Booker did exactly that during an appearance this Sunday on “Meet the Press” in which he rebuked the Obama campaign for its ongoing efforts to attack Mitt Romney by targeting his experience working at private equity firm Bain Capital. Ads condemning Bain have become the centerpiece of Obama’s campaign, but Booker would have none of it:

“I have to just say, from a very personal level, I’m not about to sit here and indict private equity. To me, it’s just we’re getting to a ridiculous point in America, especially that I know I live in a state where pension funds, unions and other people are investing in companies like Bain Capital. If you look at the totality of Bain Capital’s record, they’ve done a lot to support businesses, to grow businesses. And this to me, I’m very uncomfortable with.”

Booker went on to add that the attacks on private equity were “nauseating.” If that wasn’t embarrassing enough for the White House, Booker likened the anti-Bain smear campaign to conservatives’ attacks on Obama’s incendiary pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright – that is, a diversion that had no place in the presidential race.

For the Obama campaign and its left-wing surrogates, this was too much to stomach. Reprisal came fast and furious. First to lash out against Booker was Obama’s chief political strategist David Axelrod, who scolded that Booker had been “wrong” to make his remarks and added that the attacks on Bain were justified because “there are specific instances here that speak to an economic theory that isn’t the right economic theory for the country.” Axelrod didn’t specify which theory he had in mind, but presumably he was referring to the administration’s strained attempts to cast Romney as a corporate raider who left gutted companies and pink-slipped workers in his wake – even if it means distorting Romney’s actual record at Bain, and the whole purpose of private equity investment, to the point of caricature. Obama-friendly media also piled on, with Chris Matthews condemning Booker’s candor as a “an act of sabotage” and a “betrayal of Obama.” So intense was the blowback that MSNBC pundit Joe Scarborough speculated that Booker was now “fighting for his political life.”

While that may have been overstating it, Booker was clearly feeling the heat. After being raked over the coals by the Obama campaign all day Sunday, he released a four-minute video clip at the end of the day expiating for his crime think on Bain. Gone was his earlier rebuke against attacking capitalism and private equity. Now Booker insisted that he had been misunderstood and that, actually, it was “reasonable” for the campaign to target Romney’s business record. All he had meant to say, Booker explained, was that he was against negative campaigning in the presidential race. That explanation made little sense, inasmuch as the attacks on Romney’s record at Bain were part of a negative campaign by Obama, but it signaled that the upstart politician had been brought to heel by the administration.

Considering Mr. Obama’s poor presidential performance, particularly in the key area of the economy, he will have a difficult time selling his self-trumped-up success in turning around the economy since the great crash in September 2008 – the very crash that leveraged him into the White House (“everything is Bush’s fault”) – no matter what is written on his cue cards.

Without a doubt, Team Obama agrees, and their strategy is a combination of Mr. Obama running as if he isn’t the incumbent (“everything is always someone else’s fault” – President Bush, Congress, the Republican majority in the House, anybody and everybody who isn’t Barack Obama), and at the same time, trying to impugn the good name and record of his Republican challenger, Mr. Romney, so the voters will prefer Mr. Obama by comparison.

This explains the Bain Capital ads and other similar attacks. But, like everything else Team Obama has tried in the last two months, this strategy seems to have backfired. Even Obama supporter Newark Mayor Cory Booker, speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press” this past Sunday, said, “I have to just say from a very personal level, I’m not about to sit here and indict private equity. To me, it’s just, we’re getting to a ridiculous point in America. Especially,” declared Mayor Booker, a Democrat, “that I know I live in a state where pension funds, unions and other people invest in companies like Bain Capital. If you look at the totality of Bain Capital’s record, they’ve done a lot to support businesses, to grow businesses.”

Pronouncing “this kind of stuff” to be “nauseating to me…[and] to the American public,” Mayor Booker put it succinctly. “It undermines…what this country should be focused on. It’s a distraction from the real issues.”

Of course, what the Newark mayor doesn’t realize is that creating a “distraction from the real issues” is what it is all about. Such ad campaigns are not by accident. Team Obama is deliberately trying every trick in their campaign book to divert attention from the president’s record in office by throwing irrelevant matters in the face of the electorate – who they condescendingly believe are too stupid to realize what they are doing – and squeak first past the finish line come November.

It is the task of Mr. Romney and his campaign team to keep the focus of the public on the real issues. To hammer away at Mr. Obama’s failures, and in essence, to force the mainstream media to do their job and not be so easily sidetracked by smoke and mirrors. Mr. Romney has to repeat and repeat, again and again, his own clear vision for handling the critical issues facing the American people. By doing so, it will not only push the media to focus accordingly, it will also force Team Obama to have to try and explain away the incumbent’s flip-flops, outright lies, and his administration’s failed domestic and foreign policies.

Since the primary concern of all Americans is the economy, it should be noted that Mr. Obama has, as one pundit put it, “been missing in action with respect to confronting the skyrocketing national debt.” He appointed a bipartisan commission to propose solutions to the looming budgetary crisis, and then summarily ignored its recommendations. Even in his first two years in office, when his own party dominated both houses of Congress, he failed to get Congree to pass a budget, and now, although the Republicans control the House, Mr. Obama’s proposed budget was still rejected 0 to 99 by the Senate, even with its Democratic majority.

Why? Because 1) self-sufficient women voters aren’t as sheeple-ish as Democratic strategists make them out to be, 2) conservative activists are overtaking Obama’s zombie army online, 3) non-delusional Americans don’t want cradle-to-grave utopians turning their country into the next Greece or Spain, and 4) responsible grownups are getting sick and tired of radical Saul Alinsky-style tall tales from the progressive Pied Piper.

Using snazzy graphics and interactive slideshow features, BarackObama.com spins a glowing narrative of imaginary Julia’s life from age 3 to 67. But “Julia” is a pathetic figment of the progressive imagination. She simply cannot function without the lifelong intervention of federal patriarchs.

Instead of two parents preparing her for school, Obama credits Head Start bureaucrats with ensuring that Julia is “ready to learn and succeed” in kindergarten.

Instead of individual teachers, private mentors, home-school organizers or charter school leaders, Obama extols his federal Race to the Top program for implementing the high school “classes she needs to do well” in college.

Instead of thrift-minded families who save for their own kids’ higher educations (or who opt for non-college alternatives) and who encourage those kids to work in private-sector summer jobs, Obama praises his “opportunity tax credit” and Pell Grants for putting Julia through college.

Instead of acknowledging how costly Obamacare mandates have caused individual-market health care insurers to drop plans altogether, Obama promotes the government-manufactured umbilical cord tethering “children” like Julia to their parents’ health care plans until age 26.

Instead of accepting that the costs and consequences of a woman’s sexual choices should be a matter of personal responsibility, Big Daddy Obama heralds his religious liberty-crushing birth control/abortion mandate for allowing Julia to “focus on her work instead of worrying about her health.”

That Portman’s is being seriously considered for the GOP ticket is no fluke. His status as a first-term senator belies an impressive political resume. For starters, he is a veteran of two presidential administrations, having served under President George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. He also spent 12 years in Congress, before being elected to the Senate in 2010. Just as significant is Portman’s experience on budget and spending issues, on which he is considered a respected authority. A former director of the Office of Management and Budget under President George W. Bush, he also served on the deficit-reduction “super committee” that last fall unsuccessfully tried to craft a plan to reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion.

Despite that failure, Portman has emerged as an effective critic of the Obama administration’s fiscal stewardship. In February he released an analysis showing just how fiscally irresponsible the administration is. Portman estimated that the administration’s budget increases would lead to the government reaching the debt ceiling once again by October, meaning that it would have slashed through last year’s $2.1 trillion increase in just 14 months. “This is an unfortunate but clear signal to the American people that Washington is spending too much, borrowing too much, and putting our nation’s fiscal stability at risk,” Portman noted at the time.

Due to his command of budget issues, Portman has also been an effective critic of the Obama administration’s budgetary gimmicks. When the administration recently touted the so-called “Buffet Rule,” a minimum tax on millionaires and billionaires, Portman was among the first to point out that it was little more than political posturing. After calculating that the high-profile tax would bring in less than $5 billion per year, Portman observed, “That represents 0.4 percent of annual individual income taxes paid — or enough to pay one week’s interest on the national debt.” The Obama administration subsequently shifted course, insisting that the tax was not intended to bolster the country’s finances but rather to promote “fairness.”

Last week, MSN Money posted a report titled “The richest counties in America.” According to the report, residents of those 15 wealthiest counties “have median household incomes that are double the national average.” Three of those counties have a median income of more than $100,000. The report goes on to say, “While many Americans struggle to find jobs, balance their budgets and get by with less, some folks are living high on the hog.” Let’s look at some of those counties.

Loudoun County, Va., has a median household income of $119,540, making it the nation’s richest county. Virginia’s Fairfax County is next, with a median household income of $103,010; the median price of a house is $507,800. Third is Howard County, Md., where the median household income is $101,771. These three richest counties have seven nearby high-income neighbors, which include Arlington and Montgomery counties. The nation’s richest counties are close to Washington, D.C., where people come to do good and wind up doing well for themselves.

These 1 percenters are not wealthy right-wing Republicans; they are Obama’s liberals. How can one tell? It turns out that seven of the 10 wealthiest counties in the Washington area voted overwhelmingly for Obama in 2008. These liberals portray themselves as 99 percenters when they are really 1 percenters. They’re simply running a deceitful rope-a-dope, aided by the mainstream media, on the American people.

During last year’s Occupy movement, truly seedy-looking characters camped out on the streets and in the parks of several of our cities, causing millions of dollars of property damage. They committed robberies, thefts and sex crimes. Some of their lowlife acts, such as defecating and urinating in public and on police vehicles, were filmed.

These people also portrayed themselves as 99 percenters. It turns out that they weren’t that at all.

Many people, who do not look beyond the vision or the rhetoric to the reality, still think of labor unions as protectors of working people from their employers. And union bosses still employ that kind of rhetoric. However, someone once said, “When I speak I put on a mask, but when I act I must take it off.”

That mask has been coming off, more and more, especially during the Obama administration, and what is revealed underneath is very ugly, very cynical and very dangerous.

First there was the grossly misnamed “Employee Free Choice Act” that the administration tried to push through Congress. What it would have destroyed was precisely what it claimed to be promoting — a free choice by workers as to whether or not they wanted to join a labor union.

Ever since the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, workers have been able to express their free choice of joining or not joining a labor union in a federally conducted election with a secret ballot.

As workers in the private sector have, over the years, increasingly voted to reject joining labor unions, union bosses have sought to replace secret ballots with signed documents — signed in the presence of union organizers and under the pressures, harassments or implicit threats of those organizers.

Now that the Obama administration has appointed a majority of the members of the National Labor Relations Board, the NLRB leadership has imposed new requirements that employers supply union organizers with the names and home addresses of every employee. Nor do employees have a right to decline to have this personal information given out to union organizers, under NLRB rules.

In other words, union organizers will now have the legal right to pressure, harass or intimidate workers on the job or in their own homes, in order to get them to sign up with the union. Among the consequences of not signing up is union reprisal on the job if the union wins the election.

But physical threats and actions are by no means off the table, as many people who get in the way of unions have learned.

This development is not all that surprising because when liberal policies threaten to destroy the country Democrats typically think all they need to do is shout louder to make people understand how wonderful the hated policies really are. This ongoing collaboration with radical left-wing community organizers is also part of the Obama reelection campaign’s divide-and-conquer strategy: Inflame the base and attack opponents relentlessly to draw the public’s attention away from the worsening economy.

In a spectacle that ought to nauseate decent Americans, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius supplicated before Rev. Al Sharpton’s radical left-wing National Action Network (NAN) at its annual convention in the nation’s capital last week. She urged activists at the fancy corporate-sponsored confab to get into the trenches and fight for the misnamed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) and to let their neighbors know that the law gives them access to mountains of taxpayer-funded freebies.

“In our country what we know is healthcare inequality [has been] one of the most persistent forms of injustice but over the past three years, as Rev. Sharpton reminded us, we have begun to turn the tide,” Sebelius said. “Now is not the time to turn back.”

“We know that the best way to keep moving in the right direction is to get people the facts. Right now there are a lot of people who are benefiting from this law who don’t even know that’s why they are benefiting.”

“We need your help,” the former Kansas governor said. “I’m delighted to be your partner in that effort.” Sebelius, named by Forbes as the 13th most powerful woman in the world by virtue of her post at HHS, virtually runs the federal Leviathan. The proposed fiscal 2013 budget for HHS is a staggering $941 billion. If Obamacare isn’t killed HHS could devour most of the federal budget in the not-too-distant future.

Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, director of coverage policy in the Office of Health Reform (OHR) at HHS, reinforced her boss’s message. In an interview at the conference she said groups like NAN, National Council of La Raza, and the newly rebranded ACORN spinoffs should sing the praises of Obamacare all across the fruited plain.

“So much of this is about educating people and making sure they know what’s in the Affordable Care Act and understanding what it means for them,” said Brooks-LaSure, a former Democratic staffer on the House Ways & Means Committee. “And that is the key to making sure that people understand just how important the law is, to making sure that we improve our healthcare system.”

Editor’s note: The following talk by radio host Hugh Hewitt was delivered at the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s 2012 West Coast Retreat, held March 30th-April 1st at the Terranea Resort in Palos Verdes, California. The transcript follows.

Part I

Part II

Hugh Hewitt: I want to begin with — this is happy talk time. After the last panel, I thought I should be like the penguin at the zoo and make you all smile a little bit because, golly, cut our wrists and stuff like that. That was horrible, but I want to begin with — really, Mike Walsh, come on, Romney is going to win, Mike. They’re going to win. Don’t worry, we’ll get to that.

My preface is if anything I say has been contradicted this morning by Jay Cost, this afternoon by Dan or this evening by Karl, I’m wrong, they’re right. So just put that down and don’t hold it against me. Is Pat Caddell still here? I didn’t see him. Pat and I were on “Hannity” together in a rather memorable exchange a few weeks back and so for an additional donation, we’re be wrestling in the garden later tonight. (Laughter). It was live television. I’m used to live television. As Barry mentioned, I did it for a dozen years for PBS here in town and stuff just happens on live television. I actually was on the air when OJ took off in the white Bronco and for three hours, I covered the first and only PBS car chase in history. (Laughter). It was very refined, a very high-end car chase.

The worst moment in live television — and I was thinking about this when I knew that Pat was going to be here, not evenly remotely close to when Pat and I mixed it up on the great American panel, but it actually goes back to another PBS night when I was set to interview Big Bird and it was Big Bird in his Big Bird uniform standing right next to me. And right before the green light went on — and Dan, you’ll appreciate the green light going on — in my ear says, “Just in over the wires, Richard Nixon is dead.” Now, I’m fairly close to President Nixon, as many of you know. So the green light went on and I said “Richard Nixon is dead — coming up, an interview with Big Bird.” (Laughter). They cut to the roll-in thing. It sounded so stupid and it’s immortalized on tape that I’ve had no success in destroying. (Laughter).

I did work for Richard Nixon right out of college. I drove across the country from Ohio down to San Clemente, the Elba of America, and began to spend two years with President Nixon right before the 1980 election. We worked on a book called “The Real War” and I am reminded of those years because they feel so much like these years and I think the results are going to be very much the same thing and I believe it’s going to be as shocking and as surprising to Washington, D.C., as 1980 was shocking and surprising to Washington, D.C., and to the country. That’s why I’m an optimist.

I think the Beltway tends to be out of touch and indeed, Manhattan Beltway media leaks tend to be very out of touch with what the rest of the country is thinking. One of the reasons I like to broadcast from Orange County is that it keeps me very far away from whatever is the common wisdom among those who are making the media or making the general noise.

When I came — and I got a glimpse of what happens when you get isolated a little bit from my time with president Nixon in San Clemente. I’ll tell you one quick story from those years. President Nixon was moving to New York in the spring of 1980 and we all went back to the great metropolis, but before he left, he wanted to see the Grand Canyon, which he had never seen as a tourist. So he borrowed George [Argus]’s RV and he set out with Bebe Rebozo to go to the Grand Canyon and the young staff — there were three of us, Ray Price and two young guys. We were back packing up the books and getting ready to move to New York and he was supposed to be gone for four or five days. He was back that afternoon.

And after Bebe went over to the Casa Pacifica and they were parking the RV, I went over to talk to the head of the Secret Service detail and I said, “What are you doing back here the 23^rd, 24^th time?” He said, “Well, Bebe and he just decided it wasn’t right for them.” They decided this wasn’t going to work and it sort of started going south when they got to lunchtime and they pulled out a very fine bottle of wine and they didn’t have a corkscrew, and the Secret Service are not valets. They don’t come equipped to take care of you, so they have to pull over to get a corkscrew. (Laughter). So they pulled over to the closest place they thought they could get into and the head of the detail was retailing (sic) me with this. He said, “It was a K-Mart.”

So President Nixon, Bebe Rebozo and two members of his Secret Service detail go into the K-Mart. (Laughter). And they’re in there for an hour. I said, “What happened?” He said, “When he came out, he couldn’t stop talking about it. He said ‘Have you ever been in one of these things? They’ve got everything in there.’” (Laughter). “They’ve got furniture and clothing,” and he had gone up and down the aisle of every row in the K-Mart because, of course, Richard Nixon had never been in a K-Mart. He had been in 1962, after losing the gubernatorial election out here, he’d gone back to New York and he’d lived in New York City. They didn’t have K-Marts on Park Avenue where he practiced and of course, he ran for president. Everyone drove him around and after the resignation, he went into isolation and he very rarely left the compound until the Frost interviews — a terrific movie.

Then he was finally getting out and this is the first time. That is a parable which I think is instructive about most people in Washington, D.C., who generally do not understand what is going on in the country except by relayed reports from their correspondents who parachute in and occasionally visit. Now, I’m not going to hold myself out as a great expert on everything. I’d leave it to Victor to tell you about farming, for example, and I would leave it to others to tell you about other things, but I do try and get around and stay outside of the Beltway.

And I believe that they will be absolutely amazed by the election results because unlike any other election, I think everybody knows everything that’s going on in this country. They may not be telling pollsters the truth about how they’re going to vote, but I think the score is as well known as any nationally broadcast world Series game. I think it’s Super-Bowl-obvious what is going on in the choice in front of us, and as a result, I think it’s going to go very well for our side. That’s why I think Romney is going to win and I’ll be back to that. (Applause).

Let me give you two illustrations of that. How many of you are aware of what President Obama said to President Medvedev on Monday? How many of you think that’s significant? Now, Victor was on with me yesterday to talk about that because it is nowhere being discussed in great length and I will be fascinated if on the Sunday shows tomorrow morning, anyone talks about it at great length. It’s an enormously significant moment. As Victor said, it’s very revealing about the inner Obama. It was a total moment of transparency. It didn’t surprise me; I doubt it surprised any of you. And I think it was heard and noted all across the country.

Governor Romney came on the show instantly to say, “This is very, very disturbing. This is very, very unnerving, disconcerting.” He used every word he could come up with to convey the fact that this is not what the President of the United States ought to be doing with the president of Russia. And I think the country knows that and the MSM does not want to dwell on this at all because they realize that unlike the Etch-A-Sketch, it is a profoundly difficult moment for the president through the next nine months — seven months.

Secondly, I’ve been doing the radio thing for 22 years, been on the radio in one form or another since late 1989 and I can count on my hand events that I know are tidal-wave-like when they occur and I’ve experienced them — for example, I was broadcasting the morning of 9/11, spent six hours on the radio and of course, the whole country knew that, so that’s not hard to see. But when Florida happened, when people were intensely interested in every development of the Florida fiasco that followed — they were following the Florida Supreme Court’s back and forth with the United States Supreme Court. People wanted to know the details. I was sad to say I was on the air when Michael Jackson died and overwhelming interest immediately in the cultural phenomenon of that, and then election nights, people tune in.

One of those events happened this week in the Supreme Court arguments that Barry referenced and the Court did us a great favor. They released the audio in real time, so I was able to take the audio and I was able to play it almost — I skipped a lot of the Anti-Injunction Act stuff because no one who doesn’t have to do penance should have to listen to Anti-Injunction Act stuff, but everything that wasn’t jurisdictional was intensely interesting to the audience. And I could have just sat back and done nothing, a little commentary. I said I felt like Vin Scully doing a seventh game of the World Series because it was this epic moment and I got my friend Guy Benson on the show yesterday, TownHall.com, a tremendously talented young writer.

I said, “It’s a sad day for you.” He said, “Why is it a sad day?” I said, “Well, you’re 27 years old and you have just experienced probably the most interesting week of covering the Supreme Court you will ever have. It will never get this interesting. Bush v. Gore was pretty interesting; this was more interesting because it was actually more accessible.” We all knew what was at stake; we all understood those issues. We’ve been debating them for two years and when Paul Clement got up and delivered a four-minute opening and a four-minute — reserved his time on the second day, requests flowed in. “Play that again, play that again, play that again.”

Attorney General Cuccinelli of Virginia came on the program on Thursday and told me something that was remarkable about that. Paul Clement didn’t use a note. Isn’t that amazing? He did not have a yellow pad in front of him; he did not — Manny would be amazed by this, as no mean advocate himself. To be able to do that means he was so deeply immersed in it and to hear the justices go back and forth and to hear Justice Scalia bring up the cornhusker kickback or for Justice Scalia to say quite candidly, “2,700 pages, I’m not going to read 2,700 pages. I’m not going to make my clerks read 2,700 pages which sums it up.” That argument did so much to revive my confidence in the jurisprudence of the United States because it was so candid and so many people understood it in the audience, so many people.

We were at a Hillsdale College event on Thursday night and Arn and I were talking about the college and what it did, but we had a reception beforehand, a few hundred people. Over and over again, people came up and said, “Thank you for playing the audio.” It’s like I had anything to do with it. It was like being — as I said at the table — Bob Feller’s catcher in a no-hitter. You really don’t have much to do with it, but you’ll be happy to take a bow, and that was the way it was and that’s great if we all know this.

Now, I think this has been evolving over the last three years. I think since the president got there, I was not one of the first ones to recognize this. A lot of people were ahead of me in this game. Rush was ahead of me on this side, David was ahead of me on this side. Mark Levin was ahead of me on this side. I bought the rhetoric. I thought this was going to be a moment where the Democratic party seized the center led by President Obama and would effectively block the Republicans from a return to power by effectively governing from the center. And I thought the appointment of Robert Gates, the carry-over appointment, I was totally taken in and so were a lot of smart people on the center left.

And if you read Peggy Noonan’s piece yesterday, I think you read in Peggy’s last couple of paragraphs a deep and obvious sense of betrayal that is not limited to Wall Street Journal writers or to people in this room, but is very much centered across the country and what has happened over the last three years with this steady, lurch-like march to the left. And I believe that that’s evidenced itself in a number of ways, including the rise of bestsellers like “Ameritopia.” Mark was on the show yesterday. It’s very interesting. Mark and I go back to the Meese Attorney general’s Department together. We compete head-to-head. If I’m on one station, Mark’s on another station, but we are very good friends and I’ll pretape things with Mark and he with me, so that we can share our collective view. We’re not competing with — we’re on the same side.

And “Ameritopia” is a very — how many of you have read “Ameritopia?” It’s a difficult book. It takes eight books beginning with “The Republic” and ending up with “The Manifesto” and including Moore’s “Utopia” and some — and “The Leviathan” and Montescue and Locke and he tries to summarize it and make an argument about what’s going on in the American psyche right now. It’s a very challenging book, but it’s a very rewarding book. And as I walked through the airport yesterday in Phoenix, it is everywhere in every bookstore. It’s flying off the shelves. He’s managed to accomplish what hundreds of liberal arts colleges have not accomplished over 50 years, which is to get people to take seriously political theory and what is developing in the country.

So Levin and I were talking about this argument that happened at the court and we believe that that was — we agreed 100% — a most significant moment of recognition that we are at a turning point about which there will be no returning, that you cannot make a U-turn off of these highways, the two of which are right in front of us. And the great news is everybody knows it. David Horowitz has always reminded me of the character — how many of you read “Winds of War” or saw that horrible miniseries? Pug Henry met everybody. He managed to show up at Stalin’s backyard and he was there with Churchill.

And David’s reminded me of Pug Henry. From the beginning, he’s been on both sides of this battle. He knows both of the major players and it was — was it Michael who said in the last panel that this was begun 1968 and continues on to this point? I thought it was over in 2004. I thought that was the last boomer election. I thought that finally, we had worked 1968 out through the system. I’m the tail end of the baby-boom. I’m 56 years old and so I’ve never really been caught up with that. College was rather dull and full of beer for me. It wasn’t — we had no revolutionaries or anything like that going on, but it’s back and it’s back in a virulent, nightmarish kind of way, but I’m very comfortable predicting it’s going to go our way.

Let me give you some examples of why. Two weeks ago at the Supreme Court in a case called EPA versus Sackett, which is not well known except to those of us who toil in the fields of land use and due process law, the Supreme Court said by the rule of nine to nothing — we got Kagan and Sotomayor to go along with this. They said that the EPA cannot deny hearing the landowners who wanted to build a little house on a little piece of property three rows up from the lake that wasn’t a wetland and who may have threatened (sic) with $32,500 a day in fines. Now, to anyone in this room, that is an absurd and deeply inimical proposition, that it had not struck the EPA, the District Court or the Ninth Circuit as profoundly wrong.

Understand that nine members of the Supreme Court understood they had to get that right even though the Ninth Circuit and the District Court and the EPA had clung to their righteousness through that whole process. They were that out of step. They are liberal elites on the Ninth Circuit. I know I’ve argued in front of Reinhardt; I know the District Court judge in which it was argued in front of and I know the EPA intimately under this regime. And they are liberal elites who do not believe that they ought to be challenged in their world view and as a result, they’re out of touch.

Go back a month earlier — Hosanna Tabor versus EEOC, another 9-0 decision where the Employment Opportunity Commission had attempted to dictate to churches who would be their ministers and who would be their teachers. And the Supreme Court is back again. Again, we get Kagan and Sotomayor and said, “That’s not American. We can’t do that.” I suggest to you that the contraception regulation — not just contraception, but morning-after pill and sterilization services, etc., is as profoundly opposite of the common understanding of the law as those two decisions. And that’s three in a row and when you get three in a row that reflect not just liberal elites, but this administration specifically.

It was this administration’s EEOC; it was this administration’s EPA; it is this administration’s HHS that are coming out with far outside of the mainstream arguments that people have turned. They have turned and they have set their face against this administration because it is radical and this examples — some examples of this that help us in this election, and I’m going to get to the specifics of the election and take some questions.

I think you win when you don’t have to explain your narrative. I know from advertising. In my business, I do a lot of advertising. I know a lot of people are (inaudible) the message and the people who have won in the messaging wars, as those of you in business know, is if you hear the jingle come on and you know how it ends before it ends, right? If you do the mattress, “You’re killing me, Larry,” is common out there. All right. How many of you know what “You’re killing me, Larry” means? All right. It’s a common, beaten into us over and over again — he owns the narrative of that mattress. He’s got you.

The narrative for this election is now a series of phrases that I don’t have to explain. I merely have to say them and you will know what they communicate whether or not you agree with them. If I say ObamaCare, you know what I’m talking about and our candidates from the bottom of the ticket up to the presidency only need say ObamaCare. If I say to you “stimulus,” you know what I’m talking about. You also know I had Jonathan Alter — I like to bring lefties on. Alter is a buddy; E.J. Dionne is a buddy; Jonathan Chait is a buddy. I love to bring them on. Dan is on, Victor is on, Michael is — but I just love having everyone on and talking to them and I love it when lefties will come back again and again.

I have them on because they’re not hard to argue with. (Laughter). It really is batting practice and I’m not like a sleeper cell on the radio. I’m not sneaking them in, but Jonathan came on and he’d written this book “The Promise” about Obama’s first year and said what a success it was. (Laughter). I said, “Okay. Give me this, Jonathan. Point me to something. When I was a kid in Ohio and I was a lifeguard for the summers — there were four summers — I life-guarded at Niles, Ohio, [Waddell] Pool, which was a WPA building, a gorgeous building. It’s still standing; it’s still there. And I said, “Okay. So that’s what the WPA built. Show me what the stimulus built.” He said, “Well, they did some improvements on Route 1 in New Jersey.” (Laughter).

He said this. I said, “Jonathan, is that it?” He said, “Well, there’s signs all over the place that say improvements.” And I said “Sure, they’re putting signs, but what is left behind?” He said, “I’ll tell you what’s left behind. Solyndra is left behind and it’s a toxic waste site to the north of us. It has actually got a cleanup order on it. That’s about it.” And we argued back and forth, but you ask yourself, what could you point to?

If you gave FDR $850 billion, do you think he would have left something behind? Do you think we’d have some more F22s? Do you think we’d have a 313-ship Navy as opposed to a 282-ship Navy? Do you think we’d have some buildings? Do you think we might have bought another country or bailed someone out or anything? (Laughter). Nothing; it’s stimulus. If I say to you “unemployment,” you know — you know — I don’t even have to tell you that his administration made a promise that it would not go above 8% and in fact, it has not been below 8%. The president himself is trying to distance himself from that promise, but he put his arms around that early on in the administration by reference and implication and it was the head of his Economic Advisors Council that put that number out in the selling of the stimulus.

And it’s very hard to say we’re moving in the right direction when you’re at 8.3. I don’t care if we’re at 8.0 or 7.8. It is not moving in the right direction fast enough for people not to understand it’s been an epic fail. If I say to you Boeing, how many of you get an immediate picture of a plant in Charleston, South Carolina that was told it could not open because of a union complaint in Washington State? All right. That’s not hard. If I tell you Gibson Guitars, you will know immediately that this is an endangered wood allegedly that had been imported illegally from India that led to the shutdown and seizure of all that. If I say Sotomayor and Kagan versus Roberts and Alito, I don’t have to explain anything to you.

So I think the narrative is set.  I don’t think anything that’s going to happen between now and top line end of the year is going to change it. I think that our friends in mainstream media are going to tell us again and again and again that every tick-down in employment represents an enormous step up for the president’s re-election chances, but if you do not have open to you the opportunity to kidnap either Michael Barone or Jay Cost and put them in your basement, then I’m going to suggest the next best thing for understanding what’s going to happen in the election.

And that is a book by Sean Trendy called “The Lost Majority.” Maybe you’ve heard this. He’s a Yalie and we’re going to have to forgive him for that, but it is nevertheless a fine bit of political analysis. It examines in great detail the Obama majority and it talks about why, one, it has been lost and two, why there are no permanent majorities. You have to ask Karl tonight about it because he also takes his swings at Karl’s great Republican majority, but I think Karl was this close with the president to pulling it off. And I don’t think President Obama — if Sean is correct — is remotely close to re-election and here is why.

The Obama coalition was very, very deep, but it was also relatively narrow. It was built on enormous majorities in the African American community and significant majorities among young voters, Hispanic voters and suburban affluence. He has lost those significant majorities in the latter three categories according to Sean’s analysis, and I believe it is correct, and he has lost the enthusiasm, though not the overall majority in the African American community. And what that means is a very brittle coalition that was very wide across many traditionally red states has now reduced itself in size, and shattered in some places, which is why if you look at the Iowa numbers, even Ron Paul beat in a head-to-head President Obama in Iowa.

Step back and ask yourself, “What is that about?” That’s about the Iowa demographics setting up to reject the president in the fall. They know, they have seen, they have taken his measure and they have added it up and they will not vote for him, and they won’t change their minds. And as a result, we have a 12-state election coming at us and it’s one about which — Michael, I know you said Romney is going to win. I think he could actually take all 12 of the states I’m about to say to you — Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Colorado and Arizona and maybe Nevada.

So I’ll go back through that but so you understand, that’s what all the money will go to. Every single volunteer that leaves their home and town to go abroad to work in some other place will go to either Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Colorado and Arizona and perhaps Nevada. And the reason — and everything else is decided. We are not in a swing state. We are in the land of the living dead. (Laughter). We are finished. Jerry Brown actually wants to raise our income taxes, which is exactly the recipe to have everyone in this room move from California and go somewhere else. We’ll visit occasionally.

Even Michigan be in play and the numbers that are coming in now, it was remarkable how they’ll bend over. CNN did a poll this week that was of adult Americans. It wasn’t even registered voters screened for, much less likely voters screened for. It was just adult Americans and that has absolutely no utility to us whatsoever. You start digging down, as Sean has done, into those 12 states, we know that we are poised to win not just a good election, but a decisive election. And by decisive, I mean 1980-like big.

I was a first-year law student at Michigan. I had finished my time with president Nixon. I had left the Manhattan office, had one to Michigan and I sat down in a law school room with John Roman — his dad ran the Journal of American Medical Association, a big leftie — on the night of 1980. Roman is still a big leftie. He works for the Lawyers’ Committee on Civil Rights and he was expecting to win on the night of November 1980, and I was expecting it would be a late night. And as those things rolled on, I started drinking the 30-year scotch because this was a 30-year event, and John Culver went down. People went — Fred Harris got defeated. People you haven’t heard of in years were wiped away. They didn’t think they were in any danger whatsoever because the country had taken the measure of Jimmy Carter and they knew we could not afford another four years.

So all we have to do — and I thought it was so remarkable that Peggy wrote this yesterday — is not lose the election. He has lost it. Now, the Republicans must not lose it back. That’s what it comes down to and it’s very easy not to lose an election when you’ve got the example of Reagan sitting in front of you. All you have to do is to speak clearly to those very issues that I’ve been talking about, that list. You just have to run through it again and again and again and say, “We’re not going to do ObamaCare, I’m not going to repeat the stimulus, I am going to attack the deficit and the debt, I am going to reform Medicare” — and everyone in this room knows we have to do that — “I’m not going to abandon Afghanistan in the way the president has abandoned Iraq. I’m going to build 313 ships and I’m not going to cut 20,000 Marines and 100,000 Army troops out of the budget. I’m not going to do any of those things.”

“Instead, we’re going to do what Reagan did,” and we’ll win. Not only will we win — it is true and Sean makes this argument and as do most of the other electoral analysts that come on. It’s hard to imagine taking the senate if Romney doesn’t win the presidency. It’s very easy to imagine taking seven or eight or even nine seats if he does and there are remarkably good opportunities out there — Josh Mandel. I don’t know if Josh has made the acquaintance of many people in this room, but — (Applause) — incredible talent.

Even I don’t believe he shaves. Am I right, Jay? Does he shave? I don’t think he shaves and he doesn’t. Twice a combat veteran of Iraq, extraordinary — the highest vote-getter in Ohio on the ticket with Rod Portman and John Kasich. He still got more votes. He’s from Cuyahoga County. He’s from Shaker Heights. No one — no Republican lives in Shaker Heights. (Laughter). I know Cleveland. They go to the Browns’ games. They aren’t even comfortable there, they’re so Democratic — and so Josh Mandel.

George Allen in Virginia, our once and future senate, Connie Mack in Florida, Denny Rehberg in Montana, Jon Bruning in Nebraska, Ted Cruz in Texas — talk about an extraordinary talent. (Applause). And I know there are other Republicans running in some of these races, but Ted Cruz would instantly bring an originalist on the caliber of Paul Clement to the Judiciary Committee, someone who you would have up there who would carry on the fight not occasionally, not sporadically, not with a little bit of an understanding, but it would be the idea of replacing over a period of two years Joe Biden with Ted Cruz on the Judiciary Committee. It’s like replacing me with Scott Verlander in the lineup and throwing fast balls. That’s how much of a talent gap we’ve got.

Pete Hegseth in Minnesota is a reach, but it’s possible; it’s possible. It would be possible in a 1980-like swing. Pete Hoekstra in Michigan — another one, very difficult, but possible. It would be like a 1980 swing. And then of course, we have to hold Scott Brown in Massachusetts. We’re going to lose Maine. Angus King is a phenomenon. How many of you are Mainers? Any of you Mainers? Angus King is the real deal. He’s a Mainer and I don’t think anyone could beat him ever so I think we lose that and he’ll caucus with the Democrats. So we’ve got to keep Scott Brown and we’ve got to pick up at least half of these seats to get there. We’re also going to win North Dakota. Thai’s a gimme.

Speculation that Santorum would quit the race rose after his three-year-old daughter, Bella, had to go to the hospital over the weekend. She suffers from Trisomy-18, a rare disorder that is fatal for all but one percent of its victims by age 10. She has been released from the hospital, but the decision to exit the race was still made.

Santorum described his campaign as being “about who we are as Americans” and reflected on how his campaign sprung from last place to runner-up, despite being counted out all the way up until the final weeks before the Iowa caucus. He is proud that his campaign didn’t focus solely on the economy, but also “violent radical Islam” and “the scourge of Iran.”

There were other factors in his decision. His campaign is asking supporters to help pay off debt, saying the campaign “can’t be free to focus on helping defeat [Obama] with this burden.” Romney had also attained a nearly insurmountable delegate lead. His rivals were under tremendous pressure to drop out due to fears that a prolonged campaign would give Obama decisive advantages. He was also declining in the polls in his home state of Pennsylvania. A game-ending Romney victory there on April 24 was becoming more likely.

Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul are committed to staying in the race. Gingrich immediately declared himself the “last conservative standing”  and says he is eager to go one-on-one with Romney. He hopes to debate him in North Carolina before the state holds its primary on May 8. It is highly unlikely Romney will agree.

Gingrich is focusing on winning delegates in Delaware on April 24, North Carolina on May 8 and Texas on May 29. He admits that Romney is “far and away” the most likely one to get the nomination, so he instead is focusing on influencing the party platform. According to the Republican National Committee, Romney currently has 573 delegates. Even if all of Santorum’s delegates jumped to Gingrich, he’d only have 334.

The focus will now be on Romney’s running mate and the general election. The most mentioned names are Florida Senator Marco Rubio, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Ohio Senator Rob Portman, Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan and Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell. Sarah Palin and Herman Cain suggest Florida Representative Allen West.

Editor’s note: The following talk by Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) was delivered at the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s 2012 West Coast Retreat, held March 30th-April 1st at the Terranea Resort in Palos Verdes, California. Video of senator’s speech can also be seen below.

Ron Johnson:  Thank you very much.

Well, first of all, thank you, Robert (Norton).  I don’t have to say a whole lot more.  You pretty well got it covered.

I also just have to say, Mike (Rogers), you did a great job in a town that lacks leadership, and let’s face it, our nation hungers for leadership.  I know I’m sleeping a little bit easier knowing that someone like you is head of the Intelligence Committee in the House.  I mean it makes me sleep a little bit better at night, so God bless you.

(Applause)

I also have to point out I have to thank David for inviting me here today, giving me this opportunity, but for what he’s done for this nation.  I mean David Horowitz to me is a hero.  I’ve been reading his books for years.  I don’t want to date you, but I’ve been reading David, and he has informed me, he has shaped my opinion, and he’s done that for millions of Americans, and extremely important — he’s making extremely important points, so I just want to thank him for what he’s done for America.

(Applause)

I said I’m not going to depress you here tonight because I’m going to answer some questions.  That’s when I’ll depress you if you ask me the right ones.  But I was asked to kind of tell my story, and Robert touched on it a little bit, but I do have an unusual story when it comes to the political world.  I mean I’m not a politician.  I consider myself a citizen legislator.  I consider myself what really was our founders’ vision — people that came to Washington that had a full life, raised a family, had a full career.  You know, take that level of experience and apply it to their nation’s problems.

But how I got involved really totally was because of ObamaCare.  And if you think back to the summer of 2009, I heard President Obama — and this is an unkind paraphrase, but this is exactly what he meant.  He said, you know, these money-grubbing doctors could take out a set of tonsils for a few extra bucks.  He didn’t phrase it that way, but that is exactly what he meant.  I found that pretty offensive.

And I was actually asked to give a speech at a tea party in October of 2009.  And they said, “As a business person, will you come and speak about the harmful effect of regulations on businesses?”  I said, “I’m happy to come speak, but that’s not what I want to talk about.”

Instead, I told the story of our daughter.  I told the story of why President Obama offended me so.  Because our daughter was born with a very serious congenital heart defect.  Her aorta and pulmonary artery were reversed.  So the first day of life, she was taken out of Jane’s arms, and I’d kind of commented.  I said, “She looks a little blue,” and the nurse said, “Oh, that’s common.”  About an hour later, the doctor said, “We’ve got to rush her down to Milwaukee Children’s, where at 1:30 in the morning, one of those “money-grubbing doctors” came in and saved her life.

And then eight months later, when her heart was the size of a small plum, another group of incredibly wonderful, dedicated, highly skilled medical professionals, in seven hours of open-heart surgery, totally rebaffled the upper chamber of her heart.

Her heart operates backwards right now, but she’s a 28-year-old nurse.  She’s working at neonatal intensive care unit now herself.  Now, she’s saving those little babies.

And the punch line is our story had a happy ending because my wife, Jane, and I, we had the freedom.  We had the freedom to call up Boston Children’s, Chicago Children’s, talk to the world’s best heart surgeons and find out what is the most advanced surgical correction for that condition.

After that speech, people came up to me and said, “Liked your speech.  Why don’t you run?”  Because I’m not crazy.  I like my life.  I’m conservative.  I want to be productive.  Who would ever want to get involved in politics?

Then on Christmas Eve, pretty much the middle of the night, they passed ObamaCare, and to me, that changed everything.  And so I stepped up to the plate because I realized it truly is the greatest assault on our freedom in my lifetime.

Now, I’ve been serving for a year and three months, two days, 14 hours — but who’s counting? — in Senator Harry Reid’s “do nothing” Senate.  It’s been a little frustrating.

But I have to admit last week was the most hopeful week I’ve spent in Washington yet.  I actually, because this is such an important issue for me, I got tickets for all four sessions in the Supreme Court.  And particularly Tuesday, the day that they argued the individual mandate, I loved to hear the clarity of Justice Thomas — I mean of Justice Kennedy.  I don’t totally trust him, but I was optimistic as he pretty well laid out the case.  Basically, he said, is it true now that we’re actually going to force an American to engage in commerce so we can regulate it?  If so, that is going to change the relationship between the federal government and the individual in a very fundamental way.  He got it.  He understood it.

One of my comments as I was kind of studying to read up for the hearing — I’m not an attorney.  I’m an accountant.  I’m a business guy.  I started reading the case law, not in detail but the summaries of it, and the precedent upon which all this explosion in government has occurred was an incredibly simple Supreme Court case that occurred 70 years ago, Wickard vs. Filburn, and it was about a wheat farmer that unfortunately in a unanimous decision — because Roosevelt was trying to pack the court and they were intimidated by Roosevelt — in a unanimous decision, Supreme Court said a wheat farmer in Ohio didn’t have the right to grow wheat for his own personal consumption.

Now, I can’t think of a more basic human right, a more basic freedom than to be able to grow your own wheat for your own consumption.  What we have in the last 70 years created is layer after layer after layer of complicated precedent.  We are being held hostage.  One of the comments I made is we are collectively suffering from the Stockholm syndrome here.  We’re being held hostage by, no offense, attorneys, freedom-depriving precedent, mind-numbing legal jumbo, when, in fact, this is very simple.  It’s as simple as does a farmer have the right to grow his own wheat for his own consumption.

We need to get back to that level of simplicity and describe that to the American people, but we’re suffering from the Stockholm syndrome because now we’re begging the Supreme Court to please, please, would you just reserve that last shred of freedom for us?  We would be so grateful.

How’d we ever get to that point?  You know, one of the things as I travel around Wisconsin and I depress people, I’ve been trying to, as simply as possible, describe the problem.  I do it with charts and graphs.  I’m an accountant.  I use numbers.  I can throw those at you.  But in the end, it’s very simple to describe our problem.  It’s very difficult to solve, but it’s very simple to describe the problem.  It’s that far too many Americans have forgotten the foundational premise of this nation.  They’ve forgotten what our founders knew.

Let’s face it.  Our founders came from dictatorial monarchies and aristocracy.  They knew the government was something to fear, not something to solve your problems because they understood that as government grew, freedom receded.

So today, far too many Americans look to government to solve their problems.  Far too many Americans are willingly trading their freedom for a false sense of economic security.  Anybody here feeling particularly secure?

What caused this?  This is where David comes in.  This is what David has described unbelievably well.  The left has been relentless.  They’ve been depressingly effective at addicting Americans to government.  They’ve had the simple strategy evolve.  I’d call it a diabolical strategy.  We will addict Americans to government.  Then we’ll tell them, “We’re going to protect your benefits.”  That’s all they have to do.  And that’s all they do do.

Now, I was talking to Bob over here at my table.  One of my charts talks about the size of government.  To me, I’m a manufacturer.  I’m always looking for the root cause.  The root cause really is the size, the scope, all the rules, all the regulation, all the intrusion of government into our lives and the cost of government.

Do you realize 100 years ago the federal government was only 2% of our economy, local government was 5%, so the total was 7%?  Now, you talk about capitalism, socialism, communism.  You know, in the end, it’s just a number.  It’s that number.

Today, the federal government is 24%.  You add in state and local government, we’re at 16%.  Total, 40.  Forty cents of every dollar filters through some form of government.  And I don’t find government particularly effective or efficient.

To put it into perspective, Norway is also 40%.  Greece — anybody hear of Greece recently?  They’re at 47.  By the way, their per-capita debt is less than ours.  Italy’s 49%, France is 53.

No, congratulations, America.  We have arrived at the lower end of European-style socialism, and again, I don’t know anybody would want to go down that path.  I mean we see the results of the Soviet Union.  You take a look at what a basket case Venezuela is, and anybody vacationing in the island paradise of Cuba recently, and the fact is we’re not.

So what I’ve been trying to develop — turn my efforts to is informing the American public, persuading them, and winning the argument.  That’s what we have to do.  That’s the first thing we have to do.  We have to win the moral argument.  Before we rush to the solution, before we rush to the piece of legislation, we need to inform, educate, persuade, and win the argument.

That’s been my efforts, and practically, in Wisconsin, my first goal is do everything I can to make sure that Scott Walker is not recalled.

(Applause)

You know, in Wisconsin, Scott Walker stepped up to the plate under repugnant levels of intimidation.  You guys haven’t even heard half the story.  And the members of the legislature showed the courage trying to close a $1.8 billion-a-year deficit.  And you see all the trouble that occurred with that.

The federal government, our deficit’s $1.3 trillion.  It’s almost 1,000 times worse.  We’re going to need elected officials with some courage, and I can’t think of a worse thing for our democracy if the reward in Wisconsin for stepping up to the plate, taking the hard votes, making the tough decisions, if your reward is be turned out of office before your term is up.  So that’s goal number one.

Goal number two — this is the most significant one — we’ve got to make sure that President Obama is a one-term president.

(Applause)

Now, Mike was talking about how divisive this president has been.  The absolute best article I read on his scapegoating was written by Charles Krauthammer, and the concluding paragraph, to paraphrase it, basically went like this — President Obama is far too intelligent not to understand what he’s unleashing on this country, but if it helps his reelection, he doesn’t care.  That’s what we need to defeat.

And I’d say that just — so that’s getting past that election.  We’ve got to do everything.  We’ve got to pull together.  Now is the time to pull together, get behind a nominee, and let’s defeat Barrack Obama.

And then after that, we need to recognize that the left has been relentlessly pursuing their agenda for 100 years.  This isn’t just about one election.  This is going to be a decades-long struggle, and we’ve got to come up with a strategy.  We’ve got to come up with a message.  We need to take back our education system.

(Applause)

As business owners, I know I’ve got some in this — you’ve got to start informing the people that work with you that business isn’t evil; it’s what made America great.

(Applause)

And I will say just the last thing before I start taking questions that we absolutely have to do.  We can’t sit back and be reactive to people running for office and then support any old buddy.  We need to proactively go out and recruit patriots.  We’ve got to have a game plan here.  The left has got their game plan, and we’ve got to come up with one ourselves.  We’ve got to find Americans that love this country, understand it’s precious, that it needs to be preserved.  We’ve got to stand those folks up, and then we’ve got to support them.

So with that, I’m happy to take some questions.

(Applause)

Question and Answer

I know that wasn’t a beginning.  I’ll save it for the end.

David Horowitz:  Just want to say I first heard of Ron Johnson during the 2010 campaign when the news said there was this businessman in Wisconsin who had never been involved in politics and felt that the country was in dire — in danger.  And it occurred to me that that’s my idea of hope and change.

(Applause)

And this spring, I got a call from Senator Johnson, and I know that when a Republican legislator calls me, that’s because he wants things to change.

I just spent a day — an hour-and-a-half today with Senator Johnson, and I can tell you what you already know just from listening to him.  This is the real article.  This is leadership that we need.  I’m going to support him.  I hope you all will get behind him, too.

(Applause)

So the first question is about ObamaCare.  How much more would it cost than the administration’s estimate?

That talent was displayed just this week when he was asked whether he thought the Supreme Court would uphold ObamaCare as constitutional or strike it down as unconstitutional.

He replied: “I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.”

But how unprecedented would it actually be if the Supreme Court declared a law unconstitutional if it was passed by “a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress”?

The Supreme Court has been doing precisely that for 209 years!

Nor is it likely that Barack Obama has never heard of it. He has a degree from the Harvard law school and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago law school. In what must be one of the most famous Supreme Court cases in history — Marbury v. Madison in 1803 — Chief Justice John Marshall established the principle that the Supreme Court can declare acts of Congress null and void if these acts violate the Constitution.

They have been doing so for more than two centuries. It is the foundation of American constitutional law. There is no way that Barack Obama has never heard of it or really believes it to be “unprecedented” after two centuries of countless precedents.

In short, he is simply lying.

Now there are different kinds of liars. If we must have lying Presidents of the United States, I prefer that they be like Richard Nixon. You could just look at him and tell that he was lying.

But Obama is much smoother. On this and on many other issues, you would have to know what the facts are to know that he is lying. He is obviously counting on the fact that, in this era of dumbed-down education, many people have no clue as to what the facts are.

He is also counting on something else — namely, that the pro-Obama media will not expose his lies.

One of the many ways of lying smoothly is to simply redefine words.

Barack Obama is a master at that as well.

Editor’s note: The following talk by Congressman Mike Rogers (R-MI) was delivered at the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s 2012 West Coast Retreat, held March 30th-April 1st at the Terranea Resort in Palos Verdes, California. Video of congressman’s speech can also be seen below.

Congressman Mike Rogers:  Well, thank you very much, I think. (Laughter). What do they say? Of all the introductions I’ve ever received, that certainly was the most recent. (Laughter). Thanks. I appreciate it. You know, it’s great to get a warm welcome anywhere, really, as a member of congress, I have to tell you. (Laughter). As a matter of fact, my neighbor sells cemetery plots and life insurance and he gets invited to the barbecues. I am no longer invited to the barbecues. (Laughter). My father, who’s 86 years old, is fond of saying, “I have five boys. Four turned out really good and I got one in congress.” (Laughter).

He mentioned my time in Chicago. I had a great time. I was an FBI agent serving in Chicago as an organized crime Special Agent. I’ll tell you, I couldn’t believe that they paid me to do it — great work, enjoyed it. Well, I was thinking about the state of the Republican presidential primary and happened to think of an event there. I was a young agent and I stopped a guy. I was trying to kind of mess with him a little bit and his name was Johnny Apes. He was a crew boss in the Chicago crime family and he had this history of just spontaneously just beating people to within an inch of their life, including his own crew members if he was ticked off — thus the “Apes” of the Johnny Apes.

So I stop him one day and I said, “Johnny, this is — I’m hearing a lot of rumors that your crew, they’re not happy with you. You’re creating a bit of a morale problem for your crew. Is there anything you want to talk about?” He said, “Let me tell you something. Nuttin’ like a good beatin’ to keep the family together.” (Laughter). So I think that’s very aptly so in our presidential primary, don’t you think? (Laughter). We’ll all be together after all of this, a good family beating, a little Republican-on-Republican violence along the way. We’ll get there; be patient; be with us. Hopefully, we’ll figure this out.

I want to thank David as well. I heard David speak, I don’t know, it must have been 10 years ago or so and I was just captivated by his story and his journey, I think, to this passionate protector of liberty and all things American, our values, our entrepreneurial spirit, our individual responsibility requirements, and everything that makes this a very special place. David, thank you for being the champion and the voice. (Applause).

And think just how far we have come. I mean, a few years ago, a great president, Ronald Reagan, tried to unify this great country. He stood in front of the wall and said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” — what a magical, powerful moment in the history of this country for liberty for millions and millions of people who were living under the yoke of communism, failed communism.

And think about where we are today — a president who decides that he’s going to use politics of division to separate enough Americans for political gain. Now, he says — works actively to pit one American against another American. We want to tear down the successful in this country if this president has his way. What great country doesn’t unify around a common purpose to move forward? The greatest nation on the face of the earth, who has lifted more people from poverty than any other nation in the history of the world — why would [he] set us against each other if it weren’t for selfish needs? That’s where we find ourselves and when you look at the incremental policies, and sometimes, not so incremental policies, that’s where we are. The fight is on and David is so aptly right when he said, “Hey, be careful; be awake. This fight is on and it’s on today.”

I have to tell you with this president — American politics seem to be getting very small, very small — commenting on an incident that is tragic enough from the White House before the facts are even in; going to the Rose Garden for a press conference and saying “I’m going to take away some business tax credits and give it to the businesses — take it from the people I don’t like and I’m going to give it to the people I like.” It’s the same business tax credit. “I’m not going to stand up and try to lift the poor up; I am going to try to push the successful down.” That is a fascinating place for this country to be, but I’m going to tell you, I feel pretty good about where we are, not because of the politics in Washington, D.C. I can’t tell you I feel fantastic about that, but I know the spirit of this country is alive and well.

I have the great privilege to be the Chairman of the Intelligence Committee. I travel a lot all over the world, meet with a lot of fascinating people in some really interesting places. One particular time, I went out and we were in a place that I actually had to don the local garb to get into this particular place and there was this very tiny military unit and some other intelligence activities going on, but because they didn’t want the locals to understand what was going on, they dressed very culturally assimilated.

So here’s a soldier in the Army with a big beard and other garments that were beyond to try to blend in, if you will. So I went out to see this particular place to make sure that they had all the tools and resources, really to tell them, “Hey, thank you on behalf of a grateful America for the work that you’re doing and the fact that you’re risking your lives for this country, and you’re away from your families. Thank you.” I represent a lot of people who want to tell you thank you in person. That’s my job and privilege to get to do it.

Well, he had waited about 10 days. He was a sergeant in the Army doing some very specialized work and he waited to get promoted to the next rank. If anybody has been in the military, that’s kind of a big deal. As I told him — he shafted himself out of six days of pay — “I’m not sure you’re smart enough to get promoted” — a wonderful guy. (Laughter).

So in order to do it, he said, “Sir, I want to be in my uniform, but I can’t do it obviously out. Can we get in our little room here and do this?” So these big, tough, burly dudes, all of them, get in this tiny room. It is the size of a Holiday Inn Express bathroom and that table group over there, you know exactly what I’m talking about. I mean, it is a tiny little space and they had bunks in there and other equipment in there and it was hot and one little window was blocked out.

So we all get in there and these big dudes — big dudes — all the flag they had was a 8½ — they were those little 6-inch flags, 5½ by 6-inch flags, those little ones that you see on the little — that’s all they had, but two guys wanted to hold the flag. These were big guys; I’m not going to argue with them. So two big guys behind him were holding each little corner of the flag and I got to present the orders on behalf of the United States of America to promote this sergeant. I mean, it was a powerful moment and all of a sudden, it was — remember, it’s all darked out and we had to be quiet. I had to read the rules in a whisper.

And when it was done, one of the folks in the back started singing “The Star Spangled Banner” in a whisper. I’m going to tell you, we were off key. I’m not even sure we got all the words right. It was the most beautiful thing I have ever heard in my life. In a very dangerous place all that way away from their families, this group of individuals still believed in something bigger than themselves and it was this great country. (Applause).

So now, where have we come? Those are the things that give me faith. So the president comes out and announces his budget. I’m glad you pointed out, he got exactly zero votes. I guess that’s a vote of some kind of confidence. I’m not sure what exactly that might be, but why? I mean, why the consternation over this thing? It was a God-awful thing. It said, “We’re going to punish the successful. We’re going to tax people more. We’re going to make them more dependent on the government. We’re going to” — I mean, if this president has his way, you’re going to live a lot closer to an urban setting of his choosing. You’re going to take the train two stops to the public benefits office and on the way home, if you’re lucky, you’ll get to stop at your federal government healthcare center and then, please God, go straight home.

It’s America by design, not America by inspiration, and it sets out an America in decline. He wants to manage the decline of America — unbelievable. I mean, this is a budget that says we are going to fire 20,000 combat-trained Marines and hire 17,000 IRS agents to go after Americans for tax liabilities on the healthcare law. That’s not the America I grew up in. That’s not the priorities of this great country. It’s happening now. That was in his budget — unbelievable that most Americans, other than this crowd, is hardly paying attention to the future that he laid out in his budget.

He’s going to cut the military capability of this great nation in half — half. It’s like saying, “Brooklyn, New York, guess what? We’re going to stop patrols, but you know what? We’ve got a SWAT team back here. If something is going on, give us a holler and we’ll get there when we can.” Would you abandon the rest of the world to its chaos when our military has really been used as one of the greatest forces for good in the world? The fact that we’ve never taken land for ourselves — we have always brought liberty to any shores we’ve ever shown up on. And he says, “We’re not going to be able to respond two places at once and I want to cut that in half. We don’t really need to do it.” Really? Wow.

I’m going to tell you something. I happened to be just a few years ago, as a member of the Intelligence Committee, I was visiting the Russians and talking about the missile defense and you can imagine we probably didn’t have a lot to talk about, but we tried anyway. And I met the largest general — a military officer — I think I’ve ever seen in my life. He was probably about 6’9”, 300 pounds and his hat looked really tiny on his big head. Now, I wasn’t going to tell him that, of course. So we talked about missile defense and our differences and we’re trying to work through it. I tried to talk about a port-of-call in Vladivostok and none of it was going anywhere. This was right after the Cairo speech by the President of the United States.

And after it was all done, he said — and I won’t do a Russian accent; I can do a Chicago accent, and I cannot do a Russian accent. He said, “Congressman, can I talk to you in the other room?” I said, “Sure, absolutely.” So he puts his arm around me and puts his hand on my chest and his hand was as big as your plate; it was huge. And as we’re walking over, I’m thinking, I’ve seen this movie. (Laughter). I don’t think this works out very well for me. I think I’m that guy. (Laughter). And when he got in the other room, he said, “Congressman, let me tell you something. It’s great to see that America is finally admitting she’s a nation in decline. We’ve been through it. I’d love to give you all the advice and counsel you can take.” Now, I believe that overseas, you never talk bad about our president. I may have had a few choice words in the hotel room, however, afterward.

I went to Lebanon to talk about some issues with Iran’s expansion and certainly, their effort to get nuclear weapons and the trouble they were causing as the single largest nation-state sponsor of terrorism in the world today. One of the colonels after our meetings was a staff colonel. As we were walking out, he said, “Congressman, do me a favor. Please tell American don’t give up on themselves.”

Got back from Israel recently and they said, “Listen, we’re in some tough times here. We have no longer a predictable partner in Egypt in the south. Hamas is now well armed, thanks to Iran, and more dangerous than ever. The Sinai is starting to go south on us. Hezbollah has maybe up to 30,000 very advanced missile systems, thanks to Iran.” Can you imagine a nuclear Iran on their horizon? And they said, “We just understand one thing. We understand that we’re going to have to deal with a weakened America.”

This notion when the president got up at his state of the union and said that we’re more loved now than we’ve ever been — remember this? He talked about Rio de Janeiro. Yeah, I guess I can see that. Rio de Janeiro, that’s it? This is a complicated world, Mr. President. It’s not about the Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. (Laughter). It’s about the fact that people have ill intent to the very existence of the United States and our allies, like Israel and our western European allies, and sometimes, even the French. (Laughter).

One caveat: Platforms are less important today than they used to be. While in the past, presidential candidates tended to reflect the party’s stances, modern presidential candidates tend to shape the party’s stances.

That said, platforms are still important in that they reveal what a party and its standard-bearer believe. In rummaging through winning GOP platforms dating back to 1860, a handful of large, enduring, recurring themes emerge.

Economic Freedom over Statism

The winning platforms of the past emphasize the importance freedom—and especially freedom from onerous and confiscatory taxation.

The 1924 platform, for instance, called for “progressive reduction of taxes of all the people.”

Parts of the 1952 platform could be used in the 2012 platform verbatim: “The administration has praised free enterprise while actually wrecking it. Here a little, there a little, year by year, it has sought to curb, regulate, harass, restrain and punish…Neither small nor large business can flourish in such an atmosphere.”

The 1968 platform urged “an expanding free enterprise system to provide jobs” and condemned the incumbent’s “economic mismanagement of the highest order.”

That charge certainly hits the mark in 2012. Compared to President Obama, LBJ looks like a miserly accountant. As The Wall Street Journal recently reported, President Obama’s term includes the highest spending years since 1946. During President Obama’s term, Washington has added $5 trillion in debt.

Noting that “private property ownership is the cornerstone of American liberty,” the 1980 platform derided the federal government as “an aggressive enemy of the human right to private property ownership.”

Again, that charge is just as true today—and so is the remedy put forth in 1980. “Our foremost goal here at home is simple: economic growth and full employment without inflation,” Reagan’s platform-writers explained.

In 1952, the platform concluded that Washington had “deprived our citizens of precious liberties by seizing powers…hampered progress by unnecessary and crushing taxation…violated our liberties by turning loose upon the country a swarm of arrogant bureaucrats.” That sounds exactly like the sentiment that unleashed the Tea Party in 2009 and then triggered the historic midterm chastening in 2010.

The 1980 platform made a “case for the individual” and offered an indictment of statism: “They believe that every time new problems arise beyond the power of men and women as individuals to solve, it becomes the duty of government to solve them, as if there were never any alternative…Our case for the individual is stronger than ever.”

A Rejection of Government Control 

Of course, liberty is about far more than property rights and taxation. “Because we treasure freedom of conscience,” the 2000 platform vowed, “we oppose attempts to compel individuals or institutions to violate their moral standards in providing health-related services…We oppose using public revenues for abortion and will not fund organizations which advocate it.”

That brings us to today’s debate over nationalized healthcare and the spinoff debate over ObamaCare’s alarming encroachment on religious liberty.

The president’s healthcare law required all employers offering health insurance to include coverage for “preventive health services.” HHS later defined this to include contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs like the morning-after pill. Many observers hoped the president would direct HHS to provide a broad exemption for religious employers—and for good reason: In 2009, the president spoke eloquently about the need to “honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion” and said he was open to “a sensible conscience clause.”

But those hopes were dashed, as we now know. HHS initially exempted only those organizations that employ people of the same faith, serve people of the same faith and focus on religious teaching as their main mission. Universities, primary and secondary schools, hospitals, nursing homes, food kitchens and virtually all religious charitable organizations would not receive a conscience-clause exemption from HHS, which explains the firestorm that erupted in January.

“This is first and foremost a matter of religious liberty for all,” Cardinal Dolan explained. “If the government can, for example, tell Catholics that they cannot be in the insurance business today without violating their religious convictions, where does it end?”

Dolan wasn’t the only religious leader to come to that conclusion. The National Association of Evangelicals, Southern Baptist Convention, LutheranChurch (Missouri Synod) and the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America have all condemned the ruling. Federal lawsuits have been filed by numerous religious employers.

Reacting to the backlash, the president proposed a compromise that would allow religious employers not to include contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs in their health-insurance plan as long as they make sure their employees have insurance alternatives that provide contraceptives, abortion-inducing drugs and the like. The White House also offered “a one-year transition period for religious organizations while this policy is being implemented.”

Behind the scenes, Democrats have been busy faking petition signatures, forging ballots and enlisting medical professionals to authorize fraudulent doctors’ notes for liberal teachers-union operatives protesting Republican opponents. It’s no laughing matter.

This week, four Democratic officials in Indiana were hit with felony charges related to petition fraud in the state’s 2008 primary. The prosecutions are a result of the local South Bend Tribune newspaper’s investigation last fall into “hundreds of county residents’ signatures” forged on petitions used to put Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on the Democratic primary ballot. At least two whistle-blowing government officials came forward to expose the forgery racket, which court documents say was formulated by Democratic Party officials inside local party headquarters.

A veteran county Democratic Party chair, Butch Morgan, resigned in October over the scandal; three employees in the St. Joseph County voter registration office reportedly helped Morgan execute the scheme. Among the hundreds of unsuspecting residents whose names were illegally signed to the petitions: the prosecuting attorney in the case and a former Democratic governor of the state!

That’s the audacity of ACORN-style hoaxes.

Without the phony signatures, there’s a significant chance that Obama would not have qualified for the primary ballot — throwing the validity of the entire election into question.

Dr. Deb Fleming, the county’s Republican chairwoman, told the South Bend Tribune that the Democratic machine has dominated her backyard for decades. “They have ‘a culture of corruption’ here and throughout Indiana. ‘I’m sure there are other things. They’ve just never gotten caught,’ she speculated. ‘Because they’ve been in control of St.

The Solyndra of the week is A123 Systems, an electric vehicle battery company based in Massachusetts. The firm also has battery plants in Michigan, where former Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm once heralded A123 as a federal stimulus “success story.” Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the company headquarters and hailed it as a “great example of how Recovery Act funding is helping American companies.” In addition to nearly $300 million in Obama Recovery Act funds, Granholm kicked in another $135 million in tax credits and subsidies to bribe the company to keep jobs in her state.

How’s the return on government investment? This green dud will have taxpayers seeing red. A123′s official company motto is “Power. Safety. Life.” But the firm’s reality is “Out of power. Endangering safety. Clinging to life.”

Earlier this week, the company announced a recall of malfunctioning battery packs manufactured in Livonia, Mich. A123 makes the products for Fisker, Chevrolet and BMW electric cars. Consumer Reports flagged the potentially hazardous defect caused by faulty calibration earlier this month. The recall will cost upward of $55 million.

A Deutsche Bank analyst wrote: “We no longer have enough confidence that (A123) can raise sufficient capital (without massive equity dilution) and/or continue to augment their book to future business. Recent quality issues may lead to concerns over (A123′s) ability to manufacture with quality at high volumes, potentially leading to customer defections or at least difficulty in procuring new contracts.”

When it rains, it pours. The dead battery debacle follows news of 125 layoffs in November due to diminished vehicle production by top client Fisker Auto.

The editor of Commentary, John Podhoretz, offered an explanation on his magazine’s blog. “American liberals,” he wrote, “know their own language, but they don’t know the language of their ideological and partisan opposite numbers. … Conservatives speak liberal, but for liberals in the United States, conservatism might as well be Esperanto.”

I have argued this point for many years. In my book to be published later this month (“Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph”), I argue that the left is a victim of its own brainwash. How could they not be? All they hear, see and read from childhood on, from elementary school through graduate school, on TV and in the movies, are leftist ideas.

Yet this is not true for conservatives. One would have to grow up in a silent monastery not to be regularly exposed to liberal and leftist ideas.

For 30 years, I have had leading left-wing thinkers on my radio show, and I continue to be shocked at their lack of awareness of conservative arguments. About two years ago, for example, I asked one of the most powerful Democratic members of Congress — a major force behind every tax increase — what tax rate he thought might be too high. He replied that he had not given it thought. I asked a leading liberal writer who maintained that all American wars since World War II had been imperialist if he thought the Korean War was also imperialistic. He replied that he didn’t know enough about that war to respond.

After interviewing leftists, liberal listeners frequently ask me why I don’t invite the best liberals on to my show.

The answer is that I have had some of the best liberals on my show. They just don’t tend to do well when challenged by thoughtful conservatives.

That may be why the majority of influential liberals refuse to go on conservative talk radio or to debate conservatives.

In earnest, the GMJ was little more than a modern-day, jihadist-inspired confrontation aimed eliminating the Jewish State. It was an aim revealed by the GMJ’s logo, showing a map of Palestine in place of Israel. The GMJ rejects any two-state solution with the nation they consider the epicenter of ”apartheid, ethnic cleansing and Judaisation.” Furthermore, the organizers insist that they are “renewing the struggle to liberate Palestine,” a particular expression that is a common euphemism for the destruction of Israel.

The organizers planned a four-pronged assault on Israel’s borders from four neighboring countries: Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon. Additional protests were organized to take place at Israeli embassies in Europe and Arab countries. Palestinian activist Dr. Mustafa Barghouti made the inevitable disclaimer that always attends such assaults on Israel’s sovereignty. “This march is absolutely peaceful and non-violent, and we will try everything possible to prevent violence,” Barghouti said. This disclaimer was followed by the curious caveat: “Of course, if they use violence against us, the world should protest,” he adds. “But the march is absolutely peaceful and nobody will try to provoke violence.”

Of course unprovoked violence did break out. It was no more than what was expected considering the history of Palestinian activism: A May 15, 2011 demonstration on Nabka Day, the day when Palestinians mourn the establishment of the Jewish State in 1948, resulted in 15 deaths when protesters attempt to breach Israel’s border.  A reprise of violence occurred June 5, 2011, on Naska Day, when Arab nations commemorate their defeat (or “setback”) by Israel in 1967.  At least 23 people were killed during a protest near the Golan Heights, when Israeli troops once again prevented a border breach by Palestinian demonstrators coming from Syria.

The Embassy’s Information Resource Center that boasts housing “the definitive collection of Americana” in Jamaica is now named the “Paul Robeson Information Resource Center.” During the renaming ceremony, U.S. Ambassador to Jamaica Pamela E. Bridgewater called Robeson a patriotic American.

Her remarks surely pleased Jamaica’s left-leaning government and its many anti-American elites. They regard Robeson as a kindred spirit — a famous ideologue of the old left who blazed a trail for them: stalwart members of today’s postmodern left. In recent years, they have pushed for slave reparations from Britain, promoted a chummy relationship with Cuba, and proven problematic partners in the war on Islamic-inspired terrorism.

Ultimately, the renaming appears to be part of President Obama’s reset of America’s foreign policy – and how a postmodern America ought to interact with the world and be perceived by it.

It’s not that Robeson’s resume lacks some stellar achievements, a fact that Bridgewater – an African-American whose father was a jazz trumpeter – surely had in mind. A famous stage actor and singer in the 1920s and 30s, Robeson was an all-American athlete and class valedictorian at Rutgers University. He subsequently earned a law degree from Columbia University, and though he briefly practiced law it’s said he ended his legal career because of limited opportunities for black lawyers, and an alleged incident in which a white legal secretary refused to take dictation from him.

Many regard Robeson as a 20th Century Renaissance man. Yet like many among the morally confused left during the 1940s and 50s, Robeson embraced communism. And while most black Americans stood by their country, Robeson stood against it by serving as a high-profile propagandist for Stalinist Russia — a dangerous existential enemy of America and the West. He was controversial and polarizing. In 1949, when Robeson declared that African-Americans should refuse to take up arms against Stalinist Russia, American boxer Sugar Ray Robinson was quoted as saying that although he’d never met Robeson, he would “punch him in the mouth” if they ever met.

Like Hollywood’s outspoken leftist celebrities, Robeson traveled the world to promote his odious political views. This included high-profile trips behind the Iron Curtain, to Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe, to demonstrate solidarity with Joseph Stalin and the communist cause. He spoke and sang at large rallies and gatherings – high-visibility events generating newspaper headlines and featured on Pathe’s newsreels.

Robeson fashioned himself as a man of the people. Yet when Hungarians revolted against their Soviet masters, he likened them to fascists. Referring to politically-motivated killings in Stalinist Russia, he observed: “From what I have already seen of the workings of the Soviet government, I can only say that anybody who lifts his hand against it ought to be shot!”

When Stalin died in 1953, Robeson – winner of the Stalin Peace Prize a year earlier – praised him in a glowing eulogy as a great man. “One reverently speaks of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin – the shapers of humanity’s richest present and future,” he wrote.

Many of Robeson’s fellow leftists were horrified at Stalin’s crimes in Russia and aggression abroad. They publicly condemned what was happening — even to the point of renouncing communism. But not Robeson. Appearing in 1956 before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, he refused to condemn Russia’s labor camps where millions perished – yet in the same breath he bitterly condemned his own country’s legacy of slavery. Robeson’s outrage was selective. He was enraged by every lynching that ever occurred in the Jim Crow South – yet he never raised his voice against millions of state-sponsored lynchings in Russia, China, and Eastern Europe. He regarded them as color-blind societies where social justice and egalitarianism prevailed.

Rewriting History

Robeson’s outspoken political views were repugnant, a fact even acknowledged today by some leftists. “Yes, Paul Robeson Was an Unrepentant Stalinist,” declared a Robeson-bashing article in the left-wing Daily Kos. Yet U.S. Ambassador Bridgewater nevertheless praised Robeson as a great American during the embassy’s renaming ceremony that coincided with the 36th anniversary of his death on January 23, 1976, at age 77. “Paul Robeson faced many challenges throughout his life, but he remained a sterling and shining example of patriotism, pride, elegance and humility,” said Bridgewater, 64, a 32-year veteran of the foreign service.

The renaming generated much positive publicity in Jamaica, a country with a love-hate relationship with the United States. Robeson’s granddaughter Susan Robeson, a filmmaker and activist, was among more than 150 visitors on hand, including a number of students. One newspaper headline declared: “Robeson’s Shining Example Lights Up U.S. Embassy.” Now, many young Jamaicans are learning for the first time about Robeson; and no doubt they’re learning a narrative that’s popular among Jamaica’s influential leftist political circles: Paul Robeson was a black man who sought social justice for America’s oppressed blacks, and as a result he was blacklisted and persecuted by America’s racist and reactionary government. A former British colony, the island of 2.7 million is overwhelmingly of African descent.

The story behind the Robeson renaming is purely Obamaesque, and is perhaps an indication of what’s been quietly happening at U.S. Embassies around the globe. Early last year, in observance of Black History Month, the U.S. Embassy in Kingston launched an essay contest for high school students, asking them to propose a historical figure after which the the Embassy’s popular Information Resource Center should be named.

The winning essay by Kathy Smith, “The Soul of a Continent,” put forth Paul Robeson with whom Smith identified, in part, out of a sense of racial solidarity. “Robeson sung songs of equality and anti-hate, as if spurred by the soul of a continent,” Smith wrote – with her reference to “continent” being a reference to Africa. “His baritone voice told the truths of a man desperate to retain his thought-soul, his identity and African spirit.”

Smith, now a law student at the University of West Indies in Jamaica, is correct about one thing: Robeson’s rich baritone voice is indeed associated with a number of memorable American songs including “Old Man River,” “Swing Low Sweet Chariot,” and “Let My People Go.” Yet Robeson also is famous for singing an English-language version of the Soviet National Anthem – a powerful and heartfelt rendition that may be heard on the YouTube clip reproduced here.

The U.S. Embassy in Jamaica failed to respond to an e-mail query regarding the renaming — and who approved it. But Ambassador Bridgewater certainly had a major role in it. So did whoever in the State Department gave her a green-light – an approval no doubt reflecting President Obama’s reset of U.S. foreign policy. In this reset, America no longer defines who it is to the world. That would be arrogant. Instead, the world is allowed to decide who America’s heroes ought to be.

How times change. During the Bush years – when I was a journalist based in Kingston, Jamaica’s capital, the U.S. Embassy sought to counter the island’s anti-Americanism, which went into a chest-thumping rage over Bush’s post-9/11 war on terrorism and invasion of Iraq. Those efforts were described in an article of mine for theWashington Times, “Answering Anti-Americanism.” Now, Ambassador Bridgewater and her State Department facilitators appear to be throwing a bone to Jamaica’s left-leaning People’s National Party and its anti-American cheerleaders: people, to be sure, who don’t represent the views of most ordinary Jamaicans.

Anti-Americanism

Words and deeds matter. By honoring Paul Robeson, the U.S Embassy may be giving a boost to anti-Americanism and in turn Jamaica’s potential for Islamic-inspired terrorism by young men attracted to jihad’s anti-Western message. It’s a strange fact: Jamaica has only a tiny Muslim population; yet it has links to a unusually large number of Islamic-inspired terror outrages and plots. These include the London subway bombings; Washington’s beltway sniper shootings; and “shoe bomber” Richard Reed’s aborted attempt to blow up an American Airlines jet.

This sort of thing happens with depressing regularity in cities where even the most liberal residents have to choose between police overreach and being murdered. It never leads to meaningful debate or a resolution, instead it peters out with the best actors in the grievance theater picking up money and influence, the media selling a few more papers or ads for nasal polyp relief on the drive time news and everything going back to the way it was.

The grievance theater is never really about the specific case, the specific shooting; it’s about the links between the social problems of the black community, the compromises of civil liberties necessary to keep entire cities from turning into Detroit and the inability of the media to address the sources of crime as anything but the phantoms of white racism. It’s about a black leadership that is more interested in posturing as angry activists and shaking loose some money, than in healing their own community’s problems. And so the same story repeats itself again and again without an honest dialogue or anything meaningful coming out of it.

The Grievance Theater has been going national. It’s no longer just extraordinary cases like Bernie Goetz’s Death Wish moment on the number 2 train that briefly catch hold of the national conversation. The obsessive coverage of the so-called Jena 6 case, an incident of so little internal meaning, signaled that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton would no longer just be able to drive a local controversy; they now had the freedom to drive national controversies any time they wanted to.

Trayvon Martin is their big moment. It’s no longer just Grievance Theater being used to influence the political fortunes of a municipal election, the way that Howard Beach was used to bring down Mayor Koch and replace him with the execrable David Dinkins. Now it’s being used as part of a presidential campaign on a national level.

The fortunes of too many black politicians have been tied to white guilt and black rage. The worst sort of black politician channels black rage to score points with black supporters while playing on the guilt of white voters, promising to heal the social conditions that bring about that anger and protect them from its ravages. But never before has that game been played out of the Oval Office.

The last two Democratic presidents were southern governors, but the current occupant is a veteran of the corrupt urban political machine where there are only two games in town and when the money runs out, this is the one you play. The money is running out, the polls are running down and accordingly we have been treated to an episode of Grievance Theater, with our beloved leader in the role of healer and inciter.

Obama helped Al Sharpton achieve an unprecedented national profile in order to marshal that part of his base which cares less about jobs, than about finding someone to blame. The Trayvon Martin circus is a bullhorn urging all of us, black or white, to stop focusing on the economy and start focusing on race.

It’s Community Activism 101 to divide and conquer the electorate by breaking them down and feeding local anxieties, whether it’s about birth control or racial injustice. And it’s a win-win for Obama, who at worst gains a distraction from economic turmoil and a few thousand guilty voters and at best, upends the national dialogue by asserting the dominance of the racial narrative. While his associates wield the bullhorns, he carefully plays healer and if there is violence, then his currency as racial healer increases.

What does it say about America that what was once a form of political theater rising out of the grimy urban blocks of the failed city is now a national art form? Nothing good. A local dysfunction has become a national dysfunction, not because every city has become New York and Chicago, but because the people at the center of power hail from New York and Chicago.

Our racial dysfunction has always been secondary to our political dysfunction and now our political dysfunction is second to none. We have the best government that Warren Buffett’s money could buy and that ACORN’s election fraud can achieve. And we have a national government that is starting to look like the dysfunctional urban governments at the center of the grievance theaters.

This isn’t the first time that a U.S. president has presented one face to the American electorate regarding the security of Eastern Europe while presenting another face to a Russian leader. The climactic moment in the George Nash-edited Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover’s Secret History of the Second World War and Its Aftermath comes during the wartime summit at Tehran, where Franklin Roosevelt privately agreed with Russian strongman Joseph Stalin’s plan to absorb Eastern Europe into his Communist dominion. But it was important for Roosevelt to tell Stalin that he could not publicly support this plan until after the 1944 election.

“In 1939 before the war, there was one Communist country,” Herbert Hoover explains in Freedom Betrayed. “By 1946 there were 23 nations or parts of nations dominated by Communism.” That is the abridged version of the 900+ page book that the 31^st president described as his magnum opus. Freedom Betrayed is a curio in any number of ways. It’s the only book-length critique of one president’s policies written by his predecessor. Publication arrives nearly a half-century after its author’s death. And it is an unsettling history of settled history—questioning the official account of World War II doesn’t provoke a conversation; it stops one. So for some the critique, and the critic, may make this book’s mere existence indecent. But like all curios, it invites curiosity.

Written during the coldest part of the Cold War, Freedom Betrayed traces the roots of the U.S.-Soviet conflict to policies enacted by Franklin Roosevelt. First among these is Roosevelt’s 1933 reversal of the policy of his four immediate predecessors denying recognition to the Bolshevik regime. “Soon after the recognition,” Hoover explains, “American members of the Communist Party began filtering into the most important government departments, thus gaining access to matters of national security, and the opportunity to influence or even to make major policies. They also infiltrated labor unions, stirring up class hatred and strikes. They infiltrated college campuses, sowing seeds of doubt in the minds of youth as to our basic principles and institutions. They created subversive fronts to mold public opinion. They stole the secrets of the atomic bomb.”

Hoover paints the picture of a president in over his head. “In his first four years in office, President Roosevelt had made speeches and statements on public affairs totaling more than 400,000 words,” Hoover writes. “Of these, fewer than 3,000—the equivalent of one speech—concerned our foreign relations.” He castigates his successor as an isolationist who cut defense expenditures and retreated from the world. He might have been talking about himself. Defense expenditures not related to veterans benefits had declined slightly from Hoover’s first budget to his last, and the isolating Smoot-Hawley tariff legislation that Hoover had denounced ultimately won his signature. It is a peculiar truth that the American presidents embroiled in the pettiest grievances against one another—think on why the Hoover Dam was briefly called the Grand Coulee Dam—demonstrated a remarkable continuity in policy.