Michael Johns

Mandela and the African National Congress: My 1990 forewarning

2025-07-19T18:19:00.016-04:00

For the 15th consecutive year yesterday, the United Nations deemed July 18 as "

" in honor of Nelson Mandela, the South African opposition leader who went on to serve as the country's first president in 1994 following the end of apartheid, the system of racial segregation instituted in 1948 by the country's

National Party

But how much does the world know about the real Mandela? In my experience, very little. Reason: Most unflattering facts regarding Mandela have been whitewashed by those who have sought to elevate him as a pristine example of all that is good and righteous.

Mandela's varnished image vs. reality

On February 9, 1990, as part of its process of bringing an incremental end to apartheid, South Africa's government

released Mandela

, who was serving a sentence of life in prison for sabotage and conspiracy to overthrow the government.

Mandela's guilt was not in question. He willingly and even boastfully admitted his role in co-founding and leading

uMkhonto weSizwe

, a terrorist paramilitary organization affiliated with the

African National Congress

(ANC), which was engaged in ruthless and bloody militant attacks against both government and civilian targets.

By this time, I had visited South Africa multiple times and met once or more with many of the nation's leading political figures. I was an opponent of apartheid. Unlike many leading Western voices against apartheid at the time, however, I also warned that the challenges confronting South Africa were being dangerously oversimplified in the West.

Two examples I often cited were:

First, Mandela and the ANC were inaccurately depicted as representing all South African blacks.

Second, the ideological and violent inclinations of the ANC and its paramilitary wing, both closely aligned with the South African Communist Party (SACP), were being routinely minimized or dismissed entirely by many in the West.

I met with a range of South African opposition political leaders in South Africa and listened as they described their varying aspirations for a post-apartheid South Africa; many privately expressed grave concerns about Mandela's ideology and tactics. And those who expressed these concerns often feared retribution for even raising them.

On one visit, I walked many of the dirt streets of

Soweto

, a prominent apartheid-era township where Mandela and the ANC maintained strong political support; a

deadly student-led rebellion

in Soweto in 1976 is often cited as both inspiring but also radicalizing the anti-apartheid cause. Mandela lived there from 1946 until 1962. But even in Soweto, it was not terribly difficult to find South African blacks who viewed Mandela with varying degrees of skepticism.

Buthelezi and the Inkatha Freedom Party

With Zulu prime minister and Inkatha Freedom Party founding president Mangosuthu Buthelezi, Washington, D.C., June 19, 1991

In several visits to

KwaZulu-Natal province

on South Africa's southeastern coast, I also met with

Mangosuthu Buthelezi

and members of his

Inkatha Freedom Party

who opposed both apartheid and the ANC's communist vision for the nation. Buthelezi went on to become South Africa's first post-apartheid Minister of Home Affairs, serving for a decade from 1994 to 2004 under Mandela and then his successor, Thabo Mbeki.

On one visit, as apartheid was quickly unraveling, I invited Buthelezi to address the

Heritage Foundation

, where I was then the policy expert on Africa and Third World affairs. He accepted. On June 19, 1991, Buthelezi arrived under heavy security, and went on to deliver a

nationally-televised address

, speaking for over an hour. For those with even a casual interest in world affairs, the vision Buthelezi expressed that day remains insightful, relevant, and worth watching.

But the U.S. and most of the West continued to wrongly depict Mandela as a singular point of resistance to apartheid. A few months after his release from prison, the U.S. Congress invited Mandela to address a Joint Session of Congress on June 26, 1990.

A week and a half prior to his address, I authored a Heritage Foundation policy paper, "

For Mandela's Visit, Some Words of Caution

," warning that the totalitarian, communist, and violent inclinations of Mandela and the ANC were both underrecognized and troubling.

Mandela's legacy is not nearly as immaculate as his proponents would have us believe. Mandela embraced communism and terrorism. And he did so fairly unapologetically for a simple reason: Mandela was a communist and he was a terrorist.

We can recognize Mandela for what he opposed. But the totalitarian ideology and tactics he embraced should also be recognized. These facts matter, offering us a more nuanced but truthful depiction of Mandela's mixed legacy and perhaps some insight into the steep challenges confronting South Africa following over three decades of five consecutive ANC-affiliated presidents (Mandela, Mbeki,

Kgalema Motlanthe

Jacob Zuma

, and now

Cyril Ramaphosa

South Africa's squandered potential

The end of apartheid could have opened a bright era for South Africans. It is a beautiful nation filled with potential. In 2025, however, Mandela's native South Africa is no role model for governance. Its government is notoriously corrupt; bribery and misuse of public resources are routine. Nearly a third of its workforce is unemployed; among its youth age 25 to 34, the unemployment rate is even higher (39 percent).

The government's human rights record is poor. Summarizing these conditions a couple years ago, the U.S. Department of State

cited

"....unlawful or arbitrary killings; torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by the government; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest or detention; serious government corruption; extensive gender-based violence, including domestic or intimate partner abuse, sexual violence, child, early, and forced marriage, and femicide; crimes involving violence or threats of violence targeting members of national groups, specifically foreigners; trafficking in persons, including forced labor...."

The country's infrastructure is unreliable; power outages and water shortages are common. With high levels of murder, robbery, and carjacking, the country has also become increasingly dangerous. And in its foreign relations, it has aligned itself with the world's most totalitarian governments, including China's Communist Party.

What follows is the warning I authored about Mandela and the ANC, published June 14, 1990, which has proven sadly prophetic and perhaps even understated:

"For Mandela's Visit, Some Words of Caution"

The arrival in the United States next week of African National Congress (ANC) leader Nelson Mandela comes at a critical stage in South Africa's internal political evolution and U.S.-South African relations.

South African President F.W. de Klerk has set out on a daring new political path with great promise for his embattled nation. He has renounced his country's longstanding policy of racial segregation, called apartheid, and taken steps toward creating an economic, political, and legal structure in which South Africa's black majority enjoys full rights and participation.

Though unthinkable only five years ago, South Africa's apartheid system - like communism - now appears headed for the dustbin of history.

As Washington celebrates the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and Nicaragua, so too should it celebrate apartheid's demise. South Africa is the economic and political engine that drives southern Africa - a region of both strategic and economic importance to the U.S.

A democratic South Africa could set in motion a series of democratic changes in the region, which would likely spur regional economic growth and improvements in human rights. With apartheid behind it, South Africa itself is likely to move forward to a bright future of peace, freedom, and prosperity, so long as apartheid is replaced with a system that guarantees the fundamental rights of all South Africans.

It is appropriate that one of apartheid's most heralded resistance figures, Nelson Mandela, will be welcomed to the U.S. next week. Mandela will meet with George Bush on Monday. He will address a joint meeting of Congress the following day, joining the ranks of Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, Douglas MacArthur, and more recently Vaclav Havel and Lech Walesa.

Americans nevertheless have reasons to be skeptical of Mandela.

First, Nelson Mandela is not a freedom fighter. He repeatedly has supported terrorism. Since Mandela's release from prison and his subsequent refusal to renounce violence, the Marxist-dominated ANC has launched terrorism and violence against civilians, claiming several hundred lives.

Further, the ANC, in which Mandela serves as Deputy President, has tortured and executed its own members when they have refused to tow the party line, a fact Mandela conceded in a press conference on April 14. ANC dissidents who escaped to Kenya in April contend that at least 120 political prisoners are being detained and tortured in ANC camps in Angola and Uganda. Because of its support for violence against civilians, Mandela's ANC appropriately was labeled a "terrorist" organization last January in the U.S. Defense Department's Terrorist Group Profiles.

Second, though Mandela has spoken out against apartheid, he is not likely to support economic and political freedom if he or the ANC takes power in South Africa. At the very moment communism was collapsing in Eastern Europe, Mandela praised the South African Communist Party in his first speech following his release from prison. Mandela said in Cape Town on February 11: "We are heartened by the fact that the alliance between ourselves and the [communist] party remains as strong as it always was."

Mandela also continues to propose the nationalization of South African industry, even though this failed policy has been rejected not only throughout Europe, Latin America, and Asia, but increasingly in Africa.

Third, Mandela continues to embrace such pariah nations as Angola, Cuba, and Libya, raising significant questions about the foreign policy alliances the ANC might seek should it take power in South Africa. Mandela thanked Muammar Qadhafi this May 18 in Tripoli for his "readiness to provide [the ANC] with facilities" and praised Qadhafi's "fight for peace and human rights in the world."

Also in May, Mandela lauded Angola's Marxist dictator Jose Eduardo dos Santos, saying "we hope that one day we will be as free as you." Remarkably, Mandela recently hailed Marxist Cuba for its "love of human rights and liberty."

Finally, though Mandela often was considered the world's most famous political prisoner, leading human rights groups such as Amnesty International never recognized him as such because of his personal involvement in violent activities.

Mandela was not jailed because of his political viewpoints. Rather, he was imprisoned in 1962 for possessing explosive devises, which were used in sabotage attacks inside South Africa, and for inciting violence. Mandela's violent actions would have resulted in imprisonment in virtually any country of the world.

In his bid to develop a democratic South Africa, President de Klerk faces the extraordinary challenge of developing democratic institutions where none traditionally have existed. De Klerk has made remarkable steps in this direction already, lifting South Africa's state of emergency, reforming the state security system, abolishing hospital and other forms of segregation, releasing political prisoners, and rescinding the prohibition on the ANC, the South African Communist Party, and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), a black consciousness movement.

De Klerk has also offered to begin talks with South Africa's black majority to reach a democratic settlement. Without de Klerk's bold leadership, the prospects for an end to apartheid would be much dimmer.

Like de Klerk, Nelson Mandela is a dynamic and important figure in South African politics. His three decades of perseverance against South Africa's apartheid system can inspire all who battle authoritarianism - in Africa and beyond. Though he has advocated terrorism and probably is no champion of liberal democracy, Mandela was a bold and determined voice against apartheid when South Africa's black majority needed such a voice. In embracing the anti-apartheid struggle, however, Americans must be increasingly careful about whom they choose to support in South Africa.

When there was little hope for change in South Africa's apartheid system, it was understandable that many Americans would sympathize with the ANC, which was relentless in its opposition to this system. But now that apartheid is nearing its end, the challenge has become more complicated. In forming its South Africa policy, Washington must now decide what sort of political system it wants in South Africa.

Partly because of its terrorism and alliance with South Africa's Communist Party, not all South African blacks support the ANC, and many have sought political alternatives. Foremost among these is the Zulu-dominated Inkatha movement, led by Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, which represents some 1.5 million black South Africans.

Because of his role as a leader in the fight against oppression in South Africa, Nelson Mandela should be welcomed to this country. But the man who hails Fidel Castro, Muammar Qadhafi and South Africa's Communist Party, and who continues to advocate the use of violence against civilians for political purposes, is no friend of peace or liberty.

The global collapse of communism shows that the world is leaving Nelson Mandela's ideas behind. Americans should praise Mandela for his lifelong role in opposing apartheid, but they should not think that he alone holds the keys to a democratic South Africa.

How America Falls

2025-05-06T00:00:00.217-04:00

By Michael Johns

A year ago, on May 8, 2024, I authored an X thread, "How America falls," which addressed a question many in the United States and the West were then—and still are—properly asking:

How was it possible for the far-left to seize control of nearly institution at the core of civil society?

It remains an important question.

It is equally important, as we proceed with attempting to reverse these losses, that we answer it with great accuracy and specificity for the following reason: In answering this important question, we can begin to address the deficiencies that—let's be honest about it—came dangerously close to collapsing the nation and the West at large.

A year later, of course, the state of affairs looks more promising. The basis for optimism is almost entirely attributable to Donald Trump's resilience and persistence throughout the 2024 presidential election cycle, which culminated with his electrifying November 5 victory, in which he won the Electoral College convincingly, 312 to 226, and was the first Republican presidential candidate in two decades to win the popular vote, securing over 77 million votes, over 2 million more than Kamala Harris.

Call this a mandate—and we must act with urgency on it.

But imagine the state of the world and nation had Trump, for whatever reason (lawfare, voter fraud, or simple electoral defeat), fallen short.

Now is an ideal time for us to perform a thorough assessment of how the ascent of the far-left nearly captured this nation and could again if we are not taking responsive and corrective steps in response to the significant losses of the past few decades.

What follows, with a few edits, is what I wrote a year ago about this:

Unlike conservatism, Marxism and Maoism are totalitarian ideologies that place significant emphasis on operational tactics, which is necessary because they rely on a small but highly disciplined minority to impose their alien agenda on a vastly larger majority that they intuitively know rejects it. We must concede the obvious: They have enjoyed great success in doing just this.

Seldom noted, however, is this fact:

As they have gone about successfully advancing their alien ideology, the far-left has been simultaneously assessing and testing the resolve of the vastly larger centrist and conservative majority they oppose—and the political party, the GOP, and organizations that purport to represent this larger majority.

So, for instance, the far-left has asked:

1. What would the Republican and conservative establishment do if we actually manipulated a presidential election and installed an illegitimate president in their great nation?

Answer: As they saw, not much. In fact, the Republican National Committee and its affiliates, s affiliates, which had the most resources to assess and document fraud and irregularities in the 2020 presidential election, has still not affirmed Biden's illegitimacy, despite the fact that a sizable majority of registered Republicans have acknowledged it. Nor have the lion's share of large conservative institutions or most conservative media documented or acknowledged this fact. It is unsettling, but it is a reality we largely allowed.

2. What would the Republican and conservative establishment do if we fully opened the borders to their great nation and began using every governmental and global resource available to import millions of illegal aliens, including foreign agents, terrorists, cartel leaders, and violent criminals?

Answer: As they saw, not much. Sure, the GOP and conservative organizations used it as a successful fundraising mechanism. Sure, they narrated and commented on its outrageousness. But no coherent plan emerged to stop it. It is unsettling, but it is a reality we largely allowed.

3. What would the Republican and conservative establishment do if we handed Afghanistan, where over 2,400 American heroes were killed over the 20-year post-9/11 war on terrorism, right back to the terrorist Taliban and abruptly departed, not even notifying allied Afghan colleagues at Bagram Airfield, who woke up the next day unaware that we departed in the dark of night

Answer: As they saw, nothing. It is unsettling, but it is a reality we largely allowed.

These are just three examples on the lengthy list of conservative and centrist inaction. The point is this: At every step, the far-left has not just succeeded; they have succeeded with relative ease, which is immensely dangerous for two reasons:

First, obviously, they have made enormous, impressive, and expeditious progress in advancing their ambitious and alien agenda.

But second and less noted, the ease with which they secured these victories has left them understandably highly brazen, emboldened, optimistic, energized, and inspired to persist in their grand quest: Taking down the freest, wealthiest, and most powerful nation in world history.

How an ideological minority prevails

How is it possible for such a small number of hardened ideologues with the most alien and unappealing ideals to succeed in imposing their will on the vast majority of Americans who clearly oppose them?

It is not attributable to the far-left's size or even the appeal of its ideas. Rather, it is because they have assembled and embraced operational discipline and basic leadership traits, including collaboration, strategic planning, unity, unyielding focus, boldness, relentless diligence, and accountability for results. The conservative and centrist movements, conversely, have not.

A history of common denominators

In their most graphic forms, history is filled examples of how the far-left has secured power over larger centrist and conservative majorities in their respective nations. It all began with the October Revolution of 1917. It continued with the Chinese Communist Revolution in 1949, the communist revolution in Cuba in 1959, the communist Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua in 1979, and similar totalitarian communist power grabs.

Importantly, there are several common denominators to each of these, and they may appear familiar to those who have watched the ascent of the far-left in the West in recent years:

Each revolutionary force promised the people a better life and represented that they spoke for the downtrodden. Once they obtained power, however, these promises were quickly abandoned, and the plight of the poor universally worsened under their governance;

Each sought to persuade citizens to distance themselves from tradition and even feel guilt over such traditions. They viewed the traditional family, traditional churches, traditional education, and other traditional institutions as enemies, and they sought to quickly eradicate or replace them with revolutionary substitutes;

Each obtained power through deception. They concealed their communist, militant, and extremist ideological inclinations, and disavowed such labels until they ultimately became apparent once they assumed power; and

Once assuming power, each sought to monopolize power at all levels of society, outlawing, eliminating, or taking control of all aspects of society, including churches, media, non-profit organizations, education, private enterprise, and other institutions that typically operate outside of government control.

Chronicling America's demise is not leadership

Conversely, over the past few decades, especially in the post-Reagan era, our nation's conservative movement and Republican establishment, have been engaged in almost uniformly performative and reactive undertakings, largely chronicling America's demise--writing books, hosting television shows and podcasts, giving lectures, and the like in which they largely document our defeats.

While it has brought a good number of conservatives some degree of wealth and fame, it never represented a serious macro-level plan for halting the advance of this smaller but vastly better disciplined radical movement, and they have swiftly seized control of nearly institution at the core of civil society in the West over the past few decades.

Chronicling America's demise, of course, is not leadership, and it has predictably failed, placing this nation's very survival in grave jeopardy. There is nothing humorous about it. There is nothing entertaining about it. The Republican and conservative establishment in its current form has been on a decade-plus streak of major defeats, often by default, and has largely proven ill-prepared for battles of great magnitude. For whatever reason, they have largely proven incapable or unwilling of rising to this moment. The far-left observed this quickly, and were inspired by it.

Time for assessment and overhaul

One conclusion should be obvious to all: We cannot go forward with the same tactics and leadership deficiencies and expect a different outcome. We are now at a historical crossroads that demands a sustainable conservative and centrist movement that is not designed to narrate our nation's demise, but is accountable for and focused on its comeback. And none of us can accomplish this grand undertaking in isolation. It must be a collaborative undertaking. We also must keep score and hold those responsible to account for incremental and overall outcomes, which to date we have failed to do.

The past few decades have proven that populist movements, including the Tea Party and MAGA movements, can successfully alter the nation's political direction, but these successes need to be institutionalized.

We also should reject the notion that there is anything particularly new about the magnitude of this undertaking. In fact, from the first bullets at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, one common theme of the nation's history has been the great challenges and threats we have confronted. The nation's survival is now on the line, but this has been the case many times before. It is a testament to American greatness that, in their respective eras, each generation before ours has united to successfully ensure the preservation of American freedom and sovereignty.

This generation cannot shrink from this challenge. Saving the nation at this point is an undertaking that should not be underestimated; it is going to be a difficult and complex. But reclaiming it once it once it is gone will prove vastly more so.

The Roar of the Forgotten Man and Woman: Why Trump Prevailed--and Deserved To

2017-02-17T14:18:00.007-05:00

By Michael Johns

On February 14, 2017, I spoke to the Cornell Political Union at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, on the promise of Donald Trump’s presidency. My lecture, "Trumpism Can Make America Great Again," follows:

Last time I was here was over a year ago when my son Michael was looking at Cornell. He loves this school and this organization—and anything he loves, I do too. So thanks to all of you for the work you do, the discussion you facilitate, and the important contribution you make to this great institution. Cornell is one of the world’s premier universities, and your intellectual curiosity and search for answers to our world's and nation’s problems are a big contribution to that greatness.

On the drive up here tonight, I happened to see how this university describes itself on its Twitter feed. It’s a great description: "Teaching tomorrow’s thought leaders to think otherwise and create knowledge with a public purpose." Tonight I’m going to do exactly that: I’m going to try to get you to think a little differently—to see what nearly 63 million Americans saw when they voted for Trump, and we’ll do all of this with the spirit that we’ll use this knowledge to serve the higher public purpose of enhancing the greatness of our nation, which requires that each subsequent American generation live up to their obligation of defending and continually improving our nation for all Americans.

------------------------------------------------------

We have just undergone the closest thing to a revolution in American politics as one can have in our constitutional republic, and tonight I will attempt to explain it objectively. I will speak tonight not to the few of you here who may already support Trump, nor those of you who consider yourselves conservatives or Republicans, but to the vast majority here tonight that I’m sure do not. These are the facts and sentiments that led to an electoral outcome you no doubt did not want and did not predict—but I’m convinced need to understand.

I come tonight not to defend Trumpism, even though you will find no more passionate advocate for it. Literally since his announcement on June 16, 2015, I defended him consistently on television, radio and in many forums in the United States and around the world—and I sought to defend or at least explain him to those who, sadly, were not prone to hear or process his important message.

So I come to Cornell tonight not to defend Trumpism but to explain it.

For eight years and maybe longer—the totality of your adult lives in fact, this nation was headed in a decidedly left of center and globalist direction. Under this recent administration, we saw the problems of other countries as inherently ones we were obligated to solve. In many cases, we even wrongly blamed ourselves for these problems. We entered into trade agreements that worked well for other nations but failed the American worker. We opened our nation to legal and illegal immigrants—and bent over backwards to accommodate their needs, desires and cultures but never considered the impact we were having on our citizens.

This created what Trump correctly labeled in his Republican Convention acceptance speech "the forgotten man and woman"—the working American whose economic plight worsened on the watch of Obama and whose country became less identifiable to him and her. And this past November 8, the "forgotten man and woman" had seen enough—and their voice was heard loudly.

What inspired all this passion in these forgotten men and women?

Let me deal tonight with facts:

Employment: All of you have probably heard and followed the employment trends announced each month and quarter by the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. You heard, for instance, that unemployment under Obama seemed to be stagnant, or even reduced. And it was always reported in single digits. In the final month of Obama’s presidency—December 2016—it was reportedly 4.9 percent, which seems not unreasonable.

But these numbers excluded the biggest story of American unemployment—the long-term unemployed and those who’d simply given up looking for work. While the short-term unemployment came down, it was only because many of those short-term unemployed Americans moved into the long-term category and ceased being reported in the primary BLS monthly survey number, which is really just a poll subject to all the inaccuracies one might see in any poll.

The employment reality in the country is actually much worse than reported. In fact, there has really been essentially zero job creation for native American citizens since 2000. The total number of Americans holding a job increased 5.7 percent from 2000 to 2014. But if you back out jobs taken by legal and illegal immigrants, the number of Americans holding jobs actually decreased 17 million between 2000 and 2014. When the longer-term unemployed are included, the number of jobless Americans is not 4.9 percent. It’s at least almost twice that—9.5 percent, and some believe considerably higher than even that.

Seldom reported in these routine "official" employment statistics was the fact that, under Obama, the number of Americans not in the labor force kept creeping upward. In December 2016, this number of Americans not in the labor force reached an all-time high: 95,102,000. That's nearly thirty percent of our entire nation. On Obama’s watch, it’s a fact that a bad employment situation got even worse and that the "forgotten man and woman" has been hurt and is hurting.

Economic growth: We first began formally recording the most important economic growth metric—gross domestic product growth—in the early 1930s. In the time since, every President until Obama had at least one year under their leadership where the country’s GDP grew by at least three percent. But in the eight years under his management, Obama was the first president since GDP was first recorded to not muster even one year of three percent growth or higher. On economic growth, as with jobs, Washington has been failing the "forgotten man and woman."

Debt: On Obama’s watch, our national debt doubled from $10 trillion to $20 trillion. This incremental, additional $10 trillion in debt that Obama added literally exceeds the cumulative debt total of every U.S. President from Washington through George W. Bush. In his 2008 presidential campaign, Obama famously said that George W. Bush’s contribution to the public debt was literally "unpatriotic" in his words. But Obama then went on to double it—all without ever retracting his "unpatriotic" comment about Bush or questioning his own patriotism.

Taxes: Under Obama, our corporate tax rate was—and still is--the highest in the developed world, which has made the U.S. an increasingly uncompetitive location to do business—and it showed as company after company left during his and previous administrations. And despite Obama’s campaign promise that he would only raise taxes on the rich, he increased them substantially on working Americans too, including with taxes associated with Obamacare and the penalty for non-enrollment. In fact, despite his campaign pledge, Obama increased over 20 different taxes that specifically penalized and harmed the poor and working class American. On taxes too, the "forgotten man and woman" was both betrayed and forgotten.

Poverty: Obama ran for election in 2008 promising to lift up the nation’s poor, and that’s a goal we conservatives share too. It was a centerpiece of his campaign. Yet here too, he failed by every significant metric. The nation’s poverty rate was higher on Obama’s departure than it was upon his arrival, increasing roughly 3.5 percent on his watch. Real household income decreased 2.3 percent during his presidency. And under Obama, Americans’ dependence on food stamps rose considerably—to an all-time high of 47 million Americans, or 13 million more than before Obama took office. Great lip service was paid to addressing poverty, but here too the "forgotten man and woman" and the country's poor were left worse off.

Regulatory costs: Obama's regulations were no friend to the "forgotten man and woman" either. He imposed over 20,000 new regulations on the American economy—many of them offering negligible value and all of them weighing heavily on working Americans, whose employers were forced to absorb over an astounding $700 billion in costs associated with these regulations, which harmed employment, harmed wages, made America less competitve, and ultimately harmed the “forgotten man and woman” considerably.

Home ownership: Home ownership admittedly might be exaggerated as an indicator of a nation’s economic healthiness but it’s certainly a metric that most want to see increasing. But like just about every other indicator under Obama, it moved in the wrong direction on Obama’s watch, falling 5.6 percent during his eight years in the White House.

Wages: One of the most important metrics to the "forgotten man and woman," wages did not come even close to keeping pace with inflation under Obama, especially in such important sectors such as housing, food, and tuition. In fact, for roughly 35 years, as we ignored the "forgotten man and woman," wages in this nation have been outpaced by inflation, contributing considerably to economic despair and anxieties for the "forgotten man and woman."

Healthcare: When Obama ran for president in 2008, he told us over and over again about the 46 million Americans without health insurance—and also about how he would fix this problem. And don’t worry, he famously and repeatedly promised, "if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. And if you like your insurance, you can keep your insurance."

But eight years later, there are still tens of millions of Americans without any health insurance—and for those who enrolled in the Obamacare plan, which had to be passed, Nancy Pelosi said, so we could know what was in it, it turned out to be a vast expansion of federal intrusion into Americans’ healthcare and a program that offered little real value to most since both its premiums and deductibles were cost prohibitive.

If Obamacare costs you roughly $5,000 a year in monthly premiums and the deductible is that or even more, can you really say you’re insured? For most Americans, Obamacare has proven a very costly catastrophic care plan that was nothing as advertised. And contrary to what Obama promised, millions lost their health insurance and lost their doctors as the new coverage mandates forced employers to drop plans and physicians left insurance plans that were paying lower allowables or proving unduly bureaucratic and time-consuming from a claim filing perspective. Again, the "forgotten man and woman" was betrayed.

Legal and illegal immigration: This is a sensitive topic because we are all correctly taught that we should be inclusive to people, religions and cultures that are different from our own, and I agree that we should.

But it’s also true that the mass legal and illegal immigration of the past few decades has shaken the fabric of many communities. Where English was once spoken universally, it is now spoken less so. I saw one public high school recently where 22 languages were spoken. Accommodating these students who were not fluent in English had become the preoccupation of the school—and at the expense of basic learning.

And of course we have all read of the other changes that have shaken the foundation of traditional American society. The decorated Christmas tree that once stood every December in the public square and was a source of community pride is now deemed offensive to some immigrants who reject Christianity and want its symbolism removed from communities where it is has long stood. "Christmas break" must now be called "winter break." And the "forgotten man and woman" is deemed "insensitive" if he or she is not welcoming to all aspects of foreign cultures, sometimes up to and including Sharia law that violates the very foundation of the American Constitution.

As millions of immigrants entered the U.S.—both legally and illegally--from seemingly every Third World nation of the world these past few decades, no one paused to ask the "forgotten man and woman" how they felt about it, or whether it was strengthening or dividing their communities and nation. The reality is that this mass immigration has driven up unemployment, driven down wages as the labor pool has expanded but jobs have not, burdened public resources that were already heavily burdened, and been at the core of several brutal terrorist incidents and many, many criminal incidents.

To the "forgotten man and woman," it’s difficult to understand why we need more people in this nation when we have nearly 100 million Americans not in the labor force; our schools, highways, hospitals, welfare programs and other public resources are increasingly overcrowded or stretched thin, and when these many immigrants have arrived in the U.S. wholly unprepared and sometimes even unwilling to integrate into our nation. And there has been a substantial cost to taxpayers from this mass immigration. As of 2010, the cost per illegal immigrant to American taxpayers was nearly $25,000 per illegal immigrant, including child welfare, education, and public infrastructure costs.

Then there’s the issue of all of the associated crime committed by these illegal immigrants. I often hear that "not all illegal immigrants are criminals," which of course is untrue. The first thing they did upon entering our nation was break our federal and state laws. But many have gone on to commit still more crimes, and many very serious felonies.

A few years ago, I was one of the first to write of the case of Josh Wilkerson, an 18-year-old Texan who was beaten to death, strangled and set on fire by an illegal immigrant who had many times before been deported. When Josh’s mother Laura buried her son, the mass immigration and open borders advocates were nowhere to be found. She received no letter or condolences from Obama. She was, in so many ways, the quintessential "forgotten American."

Nor are these one-off cases. In 2014, illegal immigrants were an estimated 3.5 percent of the total U.S. population but comprised 36.7 percent of all federal criminal sentences. That’s an astonishing and alarming statistic—and once again the victim is almost entirely the "forgotten man and woman." The "forgotten man and woman" was victimized by the crime in most cases. And the "forgotten man and woman" is left with the burden of paying to incarcerate an illegal immigrant who never should have been here in the first place.

And then there is the issue of drugs. The porous southern border has become a primary entry point for some of the country’s most harmful drugs, including heroin, Fentanyl and a wide range of opioids. As the children of the "forgotten man and woman" fell victim to addiction and overdoses, not one singular national political leader took action on the obvious first step in solving the crisis: Closing the open southern border through which most of these illegal drugs were entering our nation. In fact, for thirty years at least, both parties in Washington have talked about securing our southern border, but they never did. It took Trump to answer this call from the "forgotten man and woman" to take the hugely reasonable step of securing it. The chant "build that wall" heard at seemingly every Trump campaign rally in the 2016 presidential campaign was the chant of the "forgotten man and woman" who had witnessed first hand the costs to our nation of inaction on securing our southern border.

Trade: In the early 1990s, as a foreign policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., I championed the North American Free Agreement, or NAFTA, as a trade agreement that would prove positive for both Mexico and the United States. We got it at least half right. It clearly benefited Mexico, as our trade deficit with Mexico expanded and whole companies picked up and moved there. But the benefit to Americans was not a net positive. And this has been the case with American trade with just about every one of our largest trading partners the past few decades. We have shipped jobs and cash to nations of the world, and they have shipped us goods somewhat cheaper than we may have produced them ourselves. It’s also true that trade does also create American jobs. But on the whole, because our trading partners manipulate their currencies, fail to meet the regulatory standards and costs incurred in the U.S., and pay their workers substantially less, these trade agreements have largely been rigged from the beginning against the "forgotten man and woman."

Consider the staggering statistics of trade deficits with our largest trading partners:

China: $579 billion trade deficit.

Japan: $69 billion trade deficit.

Mexico: $63 billion trade deficit.

As companies and manufacturers have left communities across this nation—and this is especially true in rust belt states like Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and others—they left emptiness, hopelessness and desperation in their wake. Laid off by the departure of these companies, the "forgotten man and woman" and their entire communities have never since been quite the same. Drive through these states, and this fact is self-evident—and the "forgotten man and woman" will be more than happy to tell you all about it if you ask.

American strength in world: Most Americans have grown up in a nation where we have been seen globally as the world’s leader. Most saw us win the 45-year-long Cold War without firing a shot. They heard Reagan say "tear down this wall" in 1987 and then watched it fall just a few years later. Most Americans know well of how our engagement in World War II essentially saved the world. It is the view of most Americans that America should not be illogically engaged around the world. Nor can or should we seek to solve every world problem. But American strength to protect itself and address the world’s most serious crises until these past few years has never been much in question.

Over the last eight years, however, the "forgotten man and woman" watched as our military was decimated and dismantled. They saw Obama label ISIS a "JV team," only to see ISIS go on to expand its reach throughout Iraq, Syria and—through terrorist attacks—into the EU and U.S. itself. They saw Obama declare a "red line" in Syria designed to halt the humanitarian suffering in that region only to do nothing after it was violated. They saw several thousand great Americans come home from Iraq in body bags—sometimes only because their military equipment and manpower was deficient for the battlefield. They saw four Americans, including a U.S. ambassador, die brutally and needlessly in Benghazi only because saving them would have proven politically inconvenient to Obama's 2012 reelection. And they saw our enemies—Iran, North Korea, and to some extent Russia—move aggressively and uncontested to expand their own military might and global reach.

In fact, on Obama’s watch, the American military fell to its weakest state of readiness at any time in history since World War II. Our fighter aircraft are the oldest and our fleet the smallest in a long period of time. For the first time since World War II, there was a period under Obama when we literally had not one naval carrier at sea anywhere in the world. Our ship strength also fell on his watch. And our ability to confront a major threat to American security from a formidable enemy—much less our ability (should the need arise) to fight two conflicts at once—fell to its weakest point since World War II. These were not oversights by Obama; they were part of a calculated policy of weakening America and thus leaving it more vulnerable than ever to aggression, terrorism and other security threats. Instead of building a military force that was best suited to fight and win wars if necessary to defend American security and interests, the "forgotten man and woman" watched on as the singular focus seemed to be turning the American military into a politically correct social experiment.

Energy: At a time when we could and should have been substantially decreasing our dependence on foreign oil we purchase—much of it from nations that don’t particularly like us—Obama refused to develop the Keystone Pipeline, to expand drilling in the U.S. and its waters, and to substantially increase our development of petroleum, natural gas, clean coal and other energy sources in our nation. In the meantime, Obama crippled the American energy sector with extensive and prohibitive regulations that only deepened our reliance on energy resources from countries not so burdened. The "forgotten man and woman" looked on as American energy workers needlessly lost their jobs from these policies and as the inability to utilize our domestic energy resources contributed to ever higher energy prices.

Infrastructure: And finally, on the issue of our national infrastructure—our airports, train systems, interstate highways—Obama talked a big game about "shovel-ready jobs" and allocated a lot toward these ends. But he has left office with our air, train, highway and other transportation systems in a state of unprecedented disrepair and certainly not competitive with other developed nations of the world. Meanwhile, many American conservatives and Republicans—skeptical of government’s ability to do much of anything well—offered no real solution to the problem. Trump, of course, arose with a $1 trillion infrastructure plan and promised to make our infrastructure cutting edge again and do so in a timely and cost-efficient fashion. It was a promise the "forgotten man and woman" was waiting to hear.

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All of this was the background and environment in which the 2016 presidential election took place. One candidate, Hillary Clinton, ran openly as a third term extension of these negative trends. She refused to acknowledge almost any of these as major problems. In fact, she wanted more of it—more refugees, more illegal immigrants, more regulations in our economy, more government intrusion into health care, even higher taxes, more government, and a continuation of a failed national security and foreign policy agenda that emboldened enemies, alienated allies and timidly refused to even utter the name of "radical Islamic terror."

Additionally, at a moment when Americans were seeking a more harmonious identity, Clinton instead continued the Obama agenda of identity politics. In seemingly every speech, she spoke of the women’s vote. She spoke of the Hispanic vote. She spoke of the African-American vote. And she spoke of the gay vote. But at almost no time did she recognize what the "forgotten man and woman" believe—that the aspirations of Americans really do not vary by gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation. We want economic growth, job creation, peace and security, good schools, safe communities. At a moment when the American people wanted a unifying message, Clinton could not bring herself to break with the identity politics on which her Democratic Party increasingly rests.

Trump was much more astute. He saw that the typical American voter had seen enough of business as usual in Washington, D.C. He called out politicians and the dysfunctions they created and offered solutions to the trade, immigration and fiscal policies that were harming the "forgotten man and woman." He promised a rebuilding of American defenses, support for American law enforcement, tax and regulatory cuts to stimulate our economy, the repeal and replacement of Obamacare, renegotiation of trade agreements in terms that would be fairer to American workers, an end to illegal immigration, and a commitment to protecting an American identity that ultimately defines all of us as Americans.

Some final comments on the significance of all of this: I believe Trump’s election is precisely the sort of historic shift that the Republican Party needed if it were to survive as a national political force. If you look at 2008 and 2012, it was clear that neither McCain nor Romney, nor the messages they communicated, spoke to what the "forgotten man and woman" wanted to hear. Their candidacies were doomed to fail.

But with Trumpism, the Republican Party can once again say that it is in fact the party of working Americans.

And this, I believe, ultimately points to the legacy of Obama—not just that he left the nation worse than he found it, but that on his watch the Democratic Party was reduced to a minor, far-left political party with narrow appeal geographically and demographically.

The ultimate metric of Obama’s legacy is not just all of the statistics I have cited tonight. It’s this number: 1,030. That’s the number of state government, gubernatorial and Congressional seats the Democrats lost on Obama’s watch as he ignored and argued with the "forgotten man and woman."

It’s true that Trumpism is shunned and misunderstood by mainstream media and at prestigious universities like the one at which we gather tonight. Ultimately these institutions too need to decide whether they wish to participate in the mainstream of American political discourse, or, as was just the case with the Democratic Party, be reduced to a minor sideshow.

What’s not misunderstood, however, is that the "forgotten man and woman" has been heard loud and clear. And should Trump execute on the promises and commitments he’s made, as I believe he will, the Republican Party and indeed this nation are going to be vastly better for it--and America will be great again.

The Legacy of Antonin Scalia

2016-02-14T20:26:00.000-05:00

By Michael Johns

When I first became engaged in national public policy and politics in the mid-1980s, the conservative movement had a saying, which I believe originated with former Heritage Foundation president Edwin Feulner: “People are policy.” In essence, the phrase represented our collective recognition that success (or lack thereof) ultimately rested with the people of our movement. Without capable and committed conservatives, little was possible. But with them, nearly anything was.

In the years since, we have lost a number of American conservatives who were more than just capable and committed. They were and are conservative icons whose work helped shape and develop American conservatism—and our Tea Party movement—as the major global political and intellectual force it is today.

Who are these icons?

Austrian school economist Ludwig von Mises, who provided much of the intellectual foundation of today’s free market economic thought, left us in 1973 at age 93.

Prominent anti-communist Whittaker Chambers, who fled the Communist Party, went on to articulate fundamental truths about communism and ultimately outed State Department employee Alger Hiss as a Soviet agent, died in 1961 at age 60.

Author and intellectual Russell Kirk, who helped define many of the enduring principles of conservatism, died in 1994 at age 75.

Ayn Rand, whose individualist fictional writings have proven hugely inspirational to our national Tea Party movement, died in 1992 at age 77.

William F. Buckley, Jr., who inspired many of today’s most prominent conservative intellectuals and writers, died in 2008 at age 82 (read my 2008 tribute to him here).

And of course (most prominent of all), our 40^th president, Ronald Reagan, who proved that conservatism can win and succeed as a governing political force, died in 2004 at age 93.

This weekend, sadly, we add one more icon to that list: U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, whose extensive legal opinions and thinking were rooted in the conservative view that the “original intent” of the U.S. Constitution’s authors must guide modern law, has died at age 79.

Scalia deserves his place among conservative icons that have helped shape modern conservatism. Appointed to the Supreme Court by President Reagan in 1986, Scalia was a reliable conservative presence on the Court for three decades. He defended the rights of the unborn on a Court that largely did not. He opposed affirmative action as antithetical to the principles of equality under law. He defended the death penalty as legally permissible. At the core of these and many other rulings and opinions was a simple yet vastly critical concept: That the U.S. Constitution should be taken for what it says and what its authors intended—and nothing more or less.

Scalia’s written opinions on the Supreme Court rival those of liberal Thurgood Marshall as the most consequential legal opinions of modern times. In Boumediene v. Bush in 2008, Scalia correctly dissented from the Court’s majority view that terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay were afforded legal rights of due process essentially indistinguishable from those of American citizens. The Court’s ruling, Scalia wrote in his dissent, “will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed.”

In the critical Second Amendment case District of Columbia v. Heller also in 2008, Scalia wrote for the majority that the right of Americans to keep and bear arms was to be taken, as it is written in the Constitution, literally. “What is not debatable,” Scalia wrote, “is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.”

And most recently (and prominently), it was Scalia, in Obergefell v. Hodges last year, whose scathing dissent on this same sex marriage case argued that religious liberty was stomped on in the Court’s ruling. In his dissent, Scalia wrote: “The opinion in these cases is the furthest extension in fact—and the furthest extension one can even imagine—of the Court’s claimed power to create ‘liberties’ that the Constitution and its Amendments neglect to mention. This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves.”

In addition to his defense of original intent on the Court, it should be remembered, Scalia never shied away from his Christian faith in a city and Court that increasingly shuns it. When one of his law clerks once refused to attend church with him, Scalia emailed the young clerk: “I shall tell the Creator of the Universe you were too busy to see him.”

As our national Tea Party movement enters its seventh year, our work, values and political positions benefit from being rooted in the thinking of some of the greatest conservative minds this nation has ever produced.

Antonin Scalia, we must remember, was one of them.

This November, Remember the Benghazi Four

2016-01-26T12:46:00.000-05:00

By Michael Johns

As far as cemeteries go, Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery in the Point Loma area of San Diego is likely among the most beautiful and pristine. Its bright green grass extends to the deep-water San Diego Bay on one side and the vast Pacific Ocean on the other. Over 100,000 upright, identical marble headstones lie in meticulous order, marking the final resting places of brave American veterans from the Mexican-American War of 1846-1847 through the present.

One of these graves belongs to an American hero, Tyrone S. Woods, who should still be alive. Woods, who served the United States for over two decades in the U.S. Navy Seals, the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service and ultimately as a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) contract agent, was killed in an attack by Islamic militants in Benghazi, Libya on the evening of September 11, 2012. Three other U.S. officials, U.S. Foreign Service officer Sean Smith, fellow CIA contract agent Glen Doherty, and U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens also were killed.

The story of Benghazi, like many of the Obama administration’s other policy failures, is tragic and angering for many reasons, but especially because it was preventable. Prior to the attacks, the Obama administration, including then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was warned repeatedly that the Benghazi compound was highly vulnerable to such an attack and in urgent need of additional security. The requests for additional security never came. Then, on the evening of September 12, the Obama administration was asked repeatedly by U.S. officials in Libya for permission to intervene against the Benghazi terrorists. Like the additional security, that request also was denied. And then, following the attack, the Obama administration lied to the American people about the fact that Benghazi was undeniably a terrorist attack (coming, in fact, on the 11^th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks).

On January 15, encouragingly, the true story of Benghazi was unveiled in brilliant detail in the new film 13 Hours, directed by Michael Bay (who directed Transformers, Armageddon, Pearl Harbor and other successful films).

Americans should make a point of seeing this extraordinary film—and for many reasons. On the most basic level, 13 Hours tells the story of Benghazi with granular accuracy. On a deeper level, though, it’s really the story of the heroic instincts of five Americans in Libya who compassionately and heroically sought to intervene to save their fellow Americans under siege that day and the Obama administration, which found such an effort a political inconvenience two months prior to the 2012 presidential election and refused their requests.

In the days following the attack of Islamic extremists in Benghazi, the Obama administration misled the American people repeatedly, stating that the Benghazi attack was unrelated to terrorism when they knew undeniably it was terrorism. “Two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an al-Qaeda-like group,” then Secretary of State Clinton emailed her daughter Chelsea at 11:12pm the night of the Benghazi attack. The following day, Clinton told Egyptian Prime Minister Hesham Qandil that “the attack had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack, not a protest.”

These were the lies of Benghazi. But there also were lies about the War on Terror more generally, which the Obama administration sought (for political expediency) to say was being won. It was a theme (and a lie) central to Obama’s 2012 campaign—and one the administration continues to tell to this day.

As we’ve learned painfully in the years since Benghazi, al-Qaeda, ISIS and other terrorist movements around the world have expanded significantly on the Obama administration’s watch, largely because the administration set arbitrary, self-imposed deadlines for the removal of American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq and because it failed (and still fails) to have the fortitude necessary to confront radical Islamic terrorism decisively, or even to utter its name.

In recent months, following attacks in Paris and San Bernardino and just a few weeks ago in Philadelphia, the Obama administration has continued to go to great lengths to deny the reality that these and other terrorist incidents are connected, coordinated and conducted in the name of Islam.

The story of 13 Hours tells how they did the same in Benghazi, ordering American officials to stand down in their effort to save fellow Americans under siege and then lying about Benghazi’s etiology, seeking to depict it as some spontaneous outrage against an anti-Islamic film that never happened. The American people were sold these lies by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, who promptly took to Sunday talk shows to say Benghazi was not an act of terrorism and ultimately by then U.S. Secretary of State and current presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who brazenly lied to the families of these four fallen American heroes as their remains were returned to Andrews Air Force Base three days after the attack.

Politically, the Obama administration ultimately succeeded in permitting enough doubt to surround Benghazi that it became largely a non-factor in Obama’s November 6, 2012 reelection. But reality has a way of fighting back, and the reality of Benghazi is now reaching the American people with one of this year’s greatest films, communicating with impeccable accuracy the betrayal of the Benghazi four.

Why Our Tea Party Movement Honors MLK

2016-01-18T22:46:00.005-05:00

By Michael Johns

In the early 1980s, as my interest in politics and my now three-decade alignment with American conservatism first began, I distinctly remember one of that time’s prominent public debates: Should a federal holiday be developed and named for American civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr.?

Like now, issues then often became quickly contentious and polarizing. Conservatives and liberals saw the world and nation ultimately in very different ways and each held their views with self-righteous adamancy. So it was, at least initially, with the King debate.

Newly elected conservative President Ronald Reagan initially opposed the holiday, not on the basis that King did not hold a special place in United States history but that the cost of a federal holiday in his name would prove prohibitively costly to the nation. But the real opposition, espoused by then U.S. Senator Jesse Helms and others, cut more to the definition of King as a person. In 1983, when legislation that would have authorized the holiday reached the floor of the U.S. Senate, Helms argued that King held views that he then labeled “action-oriented Marxism.”

Nonetheless, it was Reagan who, on November 2, 1983, ultimately signed a bill creating the day as a federal holiday. “Let us not only recall Dr. King, but rededicate ourselves to the Commandments he believed in and sought to live every day,” Reagan said on November 2, 1983, following his signing the bill creating the holiday.

Placed in comparative context, it’s an extraordinary recognition.

Other than King, George Washington is the only person who has a U.S. federal holiday in their honor (and even that holiday, celebrated the third Monday of February, omits his name and is instead labeled more generally as "Presidents' Day"). While we honor Christopher Columbus with a federal holiday the second Monday of every October, several states (Alaska, Hawaii, Oregon, and South Dakota) refuse to commemorate it. There is no federal holiday for Thomas Jefferson, who authored our Declaration of Independence and helped lead our nation’s independence, nor Lewis and Clark, who spearheaded the first American expedition of the American West, or Abraham Lincoln, who preserved the nation amidst civil war and effectively abolished slavery, nor Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who guided the U.S. to victory in World War II and ushered the nation through the Great Depression, nor Reagan himself, who most have come to conclude brought an end to the multi-decade Cold War without firing a shot.

Yet, just as Reagan ultimately came to support and sign legislation supporting the King holiday, the Tea Party movement today has good reason to recognize this great man’s leadership and the holiday named in his honor for at least four significant reasons:

1.)    King’s vision was to end racial identity: While the civil rights issues of the time required King to appropriately lead the crusade for equal representation of African Americans, close scrutiny of his words and deeds reveal his underlying objective was to ensure race would never be used to separate Americans. Despite a modern Democrat party that bases almost its entire political strategy on selfishly dividing the American people by race, religion, gender, and sexual orientation, and a liberal political culture that still champions affirmative action on many levels, King never sought special privilege for African Americans or any race. As King famously said in his “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Were he alive today, King almost certainly would reject the tactics and messages of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and others who wrongly represent that they are carrying on King’s message and activism.

2.)    King believed that people, even more than laws, defined our nation: While much of the civil rights debate at the time understandably centered around what were and were not federal governmental responsibilities and how to protect the civil liberties of all in rule of law, King equally believed that the character of the American people were just as influential and impactful. King was a devout Christian who was on record at the time advocating many of the traditional values the conservative and Tea Party movements support today. He supported the traditional family and vehemently opposed abortion and saw both positions as vital to the social fabric of African Americans and the nation as a whole.

3.)    King championed fiscal and personal responsibility: Just as it is seldom recognized today that King almost certainly would have been a vehement opponent of the abortion industry and culture that has developed in our nation, so too are we rarely told that King was a significant champion of personal responsibility. In the last book he authored before his death, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community, King praised hard work, thrift and self-reliance. Were he alive today, he likely would see merit in many of the same messages our Tea Party is advocating and communicating about the limits of government’s responsibilities and the self-destructive nature of its punitive policies toward industriousness and productivity.

4.)    Like the Tea Party today, King was targeted by government for peacefully challenging unjust policies: Just as the Internal Revenue Service, almost certainly at the direction of the Obama White House, has illegally monitored and targeted our Tea Party movement because it feels threatened that our common sense message may inhibit their ability to control and mislead the American people, King too was targeted for his peaceful opposition to the country’s then unjust laws. As the Obama administration fears the Tea Party movement’s peaceful organization and message, the Kennedy and Johnson administration feared King. Then Federal Bureau of Investigation Director J. Edgar Hoover famously kept King under surveillance and maintained an active FBI file on the civil rights leader.

As we close the 30^th consecutive Martin Luther King holiday today, the trepidation to embrace King among some conservatives and Tea Party members, I believe, is not rooted in any lack of recognition for the bravery and ultimate success of his constructive efforts, but that his period of U.S. history is used so frequently by American liberals to challenge our contention that our nation is both exceptional, unique, and divinely guided. But how can that be, liberals like to ask, when our government, a mere few decades ago, denied basic civil rights to both African Americans and women?

The answer is this: Unlike totalitarian nations that crush human and civil rights crusaders who threaten their power structure, or European nations that continue to inhibit individual rights and organize their societies predominantly on familial, hierarchical societal structures, our nation has been one of ongoing progress led by individual and collective crusades to improve our nation and expand liberty with each consecutive generation, to make it more just and successful and to enhance individual opportunity for all Americans. American exceptionalism lies not just in our nation's unequaled and exceptional founding on a set of extraordinary ideas and ideals, but in our continued commitment to perfecting and promulgating these principles in each subsequent generation.

The Tea Party movement most certainly carries on in this great tradition, just as King did with his civil rights leadership that we properly commemorate today.

13 Hours of Heroism

2016-01-10T10:57:00.002-05:00

By Michael Johns

“By the rude bridge that arched the floor, their flag to April’s breeze unfurled. Here once the embattled farmers stood, and fired the shot heard round the world.”

The words are from the introduction to The Concord Hymn by Ralph Waldo Emerson, and they capture the heroism that was at the heart of the American Revolutionary War launched by American patriots at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts on April 19, 1775.The “shot heard around the world” was an act of heroism. Without it, there may never have been a United States. Without hundreds of individual and collective acts of American heroism since, our nation likely would never have persevered.

Several years ago, our national Tea Party movement began referring to themselves as “the three percent.” It referred to the fact that, among the American colonists of the 1770s, the battle for liberty was not waged by all, or even most. A mere three percent of the population participated in the Revolution, even though many more (roughly 40 to 45 percent supported it).This has largely been our nation’s experience with heroic acts since. While the nation embraces these acts in theory (especially once they prove successful), they are acts of heroism precisely because not everyone has done, or could do, them. After they unfold, we typically look back with a largely revisionist sense that all Americans embraced these causes and selfless acts at the time. In fact, it’s seldom the case.

Roughly fifteen months after Lexington and Concord, heroism again manifested with the signing of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. It was signed by a mere 56 Americans and written almost exclusively by one, Thomas Jefferson. In retrospect, the 56 founders who signed the Declaration actually had every reason not to sign it. Most lived lives of relative tranquility and luxury for the time and were not ultimately the primary beneficiaries of the liberty and independence the Revolution achieved. Yet, they acted—as did the unknown patriot who fired the “shot heard round the world”—out of principle over practicality, and this also made them heroes who pledged their lives to a cause that they likely knew at the time could have failed miserably and (in the case of the American Revolution) was not even embraced by a solid majority of citizens.

Every generation of American history to date has had its heroes. The iconic ones, of course, are etched in stone: Washington and his soldiers at Valley Forge in the brutal winter of 1777-78, Lincoln and his perseverance as the nation threatened to fracture, and the political and military commitment to victory over fascism and later communism by a series of American leaders and patriots.Throughout what ultimately proved to be the final days of the Cold War, I saw firsthand the depth of commitment of American-led rebellions against Soviet hegemony in Africa, Asia and Latin America that comprised the foundation of the so-called "Reagan Doctrine."

As was the case with the American Revolution itself, these efforts were both supported and opposed by many but carried out by only a few. Sadly, many of those few never lived to see the post-Cold War world they helped create. They were killed in action, as was the case with Angola's Jonas Savimbi, or they were assassinated, as was the case with Afghanistan's Ahmad Shah Massoud and Nicaragua's Enrique Bermudez. But had the Soviet Union not encountered the brave resistance of these leaders in places like Afghanistan, Angola and Nicaragua, former Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev likely never would have reached the conclusion that retreatment and reconciliation, not continued investment in Cold War conflict, was in his nation’s best interest. Had that proven the case, what world might exist today?

In very recent months, of course, ths tradition of American heroism has continued. When an Islamic terrorist from Morocco entered their train car with an AK-47 machine gun and 300 rounds of ammunition in France last summer, it was three brave Americans (Anthony Sadler, Alek Skarlatos and Spencer Stone) who jumped immediately to the passengers’ defense, likely saving the lives of many. “Your heroism must be an example for many and a source of inspiration,” French President Francois Hollande later said of their efforts.

And this past week, in Philadelphia, police officer Jesse Hartnett, who sustained multiple gun shots from an ISIS-inspired terrorist, heroically persevered against the terrorist, even in his bloodied and bullet-ridden state. “Shots still…shots fired. I’m shot. I’m bleeding heavily. Get us another unit out here. 6-0 and Spruce,” Hartnett can be heard saying in a chilling Philadelphia police radio call as he stumbled from his car to pursue the terrorist, who was apprehended.

This Thursday (January 14) evening, the ongoing story of American heroism continues with the national release of 13 Hours, an exceptional and historically accurate film that compellingly tells the story of six brave Americans who navigated the Obama administration’s political trepidation and intervened in defense of American personnel under attack by al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists at the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012.

Release of the film is prompting broad Twitter use of the hashtag #AHeroIs, as Americans reflect on the many other acts of heroism they have witnessed in their own lives or interpreted in their assessment of America's bold history.

While four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, were killed in the Benghazi attack, the efforts of these five American heroes over the 13-hour conflict in Benghazi likely saved the lives of many others.

13 hours tells this compelling story of Benghazi, a continuation of the long-standing tradition of American heroism. It's an important story, and one all Americans should make a point to see.

The Tea Party: Then and Now

2015-02-02T21:55:00.002-05:00

By Michael Johns

The largest and most impactful grassroots political movement, at least since the civil rights movement and perhaps in all of American history, originated in the minds and efforts of less than a couple dozen Americans.

It was late February 2009, just weeks after the inauguration of Barack Obama, and there was every reason for conservatives to fear the worst: That we had elected a polarizing, far left and ultimately ineffectual president who would prove a threat to constitutional law, our economy and America’s global standing in the world. Most concerning was that he would gradually or even quickly erode our nation's two centuries of respect for individual rights and liberties upon which America was founded, “fundamentally transforming” (as he promised) our nation in destructive ways.

On the morning of February 19, 2009, as was often the case, I had the financial media outlet CNBC playing on a distant television in my suburban Philadelphia home. This particular cold February morning, Rick Santelli, a Chicago-based CNBC reporter, was doing his usual stand-up reporting from the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade (COMEX). Santelli began reporting on Washington’s federal subsidies of housing under Obama when mid way through his report his sense of outrage began to escalate passionately.

Santelli accused the Obama administration of "promoting bad behavior" in subsidizing mortgages then at default risk with a $75 billion housing program, known as the Homeowners Affordability and Stability Plan. He then turned and, while still live on CNBC, stated assertively to COMEX floor traders: "We're thinking of having a Chicago Tea Party!" His suggestion of a Tea Party response to the federal government’s overreach was greeted with supportive applause and whistles of approval from COMEX traders. Santelli then said: "What we are doing in this country is making our founders roll over in their graves.”

I found Santelli's Chicago comments accurate, inspirational and even bold for a mainstream reporter in a media world that really never challenged Obama on much of anything during or since the 2008 campaign. What I did not realize was that his remarks were viewed similarly by several other conservative-leaning Americans, who would go on to inspire a national political movement that would shake the nation.

The day following Santelli’s rant in Chicago, roughly 22 conservative activists, including me, were invited to participate in a strategic organizing Tea Party conference call moderated by Nashville-based, Stanford-educated conservative Michael Patrick Leahy. It was Leahy who earlier launched the now famous #tcot (Top Conservatives on Twitter) hashtag, where it remains today one of Twitter’s most commonly used hashtags and a key methodology for conservative communication.

Most on the call, unlike me, were new to political engagement. They had largely never worked in government, public policy or politics. Aside from Leahy and me, the others had never managed an organization either. They had largely never written or spoken on political or public policy themes, even though all of us would soon be called upon to articulate our Tea Party message nationally and even globally in the weeks to come. Most had never even worked on a political campaign. But the passion on that call was infectious. The 12 or so of us left it with a feeling that a potentially influential national political movement was emerging—and quickly.

Several follow-up calls were scheduled, and they led us to devise a now well-known plan for Tea Party protests across the nation on Tax Day, April 15, 2009. The aggressive six-week timeline, like much that the Tea Party movement has undertaken since its creation, was organized hastily, with a sense of urgency, and not without its errors. But April 15, 2009, is now a fairly notable day in American history in the sense that it was the physical manifestation of a national political movement, comprising tens of millions of Americans and quite possibly the largest in American history, that would go on to impact significantly the nation’s political debate and power structure.

The day of April 15, 2009, was a busy one. For my part, in the afternoon, on Boston Square in downtown Boston, just blocks from the original Samuel Adams-led Tea Party on December 16, 1773, I spoke to a large and passionate crowd furious with Obama and the country’s direction. I then left Boston to speak that evening at one of the nation’s largest tea parties of the day, held in lower Manhattan, not far from the memorialized 9/11 attack location. Three days later, on the grounds of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, I spoke for a third time in just three days to a very large and vibrant Tea Party rally organized by the Independence Hall Tea Party Association, of which I was then an officer.

The years 2009 and 2010 were full of flurry and a sense of urgency for the national Tea Party movement, an urgency that has continued to this day. In 2010, in Quincy, Illinois, where Lincoln held his sixth debate with U.S. Senator Stephen Douglas on October 13, 1858, I joined Leahy and the late media personality Andrew Breitbart in addressing a large Tea Party crowd on the precise location where Lincoln pointedly articulated his anti-slavery message: “We (the Republican Party) also oppose it as an evil so far as it seeks to spread itself,” Lincoln said that day in Quincy.

By this time, the message of our movement was being refined and polished, comprised mostly of three universal themes that were and continue to be both constructive and broadly popular with the American people: First, the federal government has grown too big and its taxes vastly too excessive. Second, the sovereignty of the United States—in controlling its borders, in developing its national security and foreign policies, and in other matters-- must be defended at all costs. And third, that the U.S. Constitution was a document containing absolute truths to which government needed to adhere if it was to avoid lawlessness, chaos and an erosion of its foundational liberties.

As I was in Boston and New York City, Leahy and others organized one of the day’s largest and most successful events in Nashville, drawing thousands. In downtown Chicago, just a couple blocks from where the Santelli rant heard round the world took place, another Tea Party founder, Eric Odom, organized a large and hugely successful Tea Party rally.

Quickly, the passion and activism of this small cadre spread to thousands, then tens of thousands, and ultimately to millions of Americans who identified themselves as being supportive of the Tea Party movement. On November 2, 2010, a highly motivated Tea Party movement rocked the nation, sending 65 new Republican House members to Washington and thus forcing then Speaker Nancy Pelosi to surrender her gavel to new Republican Speaker John Boehner. Four years later, on November 4, 2014, the Tea Party movement again proved a huge difference maker, further increasing Republican presence in the U.S. House and increasing its U.S. Senate seats by nine, including pulling out wins in hugely contentious races in many states, including Colorado, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, and South Dakota.

Meanwhile, in the U.S. House of Representatives, a Tea Party Caucus, chaired by former Congresswoman Michele Bachman, had been developed with the movement’s input to coordinate the Tea Party agenda in Congress. And the national strategy discussions continued. In Chicago, for instance, Odom and I spent three long days in detailed discussion on the movement’s strategy, messaging, decentralized structure and allocation of limited resources.

In the months and years since, along with other Tea Party founders from the February 2009 conference call, we continued tireless efforts of what by then had become a vast, influential, though sometimes chaotically organized movement of political consequence. All the Tea Party movement founders from Leahy’s first conference call are impressive in their own ways, and have their own personal stories about what sparked their leadership in this now historical movement.

In the years that followed, along with other national Tea Party leaders, Leahy, Odom and I crisscrossed the nation articulating the Tea Party message and helped to organize the movement politically in order to prevail in elections.

In Dallas, for instance, Leahy organized a national Tea Party leadership meeting that included many of the founders from the original February 2009 conference call. “Let’s begin this meeting with a prayer to God for His guidance of this movement,” I suggested privately to Leahy, who agreed. We began the meeting exactly that way. Later, also in Dallas, we organized a two-day training course for regional and other Tea Party leaders on political and public policy activism.

One of those leaders was Chicago-based Eric Odom, who has been an ongoing national Tea Party force--and a friend. Odom had been a part of the first Tea Party organizing calls and influential in the development of the successful April 15, 2009 Tea Party rally in Chicago. In fall 2010, from Las Vegas, Odom and I poured ourselves into the final days Nevada State Senator Sharron Angle's U.S. Senate campaign in hopes of replacing the Obama administration’s strongest Senate ally, Harry Reid. As the movement’s prominence (and the associated strategic questions facing it) evolved, I found Odom one of the movement's most constructive leaders. We visited together for strategic discussions in Chicago. And on my home turf of Philadelphia, I invited Odom to join me in addressing a large and important pre-election Tea Party rally held on the iconic grounds of Independence Hall in front of the very building where 56 founders of our nation pledged with a “firm reliance of the protection of divine providence,” their “lives, fortunes and sacred honor” to remove imperial British forces and rule and establish a self-governed nation rooted in liberty and the rule of law.

But together Odom and I also helped each other laugh off the obsessive, unjustified and inaccurate politically-motivated criticism we endured by organizations supported by billionaire liberal George Soros and others whose agenda has been to mortally wound our movement. Some of it bordered on the outrageous. In May 2011, for instance, Odom and I were leading a highly confidential national Tea Party strategic leadership call when Lizz Winstead, creator of Comedy Central's Daily Show, and liberal comedian Elon James White crashed our call after call details, secured codes and other information were leaked or surreptitiously obtained by a still unknown source.

The Tea Party movement’s efforts, as even its detractors would concede, have since proven hugely consequential, ensuring that Obama, at least since 2011, was not given full reign of the legislative and executive branches of government. A Tea Party-influenced Republican House and Senate, along with our extensive grassroots efforts, have held liberal Obama’s agenda at bay, despite the Tea Party’s ultimate inability to defeat Obamacare. Along the way, tens of millions of Americans, comprising all races, religions, political party affiliations, and demographics, have embraced our work and embraced our patriot and Tea Party labels.

Since that first February 2009 conference call, the founding and ongoing development of the historic Tea Party movement is comprised of many intriguing personal stories, and a singular collective story. Along the way, we have done many things well (removing Pelosi and then Reid as Speaker and Majority Leader, respectively), strengthening the Republican Party as a party that stands more than before for conservative principles expressed (but too often ignored) in the GOP platform, and we also quickly obliterated the 2008 progressive political culture that maintained that Obama was a man who singularly held the answers for the nation. Time has proven his ideas were not at all innovative and were actually just a rewording of those from the liberal playbook of more government and more taxes. In all these ways, since those February 2009 planning calls, the national Tea Party movement has exceeded the accomplishments of the effective and well-constructed 2008 Obama for America campaign that ultimately propelled Obama to the presidency.

All this history is important because it reaffirms the veracity of Margaret Mead’s famous statement: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” It’s worth asking: If those first organizing calls had not been launched, would Republicans today control the U.S. Senate and House? If no, that means that Obama’s entire far-left political agenda would have been rubber stamped by an equally liberal Congressional leadership. Has the Tea Party movement saved the nation? I believe it likely has.

Yet, to be truthful about the inner workings of the Tea Party movement, we have done many things well, but failed in others. In 2015, the Tea Party and patriot movement’s top priority must be communicating and impacting public opinion and explaining why and how Tea Party principles can make America great again: creating jobs and economic prosperity, restoring rigid adherence to the U.S. Constitution, and restoring a strong America that can defeat serious national security threats. We must demonstrate to the American people, as they already seem to be recognizing, that liberalism is a false religion ultimately about the manipulation of society for political ends.

With a reliance on divine providence again, let’s roll back this utterly destructive, unconstitutional government and welcome in a century or more of strong liberty leadership. Next step: We must explain our Tea Party vision and solutions for America.

Listen to the American People: Secure the Border

2014-08-18T17:03:00.000-04:00

By Michael Johns

“He was tortured, beaten to death, strangled and then set on fire,” Laura Wilkerson said earlier this month in McAllen, Texas. She was recalling her beloved 18-year-old son Josh, who was brutally murdered by illegal alien Hermilio Moralez in November 2010.

The details of Josh Wilkerson’s murder are gruesome. Moralez, in the United States illegally from Belize, violently kicked Wilkerson in the stomach, slicing both his liver and spine and rupturing his spleen. The illegal alien then proceeded to beat Wilkerson over the head with a closet rod with such force that the rod ultimately shattered in four pieces. With Wilkerson defenseless and motionless, Moralez then took two dollars from Wilkerson’s wallet, purchased gasoline, and set Wilkerson’s motionless body aflame. Moralez's mugshot reveals a young man smiling smugly. Later, at his trial, the illegal alien would speak from the stand about how he was a “trained killer” and that his “killing instincts” had taken over. There was no remorse.

Americans can be forgiven for asking a reasonable question: Why was this man in the U.S. in the first place?

Young Josh Wilkerson is just another life lost and another cost paid in a long list of lives lost and costs paid because Washington, D.C. policymakers continue to fail to do what logic and all sensibility dictate should have been done decades ago: Securing the U.S. border with Mexico so that illegals are not afforded access to the U.S.

The U.S. federal government’s multi-decade failure to secure its 1,989-mile border with Mexico now stands as the most glaring example of both major political parties’ ongoing refusal to be responsive to the American people’s overwhelming belief that this border needs to be secured. Josh Wilkerson’s murder stands as just one of many examples why it is now perhaps the most critical issue facing the nation, presenting increasingly grave economic, security and other threats.

It’s worth asking the obvious question: With more than 35,000 illegals monthly now crossing the border into the U.S., why exactly has this border not been sealed? Laughingly, the Obama administration has said that the border with Mexico is more secure than it has ever been. It’s a sentiment shared by Congressional Democrats. “The border is secure,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid absurdly stated last month. Other policymakers acknowledge the obvious, but obfuscate the issue, speaking wrongly of supposedly insurmountable challenges associated with keeping illegals from entering the country.

The reality, of course, is the very opposite. The U.S. border with Mexico is consciously not secure because (for decades now) both parties have seen a political self-interest in ensuring it is left unsecured. Democrats, envisioning ultimately granting citizenship to these illegals, see the influx as politically advantageous: Millions of largely government and benefit-dependent illegals who, once afforded amnesty, will (Democrats believe) represent a groundswell of additional votes for their party and its candidates, possibly ushering in generations of Democrat victories in national and regional elections. Similarly, some Republicans, influenced by the desire of some private sector forces to attract cheap, illegal and sometimes sub-minimum wage labor resources, see the influx as a means to breaking organized labor and serving as a deflationary force in the largely blue collar and labor positions these illegals are likely to assume. Never stated openly is this reality: The U.S. does have a policy on the border, and it is--scandalously--to keep it open.

In many respects, it is exactly this sort of unresponsiveness of elected officials to the concerns of the American people that gave birth to America’s Tea Party movement in 2009. Five years later, the practical reality of Washington’s unresponsiveness is such that this crisis may now well be left to the Tea Party movement to solve. Should the Tea Party embrace this cause, as we must, the movement can count on more ridicule from Washington elites. But the Tea Party will find an ally in the American people, who see the seriousness of the border crisis, resoundingly support logical conclusions to it and importantly believe this administration has been at least complicit and likely even a force behind the latest influx of illegals that now threatens the nation.

Support for border security and opposition to amnesty is broadly popular. In a Rasmussen Poll taken last month, on July 17, a clear majority of likely voters (59 percent) were clear: They want those who have entered this country illegally to be returned to their home countries. And the American people largely recognize this is not a blameless crisis: Another Rasmussen poll, also taken last month, found that nearly half of likely voters (46 percent) believe the Obama administration, through its policies and statements, has contributed to it. Understandably, an overwhelming majority of Americans (58 percent, according to the same poll) believe the top priority in the crisis is for the U.S. to gain control of its border.

The arguments for urgently securing the border with Mexico and opposing Washington’s illogical amnesty initiatives are extensive and they strike at the very heart of the issues that most concern Americans:

1.) National security. The American people have patiently endured extensive and intrusive governmental security measures since the September 11, 2001 attacks, ostensibly designed to protect the country against an al-Qaeda or al-Qaeda-aligned terrorist attack. Question: What point exists in prohibiting American citizens from boarding U.S. airlines with, say, 3.5 ounces of non-flammable liquid, as opposed to the mandated 3.4 ounces, when literally any non-citizen--including the bloodiest of terrorists--can simply walk across our southern border?

As it is today, our government cannot answer basic questions about the flood of illegals across our border. How many illegals exactly have crossed the border and are in this country? There are only estimates (more than 12 million and as many as 20 million or more). Where in the U.S. are these illegals located? Answer: Just about everywhere, but no government agency can say exactly. And how many of these millions of foreigners have crossed the border illegally with malicious intentions for this country? We do know that they have included members of a broad range of global terrorist movements, violent gangs (including arguably the most violent, MS-13) and felony criminals, including murderers, violent criminals, rapists, and sexual offenders. And even when (by good fortune alone) they have been detained, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have released thousands of these illegal felons into the general U.S. population. As evidence of the utter lack of border security to criminals and potential terrorists, videographer James O’Keefe last week released video of him crossing the Rio Grande from Mexico into the U.S. dressed as Osama bin Laden. What barriers did O’Keefe encounter in entering the U.S. dressed as the infamous al-Qaeda terror leader? Answer: None.

2.) Jobs. America’s job crisis is vastly worse than what one might gather from the numbers released monthly by the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, which systematically exclude the many millions of Americans who comprise the long-term unemployed and those who have simply given up looking for work. Including these, there are roughly 102 million working-age Americans without jobs as of August 2014, an all-time high and growing. A stunning study released by the Center for Immigration Studies this past June found that all of the net gain in American jobs created since 2000 has gone to illegal and legal immigrants—that is, there has been no job growth for 14 years for native U.S. citizens.

It is absurd that the obvious must be stated: Basic supply and demand economics indicate that granting amnesty to the estimated 12 to 20 million illegals now in this country will only further exacerbate the U.S. employment crisis, both adding to the existing number of jobless Americans and also contributing to wage deflation (lower pay) as a greater number of Americans compete for a fewer number of existing jobs. As such, it should not prove surprising that sealing the border and opposing amnesty are items very high on the agendas of traditionally progressive constituencies, including labor unions and African-Americans, both of whom correctly see amnesty and a failure to secure the border as a recipe for higher unemployment and wage deflation, especially in traditional blue collar and lower wage occupations.

3.) Public resources. It is perhaps the greatest irony of all that progressives who clamor for vastly greater federal and state funding for health care, education, transportation and other public services are also those spearheading the opposition to border security initiatives and amnesty support. The influx of millions of illegals has only made all of these mounting problems worse as illegals consume these resources (and, of course, pay no offsetting federal or state taxes in exchange for them).

4.) Fairness. Many millions of foreigners from all over the world are, right now, legally seeking U.S. citizenship. The legal process to obtain U.S. citizenship is cumbersome, bureaucratic and lengthy. Unlike the illegal aliens now here because of their brazen disregard for U.S. federal law and national sovereignty, these would-be U.S. citizens follow this process both legally and patiently. Under amnesty proposals, however, these foreigners, those we might call “legal immigrants,” continue waiting in their foreign lands as those who crossed our southern border in violation of U.S. federal law are rewarded with U.S. residency, access to many of our country’s public benefits and infrastructure, and ultimately citizenship. These illegals will enjoy the backing of an entire U.S. political lobby that (motivated by its own selfish political and economic agendas) seeks to reward their lawless entry with the same highly-coveted U.S. citizenship denied those now following the process legally.

5.) Will of the American people. There are few issues on which Americans are more united than the fact that the borders of the country should be secure and that those who enter this country illegally in violation of U.S. federal law should not, in turn, be rewarded. The American people remain understandably compassionate towards those fleeing tyranny, but they are united in their logical, on-target conclusion that open borders and amnesty are harming the U.S. in multiple ways. Indeed, perhaps never before in the modern history of the conservative movement, has there been such an enticing opportunity for conservatives (and now the Tea Party movement) to build political alliances with unions, minorities and low-wage workers than there is right now in supporting an urgent securing of the U.S. border and opposing amnesty, showing that the Tea Party and conservative movements stand with working Americans and the rule of law.

Of course, all of these are facts lost on most Washington policymakers who are increasingly disengaged from the sentiments and concerns of the American people they purport to represent. Americans in 2014 are hurting. Failing to secure the border and granting amnesty to millions of illegals stand to further inflame these problems, damaging the already anemic U.S. job market, increasing crime and the demand on public resources, and perhaps even opening the door for what Americans have feared most since September 11, 2001: a coordinated terrorist attack on the U.S. mainland. These are deadly serious problems. But a political movement that can, right now, understand and communicate these facts with the urgency they require is likely to find broad support among the American people.

Iowa's Real Message? A Still Conflicted Tea Party Movement

2012-01-03T15:38:00.006-05:00

By Michael Johns

At least for the next few days, the results of today's Iowa caucuses will dominate the political coverage of the tea party movement and the movement's influence on the 2012 Presidential election. But whatever those results end up being tonight, polls of individual tea party organizations continue to reflect a tea party movement deeply conflicted on which candidate is likely to best represent tea party principles and still defeat President Barack Obama in November.

The good news for the tea party movement's likely effectiveness in this year's general election is that the movement is united on supporting whichever Republican ultimately arises as the party's nominee. Scott Rasmussen, a pollster known for his accuracy, said December 30 that over 90 percent of tea party-aligned voters intend to vote for whichever Republican wins the nomination. That's bad news for Obama, whose top political advisers have hoped that the tea party movement would erupt in civil war over the primary process or, worse yet, support a third candidate, thus splitting the Republican vote.

Meanwhile, however, individual tea party organizations are reflecting deeply conflicting sentiments about their aspirations for the ultimate Republican nominee. In mid-December, reenforcing the promise of Newt Gingrich's candidacy, 23,000 members of the national tea party organization Tea Party Patriots granted Gingrich the most support among all candidates (with 31 percent saying they supported Gingrich), followed by Michele Bachmann (28 percent), Mitt Romney (20 percent), Rick Santorum (16 percent), Ron Paul (three percent) and Jon Huntsman (less than one percent).

Since then, however, two regional tea party organizations have announced candidate endorsements. In Illinois yesterday, the Rockford Tea Party announced results of its organizational poll, which was won by Paul (with 29 percent support) followed by Santorum (24 percent support).

Also yesterday, the Independence Hall Tea Party PAC, which has supported conservative candidates in Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, became the first tea party organization in the nation to endorse Romney. In announcing the endorsement, however, the organization appealed mostly to the perceived electability of Romney in November's general election. The tea party movement, the organization said, has "come to realize, or will eventually realize, that the only way to defeat President Obama, whose policies are an anathema to conservatism and the tea party movement, is to rally around his strongest opponent, Mitt Romney."

Leadership Bid Reflects Growing Tea Party Influence in World's Greatest Deliberative Body

2011-12-14T12:09:00.012-05:00

By Michael Johns

The tea party movement began in an unassuming way: A series of March 2009 conference calls of a couple dozen conservative and libertarian activists from across the nation. How far it has come. Yesterday, after taking back the U.S. House of Representatives in November 2010 and growing its rank and file members into the millions in less than three years, the movement made a bold but ultimately unsuccessful bid for a leadership position in the United States Senate.

With tea party support, U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) challenged U.S. Senator Roy Blunt (R-MO) for vice-chairman of the Senate Republican Conference. With all 47 Republican Senators casting votes, Blunt won the vote narrowly, 25 to 22. But the tea party-supported Johnson challenge proves important symbolically as a demonstration that, while tea party-affiliated members of the U.S. House of Representatives have proven hugely influential in guiding the direction of that legislative body, support for the tea party movement and its policy agenda is growing in the U.S. Senate too.

Since the vote was conducted by secret ballot, no official list of how Republican Senators voted is available. But in garnering 22 votes, Johnson proved that the Republican minority of the U.S. Senate is increasingly sympathetic to tea party sentiments. Even in his home state of Missouri, Blunt failed to garner the support of the three Republican candidates now vying to face Democrat U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill in this November's general election, a sign that Republican candidates fear alienating the increasingly powerful tea party movement, whose support is deemed critical in national, state and municipal primaries across the nation.

Following his electoral victory, Blunt suggested that he hopes to be responsive to the tea party movement's policy agenda. "I hope that six months from now they're not disappointed," he said.

Several national tea party organizations and leaders had been vocal in support of Johnson's bid for the leadership position.

In Staten Island, the Promise of Newt Gingrich's Tea Party Support

2011-12-05T22:32:00.010-05:00

By Michael Johns

No Republican Presidential candidate has yet solidified the support of the nation's tea party movement. But Newt Gingrich's hugely positive reception this past weekend at a Staten Island Tea Party event certainly suggests that the politically burgeoning Gingrich has good reason for optimism. Reception to his remarks this past Friday was perhaps best captured in a New York Post headline: "Staten Island Tea Partiers: Newt's a beaut."

In his remarks to the Staten Island Tea Party, Gingrich challenged President Barack Obama to seven three-hour debates should Gingrich become the Republican nominee. "Let's be fair. I'll allow him to use a teleprompter," Gingrich joked to the 700 attendees.

Gingrich also addressed head on the several Republican Congressional opponents who have announced opposition to his candidacy. "I am a very aggressive reformer," Gingrich said. "I have stepped on a lot of toes. It means some congressmen who have petty interests find themselves unhappy," he said.

Gingrich openly mocked Obama's indecisiveness on a proposed Canada-to-Texas petroleum pipeline. "It's one thing to say somebody can't play chess. It's a second thing to say somebody can't play checkers. But you can't play tick-tack-toe, too?" he said. He called Obama "delusional" for labeling himself a "friend of Israel" during a recent New York City fundraising visit.

Gingrich's successful Staten Island Tea Party appearance was accompanied by news that former Staten Island Congressman Vito Fossella has endorsed his candidacy.

In polling, Gingrich has seen a substantial increase in his national support since Herman Cain's announcement this past weekend that he was suspending his campaign. In an average of recent national polls conducted Monday by the political website Real Clear Politics, Gingrich has now surpassed former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney as the leader among all Republican Presidential candidates. Romney, the Real Clear Politics poll summary showed, has fallen to third, behind Gingrich and Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX).

Silencing the Problem Solvers

2011-11-22T17:23:00.032-05:00

By Michael Johns

We should know at least this by now: One of the first signs of failed and lost political leadership is often the creation of a government commission.

On the surface, the development of such commissions might project the image of non-partisanship, seriousness, deliberation and urgency. In reality, though, it more typically reflects political cowardice, rooted in obfuscation, deflection and even dereliction of duty by elected leaders unwilling to take responsibility for the decisions they promised the public they would make on their behalf.

So it has been with the Obama administration. When it comes to politics, this administration is all hands on deck, ruthlessly disparaging its political opponents, dividing the public by class and demographics, and even attempting to invent new bogeymen to distract the public from its own colossal failures.

What is the specific Obama plan for reducing our federal deficit and prioritizing our federal government expenditures? Who knows? With support from his liberal Congressional allies, Obama delegated that responsibility to the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, also known as the Supercommittee, which three and a half months later has reported that it has nothing to report and was unable to develop any consensus on the committee's charged mission of presenting a deficit reduction plan.

Did the commission fail? That's the wrong question. The more proper question is where is this President's own solutions? What is his own plan for addressing the fiduciary crisis that he contends inflicts our nation's federal entitlement programs? You won't be seeing that plan because this administration knows it is not a vote winner. Instead, they will blame Republicans, blame the commission, and try to deflect the nation's rage. That is one thing this administration has done with some success, and it is what we can expect of it between now and November 6, 2012.

There is good news, however. Some institutions are doing the hard work. Such is the case with The Heritage Foundation, which has offered its detailed "Saving the Dream" plan to simplify the tax code and address the coming crises in federal entitlement programs.

It also is the case with FreedomWorks, which last week released, on behalf of America's tea party movement, "The Tea Party Budget." In so doing, FreedomWorks has done more for America than this President has yet to do: Present a concrete and comprehensive plan for reigning in federal expenditures, reducing the federal debt and bringing the American government into the 21st century while still preserving the tenets of our founding principles.

The details of The Tea Party Budget are thoughtful and an indication that America's tea party movement, unlike the President, is not shrinking from the detailed and sometimes difficult burdens of governance. Among the plan's highlights, it would:

**Cut, cap and balance the federal budget;

**Balance the federal budget without any increase in taxes;

**Reduce federal spending by $9.7 trillion over the coming decade;

**Reduce federal government spending from its current level of 24 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), the highest since World War II, to a more realistic 16 percent; and

**Expand the choices afforded citizens as it relates to their Social Security contributions and, for the elderly, medical plans available under Medicare.

One would think that such a constructive and detailed plan would be welcome in Washington, even among those who may disagree wholly with the plan's details, because it at least begins the hard work of moving from meaningless political rhetoric to concrete solutions.

Yet, this administration and their Democrat allies in Congress are not policy creatures; they are political ones, and this means a strict aversion to constructive solutions, especially those offered by perceived political enemies. As U.S. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) began to convene the FreedomWorks meeting this past Thursday in the Russell Senate Office Building, stern-faced aides of U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) encircled it, informing Lee that it violated an obscure component of the Senate Rules Committee that prohibits unofficial meetings as being advertised as "hearings."

Of course, there was no advance notice given Lee or FreedomWorks. Of course, none of Schumer's aides gave much consideration to the fact that there was nothing particularly unique about this particular gathering that had not occurred countless other times in the very same building under the name of "panel discussion," "briefing," "roundtable," or other apparently innocuous nouns. And of course, there was no consideration to the fact that, in dozens of American cities right now, the Occupy movement, without permits, has spent weeks held up on government and city grounds--offering no real concrete solutions to anything.

Fortunately (thanks to Hillsdale College's Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies), the FreedomWorks meeting was simply moved down the street, where the voice of the people was more welcome. But the image of Washington's liberal elite attempting to silence the tea party is one worth keeping in mind as a political contrast, particularly as next year's electoral season nears: On one hand is a movement offering concrete solutions to America's most pressing challenges; on the other is an arrogant governing elite that continues to rely only on the power of the state and its legal minutia to silence constructive solutions at a moment when America needs them desperately.

More Than One Deficit Reduction Committee Report

2011-11-16T17:29:00.011-05:00

By Michael Johns

Conventional wisdom holds that the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, often referred to simply as the Supercommittee, is the sole entity working on a plan to reduce America's deficit. That committee, created by the Budget Control Act of 2011, has until November 23--a week from today--to identify a means to cut the nation's deficit by at least $1.5 trillion over the next decade. The Supercommittee is comprised of 12 bipartisan members of Congress: U.S. Senators Max Baucus (D-MT), John Kerry (D-MA), Jon Kyl (R-AZ), Patty Murray (D-WA), Rob Portman (R-OR) and Pat Toomey (R-PA) and U.S. Representatives Xavier Becarra (D-CA), Dave Camp (R-MI), Jim Clyburn (D-SC), Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), Fred Upton (R-MI) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD).

Some speculation holds that the committee may go big, identifying up to $3.7 trillion worth of deficit reductions. But should the committee fail to reach a consensus on at least $1.5 trillion of cuts, an automated plan will kick into place to cut the deficit, including deep cuts to the nation's defense budget that many believe could prove threatening to the nation's security.

Less known is the fact that this committee is not the only one at work on a deficit reduction plan. The Tea Party Debt Reduction Commission will present its findings this Thursday, and it will include a plan to balance the federal budget in less than a decade, reduce federal spending to 18 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), reduce the national debt to at least 66 percent of GDP, and reduce federal spending by at least $9 trillion over the next decade--all without raising taxes. Like the Supercommittee, the Tea Party Debt Reduction Commission consists of 12 members, including tea party leaders from Colorado, Connecticut, Indiana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Utah and Virginia.

In presenting its recommendations, the Tea Party Debt Reduction Commission drew on the input of multiple public hearings around the nation and online voting by tea party activists on federal spending cut priorities. In a press release issued Monday, the Tea Party Debt Reduction Commission said its findings "will serve as the tea party's response to the super-committee's likely disappointing findings, and negate the establishment narrative that tea partiers can't identify specific cuts to the budget. Tea party leaders around the country know that Washington can do better, and plan to release materials documenting exactly what cuts can--and should--be made to preserve America's economic future."

The tea party recommendations have been facilitated by the grassroots conservative organization FreedomWorks. Its president Matt Kibbe said that the tea party recommendations will "show Washington that there is a strong, grassroots constituency to support bold budgetary reform." The tea party committee's recommendations will be presented Thursday at 2pm in Room 325 of the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C. The public can follow the tea party recommendations on Twitter by following hashtag #TPDC.

The Mitt Romney Question

2011-11-10T16:02:00.015-05:00

By Michael Johns

In an apparent effort to appeal to the tea party movement, which is expected to prove hugely influential in determining the 2012 Republican nominee for President, candidate Mitt Romney spoke to Americans for Prosperity's "Defending the Dream" summit this past Friday, offering his most detailed proposals to date for reigning in government spending.

Romney's proposed cuts would cap federal spending at 20 percent of the nation's gross domestic product (current federal spending comprises approximately 39 percent of it). Among his significant proposed reforms, he would privatize Amtrak (saving $1.6 billion) and curtail public funding for the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (which runs PBS) and the Legal Services Corporation (which provides legal assistance that is largely duplicated by state, municipal and philanthropic sources). His proposed cuts also include eliminating Title X family planning funding (a primary source of funding for Planned Parenthood) and reducing foreign assistance by $100 million.

Americans for Prosperity, which maintains 34 state chapters and claims 1.8 million members, is one of several influential national organizations that have expressed support for the nation's tea party movement.

Romney's proposals, however, are proving unpersuasive to some tea party leaders and activists. Earlier today, a coalition of conservatives announced the formation of the "Not Mitt Romney " coalition, which is seeking to unite conservative and tea party voters against the former Massachusetts governor. Its first advertisement features numerous public comments by Romney that deviate substantially from established conservative policy positions, including Romney expressing support for the 2008 TARP bank bailout and distancing himself from the administration of former President Ronald Reagan.

The coalition's three founders are Ali Akbar, a Republican communications consultant, John Hawkins, a conservative blogger, and Matt Mackowiak, a conservative political consultant. In a November 4 Des Moines Register op-ed, the three wrote that Romney "is not a conservative" and criticized his historical policy positions, including pro-choice stands, refusing (until recently) to sign Americans for Tax Reform's "no tax" pledge, raising taxes during his Massachusetts governorship and supporting the Brady gun control legislation.

The three have also challenged the often-made "electability" argument for Romney, which holds that the former Massachusetts governor is the best-positioned Republican candidate to defeat President Barack Obama in the November 2012 general election. Romney lost a 1994 campaign for the U.S. Senate to Ted Kennedy and, most recently, the 2008 Republican Presidential primary to John McCain.

OWS is no Tea Party

2011-11-09T13:26:00.010-05:00

By Michael Johns

As the Occupy movement enters its second month, the inclination to compare and contrast it with the nation's mammoth tea party movement is proving irresistible. The Occupy protests are “not that different from some of the protests we saw coming from the tea party,” President Barack Obama suggested to ABC News last month.

But aside from both movement's populist foundations and a shared opposition to the 2008 TARP bank bailouts, few other specific common denominators are emerging. "No matter how similar the tea partiers and the Occupiers appear, they will never agree about most of the political questions that matter," Huffington Post columnist and author Kent Greenfield wrote earlier this month in a column generally supportive of the Occupy movement.

From the tea party perspective, the comparisons are being similarly rejected with a growing sentiment that the differences between the two movements are striking not just from a policy standpoint; they go right to the heart of the ethos of each, perhaps best reflected in the tea party movement's general civility compared to the theft, violence and property damage associated with many Occupy protests (arrests at Occupy protests nationwide now exceed 3,000 with countless incidents of property damage, violence, and even rape).

FreedomWorks president and tea party supporter Matt Kibbe, author of Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto, wrote in a November 3 Wall Street Journal op-ed that "when tea partiers petition their government for a redress of such grievances, as more than one million did on Sept. 12, 2009, they don't get into fights, they don't get arrested, they say 'excuse me' and 'thank you,' they wait in hopelessly long lines for porta-johns, they pick up their trash and leave public spaces and private property exactly as they found them." "No one told myself or other tea partiers to do these things; we just believe that you shouldn't hurt other people and you shouldn't take their stuff," he wrote.

A new public opinion poll released yesterday by The Daily Caller and conducted by The Resurgent Republic shows that both movements enjoy the support of slightly more than a third of the American electorate, with 37 percent viewing the tea party movement favorably compared to 34 percent for the Occupy movement. Among politically critical independent voters, however, the tea party enjoys substantially greater support than the Occupy movement, with 41 percent viewing it favorably versus only 32 percent for Occupy.

The Tea Party and Florida

2011-11-07T16:20:00.013-05:00

By Michael Johns

Among states critical to winning both the Republican nomination for President and the 2012 general election, few are likely more important than Florida.

At least three factors make the Sunshine State a critical one for Republican presidential candidates. First, the staggered schedule of state elections continues to make early caucus and primary electoral success essential to securing the nomination. With its primary scheduled for January 31, 2012, Florida is proceeded only by Iowa (January 3), New Hampshire (January 10) and South Carolina (January 21) in the electoral schedule. Second, as a product of population growth reflected in the 2010 U.S. Census, Florida has gained two additional electoral votes. Now holding 29 electoral votes, the Florida electoral prize lies only behind California and Texas (and tied with New York). And third, in modern electoral history, only one Republican presidential candidate has lost the general election while winning Florida (George H. W. Bush in 1992), and none has won without it. Republican victors (Richard Nixon in 1972, Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984, George H. W. Bush in 1988, and George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004 all carried Florida). Republican losers (Gerald Ford in 1976, Bob Dole in 1996 and John McCain in 2008) failed to carry it.

This influence made this past weekend's first ever Florida tea party convention in Daytona Beach an important one as the state's tea party-aligned activists begin affiliating with presidential campaigns and making decisions about how they will cast their January 31 votes. Presidential candidates Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich called in to offer remarks to the convention, and Rick Santorum addressed it in person. Perhaps most important, as The Miami Herald reported, many attendees continued to express grave reservations about the candidacy of Mitt Romney, who, according to a USA Today/Gallup poll released today, is tied with Herman Cain among likely Republican voters.
"Some of these Republicans think they have our votes in the bag no matter what, but they don't," Florida tea party activist Don Koll told The Herald. "They're turning their back on us, and they will pay a price," he said. Another convention attendee, Kelly Staples of Jupiter, Florida, said: "I have yet to meet a committed Romney supporter. I don’t know why people are trying to make him the inevitable nominee, when he’s not."
Among Presidential candidates addressing the convention, Santorum focused on his electability, calling himself "the most electable conservative in this race." Gingrich, in his remarks, called President Barack Obama "the best food-stamp president in American history." Bachmann echoed her campaign message that the U.S. needs to be "a pro-growth, self-reliant nation." The Daytona Beach News-Journal reported that the best reception at the convention was given to Cain, who declared that "the attack on my character has backfired."

The convention, however, was also notable for several no-shows, including tea party-supported Florida Governor Rick Scott and U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, both of whom had been invited. The convention was organized by Pam Dahl, who leads a tea party organization in The Villages in Central Florida. "We were very pleased for it being our first convention," she said. A 2012 Florida tea party convention, she said, is likely.

Virginia Tea Party Alliance: Democrats "Need to Be Held Accountable"

2011-11-03T21:08:00.010-04:00

By Michael Johns

Less than a week before Virginia's November 8 general election, northern Virginia State Senate Democrats are on the defense as the tea party movement late last month began airing a widely-broadcast advertisement calling for their ouster. Purchased by the Virginia Tea Party Alliance, the advertisement targets seven northern Virginia Democrats, associating them with "Obamacare," in-state tuition assistance for illegals, high taxes, and big government.

The tea party ad praises Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R), who sued the federal government in March 2010 over alleged unconstitutional provisions of the Obama-supported health care legislation. The seven tea party-targeted Democrats include five Virginia Senate incumbents: George Barker (Fairfax County), Charles Colgan (Prince William County), Mark Herring (Loudoun County), Chap Petersen (Fairfax County), and Toddy Puller (Fairfax County) - and two candidates - Barbara Favola (Arlington County) and Shawn Mitchell (Prince William and Loudoun counties).

Virginia Tea Party Alliance executive director Karen Miner Hurd says each of the targeted Virginia Democrats "need to be held accountable for their support of the president’s destructive policies like Obamacare and extreme environmental regulation by the EPA.”

As with other swing states, Virginia's state elections are considered something of a barometer of national political sentiment. President Barack Obama won the state by a six point margin in the 2008 Presidential election. Currently, the House of Delegates is controlled by Republicans. Democrats maintain a slim 22-18 majority in the State Senate.

The Virginia Tea Party Alliance describes itself as "a third force in politics, not a third party."

How Rick Perry Can Win the Tea Party

2011-11-01T15:46:00.019-04:00

By Michael Johns

No Republican Presidential candidate has yet solidified universal support of the tea party movement, but the battle for that support is intensifying. How big is the tea party prize? Still less than three years old, one in four American voters--in excess of 50 million Americans--now support the tea party movement, according to the most recent Gallup poll.

One candidate whose candidacy would be substantially elevated by a more universal embrace of the tea party movement is that of Texas Governor Rick Perry, whose conservative credentials were largely unchallenged prior to his entry to the race. But tea party and Republican support for Perry has fallen substantially since September.

The fall has been steep. A September 20 Gallup poll of Republican voters showed Perry leading all Republican candidates, with 31 percent support (seven points higher than that of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney). However, three weeks later, on October 15, Gallup found that Perry's support among Republican voters had slipped to 15 percent, placing him behind both Romney (20 percent) and Georgia businessman Herman Cain (18 percent).

What accounts for Perry's slip? Many signs point to a growing recognition among tea party and Republican voters of Perry's unpopular decision to provide illegal aliens with in-state tuition rates to Texas colleges and universities. "You put in place a magnet to draw illegals into the state, which was giving $100,000 of tuition credit to illegals that come into this country," Romney told Perry during a Republican Presidential debate last month.

Possibly intensifying concerns about Perry's candidacy among tea party voters, the Texas governor has been unapologetic in defense of the policy. "Are we gonna create tax wasters or are we gonna create tax payers?" Perry asked last month in New Hampshire.

Tea party concerns about Romney's continued support for the 2008 TARP bank bailouts and a mandated health insurance plan (not so dissimilar from Obamacare) for Massachusetts during his governorship have long troubled tea party activists and, to a large extent, opened the door for possible broad tea party support for Perry and other Republican candidates. But Perry's handling of issues related to border security and illegals continue to hamper that broad embrace.

Those who may know Perry's record best--Texas tea party leaders--continue to raise red flags concerning his candidacy. Last month, as it appeared unlikely that Perry was going to support Republican-sponsored legislation that would empower Texas law enforcement officials to check the immigration status of those they detain, Texas tea party leader JoAnn Fleming derided Perry. "Governor Perry's decided, apparently, that he just needs to keep pointing the finger at Washington D.C., which absolves him of any responsibility," she said.

Still, Perry's otherwise exceptional conservative record as Texas governor, combined with his $17 million campaign war chest, offer him an opportunity of recovering tea party support if he can win back his credibility on issues related to border security and illegals. Such a step might begin with him rescinding his support for in-state tuition assistance for illegals and a reversal of his position on empowering Texas law enforcement to assist in enforcing the nation's immigration laws.

Tea Party Influence: The Case of TeaParty.com

2011-10-28T12:06:00.011-04:00

By Michael Johns

Chances are good that you have never heard of the Canadian rock band, The Tea Party. Formed in 1993, the band broke up briefly in 2005, recording seven albums in their largely unremarkable 15-year career. The band's most popular album, The Edges of Twilight (released in 1995), sold 270,000 copies. None of their songs have ever received wide airplay in the United States, but two of their most successful ones, "Lullaby" and "Soulbreaking," did rise to third on the Canadian Singles Chart. The band's 42-year-old lead vocalist Jeff Martin, from Windsor, Ontario, looks the part, slightly resembling a crossbreed between The Doors' Jim Morrison and Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder.

And should you find yourself in Saskatoon, a city in central Saskatchewan, on November 20, you can catch the band live at a 20,000-square-foot venue called the Odeon Events Centre. But chances are you won't be in Saskatoon that day, if ever.

What does make the band hugely relevant, however, is that it owns the Internet domain name, teaparty.com, and that ownership may now be its key to seven-figure riches as the Tea Party movement continues its ascent as the largest and most influential grassroots movement in U.S. political history. Not oblivious to the growing influence of the Tea Party movement, the band retained Boston-based Sedo, a domain brokerage firm, to sell its domain name. “It’s very rare when a domain name of this value and significance becomes available – especially one that is so timely and relevant,” Kathy Nielsen, Sedo's director of sales, said in an October 15 press release.

Earlier this week, Nielsen told Politico's Patrick Gavin that Sedo beat out 30 other firms in bidding for the exclusive right to sell the teaparty.com domain. So far, she says, they have received eight offers for it, and she predicts that the domain will sell within the next 30 days.

The Tea Party and Mitt Romney

2011-10-24T15:10:00.010-04:00

By Michael Johns

Among the tea party movement's many political and policy accomplishments, it is now well established that the movement has positioned itself as the most influential force in determining the 2012 Republican Presidential nominee. But while the movement's political influence is indisputable, its precise political preference in the 2012 Presidential election remains less clear. Each Republican candidate can point to some degree of support within the tea party movement, and several candidates--such as Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain and Ron Paul--can even boast that the tea party movement constitutes a substantial foundation of their respective national political support.

And then there is Mitt Romney. The former Massachusetts governor may well represent the most significant paradox and challenge to the tea party since the movement's 2009 founding. While the Tea Party is unified in the objective of removing President Barack Obama in 2012, it is less clear whether the movement is prepared to select a candidate such as Romney, whose conservatism remains in question over his continued support for the 2008 bank bailouts and a mandatory state health insurance policy that he instituted during his governorship. "Romney is not a conservative," conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh stated unequivocally earlier this month.

Yet, according to a Gallup Poll released earlier this month, Romney remains competitive among self-identified tea party voters, garnering the support of 17 percent of them. That places him substantially behind frontrunner Herman Cain, who is preferred among 27 percent of tea party voters, and one point behind Texas Governor Rick Perry, who is preferred among 18 percent of these voters. But it places him ahead of the six remaining Republican Presidential candidates, several of whom are self-declared tea party candidates: Bachmann, Paul, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, Jr., Gary Johnson and Rick Santorum.

Despite his third place showing in the recent Gallup Poll, however, several tea party groups and leaders remain adamantly opposed to his candidacy. "I don’t know of a single tea party person who likes or supports Romney,” Andrew Hemingway, chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire, told The New York Times this past August. The Washington, D.C.-based group FreedomWorks, which has been supportive of the tea party movement, similarly has derided Romney, with FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe stating that "if every political opportunist claiming to be a tea partier is accepted unconditionally, then the tea party brand loses all meaning."

An Emerging Tea Party Anthem?

2011-10-21T12:41:00.008-04:00

By Michael Johns

Music has long had a foothold in many national protest movements. For the tea party movement, which is now arguably the largest such movement in American history, a growing number of music groups and songs have proven appealing, receiving play at the thousands of tea party events held nationally since the movement's 2009 launch. To date, however, no singular song or group has received the broad embrace that, say, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young did by the liberal protest movement of the 1970s, which embraced songs like "Woodstock" and "Ohio" as reflective of their movement's ethos.

For the tea party movement, however, all this may be beginning to change, The New York Times reports. Krista Branch's "I Am America" is now receiving growing play at various tea party rallies and has been adopted as a campaign theme song for tea party-supported Herman Cain's Presidential campaign. "The first time I heard that song, the message was so right-on I felt goose bumps just listening to it," Cain told The New York Times.

The song's lyrics, authored by Branch and her husband, were inspired by the tea party movement and depict the arrogance of a governing elite who ignore and demean the sentiments of the American people. "Pay no attention to the people in the street, crying out for accountability. Make a joke of what we believe, say we don't matter cause you disagree," Branch sings in the song.

Branch says the tea party movement's most unifying theme is that America is the greatest nation on Earth. The tea party movement, she says, is "not so much a rebellion as a love for this nation and a love for freedom."

Tea Party Nothing Like OWS

2011-10-19T15:00:00.007-04:00

By Michael Johns

In terms of its influence, clarity of its policy agenda, and number of supporters, the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement fails to match that of America's tea party movement, whose membership ranks have swollen to the tens of millions these past two years and whose organization and passion in 2010 changed the leadership of Congress. Yet OWS's anti-establishment, anti-corporate, and anti-bailout themes have caught on surprisingly quickly, making it perhaps inevitable that media comparisons would be drawn between the two national protest movements.

But how much do the two movements really have in common? Not too much, say both political analysts and tea party leaders and activists. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Republican political pro and Fox News commentator Karl Rove contends that "Occupy Wall Street isn't a movement. It's a series of events populated by a weird cast of disaffected characters, ranging from anarchists and anti-Semites to socialists and LaRouchies."

While the OWS movement has garnered large national media attention, especially due to a sizable number of arrests and clashes with police at its events, its size is dwarfed by the tea party. Writing in The Washington Post, conservative columnist George Will observed correctly that fewer people have participated in all OWS events to date than participated in just one tea party event, the September 11, 2009 rally on the Washington, D.C. mall. "In comportment, OWS is to the Tea Party as Lady Gaga is to Lord Chesterfield," Will wrote.

Meanwhile two national Tea Party organizations have been quick to distance themselves from OWS. "The left is trying to create a counter force to the tea party, but it’s almost laughable that anyone is comparing the two, because they’re totally different," Tea Party Express strategist Sal Russo told Politico. In a fundraising appeal, Tea Party Express contrasted the two movements through photos, including Tea Party members, dressed patriotically, saying the Pledge of Allegiance along with OWS members clashing with police. “Why can’t the media tell the difference between these two [sets of] photos?” Tea Party Express asked, urging Tea Party members to “stand up to these comparisons and stand up for our principles."

Another national Tea Party organization, Tea Party Patriots, sent their members an e-mail with the title, "Occupy Wall Street? They're no Tea Partiers."

Tea Party Agenda: Restore American Greatness

2011-10-19T11:36:00.008-04:00

By Michael Johns

History will likely record that the emergence of the 21st Century American tea party movement was sparked by a visceral national rejection of some of the most statist, unconstitutional, and threatening progressive policy proposals in the nation’s history. It also will likely record that, since the movement’s 2009 launch, it has succeeded on multiple levels: Engaging tens of millions of liberty-loving Americans in the American political process, defeating (or holding at bay) some of the worst policy proposals of this administration, and proving a demonstratively effective grassroots political force in elections throughout the nation.

So is the tea party succeeding? Held against even the most ambitious expectations that existed among those of us who participated in some of the first national tea party conference calls and events in early 2009, the answer is clearly yes. The movement now holds household brand recognition. It is justifiably feared and routinely (even if unjustifiably) disparaged by the Obama White House and the Washington establishment. And, as the nation inches ever closer to the 2012 national elections, it is proving the most intriguing political force in the nation. In short, the tea party movement is now the most influential and fastest-growing center-right political movement in American history, which of course is no small achievement.

Yet, despite these laudable successes, the tea party’s biggest challenges likely lie ahead of it, especially for this singular reason: History dictates that opposing an existing political ideology (as the tea party movement is doing successfully) is a vastly easier undertaking than providing a comprehensive, alternative governing policy agenda, which the movement is only now beginning to do in earnest. The development and advancement of that policy agenda, combined with continued improvements in the movement’s operational and organizational capabilities, are likely the most important next steps in the movement’s continued maturation and will be instrumental factors in the reach of the movement’s long-term success and longevity.

This coming challenge raises a simple question: Having followed the tea party movement now for two years, the nation understands what the tea party opposes. But what does the tea party movement support? The answer to this question is paramount, and likely includes the following:

First, a rigid adherence by government to the United States Constitution and our founders’ vision of a federal government limited in both size and scope. As has been proposed in the Enumerated Powers Act, first championed by Congressman John Shadegg (R-AZ) and since by others, the tea party movement believes Congress needs to begin detailing the empowering Constitutional authorities that permit the legislation that it proposes and adopts. Had the Enumerated Powers Act been in effect in 2010, it is highly likely that legislation requiring Americans to purchase health insurance (whether they want it or not) would have been immediately discarded as not meeting even a minimal threshold of Constitutional permissibility (regardless of what one thinks of the policy itself). Consistent with this agenda, the Tea Party movement also has been appropriately engaged in reigning in an imperial Supreme and federal court system that has routinely ruled in extra-Constitutional ways, undermining individual and property rights and threatening the very fabric of the nation’s rule of law.

Second, a tax system that is vastly simplified and less burdensome. While the Tea Party movement draws its name from the famous 1773 tax rebellion of American colonists against the British colonial government and the monopolistic East India Company, the acronym T.E.A, standing for Taxed Enough Already, also has appropriately been used as a motto for the movement. As the Tea Party movement has correctly observed, one of the primary roles of government is to create an economic climate that best permits the creation of jobs and prosperity for its citizens.

Achieving this requires job-creating entities, such as corporations and small businesses, to maintain a sufficient cash flow and capital reserve to afford the hiring of new workers at competitive wages. Yet, in the midst of one of the nation’s deepest recessionary economic climates with unemployment hovering near double digits, the United States continues to tax American corporations at a 40 percent rate, which is now the second highest in the world. Once the economic engine of the world, the United States has — as a direct result of its own public policies — become a less and less appealing nation for job-creating entities and millions of American jobs have been lost, transferred to other nations with less prohibitive tax and regulatory policies. Individual taxes have been equally punitive. Today, the average American family sends in excess of $20,000 in federal taxes annually to Washington, reducing their ability to meet fundamental needs and decreasing their ability to be charitable within their communities. They also continue to be burdened by a death tax, also opposed by the tea party movement, that destroys wealth and discourages investment.

The tea party movement also is vocal in its position that the U.S. tax code has become incomprehensibly complex and increasingly so with each passing year. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) regulations and codes now contain 5.6 million words, seven times as many as the Bible. In the past decade alone, the regulations and codes have tripled in length, and it is now an uncontested fact that even the typical IRS customer service representative cannot routinely explain the code’s many complexities, which is a direct product of a government that has become too large and unruly, influenced by special interests run amok.

Third, a commitment to limiting government’s reach in the provision of goods and services. The federal government’s intrusion in assuming ownership of banks, mortgage and insurance companies, automobile companies, and other traditionally private sector industry segments threatens the very fabric of a free market economy and has been a core focus of tea party condemnation. In some respects, this reach has been facilitated by the failure of government (and federal courts) to recognize the Constitutional limitations of government, but it has also been fueled by a conscious and somewhat successful effort by this administration to undermine the core foundations of free market capitalism and expand government’s reach in becoming a provider of goods and services.

The tea party movement believes the proven inclination of the federal government to intervene in bailing out, and even assuming ownership of, private sector companies has created a dangerous economic climate that has undermined market-based and fiscally responsible decision making.

Fourth, substantial cuts in overall federal government spending. Not since World War II has federal spending and deficits, calculated as a percentage of GDP, run as high as they have under the Obama administration. As a percentage of GDP, federal spending now stands at 25 percent of total GDP. Deficits stand at 10 percent of GDP. And the federal government now routinely runs annual deficits exceeding $1 trillion (with no sign of substantial reductions in that anytime soon). This excessive federal spending hurts the American economy in numerous ways. It continues to build a culture of dependency in the nation that ultimately could ensure a vastly expanded, intrusive federal government for generations to come. It misallocates efficient resources, often through programs that do not generate wealth or prosperity and detract ever-growing numbers of Americans from the private sector at great opportunity cost. And not infrequently, these programs are wasteful, or politicized, or counterproductive, or all of these combined.

Since its formation, perhaps no issue has resonated more with the tea party movement than the fact that our federal government is simply too large, growing too fast, and threatening — by its very size alone — the vision our founding fathers articulated of a federal government limited in both size and span of functional responsibilities.

Each of these four issues is considered domestic or fiscal in nature, and the question is routinely asked whether the tea party movement has, or intends to, develop better articulated national security, foreign, and social policy proposals.

My response to this question typically has been two-fold: First, I do not believe the tea party movement is as divided on these additional issues as liberal media have sought to portray. Most tea party leaders and activists I have encountered believe that there are disturbing social trends in the nation, including the multiple problems arising from the federal government’s failure to secure its borders, the ever-alarming number of abortions (now exceeding 4,000 a day) that continue to be performed in the U.S. and the urgent need for further choice and accountability in primary education. In foreign policy and defense matters, while some tea party leaders believe the U.S. is overextended abroad, most also share Ronald Reagan’s vision that American strength, not weakness, represents the best chance for peace and freedom.

Yet, second, there also appears to be an understandable reluctance to complicate the Tea Party message by broadening the issues of its focus and potentially limiting the movement’s size and influence. For these reasons, the driving principles of adherence to the U.S. Constitution, the need for tax relief and tax code simplification, and the reigning in of a vastly bloated federal government appear to be the unifying principles that will continue to unite the influential and ever-growing tea party movement.

The Tea Party Movement Has Strengthened American Democracy

2010-10-20T12:57:00.012-04:00

By Michael Johns

Within the American political establishment, the mammoth growth of the tea party movement has invoked a series of reactions and emotions. It was first ignored, even as thousands of Tea Party rallies drew large, passionate crowds across the nation. When its size and influence ultimately became too large to neglect, it was wrongly and inaccurately maligned. Then, when the malignments also largely failed, they questioned whether the movement actually had the political skill and influence to tangibly impact major elections.

Now that the movement has sent established political figures packing in multiple states, a new thesis critical of our movement has emerged: That the tea party movement is somehow bad for the Republican Party. Like the criticisms that preceded this one, however, this thesis is wrong. While the tea party movement is a decidedly non-partisan one, it has served the very constructive ends of enhancing debate and political competition within the Republican Party. Faced with tea party opponents, many established Republican incumbents and challengers have been forced to address policy issues with greater specificity, and the result has been a healthier political climate in which primary voters have been afforded broader choices.

This has proven true in multiple races across the nation. At the New York Republican Convention in early June, New York Republicans first looked over tea party-recruited candidate Carl Paladino (R-NY), instead selecting a former U.S. Representative who had abandoned conservative principles on multiple occasions and failed in a prior statewide election. But instead of allowing the selection of Republican insiders to stand, the tea party movement, along with many principled conservative Republicans throughout the state, led a petition drive for Paladino, ultimately landing him on the Republican ballot anyway. By the time the September 14 primary arrived, Paladino had made the case for his candidacy convincingly. Showing that the Republican establishment had made a selection contrary to the will of the people at its party convention three months earlier, Paladino trounced challenger Rick Lazio in a 62% to 38% landslide.

In advancing the inaccurate thesis that the tea party movement is bad for the Republican Party, the race perhaps most cited has been the United States Senate race in Delaware, where tea party favorite Christine O'Donnell (R-DE) upset her challenger, former Delaware Governor and U.S. Representative Mike Castle (R-DE), 47% to 44% in the September 14 primary. With strong tea party support, O'Donnell convincingly persuaded many Delaware Republicans that the most effective way to stop the Obama agenda was not sending Castle, who had supported federal bailouts, was sheepish in his opposition to Obamacare, and had earned the lowest possible rating on his protection of Second Amendment rights, to the U.S. Senate. Castle also arrogantly refused to engage O'Donnell in debate prior to the primary election. In the end, Delaware Republicans properly saw Castle as exactly the sort of elitist political figure who was incapable of halting the progressive agenda in Washington and represented many of the exact sentiments and policies that were wrong with the political status quo. O'Donnell faces an uphill battle in her general election campaign against Democrat Chris Coons, but at least Delaware voters will now be afforded a legitimate choice between two very contrasting political figures, including one, in O'Donnell, who very clearly will oppose the Obama policy agenda.

In similar primaries, tea party-supported candidates have connected well with voters, winning in states as diverse as Alaska, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Nevada, Utah, West Virginia, and others.

The success of the tea party movement represents a hugely constructive change in American politics. For many decades now, both political parties have operated on a "next in line" nominating process. This process suspends any serious consideration of a candidate's position on issues and instead dictates that those with the longest-standing service in government warranted the nomination on that basis alone. It is exactly this sort of logic that led a select few Republican insiders to favor candidates like Rick Lazio in New York and Mike Castle in Delaware.

But what such an approach fails to recognize is that the selection of good candidates must always consider much more than simply the longevity of service of that candidate in government. Elections are and must continue to be about ideas. In fact, given the failure of government to constrain spending and taxes and its obvious inability to create a climate for national economic growth and prosperity, one might go further in saying that longevity of service in that system is a detriment, not a credential, to an aspiring candidate. The other ancillary benefit created by the tea party movement's preference for issue-based candidates over governmentally credentialed ones is that it permits, as our founders intended, candidates unaffiliated with government a better opportunity to enter and prove competitive in elections. Surely, the nation would be served well by drawing fewer career politicians and more candidates from non-political professions, such as medicine and business.

A final point: It is held by some that the key to political victory is diluting the liberty-based message in ways that create a "big tent." On the surface, this approach might seem sensible, but in reality the big tent that has proven most appealing to voters is a platform that is predictably aligned with limited government, lower taxes, and strict adherence to our Constitution. In support of this, one need look no further than the Presidential races of the past three decades to see that principled conservatives fare well politically, while less principled Republicans tend to struggle. In 1980, 1984, 1988, 2000, and 2004, Republican Presidential candidates Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush ran on unequivocal conservative platforms and won. In 1992, 1996 and 2008, Republican nominees presented political records and platforms that were less clearly conservative and lost by large margins.

The lesson should be self-evident: Liberty works as policy, but it also works as politics. In embracing candidates who enthusiastically support the liberty-agenda, the tea party movement has strengthened American political discourse and democracy. The movement also has increased the likelihood that the Republican Party will put forward candidates and policy agendas that resonate with the American people.