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National Security Pollsters ‘Come In From The Cold’

by 1389AD ( 141 Comments › )
Filed under Anti-Jihad, Censorship, Elections 2012, Europe, France, Iran, Israel, Military, Nuclear Weapons, Polls, Saudi Arabia, Terrorism, UK at February 14th, 2011 - 2:00 pm

This slideshow at CPAC 2011 shows just how opposed to the will of America’s citizenry are the government officials, think-tank pundits, media personalities, and foreign propagandists who have been guiding, or rather misguiding, America’s foreign policy. They have been not only ignoring, but deliberately flouting, the clearly expressed intentions of the voting public.

These two pollsters are leaving their role as spectators to participate more directly in the political scene by providing a venue where citizens can make themselves heard on the issue of national security.

Pollster John McLaughlin

Pollster Pat Caddell

BigPeace: Pollsters Launch Network to Inject National Security Issues Into the Public Dialog

By Alexander Marlow Feb 13th 2011 at 6:44 am

…When it comes to issues of national security and foreign policy, Democratic pollster and Fox News contributor Pat Caddell and GOP pollster John McLaughlin had grown tired of merely charting what Americans are thinking and decided to get into the business of empowering them to act.

…“There is a specter of decline about this county,” Caddell said in an exclusive interview for Big Peace, “the anxiety level is very great.” It was this sentiment that compelled the two gentlemen to launch SecureAmericaNow.org, a nonpartisan, grassroots effort to organize the American people to keep the pressure on the political class, which the founders of the network belive cannot be saved without increased citizen involvement.

…“We asked in a survey,” McLaughlin tells Big Peace, “‘Barack Obama is committed to a policy of outreach to the Muslim world, knowing this do you think the policy has increased or decreased the security of the United States?’ Fifty-one to 23 [percent of] the people say it has decreased versus increased. The people are way ahead of [Obama] when it comes to these issues.”

The network will feature polling data, research, op-eds, social networking, and other information that will help foster a greater national dialog on the security and foreign policy issues that are negligently ignored by our political class and mainstream media. They used a CPAC panel as a launchpad for SecureAmericaNow.org and to raise these issues. On the panel, Caddell expressed utter exasperation with the media and political class for not making the story of Everybody Draw Mohammed Day creator Molly Norris front and center on the national stage. Norris created the idea last year in response to Comedy Central refusing to air an image of Mohammed on the South Park (Comedy Central had allowed South Park to depict Mohammed in 2001). It was reported that Anwar al-Awlaki had put Norris on a hitlist, and, as we reported at Big Peace, Norris has since gone into the FBI equivalent to the witness-protection program. In other words, she no longer exists. Yet this outrageous tale was largely absent from the American conversation. “That absence tells you everything you need to know about what is wrong with the dialog,” Caddell said.

During the interview, McLaughlin and Caddell cited other examples of politicians and media elites failing to react to the will of the American populace. One of these issues is that over three quarters of the American people want to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weaponry and 80% believe Iran would give nukes to terrorists if they could. Americans want to act, yet the current administration has taken a passive approach to Iran. Also seemingly lost from the public discourse is that David Cameron, the leader of our closest ally, Great Britain, noted in a public address that multiculturalism has failed (not to mention that France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany’s Angela Merkel agree), yet the American media and political class largely ignored this striking repudiation of a core liberal tenant. Cameron’s sentiment was simply not simpatico with the narrative the American media has created to support post-1960s liberalism.

But what is truly inspiring Caddell and McLaughlin to take up their virtual muskets is the endemic dearth of common sense that’s engulfed the media and our elected officials. Caddell cites the Ground Zero Mosque quagmire as evidence of that:

The prevailing ideology in this county is common sense. You had Hispanics, African-Americans, women more than men, a majority of Democrats opposing [the Ground Zero Mosque], and all the while being told they are bigots. The political class in this country—it’s outrageous—the whole country is ahead of them. War is too important to be left to generals; security is too important to be left to diplomats and the political class.

Indeed, and that’s why we’re pleased to welcome SecureAmericaNow.org to the neighborhood. Check out the website today, which is still under development and should be fully functional in about a month. Follow them on twitter and facebook, sign-up, and donating is easy. Caddell and McLaughlin expect meet-up groups to begin soon so that you’ll be able to organize your own grassroots activism from the SecureAmericaNow.org website.
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Read it all.

Originally posted on 1389 Blog.

Tags: blogging, John McLaughlin, National Security, Pat Caddell, Politics, social media
Posted in Anti-Jihad, Censorship, Elections 2012, Europe, France, Iran, Israel, Military, Nuclear Weapons, Polls, Saudi Arabia, Terrorism, UK | 141 Comments »

Rep. Allen West Wraps Up CPAC 2011

by 1389AD ( 118 Comments › )
Filed under Anti-Jihad, Elections 2010, Islam, Military, Republican Party at February 13th, 2011 - 9:00 am

Barone: 2012 elections tell a story that should leave Dimocrats uneasy

by Bob in Breckenridge ( 163 Comments › )
Filed under Democratic Party, Elections 2012, History, Politics, Polls, Republican Party at February 2nd, 2011 - 6:30 pm

Good article by Michael Barone, who is undoubtedly the most knowledgeable person when it comes to politics in America.

Barone goes over the numbers for both the Senate and the White House, based upon the results from last November, and suffice it to say, things ain’t looking rosy for the libs.

What a shame!

Of course, a lot can change over the next 18 or so months, but if we can get the right people to run against the vunerable libs (no more Sharron Angle or Christine O’Donnell types, please!), we have an excellent chance to win the triumvirate- Keep and increase our majority in the House, take control of the Senate, and take back the White House from the socialists who now occupy it.

Politics By the Numbers: Good Omens For the GOP in 2012

Numbers can tell a story. Looking back on Barack Obama’s second State of the Union message, and looking forward to the congressional session and the 2012 elections, they tell a story that should leave Democrats uneasy.

Start off with the audience in the House chamber. Not all members of Congress attended; Obama briefly and Paul Ryan at greater length in his otherwise brief rebuttal both appropriately noted the absence of Gabrielle Giffords.

But the contrast between the audience at Obama’s first State of the Union last year and the audience this year is remarkable. Then there were 316 Democrats and 218 Republicans in Congress. This year there are 289 Republicans and 246 Democrats. No president has seen such a large change in the partisan composition of his State of the Union audience since Harry Truman.

That obviously will have legislative consequences. Obama told Republicans to give up on all but the most minor changes to Obamacare. They’re not going to follow this advice.

As for spending, Obama reiterated his call for a limited freeze on domestic discretionary spending and cuts in defense. Again, as Ryan made clear, this Congress has different ideas.

The political incentive for Obama is to sound consensual, not confrontational. The current uptick in his job approval, putting him just over 50 percent, began when he agreed with Republicans to continue current income tax rates rather than raise taxes on high earners.

But on Tuesday night, he continued to call for higher taxes on the greedy rich in a time of sluggish economic recovery. Not as consensual as one might expect.

House Democrats, almost all elected from safe districts, won’t mind that. But they’re not going to have much to say about legislative outcomes. House Republicans will take it as a poke in the eye and perhaps as an attempt to renege on a deal. Not helpful in reaching other agreements.

In the Senate, where Democrats have a 53-47 majority, but not iron control, the situation is different. In the 2012 cycle, 23 Democrats come up for re-election and only 10 Republicans. You can get a good idea of their political incentives by looking at the 2010 popular vote for the House in their states. Since the mid-1990s, when partisan percentages in presidential and House elections converged, the popular vote for the House has been a pretty good gauge of partisan balance.

Of the 10 Republican senators up for re-election, only two represent states where Democrats won the House vote — Olympia Snowe of Maine and Scott Brown of Massachusetts. They’re both well ahead in local polls.

For the 23 Democrats up for re-election, the picture is different. Eight represent states where the House vote was 53 percent to 65 percent Democratic and where Barack Obama got more than 60 percent in 2008. Count them all as safe.

But 12 represent states where Republicans got a majority of the House vote in 2010. These include big states like Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Virginia, and states like Montana and Nebraska, where Republican House candidates topped 60 percent. Missouri, New Jersey, North Dakota, West Virginia and Wisconsin round out the list.

In another three states — New Mexico, Washington, Minnesota — Republicans won between 46 percent and 48 percent of the House popular vote. These were solid Obama states in 2008. They don’t look like solid Democratic states now.

The point is that Democratic senators from all or most of these 15 states have a political incentive to reach agreements with Republicans that go a lot further than Obama did at the State of the Union.

Finally, what about the portents for the 2012 presidential race? Well, start off with the fact that Democrats won the House popular vote in only two of the 17 states that do not have Senate elections next cycle. The other 15 went Republican.

Click here to read the rest…

Tags: Michael Barone, Politics
Posted in Democratic Party, Elections 2012, History, Politics, Polls, Republican Party | 163 Comments »

LTC West Will Not Be Silenced

by 1389AD ( 436 Comments › )
Filed under Crime, Elections 2010, Free Speech, Islam, Liberal Fascism, Media at January 12th, 2011 - 6:00 pm

Denying the Heckler’s Veto

I had not planned to blog anything about the shootings in Tucson, because I am primarily a counterjihad blogger, and because I generally focus on issues and events that have received too little attention elsewhere. The shooter in Tucson was not a jihadi, his victims had no known association with the counterjihad, and the story has already been covered in intensive detail in many other places.

This horrific event has nonetheless become relevant to the counterjihad blogosphere because it has been misused as a tool for attacking freedom of speech, which is another of our legitimate concerns.

As Rahm Emanuel infamously said, “Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things you couldn’t do before.” True to form, leftist politicians and media pundits have attempted to exploit this “opportunity” for political gain in a truly shameless manner. They have attempting to shift the blame from one malevolent, deranged individual with no coherent belief system to their political opponents on the right.

One of their ploys is to attempt to muzzle freedom of speech by imposing a heckler’s veto on opposing political speech that they choose to label as too inflammatory.

A heckler’s veto occurs when an acting party’s right to freedom of speech is curtailed or restricted by the government in order to prevent a reacting party’s behavior. The common example is that of demonstrators (reacting party) causing a speech (given by the acting party) to be terminated in order to preserve the peace.

I call your attention to the newly-elected US Representative from Florida, LTC Allen West, who is having none of this. He is also one of the few people on the political scene who truly understands the counterjihad:

Rep. Allen West decries ‘opportunism’ in wake of Arizona shooting; has no plans to change rhetoric

(h/t: Weasel Zippers, vagabond trader)

by George Bennett | January 11th, 2011

U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Plantation, this morning criticized “political opportunism” in the wake of Saturday’s shooting of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and said he has no plans to tone down his own “stronger language.”

Within hours of the shooting that killed six and critically injured Giffords, some commentators placed the massacre in the context of the nation’s heated political climate and blamed the tea party movement, Sarah Palin and other conservatives although no public evidence has suggested accused gunman Jared Lee Loughner was associated with or sympathetic to any of them. Some critics pointed to West’s own words — such as saying citizens must be “well-informed and well-armed because this government that we have now is a tyrannical government” — as contributing to that climate.

West has rejected such criticism and accused those making it of trying to score political points.

“One of the concerns I do have is the political opportunism that has come out of this. That’s kind of deplorable and unconscionable what some people are doing. This is not the time to start looking for grandstanding and things of that nature,” West said on his way into a West Boca Chamber of Commerce breakfast at Boca Lago Country Club.

Asked if he had any regrets about his choice of words in the past, West said, “No I don’t, because I think when you look at the president saying don’t bring a knife to a gun fight and the fact that the president talked about if the Republicans were to win in the midterms we’re going to have hand-to-hand combat.”

He also said a blogger in Broward County had once said West should be skinned alive, so “I think there are some things that both sides need to be concerned about.”

West, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, has said his references to “bayonets” and military imagery are metaphorical — and he has no plans to stop using them…

Read the rest.

Gates of Vienna: The Challenge That We Have

(Reprinted with permission)

Rep. Allen West (R-FL) — oh, how satisfying to type those words! — gave a memorable speech last month in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, when he was still the congressman-elect.

When Col. West speaks out about Islam, he sounds exactly like one of the contributors to this blog. To have him in the halls of Congress is a real boost for the Counterjihad.

Many thanks to Kitman for YouTubing this video:

Watch this video on YouTube.

Allen West : “A Man Must Stand for Something or He Will Fall For Anything!”