Why Duncan Hunter - Part 2

Why Duncan Hunter is the Man for POTUS, Part 2
Alexander J. Madison - March 3, 2010
The 2010 elections are right around the corner. Once again, I urge all conservatives to work tirelessly to nominate and elect candidates who will not only stop Obama’s socialist agenda, but who will also reverse course on the Republican ‘slow drift’ socialism it has embarked upon.
Though it seems too early to expend effort lobbying for the right 2012 Presidential candidates, one glance through the headlines will demonstrate that a gaggle of Republican politicians are already lining their coffers and elbowing for a place in the primary.
And we see another phenomena repeating, as predictable as the swallows returning to Capistrano: RINOs pretending to be conservatives when they are challenged in their primaries. Just the other day, we found out from John McCain that he was apparently bamboozled by former Treasury Secretary Paulson into supporting the “crap sandwich”, the rich-guy & foreign banker bailout known as TARP. Perhaps Hank, that old romantic, got down on bended knee and stroked McCain’s hand, much like he did to Speaker Pelosi. With pressure on his right flank from conservative stalwart JD Hayworth, Mr. McCain has resorted to ridiculous statements, unbelievable statements, to get the folks who are angry at Washington to re-elect His Maverickness. McCain isn’t the only one. His good pals in Florida and Texas, Charlie “bailout” Crist and Rick “vaccine” Perry, are suddenly claiming to be Reagan Republicans. Huh?
So what is the solution to this smoke and mirrors nonsense? The nonsense that has a lifelong liberal limp-wrist like Mitt Romney – who still believes that semi-automatic rifles with a bayonet mount are too scary for American citizens to possess, and that socialized medicine is desirable as long as his name is attached to it - being touted as the 2012 “frontrunner” by the same folks who sold us John McCain in 2008. The nonsense that has global warming alarmist, treehugger, and anti-smoke nazi Tim Pawlenty being feted as presidential timber. The nonsense of Newt Gingrich – who was leftwinger Dede Scozzafava’s biggest cheerleader - arrogantly thinking he can waltz into the nomination based on his schizophrenic ideas of his American Solutions racket. The nonsense that nanny-stater extraordinaire Mike Huckabee – who despite his apparent return to gobbling down Twinkies and fried gizzards is fawning over Michelle Obama’s new anti-fatso campaign – is remotely suitable for the task at hand. And the nonsense that McCain’s VP, Sarah Palin, by virtue of a pleasant personality and vague conservative credentials, is the only person who can beat back the pack of RINOs.
The Tea Party did not form based upon the Republicanism that these folks represent. The Tea Party was the direct reaction to these people, working hand in glove with the democrats, saddling America with debt, bureaucracy, nanny-statism, illegal aliens, and Political Correctness. Its genesis was a combination of Rick Santelli’s famous rant, the GOP and Democrats force feeding TARP to an angry public, the 2007 push for amnesty, and, more recently, the Obama Administration’s blatant attempts to consolidate government power and control. But these are just the straws that broke the camel’s back!
Real Americans do not want governors and bureaucrats telling them they can’t smoke here, or there, while taxing their tobacco and alcohol products sky high to further feed the nanny state. They do not want the government to spend one thin dime of their money telling them what and how the hell to eat. They loathe the notion of the government, be it state or federal, sticking their noses into healthcare - ObamaCare, RomneyCare, ArKids, Special Needs kids - it does not matter; unleash the free market then stay OUT of it, period.
Americans reject the entire notion of Amnesty, whether it is La Raza’s call for complete open borders or McCain’s and the GOP establishment’s “pathway to citizenship”. You sneak in, we catch you, goodbye!
Patriotic Americans overwhelmingly reject the whole notion of Algore’s phony, sovereignty usurping, wealth redistributing scheme called global warming. Yet, there the Republicans were in a 2008 primary debate, raising their hands like eager, brown-nosing schoolkids when the debate moderator asked who believed that “global warming was a serious problem”. And there was Governor Pawlenty on the sidelines telling the world to ignore those awful skeptics, and later VP candidate Palin telling us “we must do something about it.” When you have politicians vowing to fix the weather, you know that the shark has not only been jumped, but they used Evil Knievel’s rocket-bike to jump it.
And Political Correctness? If the current 2012 media-selected frontrunners became anymore politically correct, they could get jobs in the Chicago Public Schools as diversity coaches teaching tolerance and anti-bullying.
After Ann Coulter, one of the genuinely funny lights of unapologetic conservative punditry, cleverly skewered John “faggot” Edwards and Political Correctness in one brilliant sentence at the 2007 CPAC gathering, Romney, Rudy and McCain could not find microphones fast enough to reject her “insensitivity” and “divisiveness”. They also, however, proved her point. It was Pavlovian.
When presidential nominee John McCain was presented with glaring opportunities to take Barack Obama to the woodshed for his radicalism, he instead wilted like a PC wallflower. McCain actually said, regarding Obama’s 20 year relationship with anti-Semitic, anti-American preacher Jeremiah Wright: “Look, I do know Senator Obama and he does not share those (Wright’s) views.” Why on earth would he say such a thing?? (Hint: Obama’s half black).
After all the hard work that conservative journalists, bloggers, and talk radio did to illuminate Obama’s radical Marxist, anti-capitalist history, McCain responded by saying “He is a decent person, and a person that you do not have be scared of as President of the United States.”!!! Top that off with his pandering to the Hispanic community by promoting amnesty – stupidly thinking that most Hispanic-Americans want our laws violated – and you get the picture. He has no problem sliming his current 2010 primary opponent, a conservative, as if he were a menace to the Republic, but treat a black liberation theology radical as the anti-American he is? Never!
The problem is this: The other guys who are gearing up for a 2012 are as bad or worse. Either they are as politically correct as McCain, share his views on amnesty and global warming, and/or they have liberal streaks a mile wide in their records as politicians. This goes for T-Paw, Newt, Mitt, Huck as well as the ‘Charlie Crist in cowboy boots’ who just won re-election in Texas. Not a Reaganite amongst them.
Sarah Palin is a special case. With two years as Alaska’s governor under her belt before being plucked onto the national ticket by McCain, she has not had a chance to fully demonstrate what she believes. She may be supporting RINO McCain’s re-election out of a sense of duty, but she sure gushes on about him every time someone brings him up; including last night on Jay Leno’s program. And she may have been following the ‘company line’ during the 2008 campaign – despite her repeated statement that she was never asked “to check her views at the door” - but that just means she needs to enlighten us now with her ‘real’ thinking on critical issues such government bailouts, amnesty, and global warming, which she flunked miserably during the campaign.
The solution is Duncan Hunter. Hunter was non-committal about his future plans in politics when interviewed last March. He did specifically say he was not “closing any doors”. But since then, he has mostly focused on getting a batch of rock ribbed conservative candidates – mostly Iraq and Afghanistan veterans – to run in congressional seats in districts currently held by democrats for the 2010 elections. Hunter understands that America is in grave peril, and that more CONSERVATIVES in congress is the only way to stop the bleeding.
The guys that Hunter is busy campaigning for include ‘Gunny Pop’ Nick Popaditch (http://www.popaditchforcongress.com/) in California, Jesse Kelly (http://www.votejessekelly.com/) in Tucson, Arizona, and Vaughn Ward (http://www.vaughnward.com/home) up in Idaho. Look at the platforms of these three warriors and you will see they all stand for slashing (not slowing) the federal government, stopping the illegal alien invasion, genuine job spurring tax cuts, and a stronger military – just like the man who helped recruit them. Hunter also has several other candidates he will be helping as well.
But once these and other conservatives are elected and we take back at least one house in the Congress (if not both), the party MUST select the right man at the right time to lead us in 2012. As Hunter succinctly stated, “I think a party is largely defined by it's president.” That was true during Nixon’s time, Reagan’s time, as well as during GWB’s tenure. So the choice is clear. We can select a presidential nominee who is a slick political animal without clear constitutional convictions similar to Nixon, a “big government” social ‘conservative’ like Bush turned out to be, or a principled constitutionalist and genuine Reaganite – like Duncan Hunter.
With Hunter, we will not get answers that cater to the crowd he happens to be speaking to. So there will be no democratic advertisements that can skewer him as a liar or a flip flopper. Hunter gives the exact same message on building the border fence and deporting illegal aliens to Hispanics as he does to every other group of Americans. And it just so happened that he received tremendous Hispanic support throughout his 28 years in Congress. Hard to imagine, but these Americans of Hispanic descent do not like being bullshitted anymore than other folks do. Maybe they appreciated the 90% drop in crime and border smuggling once the ‘Hunter Fence’ was erected in their communities; the same ‘Hunter Fence’ that was called “ridiculous” and “nonsense” by Rick Perry – doing his best Janet Napolitano impression.
And just as Hunter refrained from jumping on the politically correct, politically popular, anti-tobacco legislation bandwagon that Republicans and Democrats alike were championing not so long ago, so too will he veto any misguided future nanny-state garbage, such as John McCain’s idiotic attempt to put nutritional supplements under FDA control, Huckabee’s anti-fat crusade, Romney’s leftwing ‘gay tolerance’ infestation in America’s schoolrooms, Palin’s welfare spending on “special needs” kids, or Newt’s inexplicable ‘bi-partisan’ – with Nancy Pelosi on the couch no less – “we agree our country must take action to address climate change” nonsense.
When the going gets tough, we won’t find Hunter ducking for cover and parroting liberal talking points to get better media coverage. No squawking on about stopping fictional “torture” a la McCain, or repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell like the Flipper Romney, or pimping for automobile “mileage taxes” to curb those mysterious green house gasses like T-Paw, or offering up tuition breaks for illegal aliens like the Amnesty Princess in Texas.
What you will find with Duncan Hunter is a hard nosed realism based on sound conservative and traditional American principles.
The hard nosed realism that says the federal government must be REDUCED in size and scope if we are to continue to exist as the country handed to us by our founders. Everything is on the table, including across the board, non-defense spending CUTS, the elimination of entire departments like Education, Arts, Energy, and Interior, and gutting the scope of the regulatory agencies such as the EPA, OSHA, and the FDA. Hunter is one of the very few men in congress to propose such genuine, “radical” reductions over his career.
The realism that says the tax system is in drastic need of an overhaul. As an original sponsor of the FairTax, Hunter wants to eliminate the IRS, by and large, and the billions it costs each year to run that bloated bureaucracy. He also is the only one to propose eliminating all taxes on US manufacturers, which would go a long, long way to restoring America’s high paying industrial jobs, and becoming competitive once again in the manufacturing sector.
The realism that says that enemies are to be treated as enemies, adversaries as adversaries, and allies as allies. Hunter’s no holds barred attitude towards Iran, and Islamic jihadists in general, will have Ahmadinejad handing over his nukes immediately. When Hunter declared in the debates and interviews that he has every intention of taking them out if they are not surrendered, he actually means it. Iran knows it too.
Hunter is also one of the few anti-communists left from the Reagan Revolution and he has always treated and will continue to treat Red China as an adversary, not a “partner” (do you hear that Mitt?). Hunter vows to bring our trade with China back into balance, and prohibit any more American “dual use” technology from leaving our shores for theirs. He will harshly punish their continued malfeasance on software and intellectual piracy, devaluation of currency and dumping. And they know it. And unlike the other guys, Hunter will command the respect and solidarity with our traditional allies – as well as our newer allies in the former Soviet Bloc – by doing exactly what he says he will do without hidden agendas or triangulating to please Arab, Russian, or Chicom sensibilities. And the fact that Hunter will restore defense spending to Reagan era levels, as a percent of GDP, means no nation on the planet will contemplate the term “paper tiger” in relationship with the USA. Hunter’s vow to put America ahead to stay in space based weapons, Naval power, missile defenses, fighter and bomber capabilities, and defense technology will not be an unfulfilled campaign pledge.
Hunter’s American principles say we live in a country founded on certain ideals, ideals that were codified in our Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and that we cannot have a federal government that does not abide by the constraints of that Constitution. Hunter – a critic of McCain Feingold – is a champion of the 1st Amendment, stalwart on the 2nd and 10th Amendments, a ferocious defender of property rights, and a champion of US Sovereignty. He does not abide by the notion that supra-national or international entities can trump the God given sovereignty of the American people – whether it’s the UN, the WTO, the World Bank or any other boondoggle organization.
As for the poison of political correctness, Hunter’s record speaks for itself. Last year, when the Senate Armed Services Committee released its “bipartisan” report on ‘war crimes’ in the Iraq and Afghan theatres, implicating Don Rumsfeld and other officials, most Republicans went into hiding and avoided talking about it. Hunter went on national television and called it “leftwing rubbish”. When McCain and his sidekick Lindsey Graham joined the democrats in calling for Gitmo to be shuttered due to reports of “abuse”, Hunter went on to CSPAN and not only defended the facility and the soldiers who ran it, but even showed off the delicious meals and prayer rugs these dirtbags were being given. When the GOP was beginning to fold like a house of cards on global warming, Hunter was right there along with Jim Inhofe to callout Algore’s phony “alarmism”– long before the recent revelations that the global warming science wasn’t science at all. Now that it’s safe to deride the Algorian fantasy, Pawlenty, Huckabee, and Romney have emerged as critics. Imagine that.
Hunter has never budged from his position that illegal aliens must not only be prevented from entering the country, but that they all must be deported; the exact opposite of the “pathway to citizenship” crap being pushed by Democrats and Republicans alike.
When the Democrat party, the media, President Bush, the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Department, and the entire GOP leadership signed on to the TARP bailout as absolutely critical to the well being of the nation, Hunter did not just say no, he said “hell no”, and offered up a free market alternative that was utterly ignored by his own party bosses. Now we know that TARP was not only unnecessary, but was the beginning of a massive campaign of government interference in the free market, just as Hunter predicted.
When General Peter Pace was taking media and democratic fire for his beliefs that open homosexuality was incompatible with military service, George Bush and Robert Gates decided to not re-nominate the warrior for his Joint Chief’s position. Hunter, on the other hand, published a scathing piece in USA Today defending not only Peter Pace, but calling the whole idea a leftwing “social experiment” that had no place in our fighting forces.
When Romney, Guiliani, and McCain were talking up their “ability” to work in a bipartisan fashion, Hunter labeled them as members of “the Kennedy Wing of the Republican Party”; a label that remains to this day. And when Wolf Blitzer asked Hunter if “reaching across the aisle” as demonstrated by the moderate and popular (at the time) governor Schwarzenegger was the future of the GOP, Hunter’s unhesitatingly fast answer was an emphatic “NO!”
And though the entire GOP establishment has rushed out to Arizona to re-elect John McCain to his Senate seat, Hunter declined to endorse him – despite a 30 year friendship with the man.
In closing, there are those who will say that Hunter had his chance, and couldn’t even get to the front tier of candidates in 2008. But is America the same country that voted for Mr. Obama in 2008? Are Americans in the mood to tolerate another “centrist” republican like McCain who could barely articulate the differences between conservative and liberal; who was afraid to label Obama for what he truly is? Are conservative Americans ready to be fed a stream of lies and flip flops again and put their faith in a politician whose tough talking, newly discovered rhetoric does not match his squishy record in office? Are we going to let the media dictate who should be frontrunners once more and who needs to be ignored?
I contend that America is experiencing a conservative re-awakening; a yearning for the years when the sure hand of Ronald Wilson Reagan was steering the ship. And this time, in 2012, the phonies and pretenders, those who helped run the ship off its proper and constitutional course, will be upended by a Reaganite. And that is the way it must be if we are to save this sacred Republic.