April 19, 2013 – Even though Ronald Reagan has been dead for eight years, Patti Davis is not done defiling her father’s memory. And now she has dragged her ailing mother into it, too.

Earlier this month, she claimed her father would have supported gay “marriage.” Now, she says since her mother, Nancy, did not contradict her, she must support redefining marriage, as well.

Davis said she never discussed the issue with President Reagan, but she believed he “would be puzzled…why anyone would have a problem with people wanting to be married, because he wanted government out of people’s lives – that he would not understand the intrusion of government banning such a thing.” She told homosexual activist Howard Bragman, “This is not what he would have thought government should be doing.”

This week, she announced triumphantly that Nancy must support gay “marriage,” because if she “had disagreed with what I said publicly about my father, she would have said something publicly.” (You can hear the audio below.)

But her argument from silence is dubious. Nancy did not publicly scold her daughter about her past statements, even when Patti was charging $39 a ticket to tell audiences that her mother beat her.

It may be that Nancy supports the issue. She was always to her husband’s left on social issues, like abortion. But Ronnie?

Davis told the New York Times, “All I know is the heart of the man who raised me as my father.”

But would the Gipper have supported the redefinition of marriage? And just how well does “Davis” reflect her father’s heart?

Patti Ann Reagan appears to be in the fifth decade of her adolescent rebellion. She led high-visibility campaigns against her father’s policies before and during his presidency, wrote a series of poison-pen books about her parents and, at the age of 41, appeared in a Playboy pictorial that should have given everyone second thoughts about the sexual revolution.

Since his elections, she has found her calling in demeaning her parents. She regularly referred to her father as “distant” and Nancy as “abusive.” Even the president’s critics found Patti’s three, thinly veiled autobiographical books overly jaded. A contemporary review of the 1986 novel Home Front said, “Patti Davis takes her prodigious knack for nursing a family grudge to its lowest common denominator.”

Coincidentally, her latest revelation comes as Davis is peddling her newest book, a first-person lesbian “love” story. She insists she is not gay – she just writes like she is. Very convincingly. (Her literary genius can be downloaded for $2.99.)

Two years ago, Davis said she was inspired to start a new workout regime by staring at a naked picture of bodybuilder Lisa Lyon. “Her muscles were lean, defined, and beautifully sculpted,” she reflected. This led Davis to her second nude shoot at age 58. (Shudder. Shudder. Shudder.)

Having failed to generate a sustainable income with those endeavors, she is distorting her father’s views for the LGBT crowd.

But Davis’ comments shipwreck on her father’s public record.

Almost exactly 30 years ago Reagan told the National Association of Evangelicals, “The family has always been the cornerstone of American society. Our families nurture, preserve, and pass on to each succeeding generation the values we share and cherish, values that are the foundation of our freedoms.”

In a speech remembered for another line branding the USSR as an “evil empire,” Reagan told the church-folk, “I want you to know that this administration is motivated by a political philosophy that sees the greatness of America in you, her people, and in your families, churches, neighborhoods, communities – the institutions that foster and nourish values like concern for others and respect for the rule of law under God.”

He lamented that “no one seems to mention morality as playing a part in the subject of sex.” [1]

The president who signed the first Child Abuse Prevention Week proclamation and added “sexual abuse and exploitation” the following year seems unlikely to have put children into the homes of gays and lesbians, where they are more than four times as likely to report having been raped and up to 12 times as likely to have been sexually touched by a family member than those from intact nuclear families.

This would be the same Ronald Reagan gay militants accused of “genocide” for not instantly finding a cure for AIDS. Talk show host Tammy Bruce recounts how her friends had champagne at the ready in the event that he died.

True, Barry Goldwater said he changed his position on homosexuality, abortion, and school prayer in his last Senate term because of his limited government views. [2] Those abrupt changes led one of his supporters, longtime Congressman Bob Dornan, to say that when he entered politics, “I was a Barry Goldwater conservative. I still am, and he’s not.” Andrew Busch wrote that, in addition to the newfound philosophical justification for positions he had rejected his entire career, Goldwater “also had personal reasons: one daughter and three granddaughters of his had had abortions; and a grandson and a grandniece were homosexual.” [3]

If nothing else, Reagan proved he did not allow his children’s views to alter his own.

However, Reagan was at heart a conciliator. He did not let political disagreements become personal feuds. After leaving office, knowing he was in his declining years, he wrote a number of heartfelt letters to his rebellious daughter in hopes of patching up their relationship. One of them read:

Dear Patti,

With myself going on 81 years, I first can’t sit back and make no effort to change our family situation. I’ve heard and read statements by you about the biography you are working on and how you plan to explore what you say are the failures of your family.

Patti you are hurting us – your parents – but you are hurting yourself even more. We were not a dysfunctional family. Was it dysfunctional to man the hot dog stand at an every year affair at your school? Was it dysfunctional to have trips every summer at Coronado and Frances Beach? I wish you would sit down with me and look at photos of these occasions and many others. Was your mother [Nancy] dysfunctional when she planned your wedding?

Patti in our meeting at the office you said your mother didn’t like you. That’s not true. Yes she’s unhappy about the way things are but again I can show you photos in which the love between you is unmistakable. And these pictures are at virtually every stage of your life. Pictures don’t lie.

Well I could go on like this but Patti as I wrote at the beginning of this my years are limited. I can tell you what it’s like to have regrets over things I did or didn’t do before my parents left this earth. I don’t want you to face that. But most important Patti is that you realize your Mother and Father have great memories of our “first born” – a beautiful little girl who used to come into our bedroom early in the morning before we were up and slip into our bed between us. That is just one of many memories we cherish and treasure.

Please Patti don’t take away our memories of a daughter we truly love and who we miss.

With Love,

Dad

Presented with such a tender and private heirloom, she refused his pleas for reconciliation and sold the letter.

Patti later appeared to claim that the letter was never sent. However, she sold it in 1992 for $500 plus half of the proceeds of its final sale. She could have purchased it back for $10,000 but declined.

Whatever her definition of family, America can do without it.

ENDNOTES:

1. Southern Baptist leader Al Mohler recently noted America’s tendency to marginalize morality when discussing same-sex “marriage.”

2. Somehow, liberals did not hail this virtue when Goldwater was opposing the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the entire ediface of the Great Society for the same reasons. These remain hot issues for liberty-minded politicians.

3. According to his daughter Joanne, Barry personally arranged her illegal abortion. His wife, Peggy, was a founding member of Planned Parenthood of Arizona in 1937.

A significantly shorter version of this essay was cross-posted at LifeSiteNews.com.

Reagan’s estranged daughter, who hated him, says parents would have approved redefining marriage

Patti Ann Reagan has entered the fifth decade of her adolescent rebellion.

Read more.

Obama doesn’t comment on ongoing trials – unless they involve Trayvon Martin

Jay Carney said the president would not comment on an ongoing legal matter like the Kermit Gosnell trial. But Obama has not always been so reticent.

Read more.

The GOP’s Loser Caucus Endorses Gay “Marriage”

The 130 “prominent conservative leaders” who signed a brief asking the Supreme Court to overturn Proposition 8 are non-Republicans, unsuccessful Republicans, unelectably liberal Republicans, or thoroughly anonymous.

Read more.

Why Romney Lost

Mitt Romney lost the presidency for the same reason Republicans always lose presidential elections: Because they deserve to.

Read more.

Who is Buffy Wicks?

“To really understand the Obama phenomenon, you should know Buffy Wicks,” one left-wing radical has written. We agree.

As National Operation Vote Director, Buffy Wicks led the Obama re-election campaign’s ground game that broke all expectations, stunned pollsters, and outmaneuvered Karl Rove. But there’s more to Buffy than organizing election rallies. She is perhaps the most radical member of the most left-wing administration in history.

Read Ben Johnson’s groundbreaking investigative research into her story, from her college days suing to overturn an election and bar a struggling woman from law school, to working with Marxist groups to organize hate-filled rallies, to asking the radical fringe to shape Barack Obama’s agenda.

• Overview: The Radical Behind Obama’s Get-Out-The-Vote Campaign

  An overview of her career, from organizing Marxist rallies to working in the West Wing. Read more.

• Part 1: Obama’s get-out-the-vote leader worked with Marxist groups on antiwar, anti-Israel rallies

  Buffy Wicks stage managed a rally that barred a rabbi from speaking because he believed in Israel’s right to exist. Read more.

• Part 2: Code Pink’s Girl in the White House

  Buffy Wicks met twice in the White House with the leader of a group that delivered $650,000 to “the other side” in Iraq. Read more.

• Part 3: Obama’s Get-Out-The-Vote Director Sued to Keep Underprivileged White Woman Out of Law School

  Talk about a war on women! She hoped to overturn Washington State’s election barring Affirmative Action. (Don’t miss the heartwarming ending!) Read more

• Part 4: Obama’s Second Term Agenda: A Progressive Army

  “We’re trying to create community organizers out of our activists,” Buffy said, training Obama volunteers in Saul Alinsky’s tactics. Read more.

  

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WASHINGTON, D.C., April 15, 2013 – Those hoping that Barack Obama would take even the tiniest moral stand against a case of the most unfathomable evil were characteristically disappointed on Monday, as White House spokesman Jay Carney refused to comment on Kermit Gosnell’s capital murder trial.

While Carney called the reports of Gosnell’s “house of horrors” – which include beheading viable newborns and collecting their severed feet in jars – “unsettling,” he would go no further.

“The president does not and cannot take a position on an ongoing trial, so I won’t, as well,” he said.

Even when Fox News reporter Ed Henry moved beyond the case to discussing Obama’s opposition to a bill that would have outlawed acts of infanticide like those perpetrated by Gosnell, Carney hid behind the ongoing trial.

When Henry asked if the president favored “some legislative solution or at least a conversation that needs to happen in Washington,” Carney replied, “Again, you’re relating it to a case I can’t comment on, the president can’t comment on.”

But the president has weighed in on an unfolding legal matter at least once before. Barack Obama uttered a surprisingly personal and emotional 242-word statement less than one month after the shooting of Trayvon Martin. [1]

At a media event last March 23, a reporter asked Obama about the February 26 killing, which George Zimmerman contends was an act of self-defense.

“Well, I’m the head of the executive branch, and the Attorney General reports to me so I’ve got to be careful about my statements to make sure that we’re not impairing any investigation that’s taking place right now,” he noted responsibly.

After that, he showed little of Carney’s restraint.

“When I think about this boy, I think about my own kids,” he said. “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”

He added that “every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this, and that everybody pulls together – federal, state and local – to figure out exactly how this tragedy happened.” (Emphasis added.)

In the Trayvon Martin case he insisted that, not only that the “crime” (if it was one) must be punished, but that multiple laws may need to be revised to prevent something similar from occurring in the future.

“I think all of us have to do some soul searching to figure out how does something like this happen,” he said. “And that means that we examine the laws and the context for what happened, as well as the specifics of the incident.” (Emphasis added.)

The next day, New Black Panther Party leader Mikhail Muhammad did a different kind of “soul-searching,” offering a $10,000 reward for George Zimmerman’s “capture” during a protest in Zimmerman’s hometown.

Why is it when the victim is a teenage gangsta the president demands political introspection, but when the victims (plural) are viable babies outside the womb screaming for life, his soul is all searched-out?

Kermit Gosnell’s “house of horrors” exposes the barbarity of abortion in all its facets: it is exploitative of mothers and employees alike; contemptuous of medical, moral, or legal standards; and regardless of the method employed, it always results in a dead baby.

This trial simply makes those facts visible. It allows the public to see the violence abortion usually inflicts on unborn babies inside the womb. Even heartrending testimony that one of the babies Gosnell “aborted” outside the womb screamed “like a little alien” recalls the film The Silent Scream.

The Gosnell case cries out for a political overhaul of the nation’s regulation of Big Abortion,at a minimum. It should also cause Americans to ask why it is wrong to behead babies outside the womb but not 30 seconds earlier inside? Why would a president who outsourced his re-election campaign to Planned Parenthood be interested in pursuing it?

As it turns out, the Trayvon Martin case is falling apart, like so many purported “hate crimes” hoaxes before it. The 17-year-old Martin hardly resembled the cherubic 12-year-old in the pictures the media plastered over the news. Video footage seemed to show Zimmerman bleeding from the back of his head. Martin’s girlfriend has admitted she lied under oath. (If she had a father, he’d act a lot like Barack Obama.)

NBC News edited an audio recording of his 911 call to make Zimmerman look like a racist. But at least they noticed that case.

So did the president. His remarks prove that Carney’s statement was as intellectually disingenuous as it is politically motivated and morally indefensible.

ENDNOTES:

[1] The president also accused police of “acting stupidly” by arresting professor Henry Louis Gates, although he acknowledged he did not have “all the facts” before he spoke. Police in Cambridge, Massachusetts, had dropped disorderly conduct charges against Gates one day earlier.

Cross-posted at LifeSiteNews.com.

In an article entitled “Republicans see cash opportunity in gay marriage shift,” Politico notes:

Portman himself has taken heat from New York donors who believe the party’s emphasis on social issues is one of the major reasons for losses this fall. Their views were taken so seriously that Portman, vice chairman of finance for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, held a dozen meetings with big New York donors recently in an attempt to assuage their fears about the of the party. (Emphasis added.)

It is well known that the party’s top donor in 2012, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, supports redefining marriage. So do Cliff Asness, Lew Eisenberg, and Dan Loeb, all three of whom signed the amicus brief opposing DOMA. Paul Singer gave the GOP $2.9 million in 2012, and New York City Mayor and Chief Nutrionist Michael Bloomberg has channeled his own vast fortunes to supporting members of either party who support marriage “equality.”

Is it any wonder the GOP is performing an “autopsy” demanding the Republican rank-and-file be more “inclusive” (read: shut their inbred, hillbilly traps) on homosexuality? What better way for Portman to “assuage” liberal donors’ fears than personally reversing his stance?

True, Portman claimed he went through a two-year “evolution” on the issue after his son came out of the closet.

Would a politician ever exploit his own family for political gain? To ask the question is to answer it.

At the 1996 Democratic National Convention, then-Vice President Al Gore recalled how visiting the deathbed of his sister, Nancy Gore Hunger, inspired him to fight Big Tobacco.

”I knelt by her bed and held her hand,” he said. ”And in a very short time her breathing became labored, and then she breathed her last breath…And that is why until I draw my last breath, I will pour my heart and soul into the cause of protecting our children from the dangers of smoking!”

Gore has two speech modes: melodrama and Vulcan. This address was delivered with equal measures of aching sincerity and snooty moralizing.

The only problem is that his sister died in 1984. While running for president in 1988, Gore bragged to an audience in North Carolina, ”Throughout most of my life, I’ve raised tobacco. I want you to know that with my own hands, all of my life, I put it in the plant beds and transferred it. I’ve hoed it. I’ve chopped it. I’ve shredded it, spiked it, put it in the barn, and stripped it, and sold it.” (Emphasis added.)

Then he went to Washington and took tobacco campaign funds, voted against cigarette taxes, and supported Big Tobacco’s agenda until it no longer benefited him to do so.

Either his position was insincere in 1996 or it was insincere eight years earlier. The touching story of his sister’s death doesn’t seem to have entered into it.

Portman’s contradictions are not as pronounced as Gore’s, but his (d)evolution troubles those on both sides of the issue.

At best, Portman admits that he wants to change the law – and the definition of an ancient, pre-political social institution – to benefit his family.

Since much of the gay “marriage” debate actually revolves around receiving government entitlements and tax breaks, Portman said, in effect, that he changed his position, because he would like to enrich his family.

Is it not logical to ask if he might want to benefit himself and the NRSC, as well?

Cross-posted at LifeSiteNews.com.

USA Today gushed, “Top Republicans urge court to support gay marriage.” U.S. News and World Report dubbed them “Republican leaders.” The San Jose Mercury News claimed Meg Whitman and “other conservatives” now support redefining marriage. Even the Daily Caller wrote, “Prominent conservatives defend gay marriage before Supreme Court.”

As with most events they cover, the mainstream media are not telling the full story about these gallant GOP giants.

I’ll say something no other reporter or columnist will say about these socially liberal political figures: They’re losers.

I don’t mean that as a pejorative – I mean that in the denotative sense. With a few notable exceptions (see below), the list of 130-some signatories consists of has-beens, nobodies, and non-entities who have a poor track record in recent elections.

The 0.00000236 percent of registered Republicans who signed the amicus brief are non-Republicans, unsuccessful Republicans, unelectably liberal Republicans, or thoroughly anonymous.

Some of the signers and alleged “Republican leaders” are not Republicans at all. Some actively supported Obama or ran against Republicans.

Not (Even) Republican-In-Name-Only

Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson was a successful two-term governor of New Mexico 10 years ago. After briefly running for the Republican presidential nomination, he left the party over its shoddy treatment of him and ran as the Libertarian Party’s presidential candidate last year.

William Weld had a similar history. The popular Republican governor of Massachusetts lost his 1996 Senate race to John Kerry and could not get confirmed U.S. ambassador to Mexico because he supports drug legalization. He entered the 2006 race for governor of New York as a Libertarian but dropped out after losing the GOP primary. In 2008, Weld endorsed Barack Obama for president, saying he “will transform our politics.”

Other signatories spent the last few years trying to build a third party to challenge Republicans from the Left.

Daily Beast columnists David Frum (who is a Canadian citizen) and Mark McKinnon talked enthusiastically about forming a third party of faux “centrists” from elements of the “No Labels” movement that would redefine Obama into the center. Neither is precisely a conservative leader: McKinnon, a former Democrat, declined to work with John McCain in 2008 so he would not harm Obama’s chances of being elected. Frum has attempted to lead a revolt against conservatism since 1991, writing books to redefine the term and launching an ill-fated eponymous website, FrumForum, which closed last year.

Even former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, whose article in The American Conservative drew attention to the group, has advocated strongly for a third party. Huntsman told MSNBC last February, “I think we’re going to have problems politically until we get some sort of third party movement or some voice out there that can put forth new ideas. Someone’s going to step up at some point and say we’ve had enough of this.” In July, this Republican Party leader announced he would not attend the 2012 convention “nor any Republican convention in the future” until the party embraces his definition of “inclusiveness.”

Huntsman has another problem: No matter how the media promoted him, Republicans wanted nothing to do with him. After Huntsman amassed 69 votes in an Iowa straw poll, Jon Stewart mocked, “If all of Jon Huntsman’s supporters met at the Ames, Iowa, Quiznos,the fire marshal would say, ‘Yeah, that’s fine. There are some more tables open in the back.’”

These are the media’s ideal Republicans, the kind who endorse Obama, try to undermine Republicans in presidential races, and go down to stunning defeat.

Huntsman’s crash-and-burn campaign illustrates another trait shared by many of these self-appointed leaders: like Weld, they have a markedly unsuccessful record with the voters in recent years.

Those Who Can Do….

One of the featured signers, Meg Whitman, lost her race for governor of California in 2010 by 1.3 million votes and nearly 13 percentage points. In a landslide year for Republicans, Whitman lost by a wider margin than Sharron Angle and Richard Mourdock combined. Both of those much-maligned conservatives lost by five percentage points, Mourdock losing to a Democrat who also opposed same-sex “marriage.”

Whitman nearly lost as badly as Tom Tancredo, when he ran for governor of Colorado as a third party candidate against a Republican who took 11 percent of the vote. Her loss was infinitely higher than Rep. Allen West, who probably won.

Given her history, perhaps it is not surprising she signed a court brief to overturn the will of California’s voters.

So did her fellow Californian Mary Bono Mack, who became a Congresswoman when her husband, Sonny Bono, died. Shortly after supporting the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in 2012, she lost to her Democratic challenger.

Michael Huffington, a one-term Congressman and one-time Mr. Arianna Huffington, came out of the closet four years after losing his race for U.S. Senate in California.

Not all the unsuccessful were on the ballot themselves.

Steve Schmidt put his electoral insights into practice with John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, as did Nicolle Wallace, the source of many of the negative leaks about Sarah Palin during the race. Wallace later admitted she did not vote for McCain in 2008.

Another campaign hand, David Kochel, was the Romney campaign’s senior Iowa adviser in 2008 and 2012. The campaign lost the Iowa caucuses both times and lost the state in the general election by six percentage points.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, an advocate of the Iraq war, signed the brief – and when has he ever led us astray?

Victory is not the lone arbiter of a political cause, much less a policy’s efficacy. But when its promoters insist they have the roadmap out of the political wilderness, their win-loss ratio merits scrutiny.

All of these operatives have something else in common: They are well to the Left of most Americans, let alone Republicans, on a host of issues aside from homosexual “marriage.”

Rockefeller Republican Redux

Many of the politicians who signed the brief hail from the Eastern seaboard, the deeply blue ancestral home of the Rockefeller Republican elites who demonized Barry Goldwater and dismissed Ronald Reagan a generation ago. Their moderate message has not led to smashing success.

Congresswoman Connie Morella, who represented Maryland in Congress for 15 years, voted against the partial birth abortion ban and in favor of gay adoption but still lost the 2002 election to a Democrat.

Nancy Johnson of Connecticut kept her House seat for decades by distancing herself from the GOP and calling herself “an independent voice.” She, too, opposed the partial birth abortion ban. The big spender authored the bill creating George W. Bush’s Medicaid drug benefit, which costs $80 billion a year and added $16 trillion in unfunded liabilities, a major reason she lost her 2006 race to Chris Murphy by 12 percentage points.

Two years later, it was her colleague, Rep. Christopher Shays’ turn. Shays, who signed the brief, is a pro-abortion RINO with a 100 percent pro-gay voting record from the Human Rights Campaign but still got defeated in 2008.

Some of the signers have had better luck.

New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman barely scraped past her Democratic opponents James Florio and Jim McGreevey – yes, that Jim McGreevey – winning by one percentage point each time. Appointed EPA Director under President George W. Bush, she repaid him by trashing his administration in her book, It’s My Party, Too.

Rep. James Kolbe of Arizona kept his seat despite coming out as a homosexual in 1996, after homosexuals blackmailed him for voting in favor of the Defense of Marriage Act. The pro-abortion, Open Borders congressman retired in 2006. He refused to endorse Republican Randy Graf and, two years later, endorsed then retracted his endorsement from Republican Tim Bee. Both lost to Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

In all, three successive Massachusetts governors signed the brief. Paul Cellucci, a pro-abortion Catholic, served as governor of Massachusetts after William Weld. When he became ambassador to Canada, Jane Swift became acting governor. She decided not to run for a term in her own right, clearing the way for the election of Mitt Romney, who still defends marriage.

True, Tom Ridge was perhaps the most popular Republican governor of Pennsylvania in memory – a decade ago. Ridge left that strange state where Republicans are “pro-choice” and Democrats are “pro-life,” to serve as the first Secretary of Homeland Security and backed the Bush administration’s unpopular amnesty proposal. He, too, wrote a poison pen memoir about George W. Bush, which was less-than-convincing.

Two elected members of Congress signed the brief, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida and Richard Hanna of New York.

These exceptions aside, one sees they are almost all former elected officials, most not very popular. More importantly, the brief has a heavy roster of Republicans from deeply Democratic states, not a few from Massachusetts.

But Republicans have no hope of carrying Massachusetts in the presidential election – the last candidate to do so was…Ronald Reagan. And as recent events have shown, a Massachusetts Republican cannot win nationwide. Indeed, marriage outperformed Mitt Romney in every state where the two were on the ballot. Despite their moderation, there are now zero Congressional Republicans from New England. Exporting that record seems imprudent.

Spin Doctor Who?

Finally, a huge portion of those who signed the brief are not now nor have they ever been prominent, many never elected to anything.

Upon hearing that “prominent conservatives” endorse same-sex “marriage,” one might have expected Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, or Rick Perry. Instead, they got Harvey Rosen, Lee Rudofsky, Reuben Jeffery, and David Chavern – all of whom apparently exist.

A moderately well-informed voter reading the list would say “who?” more often than a flock of stuttering owls.

Some gained a limited degree of fame on television. Republican talking heads are significantly overrepresented. Fox News “culture warrior” Margaret Hoover, the great-granddaughter of Herbert Hoover, signed on. So did Patrick Ruffini and commentator S.E. Cupp.

Political strategist Rich Galen sometimes appears on Fox. Analyzing the 2012 election, when an estimated three-to-six million Republican voters stayed home, Galen wrote that “the GOP is maxed out on voters. It has squeezed every vote out of its available voter base and has no choice but to expand that base if they are going to be successful in the future.”

Some of the new “leaders” held appointed positions before or between their gigs in punditry. Marc Gerson, the speechwriter who invited David Frum into the Bush-43 White House, was the author of The Neoconservative Vision.

But the accomplishments of most of these “prominent” people would leave the average reader in stumped silence. John Goodwin, for instance, was chief of staff to Raul Labrador, a congressman most people have never heard of. David A. Javdan was general counsel to U.S. Small Business Administration for four years.

The numbers of “assistant deputy,” legal counsel, and “e-campaign” officials is richer than a typical listing of party elites. These are public positions anyone would be honored to hold, but they confer neither prominence nor leadership.

Further down one finds party donors such as Cliff Asness, Lew Eisenberg, and Dan Loeb, or lawyers like Ben Ginsberg or Ted Olson. Tyler Deaton is the current secretary of the New Hampshire Young Republicans, not exactly a springboard to the presidency. Perhaps one day he will be a leader, but he’s not now.

You may ponder over the full list here.

Its signatories may be described many ways, but “conservatives” and “leaders” do not spring to mind. Despite having plenty of time and opportunity, not a single media outlet has called the mainstream press for its misrepresentation of these third party enthusiasts, unelected officials, and (mostly) unsuccessful politicians.

In their reporting the media redefined the term “leader,” as well as “conservative,” but the substance remains the same. Renaming a loser a leader does not make him a winner. Rebranding a dark horse a front-runner does not alter his relative insignificance. Labeling a failure a success does not improve his chances of actually succeeding at improving society, regardless of the fervor of liberals’ beliefs nor the sincerity and purity they ascribe to their motives.

Those principles also apply to their attempts to redefine “marriage.”

Cross-posted at LifeSiteNews.com.

When Heather and Toby Large of Illinois went in for a routine check-up of their unborn son, the process revealed a familiar face: Emperor Palpatine of the Star Wars saga.

Toby said, “At this point, everyone in the room had a laugh, including our eight-year-old daughter, Hannah, and the ultrasound technician.”

By posting the picture online, they and their son inadvertently went viral, producing dozens of stories and countless views of the image.

Lucas fans began posting headlines such as “May the Face Be With You,” “Conceived with Evil,” and the warning “2013 is the Year Emerpor Palpatine will be Unleashed Upon the World.”

Even at The Huffington Post, which contends that having people look at ultrasound images is part of the “war on women,” got in on the act.

Despite his fearsome fetal features, baby Bowie is now eight months old – playful, handsome, and devoid of any trace of supernatural evil. You can see his current visage here.

The dueling images of Bowie “Palpatine” Large silently convey the experience of parents, family members, and friends around the world. Even when images in the womb look the most foreboding, promising a child who appears to be in some way subpar, life is a beautiful surprise.

Cross-posted at LifeSiteNews.com.

The use of the first-person singular is Obama’s own Holy Tradition, a hallmark of both his rhetoric and his governing style. His administration is a Magisterium of one.

Nonetheless, one line is particularly galling: “Michelle and I warmly remember our meeting with the Holy Father in 2009, and I have appreciated our work together over these last four years.”

That mutual work has consisted of:

• Stripping the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops of federal grants to fight sex trafficking, because the USCCB would not refer patients for abortion;
• Forcing Catholic non-profits and laity to violate their faith by financing abortifacients at home and abortion around the world;
• Publicly advocating the redefinition of the family, something the pope said just last month threatens “the future of humanity”;
• Trying to have the government decide who is a “minister,” a ploy with far-reaching implications that the Supreme Court unanimously struck down;
• Reducing the “freedom of religion” to a mere “freedom of worship”; and
• Generally trying to shoehorn people of faith into a tiny, hermetically sealed box as far removed from the public square as possible.

In other words, Obama thanked himself for a four-year relationship that has been purely adversarial.

As Bill Clinton might say, that takes a lot of brass.

One is tempted to interpret Obama’s strange show of appreciation as a sign of good sportsmanship, rather like opposing teams shaking hands after a basketball game. One could also detect an oblique sense of gloating, as he congratulates himself on outflanking the Church in the United States, often with the active aid and participation of the Catholic laity and ordained.

Compare Obama’s statement with that of House Speaker John Boehner, who is Catholic:

The prayers and gratitude of American Catholics are with Pope Benedict XVI today. The Holy Father’s decision displays extraordinary humility and love for the Church, two things that have been the hallmarks of his service. Americans were inspired by his visit to the United States in 2008, and by his quiet, steady leadership of the Church in uncertain times. People of all nations have been blessed by the sacrifices he has made to sow the seeds of hope, justice, and compassion throughout the world in the name of Our Lord and Savior.

Note the reverence, the attention to the good the other person has done, the beneficial impact someone else’s actions have had, and the reference to a Higher Being.

Obama essentially read the pontiff out of his own statement, indulging him only insofar as the pope happened to coincide with his interests and those of the coalition that elected him.

Note to Speaker Boehner: This is how the conservative grassroots expect you to “work together” with President Obama in his second term.

Cross-posted at LifeSiteNews.com.

Politically motivated arguments are infuriatingly illogical, but none more so than special pleading for abortion providers.

Earlier this month, Rush Limbaugh told his that audience Roe v. Wade had “made us insensitive to killing.”

His words took on a new prescience as the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre claimed the lives of nearly two-dozen young children – often referred to in the media simply as “babies.”

But not everyone was convinced. His caller’s statement that abortion deserved an honorable mention in decimating the black community brought howls from the Civil Rights industry, one of the pillars of the Democratic Party with the abortion industry, labor unions, and homosexuals. Seeking to exonerate its political bedmate, the website TheRoot.com posted a 2011 speech given by Rep. Gwen Moore, D-WI, during congressional hearings to defund Planned Parenthood:

I just want to tell you what it’s like not to have Planned Parenthood … You have to give your kids Ramen noodles at the end of the month to fill up their little bellies so they won’t cry. You have to give them mayonnaise sandwiches. They get very few fruits and vegetables, because they’re expensive. It subjects children to low educational attainment because of the ravages of poverty.

She concluded, “Planned Parenthood is healthy for women, it’s healthy for children, and it’s healthy for our society.”

Planned Parenthood is indisputably not healthy for the unborn children variously dismembered, suctioned, or given lethal injections in every one of their affiliates.

Poverty, though never good, is far from the worst evil. (Wanton dismemberment of the innocent might qualify for that.)

American culture long believed overcoming the ravages of poverty or deprivation built character. School books lionized the initiative evident in Horatio Alger stories and the ingenuity of real-life figures from Abraham Lincoln to Andrew Carnegie. Before church philanthropy was replaced by government entitlements, people helped their neighbors – and a kindly parson might point out the destructive behaviors that led the recipient into his impoverished state. He would wipe away tears, give them a sense of purpose, and gently point the way to a future filled with hope.

The church might even condition its aid upon the person’s giving up vices like drinking, gambling, and being a bit too loose with his or her affections.

Unlike certain denominations – which fund abortion with tithes – churches equipped struggling parents with the skills they needed. If necessary, a relative, a Christian family, or an order of monks or nuns, would adopt the children produced by those who could not care for them.

Generations of people grew up just this way – poor, perhaps raised by someone other than their birth parents, but determined to fulfill their potential.

People as diverse as Clarence Thomas, Steve Jobs, and Domino’s Pizza founder Tom Monaghan shared a history of overcoming abandonment, indifference, and hardship to reach the pinnacle of success.

The next generation might appreciate the same opportunity, pork ‘n’ beans notwithstanding.

A video making the rounds in pro-life circles claims that Planned Parenthood shows women how to cover up signs of domestic abuse. A video posted on the group’s Info for Teens Facebook page shows a woman giving make-up tips to cover up bruises, abrasions, and signs of strangulation.

According to some, this proves that Planned Parenthood does not just perform 330,000 abortions a year; it is now providing beauty tips to battered women.

The only problem is, it’s a lie, as the video – and the underlying article written by the organization that exposed it – show.

“The video is from a legitimate organization in the UK that fights domestic violence,” it notes, and UK website originally headlined it, “Don’t cover it up.”

In other words, it is a parody against domestic abuse, not a cover-up enabling it.

Planned Parenthood, which is nothing if not obsessive about its public image, posted this video to present itself as a courageous opponent of abuse.

The irony is that Planned Parenthood has done more to cover up the abuse of women and young people than any organization outside NAMBLA.

Abortion is an invaluable tool to enable abusers, and their families, to dispose of the evidence of statutory rape or incest. In 2004, an Ohio Planned Parenthood performed an abortion on a 14-year-old after her 21-year-old soccer coach posed as her father, a scandal that resulted in a lawsuit.

Planned Parenthood has all too often been willing to turn a blind eye, refusing to report statutory rape to the authorities as required by law and sometimes advising the victim on how to hide the abuse.

The abortion industry benefits from the suffering, fear, and deception of the sexual abusers it empowers, overtly or covertly. Posting this video is its own form of make-up, covering up its ugly past, present and, if authorities fail to remain vigilant, future.

If the pro-life movement responds to the post, it should be with outrage that such an organization is now posing as a staunch opponent of the very abuse that pads its bottom line.

For those who would seize upon this video as pretext to attack Planned Parenthood I say: Get a grip.

Misrepresenting the contents of a post will backfire, because 1) it should; and 2) it turns the guilty party into a victim. Such tactics should have no place in the pro-life movement.

What separates those of us who seek to protect life from those who seek to destroy it is our commitment to truth. The other side twists quotations about the unborn into endorsements of rape. They conflate the free exercise of religion with the ruthless imposition of theocracy by “denying women access to contraception.” They pretend nuns with rosaries and pastors with Bibles are incipient domestic terrorists.

Let’s leave the gutter tactics and character defamation to the Left, which is both more skilled at its art and more practiced in its execution than we can ever hope to be. We have a higher calling.

Cross-posted at LifeSiteNews.com.

With the election safely behind us, the media have lost all interest in reporting on abortion extremism. This is most doleful, since congressional Democrats’ infighting over a coveted leadership position has degenerated into one of the most extreme pro-abortion bidding wars in recent memory.

Congresswoman Nita Lowey, D-NY, argues that she deserves the ranking Democratic seat on the House Appropriations Committee, because Ohio Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur is insufficiently pro-abortion.

Kaptur, a Catholic Democrat representing a blue collar district in Toledo, has only a 70 percent voting record with NARAL Pro-Choice America. Lowey has an unswerving, 100 percent voting record against the unborn.

Although she is the most senior member of the powerful committee, Kaptur angered Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi by once challenging her for her leadership position and by allegedly lacking a strong commitment to abortion-on-demand.[1]

Among her unforgivable trespasses, Kaptur briefly stood with Bart Stupak to hold up the passage of ObamaCare, until they received a worthless executive order promising not to fund abortion. Stupak admitted this summer he was “perplexed and disappointed” that the president had not kept his word.

One would be tempted to write off the episode, but the issue of Kaptur’s abortion voting record surfaced earlier this year, when redistricting forced Kaptur into a primary battle against fellow Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich.

The former Cleveland mayor is a one-time pro-life Catholic who flip-flopped before running for president in 2004. Since his Road away from Damascus experience, Kucinich has confined himself to advocating for life on other planets.

Seeing the issue arise for the second time in a year, Ohio Republican Party Chairman Robert Bennett told the Toledo Blade, “The Democratic Party has become the party of California and New York, the two coasts, and anyone from the commonsense Midwest is not eligible for leadership positions in the Democrat Party.”

But he rather misses the point, as Republicans are wont to do on abortion.

The Democratic Party is a slave to the abortion industry, where any deviation from the party line – no matter how halting, half-hearted, or transitory – is punished to the greatest extent possible.

The Democrats’ approach to abortion could not contrast more with that of the Republicans.

Pro-lifers are told – explicitly in some cases – to “hold their nose” and vote for a candidate who shares some portion of their views, publicly, during election years. “Better half a loaf than nothing,” laugh political pundits as religious leaders line up to endorse candidates like Rudy Giuliani, who opposed banning partial birth abortion.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has become a wholly owned subsidiary of Planned Parenthood, where 70 percent is not sufficiently servile to the forces of death. And the media convinced the less gifted portion of the electorate that Republicans are the extremists on the issue.

Some of the more shrewd members of the party have misgivings about being the handmaid of the abortion industry, but the abortion movement has skillfully deployed its political resources to keep the party on a short leash.

Pro-abortion groups neither settle nor acquiesce; they demand. They are willing to put their (substantial) financial resources behind candidates who support them – and to ruin any politician or charity that turns on them.

Pro-lifers’ success will only match their public support when they learn a few lessons from Planned Parenthood.

UPDATE: On December 4, Lowey defeated Kaptur for the slot. The Democratic House caucus’ Policy and Steering Committee favored the New York Democrat by a vote of 36-10.

Cross-posted at LifeSiteNews.com.

ENDNOTES:
1. When some called for Pelosi to step down, NARAL praised her “decision to remain at the helm of a strongly pro-choice Democratic leadership team” in the House. “We will need stalwart leaders like Leader Pelosi and others to block anti-choice lawmakers from undoing the progress we’ve made to protect our reproductive freedoms and privacy,” said NARAL President Nancy Keenan. “We look forward to continuing this valuable work alongside her.” The press release praised Pelosi’s “decision to remain at the helm of a strongly pro-choice Democratic leadership team in the House.”