Victicrat: Ft. Alfonzo Rachel, Produced by Eric Elder; Starring James O’Keef, Ryan Sorba and more…

More from PJTV.

(h/t Ryan Sorba)

While many Republicans have been slow to criticize Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, conservative pundits are confronting her racial views head on. George F. Will asks “Does she think the figure of Justice should lift her blindfold, an emblem of impartiality, and be partial to certain categories of persons?” in his Washington Post column this morning.

“Affirmative action standards are a bad way to pick one of the nine most influential jurists in the U.S., whose vast powers can shape virtually every aspect of our current lives,” writes University of Chicago law professor Richard Epstein, “The president should have done better, and the Senate, Democrats and Republicans alike, should subject this dubious nomination to the intense scrutiny that it deserves.”

Conservatives and Republicans have been saying for years that we need someone, in office or out of office, to clearly articulate conservative principles in a relevant and engaging way. Tom McClintock has been doing it for years, but always failed to get national attention—he’s just so good at it that it scares the media. Jon Fleischman’s Flash Report posted a speech today that McClintock gave at The Council for National Policy in DC on May 16th—read the whole thing.

[Excerpt]

What is the “nothing” that we have that so dismays and disgusts these same messiahs of mediocrity – this “nothing” that’s convinced them that we must wean ourselves from our unseemly nostalgia with such irrelevant has-beens as Reagan, and Lincoln and Jefferson – I add the others because they stood for exactly the same principles as Reagan.

We stand for freedom.

We stand for abundance.

We stand for individual responsibility.

Freedom. Abundance and Responsibility. That is our platform.

Those who call that “nothing” are the same failed leaders who disdained it during the Reagan years and dismantled it as soon as the Reagan years were over.
They stand for statism. We stand for freedom: The God-given right to enjoy the fruit of our own labor; the right to raise our children according to our own values; the right to express our opinions and our faith freely and without reserve; the right to defend ourselves and our families; the right to enter into voluntary associations with each other for our mutual betterment without an army of busy-bodies telling us what is best for us.

They stand for the rationing of shortage. We stand for abundance: what happens when free men and free women enjoy the liberty to go as far as their desire, talent and imagination can guide them and as far as their labor, industry and enterprise can take them. Societies prosper when freedom protects the rights of each of us to decide on our own what we will produce and what we will consume. Government exists to protect the conditions that produce abundance, not to ration shortages that government has caused.

They stand for paternalism. We stand for personal responsibility. That means you stand by your promises. That means you tell your customers the truth about your products and investments. It means if you bring a child into the world then by God you look after that child. And it means if you make a bad decision, you set it right and you learn from it – and you realize that the bad decisions we all make from time to time is the price we pay for the freedom to make all the good decisions in our lives.

Freedom. Abundance. Responsibility. Ladies and Gentlemen, that ain’t “nothing.” That’s everything.

That’s everything our country is, everything our country stands for. That’s everything ten generations of Americans have fought to defend. That is everything that the happiness and prosperity of society depends upon. That is everything that we have – everything that we are – everything that we hope as Americans.

Really, read the whole thing. I don’t know about you, but I’d vote McClintock 2012 in a heartbeat.

From The London Times:

Thirty years on from Margaret Thatcher becoming Prime Minister, it is being suggested that we have come to the end of the Thatcher era. Don’t believe it. Iron does not rust that easily. [Read More]

The Dana Report just opened a new online shop! Our old store was good, but we could only have one design per item, and most of the items were pretty weird (thongs, and dog t-shirts??). The new store is hosted by Skreened.com, and prints all designs on American Apparel products (we don’t support their politics, clearly, but they’re comfy!)

All of the designs are available on any t-shirt type/color and in women’s styles. You can also purchase any of the designs on a hoodie or tote bag!

Check out the store and please buy something if you like it, The Dana Report could really use your support as we plan for a website re-design over the summer.

UPDATE: Sorry! The wrong link was up for the store; it is now fixed.

By Thomas Sowell at Townhall:

Too many Republicans seem to think that being “inclusive” means selling out your principles to try to attract votes. It never seems to occur to them that you can attract a wider range of voters by explaining your principles in a way that more people understand.

That is precisely what Reagan did and what Gingrich did in 1994. Most Americans’ principles are closer to those of the Republicans than to those of the Democrats.

It is the only advantage the Republicans have. The Democrats have the media, the unions, the environmental extremists and the tort lawyers on their side. Why should Republicans throw away their one advantage by becoming imitation Democrats? [Read More]

From the Weekly Standard:

The postmortems on the presidency of George W. Bush are all wrong. The liberal line is that Bush dangerously weakened America’s position in the world and rushed to the aid of the rich and powerful as income inequality worsened. That is twaddle. Conservatives–okay, not all of them–have only been a little bit kinder. They give Bush credit for the surge that saved Iraq, but not for much else.

He deserves better. His presidency was far more successful than not. And there’s an aspect of his decision-making that merits special recognition: his courage. Time and time again, Bush did what other presidents, even Ronald Reagan, would not have done and for which he was vilified and abused. That–defiantly doing the right thing–is what distinguished his presidency. [Read More]

Philip Klein:

Conservatism Can Rise Again

America is not as conservative as it seemed in 2004 and it isn’t as liberal as it looks this morning.

What happened is that four years ago, voters put their trust in one political party to run the country and they didn’t like the results, and so, over the course of two elections, they systematically threw out that political party and turned to a different one. If Democrats disappoint the public, they could be waking up on a not so distant November morning just as devastated as Republicans are today.

Those who are in the profession of writing the first rough draft of history would have us believe that a single election result can signal the end of an intellectual tradition, but actual history instructs us otherwise. This is especially true for conservatism, which rose from the staggering defeat of one its own in 1964, to a glorious triumph 16 years later.

John McCain is an honorable man who sacrificed more for this nation than most of us can imagine, but he’s also eccentric and idiosyncratic. During the campaign, he railed against Wall Street greed and excessive CEO pay on the one hand and against his opponent’s plans to redistribute wealth on the other; he called for a spending freeze while proposing that government spend hundreds of billions of dollars to freeze home foreclosures by partially socializing the housing market.

Of all the ways to put these election results in broader historical context, it’s quite a stretch to equate the defeat of John McCain with the end of conservatism.

At the same time, it would be irresponsible and unhelpful to ignore the severe challenges conservatism faces in both the immediate and long term.

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WHEN HE ENTERED the presidential race nearly two years ago, most conservatives didn’t give Barack Obama a chance against the vaunted Clinton machine. After he finally emerged victorious from the protracted primary, many conservatives clung to the belief that disgruntled Clinton voters and working class whites in rural areas would deny him the presidency. To date, Obama has proven all of the skeptics wrong.

The sooner conservatives realize that Obama is not merely a gifted orator, but an incredibly talented politician with the potential to be a transformational liberal leader, the better prepared they will be to resist his agenda. In a time of economic crisis, with Democrats having overwhelming control of both chambers of Congress, stopping him will be difficult, but it won’t be impossible.

Although Obama has radical liberal roots, he was elected president by papering over his past, and convincing Americans that he was a pragmatic moderate who would cut their taxes and be more fiscally responsible than President Bush. Democrats won Congressional races in traditionally conservative districts in much the same way. If, once in power, Obama and his Democratic allies cater to their liberal base, it will be jarring to Americans who had something different in mind when they voted for the abstract concept of change.

Conservatives won’t thwart Democrats by name-calling, but by articulating to the country why liberal proposals will have disastrous implications, and emphasizing that there is little room left to expand social programs when the government has to fund a $700 billion bailout — just as tax revenue falls as a result of the shrinking economy.

While the network of conservative think tanks, journalists, and activists will have to spend the foreseeable future on defense, trying to contain the march of liberalism, it will also be a time for the movement to engage in long-term thinking, so that it will be in a position to reassert itself when the political conditions are right.

Many conservatives would agree that the basket of issues that led to Ronald Reagan’s historic victory don’t have the salience that they did in 1980, when the top marginal tax rate was 70 percent and the Soviet Union still loomed large. But that’s where the agreement ends.

Some of those who identify themselves as conservatives would have us believe that the conclusion to draw from this is that the era of small government conservatism is over, and that the only option is to fight for a conservative welfare state to replace a liberal welfare state. But that was the driving force behind President Bush’s brand of “compassionate conservatism,” which led us to a fiscal disaster that critics now want to blame on traditional conservatism.

Those of us who still believe in fighting for limited government cannot allow this to happen. It’s one thing for the Republican Party to embrace statism, but once the conservative movement does so at the philosophical level, it will no longer have a reason to exist. If people want big government, they’ll support liberalism — conservatives simply cannot beat the real thing.

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IT WOULD BE ESPECIALLY shortsighted to make such concessions given that conservatives can make small government ideology more relevant to contemporary challenges without abandoning their core beliefs. With all the focus on the financial crisis that hit in this fall, the candidates all but ignored the far more substantial financial crisis that is staring us in the face.

The United States faces a long-term deficit of over $53 trillion that is set to bite us in just a few years, as Baby Boomers begin to retire and current payroll taxes are no longer sufficient to subsidize their retirements. By the time government gets around to doing anything, the choices will be limited. Either lawmakers rein in social programs, or they turn America into a European welfare state, with unconscionable tax rates, high unemployment, a stagnant economy, and a shrinking military budget. Not since Reagan’s landslide in 1980 will there be a better time for conservatives to make the case for a smaller government with limited functions.

Lost in all of this is a discussion of national defense. Liberals would like for us to behave as if the September 11 attacks never happened. They portray the threat of Islamic terrorism as something the Bush administration invented — or, at least, exaggerated — in a cynical ploy to scare up votes.

More than seven years have passed since that fateful day, and so it’s only human nature that Americans would move on and focus on their own economic concerns. But unfortunately, our enemies have not moved on, and if liberalism fails to adequately confront this and other threats to our national security, then just like during the Cold War, it will be up to conservatives to respond.

The road ahead for conservatives is long, dark, and perilous — and there are no guarantees that the movement will reemerge in the years to come or return to its former glory. But it certainly isn’t dead. Not even close.

by Philip Klein – American Spectator [h/t Ramesh Ponnuru]

From Statesman.com:

Christopher Buckley, author and son of late conservative icon William F. Buckley, last week surprised readers of the magazine his father founded, the National Review: “Sorry, Dad, I’m voting for Obama” was the headline on The Daily Beast blog.

(Read in Full)

This whole story is so weird. Who could have ever imagined that WFB’s son would dump National Review for Obama?

h/t TruthCaucus

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