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Yeah, it was a good monologue..

This one was better:

This speech is a verbatim transcript of “The Speech” given as a portion of a pre-recorded, nationwide televised program sponsored by Goldwater-Miller on behalf of Barry Goldwater, Republican candidate for the presidency whom Ronald Reagan actively supported.
4,626 words

Thank you very much. Thank you and good evening. The sponsor has been identified, but unlike most television programs, the performer hasn’t been provided with a script. As a matter of fact, I have been permitted to choose my own ideas regarding the choice that we face in the next few weeks.

I have spent most of my life as a Democrat. I recently have seen fit to follow another course. I believe that the issues confronting us cross party lines. Now, one side in this campaign has been telling us that the issues of this election are the maintenance of peace and prosperity. The line has been used “We’ve never had it so good.”

But I have an uncomfortable feeling that this prosperity isn’t something on which we can base our hopes for the future. No nation in history has ever survived a tax burden that reached a third of its national income. Today, 37 cents of every dollar earned in this country is the tax collector’s share, and yet our government continues to spend $17 million a day more than the government takes in. We haven’t balanced our budget 28 out of the last 34 years. We have raised our debt limit three times in the last twelve months, and now our national debt is one and a half times bigger than all the combined debts of all the nations in the world. We have $15 billion in gold in our treasury—we don’t own an ounce. Foreign dollar claims are $27.3 billion, and we have just had announced that the dollar of 1939 will now purchase 45 cents in its total value.

As for the peace that we would preserve, I wonder who among us would like to approach the wife or mother whose husband or son has died in South Vietnam and ask them if they think this is a peace that should be maintained indefinitely. Do they mean peace, or do they mean we just want to be left in peace? There can be no real peace while one American is dying some place in the world for the rest of us. We are at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it has been said if we lose that war, and in doing so lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening. Well, I think it’s time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers.

Not too long ago two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, “We don’t know how lucky we are.” And the Cuban stopped and said, “How lucky you are! I had someplace to escape to.” In that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man’s relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.

You and I are told increasingly that we have to choose between a left or right, but I would like to suggest that there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down—up to a man’s age-old dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order—or down to the ant heap totalitarianism, and regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.

In this vote-harvesting time, they use terms like the “Great Society,” or as we were told a few days ago by the President, we must accept a “greater government activity in the affairs of the people.” But they have been a little more explicit in the past and among themselves—and all of the things that I now will quote have appeared in print. These are not Republican accusations. For example, they have voices that say “the cold war will end through acceptance of a not undemocratic socialism.” Another voice says that the profit motive has become outmoded, it must be replaced by the incentives of the welfare state; or our traditional system of individual freedom is incapable of solving the complex problems of the 20th century. Senator Fullbright has said at Stanford University that the Constitution is outmoded. He referred to the president as our moral teacher and our leader, and he said he is hobbled in his task by the restrictions in power imposed on him by this antiquated document. He must be freed so that he can do for us what he knows is best. And Senator Clark of Pennsylvania, another articulate spokesman, defines liberalism as “meeting the material needs of the masses through the full power of centralized government.” Well, I for one resent it when a representative of the people refers to you and me—the free man and woman of this country—as “the masses.” This is a term we haven’t applied to ourselves in America. But beyond that, “the full power of centralized government”—this was the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize. They knew that governments don’t control things. A government can’t control the economy without controlling people. And they know when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. They also knew, those Founding Fathers, that outside of its legitimate functions, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector of the economy.

Now, we have no better example of this than the government’s involvement in the farm economy over the last 30 years. Since 1955, the cost of this program has nearly doubled. One-fourth of farming in America is responsible for 85% of the farm surplus. Three-fourths of farming is out on the free market and has known a 21% increase in the per capita consumption of all its produce. You see, that one-fourth of farming is regulated and controlled by the federal government. In the last three years we have spent $43 in feed grain program for every bushel of corn we don’t grow.

Senator Humphrey last week charged that Barry Goldwater as President would seek to eliminate farmers. He should do his homework a little better, because he will find out that we have had a decline of 5 million in the farm population under these government programs. He will also find that the Democratic administration has sought to get from Congress an extension of the farm program to include that three-fourths that is now free. He will find that they have also asked for the right to imprison farmers who wouldn’t keep books as prescribed by the federal government. The Secretary of Agriculture asked for the right to seize farms through condemnation and resell them to other individuals. And contained in that same program was a provision that would have allowed the federal government to remove 2 million farmers from the soil.

At the same time, there has been an increase in the Department of Agriculture employees. There is now one for every 30 farms in the United States, and still they can’t tell us how 66 shiploads of grain headed for Austria disappeared without a trace and Billie Sol Estes never left shore.

Every responsible farmer and farm organization has repeatedly asked the government to free the farm economy, but who are farmers to know what is best for them? The wheat farmers voted against a wheat program. The government passed it anyway. Now the price of bread goes up; the price of wheat to the farmer goes down.

Meanwhile, back in the city, under urban renewal the assault on freedom carries on. Private property rights are so diluted that public interest is almost anything that a few government planners decide it should be. In a program that takes for the needy and gives to the greedy, we see such spectacles as in Cleveland, Ohio, a million-and-a-half-dollar building completed only three years ago must be destroyed to make way for what government officials call a “more compatible use of the land.” The President tells us he is now going to start building public housing units in the thousands where heretofore we have only built them in the hundreds. But FHA and the Veterans Administration tell us that they have 120,000 housing units they’ve taken back through mortgage foreclosures. For three decades, we have sought to solve the problems of unemployment through government planning, and the more the plans fail, the more the planners plan. The latest is the Area Redevelopment Agency. They have just declared Rice County, Kansas, a depressed area. Rice County, Kansas, has two hundred oil wells, and the 14,000 people there have over $30 million on deposit in personal savings in their banks. When the government tells you you’re depressed, lie down and be depressed.

We have so many people who can’t see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion that the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one. So they are going to solve all the problems of human misery through government and government planning. Well, now, if government planning and welfare had the answer and they’ve had almost 30 years of it, shouldn’t we expect government to almost read the score to us once in a while? Shouldn’t they be telling us about the decline each year in the number of people needing help? The reduction in the need for public housing?

But the reverse is true. Each year the need grows greater, the program grows greater. We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet. But now we are told that 9.3 million families in this country are poverty-stricken on the basis of earning less than $3,000 a year. Welfare spending is 10 times greater than in the dark depths of the Depression. We are spending $45 billion on welfare. Now do a little arithmetic, and you will find that if we divided the $45 billion up equally among those 9 million poor families, we would be able to give each family $4,600 a year, and this added to their present income should eliminate poverty! Direct aid to the poor, however, is running only about $600 per family. It would seem that someplace there must be some overhead.

So now we declare “war on poverty,” or “you, too, can be a Bobby Baker!” Now, do they honestly expect us to believe that if we add $1 billion to the $45 million we are spending...one more program to the 30-odd we have—and remember, this new program doesn’t replace any, it just duplicates existing programs—do they believe that poverty is suddenly going to disappear by magic? Well, in all fairness I should explain that there is one part of the new program that isn’t duplicated. This is the youth feature. We are now going to solve the dropout problem, juvenile delinquency, by reinstituting something like the old CCC camps, and we are going to put our young people in camps, but again we do some arithmetic, and we find that we are going to spend each year just on room and board for each young person that we help $4,700 a year! We can send them to Harvard for $2,700! Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting that Harvard is the answer to juvenile delinquency.

But seriously, what are we doing to those we seek to help? Not too long ago, a judge called me here in Los Angeles. He told me of a young woman who had come before him for a divorce. She had six children, was pregnant with her seventh. Under his questioning, she revealed her husband was a laborer earning $250 a month. She wanted a divorce so that she could get an $80 raise. She is eligible for $330 a month in the Aid to Dependent Children Program. She got the idea from two women in her neighborhood who had already done that very thing.

Yet anytime you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we are denounced as being against their humanitarian goals. They say we are always “against” things, never “for” anything. Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn’t so. We are for a provision that destitution should not follow unemployment by reason of old age, and to that end we have accepted Social Security as a step toward meeting the problem.

But we are against those entrusted with this program when they practice deception regarding its fiscal shortcomings, when they charge that any criticism of the program means that we want to end payments to those who depend on them for livelihood. They have called it insurance to us in a hundred million pieces of literature. But then they appeared before the Supreme Court and they testified that it was a welfare program. They only use the term “insurance” to sell it to the people. And they said Social Security dues are a tax for the general use of the government, and the government has used that tax. There is no fund, because Robert Byers, the actuarial head, appeared before a congressional committee and admitted that Social Security as of this moment is $298 billion in the hole. But he said there should be no cause for worry because as long as they have the power to tax, they could always take away from the people whatever they needed to bail them out of trouble! And they are doing just that.

A young man, 21 years of age, working at an average salary...his Social Security contribution would, in the open market, buy him an insurance policy that would guarantee $220 a month at age 65. The government promises $127. He could live it up until he is 31 and then take out a policy that would pay more than Social Security. Now, are we so lacking in business sense that we can’t put this program on a sound basis so that people who do require those payments will find that they can get them when they are due...that the cupboard isn’t bare? Barry Goldwater thinks we can.

At the same time, can’t we introduce voluntary features that would permit a citizen who can do better on his own to be excused upon presentation of evidence that he had made provisions for the non-earning years? Should we allow a widow with children to work, and not lose the benefits supposedly paid for by her deceased husband? Shouldn’t you and I be allowed to declare who our beneficiaries will be under these programs, which we cannot do? I think we are for telling our senior citizens that no one in this country should be denied medical care because of a lack of funds. But I think we are against forcing all citizens, regardless of need, into a compulsory government program, especially when we have such examples, as announced last week, when France admitted that their Medicare program was now bankrupt. They’ve come to the end of the road.

In addition, was Barry Goldwater so irresponsible when he suggested that our government give up its program of deliberate planned inflation so that when you do get your Social Security pension, a dollar will buy a dollar’s worth, and not 45 cents’ worth?

I think we are for an international organization, where the nations of the world can seek peace. But I think we are against subordinating American interests to an organization that has become so structurally unsound that today you can muster a two-thirds vote on the floor of the General Assembly among the nations that represent less than 10 percent of the world’s population. I think we are against the hypocrisy of assailing our allies because here and there they cling to a colony, while we engage in a conspiracy of silence and never open our mouths about the millions of people enslaved in Soviet colonies in the satellite nation.

I think we are for aiding our allies by sharing of our material blessings with those nations which share in our fundamental beliefs, but we are against doling out money government to government, creating bureaucracy, if not socialism, all over the world. We set out to help 19 countries. We are helping 107. We spent $146 billion. With that money, we bought a $2 million yacht for Haile Selassie. We bought dress suits for Greek undertakers, extra wives for Kenyan government officials. We bought a thousand TV sets for a place where they have no electricity. In the last six years, 52 nations have bought $7 billion worth of our gold, and all 52 are receiving foreign aid from this country.

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this Earth. Federal employees number 2.5 million, and federal, state, and local, one out of six of the nation’s work force is employed by the government. These proliferating bureaus with their thousands of regulations have cost us many of our constitutional safeguards. How many of us realize that today federal agents can invade a man’s property without a warrant? They can impose a fine without a formal hearing, let alone a trial by jury, and they can seize and sell his property in auction to enforce the payment of that fine. In Chico County, Arkansas, James Wier overplanted his rice allotment. The government obtained a $17,000 judgment, and a U.S. marshal sold his 950-acre farm at auction. The government said it was necessary as a warning to others to make the system work. Last February 19 at the University of Minnesota, Norman Thomas, six-time candidate for President on the Socialist Party ticket, said, “If Barry Goldwater became President, he would stop the advance of socialism in the United States.” I think that’s exactly what he will do.

As a former Democrat, I can tell you Norman Thomas isn’t the only man who has drawn this parallel to socialism with the present administration. Back in 1936, Mr. Democrat himself, Al Smith, the great American, came before the American people and charged that the leadership of his party was taking the part of Jefferson, Jackson, and Cleveland down the road under the banners of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. And he walked away from his party, and he never returned to the day he died, because to this day, the leadership of that party has been taking that party, that honorable party, down the road in the image of the labor socialist party of England. Now it doesn’t require expropriation or confiscation of private property or business to impose socialism on a people. What does it mean whether you hold the deed or the title to your business or property if the government holds the power of life and death over that business or property? Such machinery already exists. The government can find some charge to bring against any concern it chooses to prosecute. Every businessman has his own tale of harassment. Somewhere a perversion has taken place. Our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation of government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment. Our Democratic opponents seem unwilling to debate these issues. They want to make you and I believe that this is a contest between two men...that we are to choose just between two personalities.

Well, what of this man that they would destroy? And in destroying, they would destroy that which he represents, the ideas that you and I hold dear. Is he the brash and shallow and trigger-happy man they say he is? Well, I have been privileged to know him “when.” I knew him long before he ever dreamed of trying for high office, and I can tell you personally I have never known a man in my life I believe so incapable of doing a dishonest or dishonorable thing.

This is a man who in his own business, before he entered politics, instituted a profit-sharing plan, before unions had ever thought of it. He put in health and medical insurance for all his employees. He took 50 percent of the profits before taxes and set up a retirement program, a pension plan for all his employees. He sent checks for life to an employee who was ill and couldn’t work. He provided nursing care for the children of mothers who work in the stores. When Mexico was ravaged by floods from the Rio Grande, he climbed in his airplane and flew medicine and supplies down there.

An ex-GI told me how he met him. It was the week before Christmas during the Korean War, and he was at the Los Angeles airport trying to get a ride home to Arizona for Christmas, and he said that there were a lot of servicemen there and no seats available on the planes. Then a voice came over the loudspeaker and said, “Any men in uniform wanting a ride to Arizona, go to runway such-and-such,” and they went down there, and there was this fellow named Barry Goldwater sitting in his plane. Every day in the weeks before Christmas, all day long, he would load up the plane, fly to Arizona, fly them to their homes, then fly back over to get another load.

During the hectic split-second timing of a campaign, this is a man who took time out to sit beside an old friend who was dying of cancer. His campaign managers were understandably impatient, but he said, “There aren’t many left who care what happens to her. I’d like her to know I care.” This is a man who said to his 19-year-old son, “There is no foundation like the rock of honesty and fairness, and when you begin to build your life upon that rock, with the cement of the faith in God that you have, then you have a real start.” This is not a man who could carelessly send other people’s sons to war. And that is the issue of this campaign that makes all of the other problems I have discussed academic, unless we realize that we are in a war that must be won.

Those who would trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state have told us that they have a utopian solution of peace without victory. They call their policy “accommodation.” And they say if we only avoid any direct confrontation with the enemy, he will forget his evil ways and learn to love us. All who oppose them are indicted as warmongers. They say we offer simple answers to complex problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer—not an easy answer—but simple.

If you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we want our national policy based upon what we know in our hearts is morally right. We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion now in slavery behind the Iron Curtain, “Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skin, we are willing to make a deal with your slave masters.” Alexander Hamilton said, “A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one.” Let’s set the record straight. There is no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there is only one guaranteed way you can have peace—and you can have it in the next second—surrender.

Admittedly there is a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson in history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face—that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight and surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand—the ultimatum. And what then? When Nikita Khrushchev has told his people he knows what our answer will be? He has told them that we are retreating under the pressure of the Cold War, and someday when the time comes to deliver the ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary because by that time we will have weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes this because from our side he has heard voices pleading for “peace at any price” or “better Red than dead,” or as one commentator put it, he would rather “live on his knees than die on his feet.” And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don’t speak for the rest of us. You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin—just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard ‘round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn’t die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it’s a simple answer after all.

You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, “There is a price we will not pay.” There is a point beyond which they must not advance. This is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater’s “peace through strength.” Winston Churchill said that “the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits—not animals.” And he said, “There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty.”

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.

We will keep in mind and remember that Barry Goldwater has faith in us. He has faith that you and I have the ability and the dignity and the right to make our own decisions and determine our own destiny.

Thank you very much.

Ronald Wilson Reagan.

Rush, you damn knucklehead, you should have listened up a year ago and AVOIDED this marxist plague altogher. GRRRRRR

Why ALL Conservatives need to support Duncan Hunter - Including you, Mr. Limbaugh

Alexander J. Madison - August 6, 2007

If Congressman and Presidential candidate Duncan Hunter had a dollar for every conservative who said “Gee, Hunter is really great, but he doesn’t have traction”, or, “Yeah, he may be the most conservative, but he can’t win”, the Hunter Campaign would be leading the 2008 money race. Alas, his campaign receives no money from folks who “really like” him, but think he can’t win. Just a “that’s too bad” or a “I wish he’d catch fire” or some equally tepid gesture.

Well, let me tell you, fellow conservatives, why this cannot and will not continue, and why the tide is starting to turn in Hunter’s favor. The “that’s too bad”s are changing to “what can I do to help?”s, as more and more folks are looking very hard at the world we face today and are beginning to evaluate who needs to lead the charge. This 2008 election is an argument for America’s soul. And the Republican primary is a referendum on the GOP’s future as a conservative party, not just a beauty pageant for politicians and their clever (consultant driven) ploys to sound like conservatives.

So my argument below addresses 3 key topics that definitively illustrate why all conservatives must climb aboard the Hunter bandwagon. The first two are about Mr. Hunter himself – his history and philosophy. The third topic is the much needed and long overdue comparison – how he stacks up against the other republican hopefuls. In addition, I will demonstrate that Hunter really does “have a chance” and how his ascension is the best thing to happen to the GOP since Ronald Wilson Reagan left the democrats and joined the party of Lincoln. And lastly, I will address the role of Mr. Limbaugh and his fellow talkers in this election cycle.

HISTORY

Duncan Hunter is a warrior. Period. He dropped out of college in 1969 to join the fight in Vietnam. By 1969, the hippies and anti-war sentiment in this country were ascendant and the war was falling out of favor even in many republican circles, due in large part to grossly inaccurate reporting (sound familiar?) by the press. But Hunter did not join to avoid the draft or to find a unit that would see limited action. And despite having a father of some political stature, he did not try to use connections for some Gore-like reporter’s assignment. Perhaps because both his father and grandfather were proud warriors before him, Hunter joined the Army Rangers, a group that was certain to see heavy combat. As an Airborne Ranger, he was involved in numerous combat operations, and was decorated for such. Yet he rarely talks about it, other than to say he didn’t do “anything special”. But special he was, both for his willingness to join the fight, and for the view that he holds to this very day: That the Vietnam War was a noble and just cause; and the cowards that pulled out the rug are execrable.

After two tours in Vietnam, Hunter returned to civilian life and went back to school, eventually earning a law degree and a job in San Diego, catering mostly to the Hispanic community there. He married, settled down and had two boys, the first in 1977. But it was his concern about the direction this country was heading in the post-Vietnam, Jimmy Carter era that gnawed at him, as it did for many patriotic Americans witnessing a very low point in our nation’s history. Hunter and his father were both early Reagan supporters, even in 1976. And it was his father that urged the younger Hunter to run for congress in 1980, with the expectation that Reagan would win and sweep republicans in with him. So Duncan jumped in with both feet, and beat a popular, experienced democrat in a democrat leaning district, by combining a message of hope and American virtue with an attack on the Carter Administration’s limp-wristed foreign and domestic policies.

He entered Washington on Reagan’s coattails and has been proudly clearing the path for Reaganism ever since. He immediately sought assignment onto the Armed Services Committee. During the malaise of the mid to late 1970s, the military was in dire need of some very tough love, and Hunter was willing to give it. In addition to helping Reagan ramrod through massive increases in defense spending, Hunter also took extra care to ensure that Veterans’ medical and education benefits were upgraded and that proper order and discipline was restored. After a number of bloody, brass-knuckle fights in the House and Senate, funding for SDI (missile defense) was approved in the mid 1980s. The media dubbed it Star Wars, and mocked the president relentlessly. Numerous high dollar professors from prestigious institutions and scientific organizations proclaimed, just like Schleprock, that “it will never work”. Hunter knew better. Of course, the democrats aligned with the leftist academics, just as they do so today.

Nevertheless, funding began. But our allies in Europe were highly skeptical. So Reagan chose the young warrior, Duncan Hunter, to lead a delegation to European capitols and convince our vital allies of the wisdom behind these programs. Hunter, with the able assistance from his friend and mentor Henry Hyde, largely succeeded.

In addition to being one of Reagan’s most trusted point men for rebuilding the military, Hunter also had a strong, independent streak. And nowhere was that independent streak more manifest than in the battle over our southern border and the continued flood of illegal aliens into the US. Hunter urged President Reagan to increase the size of the Border Patrol (BP), which the President did. However, Reagan’s “solution” to the problem included a 1986 Amnesty bill for millions of illegal immigrants. Hunter vociferously dissented and predicted that such an amnesty, without a secure border, would lead to a stampede of illegals dwarfing what had come before. Despite Hunter’s efforts, the GOP (and the democrats) went along with the Amnesty plan. With 20/20 hindsight, we now all see that this amnesty plan did open the floodgates, and many more millions have entered since. But it was Hunter and his few allies in Congress that had the FORESIGHT to see exactly what would happen. Later, even Ronald Reagan regretted the amnesty.

During the Bush 41 era, through the Clinton years and to the present day, Hunter has been the loudest and strongest voice standing up against the federal government’s apathy regarding the southern border. It took a Herculean effort for Hunter to secure funding for a new double border fence in his own district, the worst smuggling corridor in the country. The Clinton administration dragged its feet, the EPA tried to scuttle it, and the local left wing activists, Hispanic “rights” groups and environmentalists fought it every step of the way. But eventually Hunter prevailed, and the San Diego Border fence was built, dropping human and drug smuggling from Mexico in that sector by over 90%.

Additionally, Hunter constantly fought (and sometimes won) battles for more detention facilities, BP agents, military assistance at the border, and for stripping away benefits to illegal aliens. Currently, Hunter has pending legislation to kill NAFTA’s provision allowing Mexican truckers free access to American roads, a bill urging President Bush to grant pardons for two BP agents accused of shooting a fleeing drug runner in the rump, and a bill to grant congressional oversight of the executive branch’s efforts to establish a Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) with Mexico and Canada. And of course, Hunter, with no cosponsors, forced the border fence bill through congress in October 2006 and obtained President Bush’s signature on the most important piece of border security legislation in the last 50 years.

Hunter has also been the staunchest leader in the fight against abortion. At least nine times Hunter has proposed the Right to Life Act, which would give the unborn 14th amendment protections under the US Constitution and finally treat them as what they are, human beings. Most recently proposed in January 2007, Hunter’s statement accompanying the bill included the following:

“On this anniversary of the Roe v Wade decision, it is important that we reflect on the 38 million abortions that have been performed in this country since the practice was legalized in 1973. This is a national tragedy that must not go unnoticed. This legislation ensures that the unborn are protected from abortion and further provided the same Constitutional protections provided to all Americans. I am proud to once again introduce this important piece of legislation and I hope my colleagues will join me in support of this effort as they have in the previous Congress.”
Hunter was also instrumental in spearheading the legislation banning Partial Birth Abortion (PBA) and in preventing federal dollars from flowing to any organization that was complicit in abortion services.

Duncan Hunter has been a warrior for conservatism and against liberalism his entire career. He has staked out an originalist position on Second Amendment rights and almost defeated, single-handedly, Clinton’s phony Assault Weapons Ban (AWB) in 1994. He was first in line to defend the military’s prohibition on homosexuals, and he recently wrote a piece in the USA Today, defending General Peter Pace’s remarks about the incompatibility of gays and military life. He has disdain for liberalism, and is one of the few politicians who still uses “liberal” as a stinging, pejorative term.

Hunter, along with Jim Sensenbrenner, kept the military spooks from being folded under the NSA umbrella, despite all the congressional hysteria and Bush Administration pressure to follow the 9-11 Committee’s recommendations. Hunter simply knew better. Hunter blocked Don Rumsfeld, his good friend, from downsizing the Army, and was responsible for George Bush’s about face to increase the size of both the Army and Marine Corps. For 26 years, Hunter has worked diligently to slash the size and scope of the federal government while pushing for increases in the numbers of ships, sailors, soldiers, bombers (including the B2), nuclear submarines, transport aircraft, missiles, missile defenses, as well as basic armaments. Hunter was urging the Congress to re-establish proper Human Intel to combat terrorism, long before 9-11.

Hunter was the leader who fought the Cosco (Chinese) takeover at the Long Beach, California port, and he was largely responsible for torpedoing the Dubai Ports lease deal in 2006. Critically, Duncan Hunter has been sounding the alarm bell against China’s malfeasance for decades, fighting hard to derail “normal” trade relations with the communist country. Hunter was the man who pushed through a ban on satellite and satellite technology exports after discovering that the Clinton/Loral team was providing the chicoms with expertise they could never develop on their own. An excerpt from a 1996 article penned by Congressman Hunter explains:

“Advocates of continued Most-Favored-Nation trade status for China claim that this is a ``normal’’ part of U.S. international relations and that China hasn’t done anything odd enough to be an exception.

China’s friends seem to have adopted a rather jaded view of normality. Are thinly veiled threats to attack Los Angeles, like those made by China during the recent Taiwan crisis, ``normal’’ diplomatic discourse?

Was Beijing’s attempt to influence elections on Taiwan by military demonstrations and missile firings ``normal?’’

Was the movement of two U.S. carrier battlegroups to positions of potential confrontation with China a ``normal’’ gesture of friendly relations?

Or, do these actions indicate a strategic relationship with China more on a par with Cuba or North Korea, countries with which we do not extend MFN?

We didn’t grant MFN to the Soviet Union either, when it was aiming missiles at U.S. cities.

As China ascends, America declines”

And despite many significant differences with President Bush and his administration (notably Gonzales, Chertoff, and Condi Rice), no one has watched the President’s back in the current war against the terrorists like Duncan Hunter. No one. As Hunter stated during the recent “cut and run” debate on the house floor:

“Mr. Speaker, there is no Democrat leader here or anywhere who can stop the war. The only thing we can do is leave this battlefield. We can’t stop this war any more than the people of Great Britain stopped the war when they just had this incident last week in Scotland. We can’t stop this war any more than the victims in the Kobar Towers stopped the war. We can’t stop this war any more than the marines in the Beirut barrack had the power to stop the war. We can’t stop this war any more than the sailors of the USS Cole had any ability to stop the war. THIS WAR HAS BEEN FORCED UPON US. THE ONLY WAY WE SHOULD END IT, THE ONLY WAY WE CAN END IT, IS TO WIN. “

In his twenty six years in the House, all on the Armed Services Committee (4 years as chairmen) Hunter has become an expert. In fact, he is THE recognized expert; often knowing more about tactics, capabilities, weapon systems, troop levels and ammunition supplies than even the Generals and Admirals and the Pentagon. Duncan Hunter is a warrior.

PHILOSOSPHY

Duncan Hunter is a Reaganite; a Reaganite with streaks of Teddy Roosevelt and General George S. Patton. He is not from the Bob Dole School of Grand Compromisers, the John McCain Institute of Annoying Mavericks, the Newt Gingrich branch of Chronic Complainers, or the George W. Bush “Compassionate Conservative” army. He usually speaks at a moderate, steady volume, but handles the stick like the Bambino handled his 47 ounce baseball bat. However, when national security or sovereignty is at stake, his volume increases, and he is not shy about ‘grabbing’ his opponents by the throat and shaking them relentlessly.

Hunter’s motto is Peace through Strength, and he means it. He is as pro-American as they come and refuses to apologize for America to a world eager to hear about our supposed “sins”.

His compass is trust in the wisdom of the American people, and his mission is to humbly pay homage to our heritage while continuing to foster American exceptionalism. Not an American exceptionalism that is our birthright, but one that has been earned by each passing generation; earned by the toil and sacrifice and blood and wisdom of our fathers and their fathers.

Hunter’s anchor is our military. His love for the fighting men and women of our republic is as deep as it is eternal, extending from the men who fought in virgin woodlands under a young Col. George Washington in 1755 up through the patriot volunteers from San Diego to Bar Harbor, hunting down Taliban in the mountains of a desolate Afghanistan tonight.

Duncan Hunter is a constitutionalist. Like all politicians, Hunter has had to compromise at times in the Congress to get his priorities passed, and he has had a handful of regrettable votes. But his core belief that the constitution means what it says -and nothing more- has not changed. He wants to return many functions of government back to the states and to the people, ranging from education to housing to arts funding to welfare. Other bureaucracies, he believes, can be reduced, merged, and de-funded with the goal of significantly reducing the overall footprint of the federal leviathan. The Constitution Party’s (CP) evaluation of Hunter was very positive, with a glaring exception for his unflinching support of the Iraq war; an exception on which Mr. Hunter is surely gratified to diverge from the CP.

When the presidential candidates were asked recently by an Iowa newspaper what they would like their legacy to be, Hunter gave the shortest response: “I’d like to see a country where the day I walk out of the White House, after a couple of terms, the American people are more independent of government than the day that I walked in.”

Duncan Hunter has also been a champion of property rights, consistently battling the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) overreach and cosponsoring legislation after the Kelo decision to address such unconstitutional takings on the federal level. He added, “I am deeply concerned with the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision greatly broadening local government’s use of eminent domain in Kelo vs. New London and believe it is important that Congress protect the property rights of private landowners and curb the government from excessive regulatory takings. It is for this reason that I voted in favor of expressing the grave disapproval of the House of Representatives regarding the majority opinion in the Kelo case.”

When it comes to the 2nd Amendment, Hunter said the following in a 2007 interview: “The right to keep and bear arms is an absolute right of Americans to protect their families and their communities and their nation with firearms. In this age of post-911, Americans, I believe are comforted by the fact that our ability to resist terrorism is not limited to law enforcement or defense agencies but is also within the ability of all gun-owning Americans.”

He receives ‘A’ ratings from both the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the Gun Owners of America (GOA).
Congressman Hunter is also a devout Christian. His firm belief in Jesus Christ informs much of his political philosophy. The sanctity of human life, the cause of freedom for our fellow man, the fight against the poison of political correctness and homosexual ‘marriage’, and the celebration of our Judeo-Christian American heritage are all rock solid commitments to Duncan Hunter. When the ACLU set its sights on the Mt. Soledad Cross, a war memorial for our the fallen soldiers on the Korean battlefield, Hunter stepped in and put his boot onto the necks of these liberal activists, and helped save the monument from a court ordered removal.

HUNTER VERSUS THE PACK

Certainly, the 2008 republican field is a talented bunch. And most conservatives will agree that any one of these gentlemen - Rudy, Mitt, Fred, Tancredo, Brownback, Paul, Huck, McCain, T. Thompson, or Hunter - is vastly superior to the inexperienced and defeatist democrat candidates.

However, many conservatives are driven by fear of Hillary Clinton. Therefore, this GOP primary campaign to date can be described as one panic attack after another. It is apparently easy for many to ignore our responsibilities as conservatives, and move directly to hyping perceived electability or a consensus moderate as the main selection criteria. Right out of the gate it was....John McCain. Finishing a close 2nd to George Bush in 2000 made McCain the presumptive frontrunner 8 months ago. He is also the republican that independents and many democrats supposedly swoon over, due to his zest for sticking a finger in the eye of conservatives. By early 2007, McCain had slipped, however, and Rudy Giuliani became the polling leader. Rudy’s 9-11 leadership was memorable, and his years as mayor of NYC are impressive in many respects. Mitt Romney, a successful businessman and popular ex-governor of Massachusetts, has been hovering behind McCain and Rudy most of the year, but he also has been building a solid organization and winning the GOP money contest. The rest of the announced candidates have struggled so far to get coverage either in the mainstream media (MSM) or the conservative mainstream media (CMSM). But the onion is just starting to be peeled back, and it does not look pretty.

Comparing Rudy and Mitt to Duncan Hunter would be a joke under normal circumstances. However, since Hillary-scare has made both initially “viable”, Hunter will have to defeat these men just the same as the others. Rudy and Mitt have a combined goose egg for military experience. Worse, they have never been involved in any capacity that challenged them to seriously consider our foreign policy. Their executive experience consisted of dealing with the mundane; such as school boards and transit, tobacco taxes and fire and police departments, etc. They may have done so competently, but that does not translate to Presidential duties. When issues of national and constitutional urgency were thrust into their laps, neither man stood tall.
Rudy rushed to Capitol Hill in 1994 to lobby for Clinton’s crime bill that included the ill considered AWB (along with a boatful of social engineering nonsense). Hunter was busy crafting a conservative alternative with no social engineering and no AWB. The Clinton version squeaked through, barely edging out the solid Hunter-Brewster alternative. Rudy was so blatantly anti-constitutional regarding the 2nd Amendment, in 2000 he sued 26 gun manufactures to essentially put them out of business, saying that manufacturers “overproduced guns, way beyond what is necessary for hunting and law enforcement”. Hunting and law enforcement? Egads!! It took a Hunter co-sponsored bill in Congress, signed by President Bush, to protect these firearms producers from liberal predators such as Mr. Giuliani.

When the conservative congress in 1996 finally pushed Clinton to sign the welfare reform bill, Rudy sued to stop it because it contained provisions that lopped off benefits for illegal aliens. Duncan Hunter, meanwhile, was writing legislation that would cut all federal benefits for illegal aliens and punish those cities that offered “sanctuary”. Of course, Rudy defied the law and staunchly defended NY’s sanctuary program. Throughout his mayoral reign, Rudy continually conflated legal and illegal immigrants.

Hunter’s entire congressional career has shown a serious dedication to ending the scourge of illegal immigrants while their cheerleaders such as Mayor Giuliani conspired to undermine federal law.

A single viewing of Mitt Romney’s performance against Edward Kennedy in the 1994 Senate debate is all you really need to know about the Romney versus Hunter comparison. Any republican that competed very well against Teddy in the pro-gay, pro gun control and pro socialized medicine arena is not fit to be Hunter’s intern, much less go head to head with the rock ribbed, California conservative.. Romney did not change his liberal tune much when he ran for and won the Massachusetts race for governor. Indeed, he proudly claimed that he would not chip away at the odious gun control laws of that state. In contrast, Hunter has stated that he would never chip away at the 2nd Amendment, period, which he considers an “absolute” individual right.

When the Massachusetts high court found that there was nothing in their constitution prohibiting gays from legally marrying, it was a chance for Romney to lead on this crucial social issue. Alas, he floundered and instead of fighting the battle over who had jurisdiction over law making in the state, Romney went ahead and instituted legal gay marriage after the legislature did not come up with a solution as the court requested. While Romney hides behind the court’s skirt on this issue, it should be noted that several conservative constitutional experts say many things could have been done to prevent this illogical and harmful plunge to moral relativism. Hunter, on the other hand, was the fiercest opponent of the Clinton machine during the debates over Don’t Ask Don’t Tell reform in the military, a policy for which Mitt has voiced support. Hunter is an co-sponsor of the Federal Marriage Amendment legislation, that one day, hopefully, will make Romney’s Massachusetts experiment moot.

Of course, if you listen to Romney on the campaign trail these days, you might wonder what happened between the end of his governorship and 2007. The number of flip flops Romney has embraced would capsize John Kerry’s sailboard. From gun control (though he still supports an AWB) to abortion to illegal immigration to gay rights, Romney is trying to convince primary voters he is now a conservative. The problem is that he does so with the same gusto he used not so long ago to convince Massachusetts that he was a liberal. Hunter, however, isn’t buying it and lumped Mitt in with Rudy and McCain as the new “Kennedy Wing” of the Republican party.

As for John McCain, it is not required to go back and revisit his many past transgressions against conservative causes, such as his McCain Feingold Thompson debacle. The recent debates in the Congress on “comprehensive immigration reform” show that McCain and Hunter are diametrically opposed. While McCain has pushed amnesty and called the vast majority of Americans that side with Hunter on this issue “nativists”, Hunter has been busy securing GOP (and democratic) support for a real fence and for strict enforcement of existing laws. And it was Congressman Hunter who was the one man standing in the way of McCain’s ill-conceived attempt to defang our military and CIA interrogators in this war on terrorism. And finally, it is Duncan Hunter who thus far has prevented McCain and his posse of internationalists from closing Club Gitmo because it ‘makes us look bad’. Hunter has never cared to follow the wishes of the UN or leftist “human rights” organizations or socialist leaders in Europe or, most importantly, the islamists themselves. Far too often, John McCain has cared.

Brief sketches of the remaining 2nd tier candidates show why none has the ability, temperament or record to compete with Hunter.

Tom Tancredo has been one of Hunter’s protégés when it comes to illegal immigration, and his overall conservatism is refreshing and welcome. However, Tom has also decided that the war in Iraq is a dismal failure and we need to withdraw, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. He has next to no knowledge of our military, its needs or capabilities, and therefore, is in a poor place to judge the Iraq theatre. Tancredo’s other downfall is an occasional case of foot in mouth disease, an affliction from which Hunter has never suffered.

Ron Paul is an interesting character to be sure. And it would take many paragraphs to fully explore the man and his stated small government/libertarian policies. Suffice to say that the GOP will not nominate an anti-war candidate in the middle of a hot shooting war against the islamists. Paul wants to withdraw. Hunter vows to lead us to complete victory.

Mike Huckabee is fun to listen to, no doubt. He is witty and folksy. But he showed during his tenure as Arkansas governor that he is weak on taxes, weak on spending, weak on illegal aliens and strong on nanny-statism; the exact opposite of Duncan Hunter.

Sam “I want to expand the compassionate conservative agenda” Brownback is too much of a bleeding heart for his own good. Squishy on Iraq, illegal immigration and promoter of anti-poverty policies for the world, he is not the steel-spined man to lead our nation. His performance in the debates can best be summed up in one word: Milquetoast.

Tommy Thompson, former (and successful) governor of Wisconsin, is a good conservative, who, like Sam Brownback, has virtually no stage presence. His time has passed.

And this brings us to the man who has not yet declared his entry into the 2008 sweepstakes; Fred Dalton Thompson. The best description of the Fred-Hunter match up is to compare a painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir to a painting by Norman Rockwell. Both paintings are a joy to look at and it is obvious that each artist was very talented. However, on close inspection, it is difficult to make out the details of the former, while the latter painting is crystal clear down to the label on a background jar of peaches.

Hence, with Fred, it has been left up to conservative voters to interpret what he says today, what he has said in the past and what his votes meant during his 8 years as US Senator from Tennessee. The closer you look, the fuzzier the picture gets.

For example, on illegal aliens, Fred has received middling to poor scores from two organizations that promote an end to illegal immigration, Americans for Better Immigration and Americans for Immigration Control (AIC). Yet Fred’s supporters deride these organizations as focusing on “legal” immigration. That is simply false. They focus on both. His supporters point to statements against the McCain-Kennedy amnesty last year as proof of his “tough on illegals” position. While certainly welcome news, it was, as usual, fuzzy. Here is what he said in a 2006 interview with Sean Hannity:

“And I think that you have to realize that you’re either going to drive 12 million people underground permanently, which is not a good solution. You’re going to get them all together and get them out of the country, which is not going to happen. Or you’re going to have to, in some way, work out a deal where they can have some aspirations of citizenship, but not make it so easy that it’s unfair to the people waiting in line and abiding by the law.”

Whatever the heck that means, I am unsure. But it certainly does not echo Hunter’s call to deport the illegal aliens and prevent them from ever being able to sneak across the border again. It sounds a lot closer to the McCain-Kennedy model.
Thompson uses vagueness with precision.

On abortion, the National Review, Human Events and other conservative publications (along with the MSM) certainly believed that Fred Thompson was a pro-choice senator. After all, his statements to that effect, such as, “Government should stay out of it. No public financing. The ultimate decision must be made by the women. Government should treat its citizens as adults capable of making moral decisions on their own”, have been widely read and understood. Of course, the ‘Road to Des Moines’ can have an interesting side effect, as we have seen with Mitt Romney. Fred claims to be pro-life now, and is “surprised” that people thought he was ever pro-choice. Indeed, he points to his record on abortion related votes as a testament. However, none of these votes goes to the central issue involved: Is the human fetus a person deserving of constitutional protection? For Hunter the answer has always been a definitive YES! For Thompson, it is clear as mud. He is against “criminalizing” abortion, which means what? Pass a law to ‘suggest’ that women carry to term? Fred argued in 1996 to do away with the GOP platform and considered abortion to be a “distracting issue”. If he has revised his thinking, fine. But let’s get some straight answers about that conversion. When did he change his mind on the validity of Roe versus Wade, which he previously supported, according to an interview with a Tennessee newspaper? When did he decide that the GOP platform is actually NOT “the most useless device” he’s ever heard of? Would he veto Hunter’s ‘Right to Life’ bill which would certainly criminalize abortion? To Hunter and most conservatives, the pro-life plank is not a distracting issue, it is fundamental to our beliefs. To Fred, it’s another subject requiring fuzzy brushstrokes.

Trade with China is an area where at first glance, it would seem that Hunter and Thompson might agree. After all, it was Thompson’s investigation into the Clinton fundraising machine that brought many of China’s malignant practices to public light. Thompson’s own rhetoric had shown a serious mistrust of the Chinese. During debates on trade with China, Fred even sponsored an amendment to tie the trade to improved conduct on the part of the communists. Despite the failure of his amendment, Fred voted in favor of Permanent Most Favored Nation status for China in 2000. Hunter, ever the anti-communist, nearly succeeded in stopping this foolishness, warning that the Chinese would cheat in every which way they could. Once again, as we see from the headlines in 2007, Hunter had the correct foresight.

There is not enough time here to cover the McCain Feingold Thompson bill and Fred’s role in its entirety. It is a long tale that lasts from 1995 through his last year as senator to his defense of the bill in the Supreme Court in 2003. He considered it a seminal achievement in his senatorial career. In fact, looking closely at the things Thompson championed in his 8 years, it may be the only seminal achievement. His work on defense and intelligence issues was reasonable, but he certainly was not a standout in these areas. And his attempts to introduce a modicum of federalism were admirable, if largely unsuccessful. When you stack up that record with Duncan Hunter’s bare knuckle fights and leadership for border enforcement, protection of life, expansion of military funding, the protection of critical military programs from Clinton’s Pentagon, unflinching defense of the 2nd Amendment, stands against Chinese communists, and supply side economics, there is little doubt who the 2008 Republican nominee should be.

TO RUSH LIMBAUGH & CO.

And finally, a note to Rush Limbaugh and other conservative talkers that cover America’s airwaves and are on the front lines in the fight against liberalism.

After the debacle of the 2006 midterm election, you, Mr. Limbaugh, came out in no uncertain terms that you were through “carrying water” for the republicans. That too often, you gave the GOP’s march to the mushy middle too little attention. You and other radio hosts, rightly I believe, diagnosed the ills of the republicans in power back then as a lack of focus on core issues of conservatism. The prescription, in your view, was a return to Reaganism. The run up to the 2006 vote saw President Bush, VP Cheney and a small handful of congressional allies defending the Iraq war while multitudes of GOP congressman ‘cut and run’ from the debate, leaving the playing field largely to the MSM and their democratic comrades. We saw talk of perhaps finding common ground on global warming and fear about pushing ahead ANWR exploration. We saw a party fretting about defending our trampled borders for fear of the Hispanic vote. We saw precious little effort expended to make the Bush tax cuts permanent. We saw Bill Frist and friends cut the president off at the knees when he waded out into the Social Security debate swamp. We saw efforts to reign in Iran fail as we foolishly relied on our European allies and the United Nations.

Given all of the above and the frustration of seeing too many cowardly republicans refusing to stand on principle, or even worse, co-opting nuggets of the liberal agenda, it has become imperative that we all support the best real conservative in the 2008 primary. No more support for flip flopping, wishy-washy, or liberal candidates. That means no support for Rudy the NY liberal, who would sign just about any gun control bill the liberals could cough up. After all, his record on the 2nd Amendment is indistinguishable from that of Michael Bloomberg. That means no support for Mitt Romney, who a few short years ago could have been running as a democrat and no one would have batted an eye, and whose Road to Des Moines conversions would be flogged 24/7 by the media and democrats. That means no support for John McCain, who is the poster child for Amnesty and Accommodation with his “good friend” Hillary. That means no support for Fred Thompson, who either has the world’s worst memory, or is busy trying to obfuscate his past and convince us that he was really a Reaganite, not the Howard Baker/John McCain poodle we all understood him to be a few short years ago.

It is simply intolerable to hear the likes of Sean Hannity, Bill Bennett and others singing the praises of liberal and moderate celebrities as if they are offering our nation and the Grand Old Party a new conservative direction. If the frontrunners were named Linc, Arnold, Lindsey and Lamar instead of Rudy, Mitt, John, and Fred, there would be no qualitative difference.

That leaves Duncan Hunter as the man that ALL conservatives can support. And support enthusiastically.
Mr. Limbaugh, now is not the time to go wobbly.