http://www.townhall.com/columnists/TomDeLay/2007/04/11/tom_delays_action_points_if_the_left_takes_imus,_we%e2%80%99ll_take_rosie

Rosie shouldn't be fired from "The View" due to pressure from conservatives. If she's to be fired at all, it should be because her employers find her a liability. If they do not currently find her a liability, right-wingers can help to make her a liability, not by clamoring for her removal, but by getting the word out about the idiocy of her commentary. When delay calls upon right-wingers to use the same bully-tactics of the left, he is calling for us to abandon the better world we seek. That better world includes freedom of speech with the marketplace of ideas as the only arbiter of that speech. We should instead work to show the idiocy of people like Rosie, i.e., beat her in the realm of ideas, not in roundabout underhanded ways.

I, like many of you, would like to have a true conservative in the White House. But I'd rather have a slightly liberal conservatie than an all-out liberal liberal. The central problem with Gingrich is that he has an unshakeable image as a partisan conservative. The very reason we like him is the very reason he would lose a general election. While I don't think we have as much reason to be gloomy as the MSM is saying we do in this coming presidential election, it will be a tough, tough fight. This, quite frankly, is the problem with any other of the people we like so much, like Brownback, Huckabee, Tancredo, and possibly Thompson. Perhaps George Will is right, and if we keep insisting on an obvious and committed conservative, we'll end up with Hillary or Obama in the Whitehouse.

I am cautiously thinking Romney should be it. He's either a moderate conservative (likely), a committed conservative (unlikely), or liberal pretending to be conservative (highly unlikely). The question isn't whether he flip-flops. Wise men flip flop according to their interests. The question is whether he's lying to us outright. I doubt it.

Just a thought. I think he's got a good chance of it, on either ticket. If the Democrat candidate asked him to be vice president, it could be a formidable team in the general election. Same thing goes for the Republican scenario.

I think the conventional wisdom, that the Democrats have a major advantage going into this presidential race, is nonsense. It's as nonsensical and fantastical as the "mandate" they got out of the last election. It was par for course on the six-year itch. Voters will be less likely to entertain a "throw the bums out" approach to the presidential election, and will do more research on the candidates. What will they find? They'll find that Obama is an empty suit that talks pretty, and they'll shrink from electing him. They'll find that Hillary is passe, harpyish,  and unlikeable. A strong Republican candidate, and we have a few, would bury either of these two without media help. And with media help, they'll still win by a comfortable margin.

 

The Mormon Prophet will turn 97 this June. He is one of the most well-respected and well-loved Mormon leaders of all time, among both Mormons and non-Mormons. His death and funeral would be a major international media event that would increase good will toward Mormons through the United States. It may come at a time when Romney is in the thick of an election battle, and could be a benefit to his campaign.

The subsequent appointment of Hinkley’s successor, Thomas Monson, to the presidency of the church may likewise give favorable press to both Mormons and the Romney campaign. This is because Monson is well known for his support for humanitarian causes throughout the world and his elevation to the presidency, or his actions therein, may also increase goodwill toward Mormons.

 

I've made several predictions that are closer to fulfillment, and I wanted to write them down before they are completely fulfilled. If they aren't, what the heck, I have a passion for going out on a limb with my predictions and bets.

The first prediction I made was that Obama would never be president. This was very early 2005 when a friend asked me if I thought he would be president, and I emphatically said he wouldn't. My reasoning then was that he was black and inexperienced. With my current knowledge I'll add that he is far left and is an empty suit.

More recently, as people have kept talking about how McCain is so popular and blah blah blah, I've said over and over that "he hasn't got a snowball's chance in hell" and I've maintained that stance for many moths now.

I've long thought that Romney would be president. Mainly because I thought that he was the best candidate. Of the republicans, once Allen went down, he was the best choice for conservatives. Giuliani? Condollezza? McCain? It's a dismall state for conservatives, and I just think (and hope) that Romney is the most conservative, because it's obvious that none of the other contenders are conserative enough for me or the conservative base. On top of that he's got a million other electable traits. Now early on, when nobody knows him, of course he's going to lose in polls, but he'll benefit greatly from people getting to know him, unlike the other candidates. Giuliani is great if you don't think too much about it, or you don't learn too much about him. And McCain has never had a chance for 2008. Hillary would be buried by Romney without media help (and I'm not sure whether she'll get it or not), and Obama is an empty shell. It's a romantic idea to give the presidency to Obama, but stack him against Romney and he's a midget in every category needed to win the presidency except blackness. And even blackness will help him with some people, hurt him with others, working out to be not a very big advantage.

I strongly suspect that the truth is not that poverty causes crime, but that modern attitudes toward poverty feed a sense of entitlement and victimhood, which rots the character and causes crime.

A society that could prove this is nowhere to be found, for in all places stricken by proverty, there is a deafening chorus of liberals preaching entitlement and victimhood to the poor.  Perhaps a study could be done of the tendency to crime of poor, but conservative people.

Liberals have won half the battle by framing human behavior as a "Nurture vs. Nature" debate. Only a liberal would describe it that way. An undergirding notion of modern liberalism is that human beings are simply cogs in a great machine. Free will is diminished, to the liberal mind, in favor of a science-inspired notion that humans are, like molecules randomly colliding in space, purely mechanistic. The conservative emphasizes that individual choice does indeed have a large effect on the outcome of our lives. If one is who one is because of "nurture." Well, it was the parent's fault. It was the crappy neighborhood; it was the bad school they went to. They never had someone who would reach down and pull them out of the muck On the other hand, if it's "nature," it's inborn. You're born gay. That's who you are. You're born incomptetent. You're born stupid. You're born athletic. You're smart because of your genes. This too depreciates the role of individual choice in determining people's lives. Conservatives who believe in the importance of free will as opposed to a mechanistic mind should point out that both of these points of view depreciate free will and lead people to make excuses for their behavior and failures. 

Prager is dead wrong on insisting that Keith Ellison should swear on the Bible. The point is not to honor the Bible. The point is to take an oath that one takes seriously. If Ellison believes the Koran is holy and the Bible is not, I would insist that he swear on the book he believes to represent the word of God. This will increase the probability that he will take the oath seriously.

The key is to sell out Taiwan. We don't need to totally screw them, just pressure them to join China in the manner of Hong Cong. Taiwan is the biggest thorn in the side of Sino-American relations, and consequently, the key to winning China's support on Korea. We could trade support for annexation for support for regime change and nuclear abandonment in Korea. This would take the fizzle out of Terhan's plans for nukes as well. It's worth the trade.

So, concerning Marxism. I haven’t read that guy, but I’ve thought about his supposed theory that history naturally tends toward socialism. I think this is wrong. I suspect he saw the progress toward Democracy, and saw its conclusion. The logical conclusion of Democracy is, I believe, socialism. If we define democracy as a government where all citizens have one vote, and the majority vote determines policy there is an equalizing force moving all outliers toward the median. Those that have more wealth than the median will tend to have their wealth redistributed by the majority (and anyone above median will have more wealth than the majority). Those that have less wealth than the median (which are 50%) will tend to redistribute wealth in their favor.

 
There are only two ultimate checks on this: extragovernmental power, and ethics.

 
By extragovernmental power, I mean things like the power of violent force, and of money. By ethics I mean, of course, that those with the political power to redistribute wealth do not do so because they feel it is wrong.

 
But most people’s ideal of democracy is that it supersedes all extragovernmental power. Hence, the lament of the influence of money in politics. Whether they say it or not, most people have the ideal that money should not have an influence in politics. The same goes for violence or threat of violence. Thus, the ideal of democracy (and I’ve been referring to it as an ideal this whole time) leaves only one check on the tendency to socialism: ethics.

Did I already mention my theory that women tend to be made more Democratic by chivalry? This idea is based on the fact that much of human motivation, though not all, is in self-interest. That self interest causes people to be slightly biased toward those political systems that will favor them, or that they have been conditioned to believe will favor them. Chivalry is a form of collectivism whereby women benefit. This makes them more prone to be Democrats. By more, I don’t say we expect >50%. I merely mean they are more prone than men, and this is one of the reasons. Some may question my “collectivist” statement. I use this in a very broad sense whereby all forms of cooperation are on a continuum where the extreme is “collectivist.” All forms of compassion and help are collectivist in this sense. I suppose I could differentiate between altruistic “cooperation” and symbiotic “cooperation,” but as I have said that women are greater beneficiaries of such cooperation, it is obvious that I mean something in the middle (otherwise I’d say only beneficiaries, or equal beneficiaries.). In any case, all forms of cooperation loom larger in the Democratic mind, and I think “collectivism” isn’t such a bad word for that spectrum. So as I say, being the beneficiaries of such “cooperation” biases women more toward that system.

One of the best strategies that conservatives can take toward the UN is to just make fun of it. 

1. Make every aspect of our lives a government function.
2. Make it illegal to have religion in anything that is a government function.

I had previously argued that the Gaza pullout was one of the reasons that condemnation of the current Lebanon offensive was muted. I think a call to Rush Limbaugh illustrates my point:

"CALLER: Well, I think a lot of it was with how much we've been giving the Palestinians and pressuring Israel to subside to them and give them, you know, concessions, give them land, pull out, and as well as with Lebanon and Hezbollah. And just to see the reaction and that it's not made things better, it's actually made things worse by doing that.
RUSH: All right, so you've discovered or decided land for peace is a hoax?

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: It's not led to what it promised?

CALLER: Correct. "