conservatism

Very moving video from the Black Pro-Life Coalition.

Robert Shrum at The Week:

Bachmann more than conceivably could march through the process to an acceptance speech at the Tampa convention — and if she does, the real winner of the 2012 Republican primaries will be… Barack Obama. 

This article is pretty comical. Shrum’s political analysis consists of projecting his own ill-conceived stereotypes onto the various factions of the Republican party to construct an imaginary scenario where Bachmann is the GOP nominee. After more rambling he concludes that this result would actually be a win for Obama.

I can only hope someone of Bachmann’s caliber challenges Obama in 2012.

Another solid piece from The Heritage Foundation. It’s worth the quick read.

FoxNews.com:

The House of Representatives has approved the GOP’s ‘Cut, Cap and Balance’ plan with a vote of 234 to 190.

Let’s hope the other half of congress has enough sensibility to follow suit.

UPDATE: Since when does ‘Cut, Cap, and Balance’ raise the debt ceiling by $2.4 trillion?

The only good thing about this plan is that nobody gets to raise the debt ceiling unless a balanced budget amendment is passed. I do appreciate that. It’s just that we should not even entertain raising the debt ceiling. It’s gone on long enough.

UPDATE 2: I just want to point out that this bill is not the same as the Cut, Cap & Balance pledge linked to yesterday. You should still sign that, if you haven’t already. The pledge does not condone raising the debt ceiling. The corresponding bill does.

Real Clear Politics:

“Democrats are willing to do whatever is necessary to raise the debt ceiling, not for future borrowing but to pay the debts that we racked up in the past. Which, mostly was racked up by a Republican House, a Republican Senate and a Republican President in the last 8 years. Yet, they’re not willing to pay the bills,” Harkin said.

Well Harkin, you got the first part right. It seems the Democrats are willing to do whatever is necessary to raise the debt ceiling. That second part is patently false, and you should be ashamed. It costs us about $29 billion a month to service the debt.¹ We take in about $172 billion a month in revenue. We do not need to borrow money to pay for the debts of the past. However we do currently spend $307 billion a month, so any borrowing would in fact be paying for our current (unbalanced) budget.

The republicans are totally willing to pay the $29 billion a month in debt service bills. They’re just not willing to spend the country into oblivion.