Month: December 2014

Kasich’s good, real good.  He’s smooth, but not slippery, folksy but not phony, conservative but not rigid.  He could pull it off, because he’s also smart as hell.

I thought he was in Phoenix hoping to make it onto Fox that night.  He had other ideas, so went to the local Fox affiliate for an interview.  He had quite an entourage with him.  I only got a chance to talk to Merle Madrid, who’s rather low on the totem pole.  The Task Force is having a cc tomorrow with Merle and Tim Lynch, the press guy.  We’re going to try to work up a schedule for future events.  For some reason he’s hell bent on going to Boise.  Maybe there are some money people there.

At the private meting with eight or ten Arizona state legislators and a few others prior to the presser, he said he’s willing to do whatever it takes for a BBA, including making phone calls.  We’ll ask Merle to pass on our suggestion that he call Sen. Coburn and Demint at Heritage.  I’m fairly sure he was pretty tight with them when they were all fiscal hawks in the House in the 90’s.  Coburn has publicly said he’s going to campaign for a an Article V BBA when he leaves office in a few weeks.  We haven’t been able to tie him down, and we’re concerned he might have been taken in by the CoS guys.  We’ll ask Kasich to call him and see if the two of them can’t coordinate their efforts on our behalf.  Demint runs Heritage, and the only progress we’ve made with them is getting a respectful neutrality.  I think maybe there’s some Birch money behind Heritage.  Why else wouldn’t they join in?  Getting them as part of the Article V Coalition would be a big boost.  They have resources that we don’t.  (We haven’t got a nickel from the Koch Complex, because Daddy Koch was a big Bircher, and the boys don’t want him rolling in his grave.)

After the presser I had a lot of time before my flight, so I went out to try and find a cab to see if I could get out early.  I asked this guy if he knew where I could find one, and he said he was on his phone with Uber.  I asked him where he was going and he said the airport, and agreed to my request that I ride along.  His name was Greg, a finance guy from San Francisco.

We get in the car and it turns out he’s a buddy of Kasich, who flew down from the City to have dinner with him the night before.  I tell him who I am and he asks me about CoS.  I explain their call would allow any amendment which reduced the power and scope of the federal government, and that stripping the federal courts of jurisdiction in abortion cases would qualify.  Seeing as how he was from San Francisco, I figured that wouldn’t appeal to him.  Then he tells me he’s talked to Meckler, who told him most of our old Resos are defective, and wouldn’t be aggregated.  I’m thinking, Why the hell l would this guy talk to Meckler?  I then tell him about Natelson’s opinion, and who Natelson is, and the son of a bitch says he’s talked to Natelson!  WTF.  So we go on and have quite a conversation.

We split at the airport, and today I find out from Biddulph that this guy’s not only been a big time bundler for Romney, he was one of McCain’s main guys.  And that he’s not in this just for Kasich, but because he’s big on the BBA.

You never know what you’re going to run into in Phoenix.

I should be able to get a read on what Kasich really has in mind tomorrow. All indications are that he intends to ride the Article V BBA pony for the next couple months, at least. Politically, it makes absolutely perfect sense for him. He’s pissed off the NRA (they endorsed his D opponent in 2010), wants to see a pathway for citizenship for illegals, and has taken the Obamacare expansion in Ohio. None of this helps with the right
But if he can make the election about balancing the budget, he’s a natural. He’s got cred. And, really, that’s what the election should be about.
Hopefully I can spend some time with his aides, Tim Lynch and Merle Madrid. Maybe have lunch. I talked briefly with both of them today, and liked their attitude. I would feel comfortable talking about “Setting the Table” with them. I doubt they’ve thought it through, and if I can get them jacked up about it they’ll run it by Kasich.
It will be a fun day.

I’ll be in a 10:30 meeting with Kasich on Wednesday, representing the Task Force.  Probably Rep. Lori Klein, Sen. John Kavanagh, Farrell Quinlan of NFIB, Kasich, his staff, and me.  He’ll have a presser at noon, and fly back to Columbus.

In and out, bang bang.  Kasich had a show on Fox, and I’ll bet he has maintained good contacts there.  This whole thing is set up for him to get a couple minute’s coverage on Fox News Wednesday night.

Like I said, Kasich’s smart.  This whole thing is set up to make him look good.  And if he gets the play he wants, he’ll want to do it again, and again.

I’ll get his attention if I think of something that makes him look good.

I’ve got a couple of ideas.

https://reaganproject.wordpress.com/2013/12/29/presidential-stuff/      (a blast from the past)

Bill Fruth had a good meeting in Columbus with Kasich’s Chief of Staff.  All systems go.  My post of a few days ago, Setting the Table, may have sounded farfetched.  If it was then, it’s not now.  Getting to 34 next year could happen  — with all of the consequences which will naturally flow from it.  And that’s a lot of consequences.

Bill and Dave have been at this for five years.  They were visionaries.  Five years ago this scheme needed support from Democratic state legislators.  So it was a real long shot.   The wave of 2010 brought it within reach.  But it was still a stretch.  The wave of 2014 made it realistic.  Bill’s meeting in Columbus means it’s probably going to happen.  If not 2015, in 2016.

This isn’t the time to get into details.  A lot of things will be worked out in the next week.

I’ve been at this blog for a year.  It hasn’t been wasted.

Freedom took off in the world a few thousand years ago in Germany, when women took control over their own bodies.  Elsewhere in the world a woman’s body was the property of her father, who decided who she would marry, and thus who would control her.

Back in the mists of time young Heidi decided she’d had enough of that.  She wasn’t going to marry Siegfried  — he was ugly and he stank.  She wanted Hans, who was cute and nice.  When she got her way, it changed everything.  The family structure that evolved is called the Absolute Nuclear Family.  This family structure migrated north to Denmark, lower Scandinavia, Brittany, and England.  It was transplanted to America.  It died off in Germany.

A woman was free, and so was her family.  Once she married she was the responsibility of her husband.  Her family, and his, had no control over, and no obligation to, the new family.  They lived apart, and were expected to make their own way in the world.

Because women had been liberated, relatively speaking, and families were on their own, society as a whole became free.  You were on your own.  Everybody was on their own.  This is called Liberty.  It turned out that a free society is a productive, dynamic, and creative society.  First the Dutch, then the English, then the Americans have pioneered freedom around the world.

Because Islam is anti-feminist, it is also anti-freedom, and anti-modern.  It produces nothing, creates nothing.

The Islamic Jihad against the West is a war on women.