United Liberty

The group, Judicial Watch, has filed charges on behalf of Joe Wurzelbacher, aka Joe the Plumber, alleging that Ohio state officials conducted investigations into his past after his tête-à-tête with then Democratic Presidential nominee, Barack Obama.

MSNBC-According to a subsequent investigation by the Ohio Inspector General, on October 16, 2008, just four days after Mr. Wurzelbacher questioned Obama, Jones-Kelley, Williams and Thompson held a meeting and specifically discussed “Joe the Plumber.” Following the meeting the defendants authorized and instructed agency personnel to search confidential office databases to retrieve information about Mr. Wurzelbacher. All three defendants are believed to have been supporters of Obama’s presidential campaign.

Barack Obama has been president for a little over a month and innocent people are still getting killed by coalition efforts in Afghanistan. Is it possible that Obama could become as unpopular in the Muslim world as George W. Bush?

Yes, it’s possible.  I expect though that the different tone of the Obama Administration will keep him above the Bush unpopularity low though even if the Obama policies are just as upsetting. Obama will at least give lip-service to things that concern the Muslim people of the region and that will be more than Bush did.

That doesn’t mean he won’t be very unpopular though…it just means he will be seen as “better than Bush” by the locals.  And who knows?  He might do quite a bit better.  We’ll see.

George Packer elaborates in the New Yorker about the parallels between today’s Republican Party and the Democratic Socialists during the 1980s:

Not because I believe in bigger government, I don’t. -Obama

 

Many of you watched Obama make his first address to Congress tonight. His speech was concentrated nearly entirely on the economy. He started out by talking about the pitiful state of our economy, and how it is affecting everyone either directly or indirectly. He reiterated the point that America will prevail and recover. I don’t doubt that we will prevail and recover, but not because of Keynesian economic policies that the Democratic Party and Neocons are implementing. Not because of the spending, bailing out, and intervention of the Federal Government.

It has been widely reported today that President Obama plans to cut the budget deficit in half by 2013. On the surface, this sounds like a great accomplishment. In fact, if you read the remarks by Press Secretary Robert Gibbs or Obama’s own message at the Fiscal Responsibility Summit, you would quickly conclude that this administration is committed to tight spending controls and economic conservatism. This is just typical White House spin.

From the floor debate in the Senate on February 7 regarding the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act:

Incidentally, let me share with a few of my colleagues why this is sort of this old ideology versus new. The Senator talked about the tired ideology of the past. What is it? Well, I think today Michael Steele, the new chairman of the Republican National Committee, made a statement on behalf of the Republican Party. He said:

For the last 2 weeks, we have been trying to force a massive spending bill through Congress under the guise of economic relief.

Well, we are having votes. This is a democracy. We are not forcing anything. We are trying to get the job done because there is an urgency to getting it done.

But then he says:

Another of President Obama’s nominations has sunk like a rock:

ANOTHER day, another blow for Barack Obama’s hopes for a “new politics”. On Thursday February 12th, Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire announced that he had withdrawn as Mr Obama’s proposed secretary of commerce. Mr Gregg is a Republican—and one, to boot, who once voted for the Commerce Department to be abolished. Bringing him into the cabinet had been billed by the Obama team as an important sign of Mr Obama’s commitment to government from the centre. Mr Gregg would have been the third of Mr Obama’s “post-partisan” appointments: his transport secretary, Ray LaHood is a Republican, and his defence secretary, Robert Gates, served in the same job under George Bush (though he does not describe himself as a Republican).

I remember how exited I was to be selected as a page for the Alabama Senate. It was April of 1993, and I recall driving up to Montgomery with my best friend growing up, Matt Hartfield. We were both 16 years old, and it was our first road trip on our own. I remember we stayed at a hotel that later became the Riverwalk Stadium where the Montgomery Biscuits minor league team presently resides.

I was very active in local politics as a volunteer, even though being a conservative Republican in the Wiregrass in 1993 was still a very lonely place at times.

But oddly enough, Alabama had a Republican governor. Guy Hunt was elected in 1987 as a result of a civil war within the Democratic Party. Alabama was a one-party state, and the Democratic primary was the de facto election-winner for statewide offices.

One of the politicans that United Liberty writers consistently speak positively about is the Governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford.  As one of the newest members of the Alabama Republican State Executive Committee, I had the opportunity to attend a party dinner in Montgomery and the privilege to meet the key-note speaker, Governor Sanford.

There have been assertions from Democrats and Republicans alike that Rush Limbaugh is the current voice of the GOP, but I expressed to Governor Sanford that I disagree.  It is my hope that true, small-government fiscal conservatives such as Mark Sanford will be the prevailing voice now and in the years to come.

A recent AP story caught my attention: “GOP governors press Congress to pass stimulus bill.” After caving last year to a $700 billion bailout, the Republicans in Congress appear to be standing firm against Barack Obama’s call to flush another $800 billion down the tubes.

By the way, this is one advantage to having Democrat control in Washington– Republicans will vote against many things they would normally support just because Democrats are sponsoring the ideas.

Well, apparently many Republican governors are rushing in to Washington to shore up George Wallace’s maxim that there’s “not a dime’s worth of difference” between the two major parties.

These GOP governors are putting pressure on their colleagues in Congress to support Obama’s bailout and to make sure they get their fair share of the pork.