Hold The IRS Accountable

Peggy Noonan hit the nail on the head in her Wall Street Journal article today on the current IRS scandal:

"I don't know." "I don't remember." "I'm not familiar with that detail." "It's not my precise area." "I'm not familiar with that letter." 

These are quotes from the Internal Revenue Service officials who testified this week before the House and Senate. That is the authentic sound of stonewalling, and from the kind of people who run Washington in the modern age—smooth, highly credentialed and unaccountable. They're surrounded by legal and employment protections, they know how to parse a careful response, they know how to blur the essential point of a question in a blizzard of unconnected factoids. They came across as people arrogant enough to target Americans for abuse and harassment and think they'd get away with it.

Hopefully, they won't get away with it.  They still may.  What is needed is what Noonan later wrote in her article:

A dead serious investigation is needed. The IRS has colorfully demonstrated that it cannot investigate itself. The Obama administration wants the FBI—which answers to Eric Holder's Justice Department—to investigate, but that would not be credible. The investigators of the IRS must be independent of the administration, or their conclusions will not be trustworthy. 

An independent counsel, with all the powers of that office, is what we need.

To read Noonan's full article, go here. 

Backstabbing Pundits

One has to wonder about some of the so-called conservative pundits who are out there badmouthing GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney.  Do they want Obama in the White House for another four years?

Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard called Romney "arrogant" and "stupid" the other day over Romney's 47% comment.   Kristol is an elitist establishment type who, according to talk show host Mike Gallagher, tries to curry favor with the Matt Laurer's (of NBC's Today Show) of the MSM.

Another pundit from the Beltway is former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan.  On September 21, she wrote (in the Wall Street Journal) about the Romney campaign:

This week I called it incompetent, but only because I was being polite. I really meant "rolling calamity." 

Well, if coming from behind in Gallup Polls to be currently even with Obama, the Romney campaign seems to be on the right track.  I don't recall Noonan (or Kristol) ever running any political campaign to have the expertise to be judging the Romney campaign.

This prompted Romney surrogate John Sununu to quip,  "I wouldn't hire Peggy Noonan to run a campaign."

Reagan and Kennedy

Former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan posted a tribute to Ted Kennedy that is interesting:

And so grace met grace, and a friendship that had already begun deepened. On Wednesday, the day after Ted Kennedy died, Nancy Reagan gave a telephone interview to Chris Matthews on "Hardball." "We were close," she said of their friendship, "and it didn't make any difference to Ronnie or to Ted that one was a Republican and one a Democrat." "I'll miss him very much," she said. "I'm sure we'll all miss him."

The Reagans and the Kennedys

Democrats Unraveling

The Democrats are unraveling. With protests against Obamacare mounting, the Democrats are calling upon their union thug allies to show up at townhall meetings and some are getting violent.

Here's a YouTube video of the Tampa meeting:



In Tampa, Florida, FoxNews is reporting:

A freelance videographer was roughed up in an altercation, which damaged his camera equipment and glasses, and at least one man was treated for minor injuries after a scuffle left his shirt partially torn from his body.

Union thugs push out opponents and close doors:



Elsewhere, it is reported:

Inside, Democratic lawmakers had a difficult time delivering their opening remarks, as they were met with shouts of "You work for us!'' "Tyranny! tyranny! tyranny!'' and "Read the bill!" the Tampa Tribune reported.

In Mehlville, Mo., St. Louis police arrested six people, some on assault charges, outside another forum that was billed as a meeting on aging but was attended by activists on both sides of the health care debate.

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the police showed up toward the end of the forum held by Democratic Rep. Russ Carnahan. One conservative activist, interviewed at a local emergency room where he was being treated for injuries, said he was attacked by some of the individuals who were arrested as he passed out "Don't tread on me" flags.

FoxNews.com also is reporting:

Top White House officials counseled Democratic senators Thursday on coping with disruptions at public events on health care this summer, officials said, and promised the party and allies would respond with twice the force if any individual lawmaker is criticized in television advertising.

The Democrats are withering under the heat of protests.

Columnist Peggy Noonan wrote (I have not been a big fan of hers since her antics during last year's campaign, but she is calling it right today):

We have entered uncharted territory in the fight over national health care. There’s a new tone in the debate, and it’s ugly. At the moment the Democrats are looking like something they haven’t looked like in years, and that is: desperate.

They must know at this point they should not have pushed a national health-care plan. A Democratic operative the other day called it “Hillary’s revenge.” When Mrs. Clinton started losing to Barack Obama in the primaries 18 months ago, she began to give new and sharper emphasis to her health-care plan. Mr. Obama responded by talking about his health-care vision. He won. Now he would push what he had been forced to highlight: Health care would be a priority initiative. The net result is falling support for his leadership on the issue, falling personal polls, and the angry town-hall meetings that have electrified YouTube.

What the town-hall meetings represent is a feeling of rebellion, an uprising against change they do not believe in. And the Democratic response has been stunningly crude and aggressive. It has been to attack. Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the United States House of Representatives, accused the people at the meetings of “carrying swastikas and symbols like that.” (Apparently one protester held a hand-lettered sign with a “no” slash over a swastika.) But they are not Nazis, they’re Americans. Some of them looked like they’d actually spent some time fighting Nazis.

To read Noonan's full article, go here.

Conservative Turncoat List Grows

The list of "turncoat" conservatives keeps growing.

Last year, Colin Powell, Peggy Noonan, David Gergen, Christopher Buckley, Kathleen Parker, David Brooks committed sins of either a.) giving lukewarm (or no) support for the McCain-Palin ticket, b.) badmouthed Gov. Palin, c.) gave lukewarm (or enthusiastic) support for Barack Obama or d.) claiming Obama will govern as a centrist like Clinton did.

Now the list just got a new addition: David Frum. Frum committed the sin of personally attacking Rush Limbaugh following Limbaugh's speech before CPAC last weekend. Frum had his head handed to him last night when he called into the Mark Levin Show. Mark Levin made hamburger out of Frum. To hear the audio of the Levin-Frum exchange, go to the Mark Levin Show link on this page.

The trouble with most of these people, they like to curry favor with the elites in the Beltway and be invited to the posh cocktail parties. But it certainly does not help them with their own readership members. In fact, they have lost a lot of followers. True conservatives with principles will never take their views seriously again.

Since Obama and the Democrats have passed socialist legislation, supposedly to remedy the recession, Christopher Buckley has come out disavowing his backing for Obama. Too little, too late. His dad, William F. Buckley, must be spinning in his grave.

As Peter Robinson wrote this week at Forbes.com:

Contrast Buckley, Gergen and Brooks with, let us say, Rush Limbaugh, whose appearance at any chic cocktail party would cause the hostess to faint dead away, or with Thomas Sowell, who occupies probably the most unfashionable position in the country, that of a black conservative.

Limbaugh and Sowell both got Obama right from the very get-go. "Just what evidence do you have," Sowell replied when I asked, shortly before the election, whether he considered Obama a centrist, "that he's anything but a hard-left ideologue?"

The elite journalists, I repeat, got Obama wrong. The troglodytes got him right. As our national drama continues to unfold, bear that in mind.

Peggy Noonan: What Happened?

Former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan wrote a piece on Governor Sarah Palin and questioned Palin's conservative credentials. The piece speaks more volumes on Noonan than it does Palin.

Part of what Noonan wrote:

For seven weeks I've listened to her, trying to understand if she is Bushian or Reaganite — a spender, to speak briefly, whose political decisions seem untethered to a political philosophy, and whose foreign policy is shaped by a certain emotionalism, or a conservative whose principles are rooted in philosophy, and whose foreign policy leans more toward what might be called romantic realism, and that is speak truth, know America, be America, move diplomatically, respect public opinion, and move within an awareness and appreciation of reality.

My feeling is that Noonan seems to have disconnected with heartland conservatives. Peggy Noonan's speechwriting work for President Reagan will always be cherished by me. I enjoyed her memoirs of those days. But something seemed to have happened to her recently. She calls herself a conservative, but she seems to have been taken in by Obamatron talking points. Maybe she's been in the Manhattan cocoon too long or some liberal there spiked her drink at the last cocktail party.

Sarah Palin's political hero is Ronald Reagan. Michael Reagan sees a lot of his dad in her. (Would Peggy dare to question Michael Reagan?) Who is she to question whether or not Palin is a Bushie or Reaganaut?

I feel very sad for Peggy. I hope she takes a month-long vacation (the sooner, the better) and spends the time in the heartland of America to re-connect with conservatives and get her political soul back.