Free Republic

In an earlier post, I started a discourse about how advancing a socially-conservative legislative agenda as a top priority is not part of the November 2010 Republican mandate. In that post, I discussed how some people equate "Pro Life" with "conservative" and how that dynamic has derailed the fiscal conservative trolley.

I think that the political origin of this phenomenon goes back to the 1988 presidential election. (Bush 41 vs. Dukakis) The book of "Friday Night Lights" contains a beautiful passage that demonstrates how this dynamic worked in 1988, and what it meant.

The "Friday Night Lights" book was most directly about an elite high school football team from the Texas oil patch. The season was 1988. George HW Bush was running for president in an era in which the Texas-Louisiana oil patch was in a severe depression (not recession) because oil was at an all time low, as low as $11 per barrel, due to Republican policies, namely the mutual defense treaty that President Reagan signed with Saudi Arabia in 1982. Still, Bush 41 managed to win the oil patch in a convincing manner. How?

Author H.G. Bissinger was at his most eloquent when he penned the following passage:

"Dukakis forces in Texas thought they could win the state on the basis of the economy. They thought that the issues of gun control and the Pledge of Allegiance were emotional fads that would quickly die out. They never thought that Bush's rhetoric, a kinder, gentler version of the 'Morton Downey Show' would have much lasting effect. . .

Perhaps just once Dukakis should have left the rarfied atmosphere of Boston and Harvard that seemed to entrap him no matter where he was, hopped in a car by himself, and taken a drive down one of those lonely, flat-as-a-pancake roads to the gleaming lights of a Friday night football game. . . . He could have pulled down his tie and unbuttoned his collar. He could have gone to the concession stand to eat a frito pie and a chili dog . . . he could have sat in a corner of the stands to listen to th econversations around him as well as take note of the prayers both before the game and after. . .

There was a heartbeat in those stands that dotted the Friday nights of Texas and Oklahoma and Ohio and Pennsylvania and Florida and all of America like a galaxy of stars, a giant, lurking heartbeat.

Michael Dukakis never heard that sound, and even if he had he probably would have dismissed it as some silly tribal ritual rite practiced in the Amercian boondocks by people who made no difference. But his opponent didn't make the same mistake."

Gifted politicians understand the heartbeat that lives under those Friday night lights. Bill Clinton understood it. Bush 43 understood it. Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin and other 2012 hopefuls understands it. They knew how to connect to the people in whom that heart beat, and by connecting on that spiritual level, they can lead and win despite their shortcomings on the issues, or in some cases, their resumes.

If Bush 41 had not connected with those folks, he may have lost Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Colorado and a few other key states. On the basis of the economy in the oil patch, conventional wisdom would tell us that Bush 41 should have lost the oil patch. The Bush campaign was certainly worried that they could lose to Dukakis. In the end, the election was not even close. One of the reasons for that result was that Bush 41 was able to connect on a more personal, spiritual level.

While the GOP won that election, the dependence on social issues as the top priority was the undoing of fiscal conservatism - at least until November 2, 2010.

Elections and politics are a cottage industry in the Mile Square City of Hoboken NJ. If there were such a stat, the hometown of Old Blue Eyes would have the highest political per capita. 2009-2010 has been a tumultuous string of election cycles, exacerbated by the resignation of an elected mayor after only one month in office. And each election brings a new controversy over campaign tactics.

The recent special election in Hoboken's Fourth Ward was no exception. The winning campaign capitalized on the Soprano State's new mail-in ballot law, stuffing the ballot box with over 500 mail-in ballots. The winning campaign took approximately ninety per cent of the mail-in votes. The proud winning candidate declared in the Hoboken Patch: "We took a play right out of the Barack Obama playbook . . . "

Maybe he should clear such comments with the White House communications director because the victory is now under a cloud of voter fraud.

Why?

The usually laissez-faire Hudson County Board of Elections excluded approximately twenty percent of the total mail-in ballots submitted due to chain-of-custody issues and signature issues. That same board has referred a number of ballots to the Hudson County Prosecutor for criminal investigation. And yet to be addressed is the allegation that 79 Fourth Ward residents were paid to vote by mail.

The fact that the Hudson County Board of Elections excluded twenty per cent of the mail-in ballots and referred two for criminal investigation speaks volumes.

These are the tactics that the Left has used to keep an iron grip on urban counties such as Hudson County. This is not an isolated case in New Jersey. Voter fraud is endemic. There have been criminal prosecutions of voter fraud in the urban areas of Atlantic and Essex Counties. It looks now like there may be one in Hudson.

The Right to Life is an issue that is close to my heart and close to the hearts of many conservatives. Most fiscal conservatives are also Pro-Life, and I think that you would be hard pressed to find a "Pro Choice" politician who is truly a fiscal conservative, budget hawk or fiscal watchdog. The GOP primary electorate is overwhelmingly Pro-Life. America is on balance a Pro Life nation. Indeed, in 2009 New Jersey elected an avowedly Pro Life governor, Chris Christie.

Despite the fact that America is a Pro Life nation, and despite the fact that the incoming GOP majority is a pro life majority, there is no 2010 mandate to move pro life legislation.

It will take several posts to address fully how the nation arrived at this intersection, but at this point, we have to start with the proposition that the focus on the right to life and abortion in the Roe v Wade era eventually forced the fiscal conservative train off its tracks.

What happened was that to millions of conservatives, the term "Pro Life" and "conservative" became synonymous. They are of course not synonymous. There is a very large intersection between the fiscal conservatives and pro-lifers, yes, but taking the Pro Life position does not make a politician a conservative.

As the GOP coalition began to unravel this past decade, I confronted a number of activists who equated Pro-Life and conservative. My answer to them was that they needed to look at a candidate's position not only on the pro-life issue, but also on issues related to the budget, taxes and free enterprise. I found myself posing the following rhetorical question:

"If Ted Kennedy were Pro Life, would that make him a conservative?"

That is a rhetorical question because the answer is obvious. If Ted Kennedy had been Pro Life, he would not have been a conservative, but a Pro Life Socialist. Uncle Teddy supported socialized medicine, heavy regulation of free enterprises, higher taxes etc. He tolerated high deficits. No, seeing the light and becoming Pro Life would not have magically converted Uncle Teddy into a conservative.

The fact that so many Republicans began to equate Pro Life with Conservative, was one of the factors that de-railed the fiscal conservative train. This is a thesis we will re-visit on a regular basis. We will re-visit it not because we should change our principles. Au contraire! The GOP is the Pro Life party. We are not going to abandon that plank in our party.

The point now is that the GOP has control of the House of Representatives. To understand the mandate that the voters handed the GOP majority, we need to understand the history of how we lost our way while focusing on a very very important issue.

The bottom line is that there will be no functional American government to protect the Right to Life if the federal government goes bankrupt.

There is chaos in the Democratic caucus in the United States Senate. There are controversies surrounding vacancies in the Dem-held seats in New York and Illinois. There is a controversy over the seat from Minnesota currently held by Senator Norm Coleman. On paper, there are 58 Democrats in the Senate. However, there are currently only 56 live Democrat bodies prepared to walk the halls of the United States Senate.

There are 41 Republicans in the United State Senate. Only 40 votes are required to sustain a filibuster. A successful filibuster can stop bad legislation dead in its tracks. There are a lot of awful proposals out there - Corporate bailouts, State government bailouts, economic “stimulus”, for example. There is an additional high-priority proposal that tops the list of Obama Administration priorities. That proposal is the Freedom of Choice Act, known commonly by its acronym “FOCA”. FOCA is a worthy target for a filibuster.

FOCA would obliterate nearly four decades of reform efforts in state legislatures, the Congress and in state referenda. Political choices have been made to pass legislation reforming abortion practice and procedure nationwide. At least 27 states and the federal government have passed Partial Birth Abortion Bans. At least 35 states have legislative requirements that parents of minors be informed and give consent before a teen can undergo an abortion. FOCA would wipe out all of those laws, and more.

FOCA’s name is an Orwellian deception because each of those laws represents a choice made by tens of millions of Americans. Each one of those laws was passed because of courageous legislative sponsors and co-sponsors, because of legislative leaders who posted the bills and because of legislators who voted for those bills. Each one of those laws passed because of pro-life advocacy groups that mounted effective public information and public relation campaigns nationwide. Each one of those laws passed because millions of voters support pro-life advocacy groups and tens of millions of Americans support pro-life candidates for public office.

The choices made by legislators, pro-life lobbyists and politicians across the land are supported by an American public that is pro-life. According to the most recent polling data, over seventy percent of Americans support significant limitations on abortion. Indeed, seventy per cent of Americans support a ban on abortion except in cases of rape or incest. Only three percent of abortions are for pregnancies that result from rape or incest. Therefore, seventy per cent of Americans support banning ninety-seven per cent of abortions.

The Obama Administration wants to pass and sign FOCA as soon as possible. FOCA would wipe out the choices made by tens of millions of Americans. We need a courageous Republican to stand up for the tens of millions of Americans who made the choice to ban partial-birth abortion and to require parental notification in cases where teens are subject to abortion.

What an irony! The last time the United States Senate refused to seat a legally elected or appointed Senator was in 1947, when the Republican-controlled body refused to seat arch-segregationist Senator Theodore G. Bilbo. Ironic? Sure. Senator Bilbo must be absolutely spinning in his grave with the knowledge that America has elected its first Black President. However, that old devil must also be chuckling because the man who is being blocked 62 years after he was blocked is Black. Theodore Bilbo was one of the most colorful Southern politicians of the twentieth century. He was one of a new breed of populists (or demoagogues, depending on your point of view) who rose up in the dirt poor deep South. Bilbo was always controversial. As a state senator he was involved in a bribery scandal connected to - ironically - the appointment of a new United States Senator. In the years before direct election of United States Senators, the Mississippi Legislature was set to select a new one. The multi-candidate field was deadlocked through several ballots in the legislature until several legislators changed their votes and resolved the race. The next day, Bilbo claimed to have been bribed by the victor. No one was ever charged or indicted or convicted in the scandal. However, Bilbo was impeached by the State Senate. He was not convicted. Despite the scandal, Bilbo was elected Lieutenant Governor of Mississippi. He served there, then as Governor and eventually a United States Senator. Bilbo was an avowed segregationist and an admitted member of the Ku Klux Klan (an honor he shares with his fellow Democrat, Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia). In the Senate, he sponsored bills providing appropriations for the relocation of African-Americans to West Africa. He penned a book entitled, Take Your Choice, Separation or Mongrelization, in which he explained the proposition. He publicly stated that he believed that Blacks should not vote. He filibustered an anti-lynching bill in the United States Senate. Bilbo was later eulogized as a “redneck liberal” for his shameless pandering to poor rural white folk and his support for the New Deal. He was such a figure that he has a namesake in William Faulkner’s fictional Yoknawpatawpha County - Bilbo Snopes. Theodore Bilbo died in 1947 of mouth cancer.

Socialists around the globe are now breathless because of the prospect that they have a friendly president in the White House. No, I am not calling the President-elect a Socialist; I am merely pointing out that he supports the centerpiece of the green-socialist global agenda, the Kyoto Accord. One of the policy positions that cost President Bush popularity worldwide was his steadfast opposition to Kyoto. Euro-pundits refer to the Bush Administration position on Kyoto as “isolationist” and “obstructionist”. Despite the fact that the globe has cooled over the last decade, Euro-pundits blame global warming on President Bush and the “Oilman Lobby”.

President Bush was right to oppose Kyoto. If implemented, the Kyoto Accord would hamper American manufacturing. America would be forced to reduce carbon emissions to pre-1990 standards. To achieve this artificial goal, the auto industry would have to re-tool. It would have to build different types of cars that would help reduce certain types of emissions. It would have to change its manufacturing facilities so that they, too, would reduce their emissions.

Sounds like a good idea, right? Perhaps. It is a good idea for Russia, Brazil and China because Kyoto exempts them from mandatory emissions reductions. That’s right, we would have to reduce emissions where the rest of the world would not. Foreign car makers would not have to reduce emissions. U.S. carmakers would.

(The pie chart above, courtesy of the Heritage Foundation, shows how emissions from “developing nations” would increase under Kyoto.)

If the UAW and the automakers themselves were really on the ball, they would be opposing Kyoto, but they won’t be able to do so because there are strings attached to the bailout money. Those strings are in the hands of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. They will control the details of the upgrade of the auto industry that will be required as a condition of the bailout loans. In other words, the federal government will hold all the cards, have all the leverage. The UAW and the auto industry will be powerless in the face of Kyoto.

Believe me, I can’t wait to see Harry Reid lose his Senate seat. After all Nevada is at its core a red state. Believe me, I would love to see Jeb Bush steamroll to a victory in a U.S. Senate race. And I would really love to see Caroline Kennedy AKA “Camelot Barbie” defend a Senate and her non-existent resume. Those are great topics, but we have to keep our eye on the ball: There are important statewide elections in 2009 that deserve our attention.

VIRGINIA: The governor’s race is at the top of the ballot in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The GOP has put its decade-long infighting aside and has rallied behind Attorney General Bob McDonnell. McDonnell is a popular figure who has a strong law-and-order record both as a Delegate and as Attorney General. He has deep roots in the two most populous and vote-rich area of the state, and has proven that he can win a statewide election. He has a very strategic advantage in that he has no primary opponent. The Democrats, on the other hand are holding a three-way primary between R. Creigh Deeds, Brian J. Moran and Terry McAuliffe. McAuliffe, of course, is the former chairman of the DNC and a Clinton crony. Moran, a state legislature, is the choice of the Virginia Democrat establishment. The united GOP will have a chance to reverse the blue tide in the Commonwealth.

NEW JERSEY: The New Jersey governor is the constitutionally most powerful governor in the nation. There are no other elected constitutional officers, so the governor appoints everyone in the cabinet, as well as every new judge in the state. Wall Street Magnate Jon Corzine holds the position now. He is there because he has used his vast fortune to win a Senate seat in 2000 by outspending his opponent by a 9:1 margin, and has underwritten Democrat bosses and machines across the Garden State for eight years. New Jersey is a very BLUE state. However, Corzine’s approval ratings are upside-down, so the GOP sees an opening. The GOP will chose its nominee on June 4, in a primary. There are three declared candidates - two mayors and a state assemblyman - but the GOP awaits the entry of popular U.S. Attorney Chris Christie. If the GOP can unite behind a candidate, then they have a chance to pull an upset.

ILLINOIS:It looks like Barack Obama’s Senate seat is no longer for sale. It may have to be decided in a special election, which should give the GOP an opening.

The GOP is on a mild winning streak, having won three special elections in Georgia and Louisiana since the election of Obama. If we can focus on 2009, then we can build on those victories.

Caroline Kennedy has only voted in half of the elections in which she was eligible to vote since registering in New York, according to The New York Daily News. Big deal. The key to this little statistic is that almost all of the elections that she missed were primaries. You don’t need a PhD in Political Science from Harvard to know that almost all primary elections are uncontested. It is hardly a sin to miss voting in an uncontested primary election. It is hardly unusual either. (That being said, I never miss voting in even an uncontested election.)

The voting record analysis is a red herring. The focus should be on her lack of experience and any policy positions we can discern.

From what we can see so far, she is an unabashed West Side Lib:

Gay marriage - SUPPORTS

Gun control - BRING IT ON

Union card check - SUPPORTS

Immigration - Supports the Kennedy-McCain Plan (Go figure)

She was my first long-distance crush. When I was five, my family had coffee table books about JFK and his family. When at six I wrote my first short story, it was about a rendez-vous with Caroline. Caroline Kennedy was the princess of Camelot. I never met her. She was only an image to me. Over the past forty years, I have gotten over my crush on Caroline. While I respect her father, I do not worship her political family. In fact, I have come to detest what they stand for.

Liberals across the Republic love the Kennedys. Liberals across America allow the Kennedys to retain power, and allow Kennedys to ascend to power before they have any experience. Why?

It is very simple. Their concept of the existence of an exclusive class structure and a political aristocracy helps them rationalize their defeatist world view. At the core of their defeatist world view is their egotistic notion that they are under compensated and under appreciated. (If I had a quarter for every liberal who thought that they were paid less than they are worth, then I would be paid what I am worth!) That notion is based on the premise that they are smart. And thanks to the Self-Esteem Revolution, so many people are taught - either by their parents or by a teacher - that they are smart in order to boost that self-esteem.

These liberals who walk around thinking that they are really, really smart quite often don’t have jobs, titles, income or any other indicator of intelligence. As such, these liberals come to believe that there is a rigid class structure in which talent can not rise. They believe this because if talent could rise, then wouldn’t they be richer or more powerful?

Therefore, they embrace the political royalty, and in that embrace, they are safe in the delusion that they are hidden geniuses.

So many liberals think that they are smart that the words “smart” or “intelligent” or any of their many synonyms now have no objective definition. “Smart” can be self-defining. That is, a person can walk around thinking that they are smart because others do not understand what they understand. A person can walk around thinking that they are smart without any objective proof that their intelligence is anything but average or above-average.

Over the past seven years, New Jersey residents have watched one public official after another caught and convicted of public corruption, forced to resign their office in disgrace, then shuttled off to prison. The Garden State has seen the conviction of such leading lights as Sharpe James, mayor of the state’s most populous city and a powerful state senator; Wayne Bryant, a powerful south Jersey state senator and holder of more public jobs than he could count; John Lynch, former state senate President and patron of former Governor Jim McGreevey.

Indeed, former Governor Jim McGreevey himself resigned in 2004 under a cloud of scandal. His stated reason for resignation was the revelation that he was a “Gay American”. However, his resignation coincided with the revelation that McGreevey was an unidicted co-conspirator in a corrupt land deal in his home county.

Despite the very public prosecution of these high profile Democrats and a host of lesser Democrat crooks in Essex, Hudson, Camden, Atlantic and Bergen Counties, the Democrats remain the majority party in New Jersey. The Democrats hold the governor’s office and both houses of the legislature. Democrats occupy both U.S. Senate seats and have upped their majority in the House delegation to 8-5. They have taken control of county governments in the former GOP strongholds of Bergen County and Monmouth County, and consolidated their control in other counties.

Why is it that they can continue to make the state more and more blue each year?

Answer number one is money. Former Goldman Sachs CEO Jon Corzine ran successfully for U.S. Senate in 2000. Since that time he has used his personal fortune to underwrite liberal causes, local Democrat organizations and local Democrat candidates across the state. He has invested as much as two hundred million of his own dollars in the New Jersey Democratic Party. The Corzine investment has made the organization flush with cash at all levels.

Answer number two is demographics. New Jersey’s demogaphics have changed dramatically. Its population has been in decline both in absolute numbers and in numbers relative to the rest of the nation. New Jerseyans are moving out of the state to the west and the south. Those emigrants tend to be more conservative and affluent. New Yorkers are migrating in. Those immigrants tend to the Democrat side. Further, the Hispanic and Asian communities have coalesced around the Democrats. The result is that the Republican base has shrunk in New Jersey.

Answer number three is cynicism. There are many voters in urban areas who have a Machiavellian approach to corruption: “Sure, my politician is corrupt, but who cares? He/she gets things done for us.” Others dismiss claims about Dem corruption with the answer that the Republicans are no different.

Answer number four is politics. Republicans held the majority from 1991 through 2001. They ran on the core conservative principles of lower taxes, less government and more family, then gradually abandoned those principles. Where the New Jersey Dems were the tax-and-spend party, the New Jersey GOP became the borrow-and-spend party

New Jersey will be one of two or three marquis races nation wide next year. New Jersey Republicans have an opportunity to score an upset, thanks to the fiscal nightmare that has continued on the Dems’ watch and to the Conga Line of corruption. New Jersey Republicans must unite around the candidate who wins the primary, and must also rally around the conservative principles that make the party great.

The authorities are treating the fire at the Wasilla Bible Church as an arson. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has found that accelerant was placed at several places near entrances around the building. People were present in the building when the fire was set. Basic concepts of criminal law hold that this is an aggravated arson. Add to the formula that the crime was committed against a church and its congregants, and you have a hate crime.

But who did it? Authorities will not comment during an investigation. However, the rest of us are free to theorize.

The fact that this hate crime was committed against a church attended by a prominent politician points toward a political motivation. I think that we can eliminate the “Christian Right” as the crime was committed against a predominantly white evangelical Protestant church. I think that we can eliminate the mushy middle: They are too squeamish to resort to violence. That leaves the left.

Well, who on the left has been using threats, force and intimidation in the past six weeks? With most of the left doing an endzone dance after the election of BHO, there is only one group that remains desperately and bitterly in need of therapy and medication: The gay and lesbian “civil rights” coalitions. They are and have been angry and on the move since the passage of Proposition 8 in California.

Some extremists might see both Governor Palin and her church as a good symbolic target. Gov. Palin has affirmed time-and-time-again that she believes that marriage is a union between a man and a woman. Wasilla Bible has participated in pro-marriage and pro-family programs, and has come under some criticism from the left as a result.

Our prayers go out to the congregation of Wasilla Bible and we wish them success with their recovery efforts.

Each year, untold numbers of American Catholics are sick and hospitalized on election day. Millions of Catholics reside in senior citizen housing or in nursing homes. And an unknown number of Catholics are homebound. Almost all of these good Americans would like to be able to vote, yet many of them are not able to do so. We have the ability to help them.

Across the nation, Catholic parishes have the resources to assist voters in need. Almost every parish has a Respect Life Committee, a Knights of Columbus council and a Legion of Mary. From the ranks of those active Catholic gentleladies and -men, there are many able-bodied and able minded people who can spend some time around each election day assisting voters in need. The basics of the proposal are as follows:

1. Establish a Voter-in-Need Coordinator for each parish. The Coordinator can then identify volunteers to assist.

2. Learn the state laws for absentee ballots and voter assistance. It is imperative that any voter assistance comply with local election law.

3. Identify Voters-in-Need. Determine their residence and voter registration.

4. Contact Voters-in-Need to offer non-partisan assistance in either transporting them to the polling place or obtaining absentee ballots.

5. Get to work.

In this small way, we can help those who need assistance in exercising that most precious of rights, the right to vote AND increase the turnout of Catholic voters nationwide. There may only be a few people in each parish in need of assistance. When multiplied out over a diocese, state and entire region, the result will be significant, both in number of vote cast and in the number of our fellow Catholics served.

In order to get his name on the ballot in states with primaries or to qualify for participation in caucus states, President-elect Obama had to meet certain qualifications. There were legal qualifications peculiar to each state - usually a number of qualified nominating signatures, and there were constitutional qualifications as well. If he did not qualify on some ground, then his opponents were free to challenge his petition either in court before the chief election officer. The legal challenge is not a secret: It happens all the time.

Why didn’t Hillary Clinton, Bill Richardson, Dennis Kucinich, Al Sharpton, Mike Gravel or Jonathan Edwards raise the issue of BHO’s constitutional qualification to hold office?

One possible answer is that they did not know about the issue. I find it hard to believe that neither Hillary Clinton nor John Edwards knew. They are both lawyers. Their campaigns were well-funded, and as such both could afford very serious opposition research and legal support. Both are ambitious. Senator Edwards is very concerned about his hair, but Hillary does not share his hair obsession and is not squeemish where hardball politics are concerned.

One possible answer is that they did know and did not take BHO seriously enough to file legal challenges. That may have been true at one point, but BHO was a top-tier candidate by December at the very latest. There were very many filing deadlines after he became a first tier candidate. I was present at the New Jersey Elections Division when the Obama petition was filed. I was present to file the nominating petition on behalf of Fred Thompson. That deadline was about one year ago. It was clear at that point that Obama was serious. Clinton could have filed a challenge in New Jersey at that point.

Hillary Clinton had the standing that Leo Donofrio lacks. If BHO does lack the constitutional requisites for service, then Hillary fell down on her job as a candidate. Mr. Donofrio has done yeomans work trying to frame the issue but the issue is moot. You can’t remove someone from the ballot after the primary election and the general election are finished, and he has won. That job has to be done by candidates who have standing at the time of the filing deadline. Count Us Out is a blog that has taken a strong pro-Donofrio position. Count Us Out cites the case of McCarthy v. Briscoe, 429 U.S. 1317 (1976) as precedential support for the case. McCarthy supports only the procedural argument that the worthy Mr. Donofrio is making. However, it indirectly points at the argument that this blog has made.

McCarthy had standing to bring his proceeding. He was an actual candidate who was trying to get on the ballot and was barred from doing so by an unconstitutional state law. Much like the petition challenges of which I speak, the McCarthy matter had to be brought in time to print and distribute ballots and had to be brought by someone with legal standing.

If the allegations about BHO’s citizenship are indeed true, then this is yet another failure of the Democrats and the MSM. However, I harbor serious doubts about the merits of the case. Hilary Clinton had thorough research on BHO, the ambition to be president and at some point knew that he was a serious candidate. If he really did not qualify, she would have taken him out.

Back before he disappeared off the face of the political map, Joe Biden declared that Barack Obama was a “new type of intelligence”. It is an article of faith among liberals that the President-elect is very, very intelligent. People of all stripes agree that he is highly talented. BHO will need all of his vaunted intellect to solve the political Catch-22 that is Sarah Palin.

Today, 40 of the nation’s governors and governors-elect will join BHO at Independence Hall in Philadelphia for an economic summit. Many prominent governors will arrive in Philly with their hats in hand. Many states have structural deficits as as the result of decades of overindulgence in Great Society programs. Big government social programs have become unsustainable. Instead of cutting their budgets and payrolls, some of these governors - like New Jersey’s Jon Corzine - are going to lobby the President-elect for their own bailout.

Governor Palin does not come to Philadelphia with an unsustainable budget. With Alaska’s fiscal house in order, she is free to lobby for the pipeline. The proposed pipeline would parallel the route of the existing trans-Alaska oil pipeline to a point south of Fairbanks. It would then follow the Alaska Highway, continuing through northern British Columbia to link with the Alberta Hub on TransCanada’s pipeline grid in northwestern Alberta. The Alaska section would be approximately 750 miles in length, with six compressor stations at start-up and at least five natural gas delivery points in Alaska. The Canadian section to Alberta would be approximately 965 miles, with ten compressor stations at start-up and eight intermediate delivery points in the Yukon.

Sarah was the irresistable force in Alaska that moved the pipeline project through the legislature and through the bidding process. The pipeline is a signature accomplishment for her. If it continues to succeed, then it will be a signature accomplishment if she runs for president. So whither Obama?

The pipeline will help the nation move toward energy independence in an environmentally responsible manner. BHO has promised to move the nation toward energy independence. BHO has promised a more perfect union in which he works across party lines to accomplish things for the American people. Will he help? If he does not, he breaks major campaign promises in a very palpable way, in which case he would be exposed on the 2012 campaign trail. If he does help, he may be helping to create a resume for a 2012 rival. If BHO is truly a new type of intelligence, he will figure it out.

For Governor Palin, it is a no-lose opportunity to use her new found fame to benefit her constituents, the people of Alaska.

One of the articles of faith of the American Left is that George W. Bush and company stole the 2000 election. Al Gore gave an Oscar-winning performance as the sore loser, and millions of moonbats followed his lead. Gore’s resistance - with Clinton’s support - delayed the transition to a Bush White House, and endangered our national security in the bargain. Despite the fact that every legitimate study performed on the 2000 election demonstrated that Bush and company legitimately won Florida’s electoral vote and the 2000 election, the Left continued to complain that he was never legitimately elected.

Many of my fellow conservatives have vowed to dig in and in effect use the issue of BHO’s citizenship as a weapon in the same way the Left used Palm Beach County 2000 as a weapon. The legal issue is moot. Our website took heat for arguing that the issue was moot, and some of the response was vile. Conservatives should be better than that. We should not endanger the nation by undermining the very legitimacy of BHO’s election.

If any conservative has a reason to complain it is Sarah Palin. She campaigned like a trooper for ten weeks. The Palin family gave conservatives everything that it had. Sarah Palin has moved on. She has indicated that she will put her personal and political feelings aside and work with BHO to the extent possible on projects that will benefit her constituents and the nation. (The Trans-Canada Natural Gas Pipeline, for instance) Indeed, Governor Palin will meet with BHO tomorrow to discuss the project.

We need to get off of the citizenship issue. The legal issue is moot. There is no way on Earth that the Supreme Court will rule that he can not take office.

Harping on the citizenship issue does not re-build the grassroots network. It does not achieve anything. Whining about Palm Beach County did not do a thing for the Dems. They didn’t succeed in 2002 or 2004. They only succeeded in 2006 and 2008 after they re-built their grass-roots and focused on fundamentals.

In the weeks that have passed since the general election, there has been much legitimate debate in the conservative blogosphere about President-elect Obama’s citizenship. The debate follows litigation filed by Phil Berg (Pennsylvania), Leo Donofrio (New Jersey) and Alan Keyes (California). All three of those suits raise interesting points of law and fact. The bottom line is that no court will - or should - now bar BHO from taking office in 2009.

Some well-established principles of election law have been at work in the Obama case: Voter choice, ballot clarity and efficient administration of elections, to name three. Unfortunately, none of the interested bloggers have discussed these principles.

President-elect Obama was nominated in each of the fifty states (except Michigan), Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia in the manner mandated by the election law established in each of those jurisdictions. There are general principles of election law that underlie the process in each state and territory. A nomination is established, with a few exceptions, by a nominating petition filed by the legal deadline with the chief election law in the state or territory. There are a minimum number of signatures required, and qualifications for people who sign the nominating petition.

There are a number of ways that a petition can be deficient. If a petition is deficient, the appropriate election officer can refuse to permit the candidate on the ballot. If that does not happen, the petition is subject to legal challenge by opposing candidates. There is a very short window of opportunity for such a challenge. Bases for petition challenges fall into three basic categories: (1) Insufficient number of qualified nominating signatures; (2) technical deficiencies; and (3) the nominee lacks legal or constitutional qualifications or suffers from a constitutional or legal bar to serve in the particular office.

The reasons for the short time period for petition challenges are clear: The ballots must be prepared in a timely and orderly manner. Once they are prepared, the voters and the candidates then can rely on the ballot as prepared by the election official. In that time-honored manner, the voters know what their choices are and can be confident that their choice will be honored.

In the Obama case, not one of his opponents challenged any one of his petitions in any state or territory. Election litigation is one of the hallmarks of the Democratic Party. Indeed, President-elect Obama has benefitted from outstanding lawyering both in his initial State Senate election (in which his lawyers had the incumbent disqualified) and in his U.S. Senate election (in which his lawyers were able to push the incumbent out of the race). Sentator Clinton had dozens of outstanding election lawyers on her team. Some of her political allies served as chief election officers in the states and territories. She had the knowledge. She had the opportunity. She had the ambition. And Team Clinton is certainly capable of hardball politics.

Despite all that, Senator Clinton did not challenge any of the Obama petitions based on his legal or constitutional qualifications to hold office. Why? Lack of gumption? No. Lack of knowledge? No. Lack of resources? No. Perhaps Senator Clinton did not make such a challenge because her research indicated that BHO was legally and constitutionally qualified to hold the office.

Interested observers have asked: Well, why didn’t Obama produce his vault birth certificate to be examined in a court of law? The answer is easy: Because the legal issue was never properly framed in a petition challenge.

Now that the general election has taken place, it is too late to disqualify a candidate. The electorate in the states and territories had a very long period in which to consider their choices both in the primary and in the general. No court should now reverse those elections and the choices of one hundred and twenty million people. To do so would be to invite legal and civil chaos. To do so would create a power vacuum which could be a national security threat.

Citizenship will remain as a political issue for many, and it may return as a legal issue once the future President Obama begins to file nominating petitions for his re-election. But for now, the citizenship is moot as a legal issue where the 2008 election and 2009 inauguration is concerned.

Charles W. Fairbanks is the nom de plum for one of Men For Palin’s founders. He is an experienced election lawyer. MFP will be happy to provide a link to show his bonafides as an election lawyer in response to a bona fide request for information submitted by email to fairbanks@menforpalin.com