among us who consider themselves liberty activists, it's best to vote for the strongest liberty candidate because this strikes a blow at the entrenched power structures of the corrupt RNC and DNC machines that tend to cavalierly marginalize 3rd parties as irrelevant because they just haven't taken off in big enough numbers to signal any real threat to the two party system.

No third party in America stands any chance of winning a presidential election.  But voting third party shouts "I'm here, I'm politically active and I intend to fight the corrupt two party system".  If anything, the third party voters take away votes from both the Republican and Democratic Parties and disemboweling the two headed monster is the act of self-preservation.  .

The Republican and Democratic Parties don't care if folks don't vote so long as they don't vote third party.  However, if third parties start to register alarming percentages that constitute a real threat to R and D absolute power, the grassroots within both parties will be vastly strengthened as will the power of independent voters.  

While I understand why folks refuse to vote and accept that I cannot possibly change their minds, those of us who do vote and participate in the political cesspool have a lot at stake here.  Defeating Romney strikes a most deserving blow at the GOP.  Four more years of Obama and Gang is better than 8  years of worthless statist neocon Republican socialists.

My choice:  Gary Johnson and the Libertarian Party.

Intrade Gamblers Beat the Pollsters and Pundits in 2008 and Has Obama Comfortably Ahead in 2012

In 2008, the professional election pundits and pollsters contemptuously thumbed their noses at Intrade, the online gambling site. It was inconceivable that ordinary bettors could possibly best America's most astute and brilliant election pundits and pollsters. But in the end it was the Intrade gamblers had the last laugh in 2008. The Intrade gamblers got closer than anybody on their calls and by a wide margin. They predicted that Obama would win with 364 electoral votes. Obama won with 365 electoral votes to McCain's 173.

In 2008 Intrade had given Obama a 65% probability of winning, here.

The New York Times chirped in on the issue and acknowledged that its own highly respected pundit, Nate Silver, was off by 18 electoral votes.

Bettors Beat Pundits

Fast forward to 2012. Right now Intrade gamblers are giving Obama a 57.1% probability of winning in November to Romneys' 42.5%. Obama isn't quite as strong as he was in 2008 but the Man of Change who didn't change a damn thing is still comfortably ahead even through he will lose some of the red to purple states that he managed to flip to blue in 2008.

Colorado 54:45
Florida 51:48
Nevada  55:43
New Hampshire 54:45
New Mexico 57:42
North Carolina 50:49
Ohio 51:47
Virginia 53:46

The current Intrade numbers have pretty much remained the same throughout the 2012 election season and after the fiasco known as the RNC Convention, Romney just can't seize on anything that could deliver a sustainable bump.  The customarily staid, flip flopping and boring Romney fails to inspire any voter excitement and ditto for his equally boring VP choice.  Paul Ryan is coming under attack from a variety of ideological sides on issues ranging from his lies about running a marathon in under 3 hours to his insanely convoluted and big spending budget that doesn't even balance the budget until 2040 while spending trillions on the wars and military.

Obama has definitely incurred the wrath of the largely anti-war Democratic base over his continuation of Bush/Cheney foreign policy while starting new military interventions but the Republican base can't seem to want for anything except more wars.  By appeasing the Republican base, Romney succeeded in alienating independent voters.  Then there's the GOP's vicious treatment of the 2 million plus Ron Paul supporters who were literally run out of the Republican Party and the RNC Convention.

Romney and the Republican Party may be in dire need of holding on to every possible constituent voting block to even stand a chance of winning in November but they instead have opted to pursue a policy of arrogance and utter contempt for those conservatives who refuse to toe the party line by questioning the sanity of its big government agenda.

The GOP's scorched earth policy will indeed butt heads with the scorched earth policy of conservative liberty activists who are so incensed that their only goal is to guarantee that the Republican Party loses in November.

Why is the American Election Process a BIG FAIL and How to Fix It.

The American election process is corrupted, rigged and exists for one purpose only: the massive concentration of wealth and power into the hands of banksters, defense contractors, fascists and bureaucrats.

We the People? We aren't part of the equation and our contribution to approving our own enslavement is to participate in the rigged system to validate and provide electoral legitimacy to the Republican and Democrat crime syndicate that lords over us with an iron fist.

There are 2 primary components of the American election process: 1. money and 2. the rigged 2 party  system itself. It's the big money that facilitates Republican and Democrat monopolies over all elections.

Money

Very few Americans even understand that the lions share of political money is dirty special interest money and it's anything but transparent.  The small contributions raised by We the People are no match for the BIG corporatist money interests of plunderers, banksters, oligarchs, plutocrats and fascists. Every time a campaign finance bill is passed by Congress and there have been many over the decades, the end result is always more secrecy and less transparency.  It's why we have these dangerous PAC's super-PAC's.  Special interests can funnel money into the RNC and DNC machines through PAC's.

The RNC/DNC lock on political money doesn’t bode well for Americans seeking to raise new candidates and get rid of the “same old, same old” congressional institutionalists who thrive on power, greed and fraud. If you find a candidate that you like and would like to support, you are legally banned from contributing more than $2,500 to that candidate; contributing more than the legal limit makes you a criminal who can be prosecuted for violating campaign finance laws. But you can give millions to the DNC and RNC machines through its PAC's who don’t have that limitation and this vastly contributes to the absolute power of special interests.

Special interests own and control American elections because they control the money.

Independent thinking candidates are routinely squashed. Big money only flows to those who can deliver the taxpayer largess to special interest campaign contributors and it’s nearly impossible for any honest politician to ever raise sufficient money to compete with the RNC/DNC money laundering machines. Corporate contributors don’t fund candidates who campaign on “I promise to reduce government power and end the fascist marriage of big business and big government”.

Progressives and liberals went ballistic over the Supreme Court Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision that essentially ruled that corporations and labor unions have a constitutional right to contribute money to political campaigns. The Supreme Court decision was right because corporations are legal entities that pay taxes while being subjected to a myriad of government regulations. Accordingly, they have an absolute legal right to have their interests represented in the election game.

So how do we get around the legal right of corporations outright buy elections and thus control legislative outcomes for its exclusive monopolistic advantage? Personally, I favor banning all political contributions except for individual contributions which should have no limits whatsoever. The limits on individual contributions drives the corrupt system underground and into a legal quagmire of undisclosed political contributions while giving both the Republicans and the Democrats extraordinary financial powers to squash We the People at all levels in the process.

The solution to the problem lies in lifting ALL restrictions on personal political contributions and mandating that all political money goes straight to the candidate by bypassing the parties and their legendary fund raising machines.

Do I care if George Soros directly gives billions to Obama?  No because it's his absolute right to fund the candidate of his choice.

Do I care if the Koch Brothers gives billions to Romney? No, because it's their absolute right to fund the candidate of their choice.

However, what the American voter really needs is real time disclosure of all political money. Every website of every candidate for public office should be required by law to have a link on their websites that lists in real time all political contributions, not by the date received but by the amount of the contribution.  If they can get the money to the bank, they can disclose it in real time.  Right now the system is rigged against disclosure because of quarterly filing requirements and the fact that a whole lot of  political money is exempt from disclosure.

If anything, Americans are nosy about money and you better believe that they'd be checking out who is bankrolling candidates.

Furthermore, America needs to ban all RNC and DNC fundraising activities. Because so much of the BIG special interest money is raised by the RNC and DNC machines through a complex legal maize that facilitates non-disclosure and secrecy, there will never be financial transparency in the election process for voter review until political monetary transparency and disclosure are achieved.

The top 10 corporate PAC contributions for the 2008 election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, were as follows:

Obama: Goldman Sachs $739,521, UBS AG $419,550, Lehman Brothers $391,774, Citigroup Inc $492,548, Morgan Stanley $341,380, Latham & Watkins $328,879, Google Inc $487,355 JPMorgan Chase & Co $475,112, Sidley Austin LLP $370,916, Skadden, Arps et al $360,409

McCain: Merrill Lynch $349,170, Citigroup Inc $287,801, Morgan Stanley $249,377 Wachovia Corp $147,456, Goldman Sachs $220,045, Lehman Brothers $115,707, Bear Stearns $108,000, JPMorgan Chase & Co $206,392, Bank of America $133,975, Credit Suisse Group $175,503.

Those figure are far from definitive and the same players funneled a whole lot more money into the campaign finance cesspool through mechanisms not requiring disclosure.  There is also the issue lobbying and its monetary influence far exceeds campaign contribution influence.

Opensecrets.org reports the top spenders on lobbying for 2008 were:

US Chamber of Commerce $91,725,000
Exxon Mobil $29,000,000
AARP $27,900,000 PG&E Corp $27,250,000
Northrop Grumman $20,743,252 American Medical Assn $20,555,000
Pharmaceutical Rsrch & Mfrs of America $20,220,000
Koch Industries $20,023,000
General Electric $19,379,000
American Hospital Assn $18,902,684
Verizon Communications $18,020,000
Boeing Co $17,540,000
National Assn of Realtors $17,340,000
Blue Cross/Blue Shield $16,220,165
Lockheed Martin $15,981,506 AT&T Inc $15,076,675
National Cable & Telecommunications Assn $14,500,000
Southern Co $14,080,000
Altria Group $13,840,000
General Motors $13,351,000

They don’t sprinkle that kind of dough around the District of Crime without getting big paybacks. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is so powerful that it outspends the #2 biggest spender on lobbying by a margin of over 3:1 with a whopping $92 million. What the Chamber of Commerce gets for its $92 million investment is the ability to load up America with cheap third world labor that drives American wages down while shifting the social costs of impoverished “slave” wage earners to the unemployed, broke and suffering American taxpayers.  Basically, it's the systematic wipe out of the American middle class.

The Banksters are always lavishly rewarded for their campaign contributions. Barry Ritholtz, a financial author and pundit, who runs the website Ritholtz.com, put out quite an enlightening article that calculated TARP money (Bankster Bailout Bucks) as a return on lobbyist dollars spent and campaign contributions. The Ritholtz list (prints to 7 pages) listed the banks that received TARP money and included political contributions and lobbying expenditures to arrive at a return on investment.

Campaign Contributions: $37.4 million
Lobbying Expenses: $76.6 million
TARP Payment: $305.2 billion
 Return on Investment: 267,208%

There are a gazillion other special interest groups that are also engaged in the “pay to play” game at the DC Wheel of Fortune.  With a $3.7 trillion pie, those seeking a slice or a crumb descend upon the pie like hoards of hungry cockroaches.

I wonder how many folks would have voted for Obama or McCain in 2008 if they had known upfront that they were heavily funded by Wall Street? Do you really think the American people would have voted for Bankster and corporate welfare?

The Best Government that Fascist Corporatist Bankster Defense Contractor Money Can Buy 

Wall Street and the banksters are far from the only larcenous and felonious gang of  plunderers at the taxpayers gate nor are they the only financiers of political campaigns and lobbying.. Defense contractors and rent seeking corporations demanding subsidies, loan guarantees, protectionism and monopoly rank quite high and are extremely powerful influences.  Entire industries like Big Agriculture and Big Pharm are major power brokers in the Pay to Play Game that reigns supreme in the District of Crime and within our own state legislators and city councils.

Most Congress Critters spend their taxpayer funded time hanging out with special interest lobbyists and favor seeking campaign contributors although most voters don't know it.  We the People have become We the Sheeple and we are laughed at and mocked by those in power, except on election day when politicans pledge their undying love to the people.

How can lobbying and influence peddling be minimized? Again, disclosure could play a key role in scaring politicians away from those who routinely bribe them for a vote.  Of course, in America there is no such thing as bribery as bribery is now nothing more than a legal campaign contribution that is codified into law.

What if Congress Critters and all other elected officials were required to make their schedules public on the Internet?  By making their schedules public I mean putting their calendars on the office holders' official website for the world to see.  Moreover, not publishing a meeting or contact should be a crime because it implies that a public official is engaging in something so underhanded that it reeks of bribery and secrecy.

Wouldn't the American voters just love to know how their elected leaders spend their time and who they spend it with? I suspect that the American people would be shocked and so angry that they'd want these bought and paid for elected representatives voted out of office.

Republican, Democrat, Liberal, conservative or independent, the American people have been denied openness and transparency by the big money games of the RNC and DNC.  Whatever our political and ideological stripes, no one will escape the fascist tyranny until this corrupt fundraising system is dismantled and outlawed.

While we will never be able to fully solve the problems of big money interests and their ability to buy entire legislative bodies, in the Age of the Internet we can certainly accomplish a whole lot more than We the People could ever have hoped to accomplish in the past and before the Internet.

The liberty movement is strengthening and I'd say it's moved from a tropical storm to a Category 1 hurricane.  The politicos and power brokers that controlled us for so many decades are finally running a tad scared and liberty will only be achieved when there's a Category 5 hurricane facing our oppressors.

The Internet is the new portal to liberty as evidenced by the stupendous growth of alternative media that is very successfully putting truth and facts into the hands of ordinary folks.  The once powerful propaganda machines of the government and its media partners in crime are rapidly collapsing.

To be continued with:  What's Wrong With the Primary and General Election System Besides the DIRTY MONEY? 

The 2012 GOP Primary By the Numbers and the Future of Ballot Box Liberty

It's been a most disappointing 2012 Republican primary season for the dedicated liberty activists striving to restore the Constitution and liberty. Unfortunately, they hit a brick wall and that brick wall is the liberty hating Republican voting base.

2012 Republican Primary Votes:

Romney      9,809,662 or 53%
Santorum    3,909,460 or 21%
Gingrich      2,720,135 or 15%
Paul            2,063,043 or 11%

Total Votes 18,502,300

Source: Real Clear Politics

In 2008, Ron Paul got 1.1 million votes and 5.5% so his 2012 primary performance was a hugely significant improvement over 2008.  Still, establishment Republicans have declared WAR on the Republican liberty activists and claim that Ron Paul delegates deserve to be disenfranchised, which they were, because these delegates exceeded their actual representative on a proportional basis.

However, this assumption is totally flawed and contrary to how political parties operate. In fact, the social conservatives and religious right have been very successful, at least since the 1980's, in having representation in the Republican Party that exceeded their actual numbers. How did they do it? They simply became political grassroots activists, same as the Paulites, and showed up at precinct, county and state conventions to assert their power by playing by the RNC's own rules. It was a very effective strategy.

In analyzing the Republican Party, it's best to understand its ideological composition which contains 3 legs, 2 big legs and one small leg.

The 3 legs of the Republican Party:

1. The commie, neocon, fascist Rockefeller R's (Mittens, Bush) - they murder in the name of the state, empire, resources and fascism while ruthlessly imposing totalitarian tyranny everywhere, including America.

2. The commie, neocon, fascist theocratic Warvangelical R's (Sanitorium, Huckabee) - these pagan fake Christians murder in the name of a deity, while ruthlessly imposing totalitarian tyranny everywhere, including America.

3. The Constitutional liberty activists who want peace, liberty and prosperity - something you will never get from the Rockefeller and Warvangelical R's.

Furthermore, the 2 big legs of the Republican Party combined forces and declared war on the liberty activists.  It was a war that they won but what did they really win?  We'll know in November.

It's important to note that the Democratic Party is pretty much identical to the Rockefeller Republicans. However, the Warvangelicals are also quite similar to the Democratic Party with their overt and profound social intolerance being the only difference.  Still, it's a significant difference that fires up irrational passions on both sides.

So what chance does liberty stand in this cesspool of statist warmongering liberty slashing collectivists?

While Lady Liberty has definitely lost another battle, she hasn't lost the war because the liberty movement is growing and its growth is siphoning off voters from both the left and the right.

Do liberty activists have any ballot box power? It's a valid question and one that will undoubtedly be definitively answered in the November general election. In 2008, Obama defeated McCain 53% to 46% and by a staggering 9.5 million votes.

Unquestionably, the Republican Party does not have the advantage in 2012 as it lags in critical swing states according to all the polls. However, the greater question is can the Republican Party afford to lose the 2 million plus Ron Paul supporters, most of whom will not be voting Republican in November?

The Republican Party has calculated, perhaps erroneously, that it still has a solid and cohesive base that can and will deliver general election victories. Moreover, the Republican Party absolutely believes that the Paulites and liberty activist really aren't Republicans, never were Republicans and that these rogue rabble rousers attempted to illegally invade and and occupy the Republican Party.

As a liberty activist who has never voted for a Democrat, I can categorically state that I absolutely will not vote Republican in November because I'm morally compelled to reject statism, socialism, wars, empire, collectivism, corporate welfare and the wholesale destruction of civil liberties (NDAA, Patriot Act).

How alone am I? I really don't know but my guess is that I'll have 2 million or so voters standing right beside me in rejecting Republican tyranny.

Meanwhile, the Revolution for liberty continues!

Election 2012: The Big Yawn Blame Game

Election 2012 has kicked off. It's Obamney and Paultard vs Obushma and Train Wreck Biden. Yawn! Such a potent sleeping pill should keep sane folks everywhere away from the dangers of Republican and Democrat ballot box gulags.

The Republican primary voting base has spoken: We want more wars, more socialism, more entitlements, more fiat money, more bankster bailouts, more spending, more deficits, more debt, more assaults on civil liberties, more prisons and more oppressive totalitarian governance.

The Democrat primary voting base has spoken: We want more wars, more socialism, more entitlements, more fiat money, more bankster bailouts, more spending, more deficits, more debt, more assaults on civil liberties, more prisons and more oppressive totalitarian governance.

What does this say about the American people? It just might prove that the American people may in fact be the only folks in human history to have had liberty and consciously and willfully decided to vote away their liberty.

What does it say about America's 2 party system? It unequivocally confirms that the Republican Party and the Democratic Party are one and the same - The Uniparty of Collectivist Statist Oppression.

Why even vote Republican or Democrat when we know we will only get more wars, more socialism, more entitlements, more fiat money, more bankster bailouts, more spending, more deficits, more debt, more assaults on civil liberties, more prisons and more oppressive totalitarian governance?

Change? The only change Americans will ever get will be the change that comes with permanently rejecting and disemboweling the Republican and Democratic Parties. The RNC and DNC machines are nothing but money laundering operations as well as wholly owned subsidiaries of the banksters, military industrial complex, prison industrial complex and fascist corporatist special interests.

A vote for permanent residence on the Republican or Democrat Plantation is hardly a vote for liberty.  It's more of a vote to permanently enslave yourself.

I'm voting for real change and will be voting for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson because he truly represents real change and at least a chance to demolish the corrupt to the core 2 party system that delivers nothing except more of the same.

America desperately needs a return to peace, liberty and prosperity. That's the hope I'll be voting for in November. Meanwhile the R's and D's can do what they always do - blame the other guy and the other party.

Muppets and Mittens: Is Romney Trying to Prove that He's Brain Dead?

In an interview with Fortune Magazine, Romney claims he's going to solve our budget problems by cutting funding for PBS, the National Endowment of the Arts and and Amtrak.

Mitt Romney: Slash Amtrak, PBS Funding, But Defense Cuts And Middle Class Tax Cuts Off The Table

The federal government is spending about $3.7 TRILLION a year on tax revenues of about $2.2 trillion. If you are going to be a serious budget cutter, you start with the big ticket items first because that's where you achieve the biggest payback.

Mitt's cuts:

PBS $444 million
National Endowment of the Arts $146 million
Amtrak subsidies $1.56 billion

Now I totally agree that subsidies to PBS and the National Endowment of the Arts should be abolished and I further believe that Amtrak should just be put on the auction block for sale.  But these items are small potatoes in the grand scheme of things.

Romney the Big Governrment Statist, just can't bring himself to even suggest cutting big ticket items that are the real problem.  Ron Paul boldly outlined his plan to cut $1 trillion year one as president.

RON PAUL “PLAN TO RESTORE AMERICA”

SPENDING: Cuts $1 trillion in spending during the first year of Ron Paul’s presidency, eliminating five cabinet departments (Energy, HUD, Commerce, Interior, and Education), abolishing the Transportation Security Administration and returning responsibility for security to private property owners, abolishing corporate subsidies, stopping foreign aid, ending foreign wars, and returning most other spending to 2006 levels.

Ron Paul has an plan to dig us out of our fiscal nightmares. All Romney had to do was just partially or wholly steal Ron Paul's plan. But weasel wimp Mittens opted instead to expose his lack of testicular fortitude.

Not only is Romney pathetically weak when it comes to slashing spending, he turns mega big spender when it comes to massively increasing defense spending by trillions.

Mitt Romney Proposes $8 Trillion Welfare Program for Defense Contractors; Prepare for Two Wars if Romney Wins

Yo Mitt, if you've got a pair, time is running out to show them.  Wimp talk just won't cut in an election where Republicans are already behind in critical swing states.