First Principles

A couple of days ago I came across this really nice piece on Clark County’s Senator Mike Roberson.  We’re extremely lucky to have this guy in Carson City.  In fact, I would argue that the entire Senate GOP Caucus – with its nice mix of veterans and folks with fresh passion – was the most […]

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I feel like I’ve spent a lot of time lately on this blog complaining about the politics of subtraction practiced by the more (allegedly) rightward wing of the party.  But it’s worth looking at the perils of subtracting from the other side of the equation, too. A few of my more moderate Republican friends lament […]

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Thomas Sowell has a great column on this topic that’s very worth reading, especially here in Nevada where various elections have been (quite wrongly, in my view) analyzed based on whether a candidate was “too conservative” or not. Senator Goldwater was not crazy enough to start a nuclear war. But the way he talked sometimes […]

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… Come From a Supposed Conservative? In case you missed it, there are three Republicans now running in what will almost certainly be state Senate District 18 down in Las Vegas.  Michele Fiore is one, and the other two are sitting State Assemblymen, Scott Hammond and Richard McArthur.  I’ve observed both of the Assemblymen in […]

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The purpose of a political party is to get as many members of that party elected to public office as possible. Period. So why is it that so many members of Nevada’s Republican Party seem to care so little for their central mission?  Why are a large minority of them seeming to act against that […]

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Yesterday’s post on the same-day caucus registration has been getting a lot of great feedback – thanks to everyone who passed it around.  Also, I’ll be on 99.1 FM Tuesday morning around 7:00 to discuss the topic. Unfortunately, there have also been some responses that aren’t exactly… fully accurate, either because the responder doesn’t understand […]

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I couldn’t live blog tonight, as I had a class to teach.  But I listened to most of it on the radio, and watched the rest on DVR when I got home. I wish the entire nation could have seen Governor Sandoval’s speech last night, in order to contrast it with this one.  Sandoval gave […]

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True social conservatism, that is – not Big Government nanny-statism in the name of the Lord. Last week, various tea party movement activists from around the country sent a letter to GOP leaders asking them to back off the social issues and focus on deficits and spending.  I agree with them to a point, but […]

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11:27: I need to go to bed.  But some closing thoughts. In the primary, pundits struggled to find a pattern to an electorate which supported both Sandoval and Angle, and seemed similarly schizophrenic across the country.  Much ink was spilled over whether the GOP was moving right, or splitting altogether.  The agendas, while different, shared […]

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Two years ago, on the eve of another historical election, I wrote about my hopes for the election results and the next several years.  I said that my desires, in order of preference, were 1) that John McCain won, and was successful, 2) that Barack Obama won, and was successful, or, failing those two outcomes, […]

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Well, no big surprises.  He made the same promises that he made a year ago, and the only difference is that now we can be even more sure he won’t keep any of them. The big takeaway from me on this was just how unserious this speech was. 

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Yes, I know it’s been a few weeks.  No, I haven’t decided that individual liberty is overrated, nor have I developed a new-found belief that government bureaucrats are qualified to centrally manage an economy.  Really. It’s mostly owing to a ton of new responsibilities at work.  But I’ve also been working with a great bunch […]

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In all the commentary on the John Ensign adultery debacle, there’s a tremendous lack of common sense or honesty, replaced instead by the kind of tribalism sourced from the same “logic” that makes Vikings fans think Brett Favre actually sucks (unless he decides to play for the Vikings). It’s understandable.  Conservatives want to rally around […]

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Six years ago, the Democratic governor had overspent and over-borrowed and overextended entitlements in his State, and predictably, had broken the back of its finances.  In the resulting circus of a recall election (which I admit being very excited about) complete with porn stars and midgets, only one serious candidate emerged who proposed conservative solutions […]

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Recent events such as the defection of Arlen Specter has amplified the calls of (mostly liberals) for the Republicans to move left if they want to remain relevant.  The argument goes that Republicans have shifted hard right since the Big Tent days of Reagan, and are now seeking to purge anyone from their ranks who […]

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Yesterday in the RGJ, there was a piece by local columnist David Jacobs snarkily noting that neither George Bush nor Congressional Republicans (back when they held majorities) were all that fiscally conservative.  He further suggested that lack of economic smarts helped cause the economic problems we have now. He’s right. So why, then, would he […]

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One tool that always comes up in political discussions by nerds like me (and my great commenters) that attempt to define and pin down political philosophies is some kind of chart.  I tend not to like them, because I think they tend to do a poor job explaining the relationships between various philosophies.  But if […]

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So Ted Stevens has lost his Senate seat in Alaska, bringing the Democrats that much closer to a veto-proof supermajority. Good.

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Tonight we went to the second-to-last last stump speech of the McCain-Palin campaign, held here in Reno with the Alaska governor.  I went to the last one, too, but this one was different.  It was bigger, more serious, and more hopeful – no matter who wins tomorrow. When we arrived, there were thousands of people […]

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The Paulestineans’ antics last weekend at the Nevada State GOP Convention have really left me thinking that they are more than just irritating oddballs, but are actually threat to conservatism in America, at least in the short term. Like the Jihadists who would rather blow themselves up than compromise with their neighbors or engage in […]

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