AFF Sentinel Vol.6#26

Three people have done more in a few months to galvanize conservative voters than all the begging and pleading and warning from political parties, trade associations and taxpayer groups have ever accomplished. Rush? Hannity? Beck? Levin? Hewitt?

Nope. Say what you will, there are three who have succeeded in uniting and galvanizing conservative and moderate Americans like no others before. Nothing like outrageous adversaries to get folks going.

POR -- Pelosi, Obama and Reid. Such boldness, such arrogance, such elitism has not been seen in a power triumvirate for some time, even in Washington. But they are extremists. And extremists always - given enough rope - go to extremes. Backed by a lot of votes, we may soon see just how far they can go.

The quiet majority has come out of their seats in a barely suppressed rage - sometimes not so suppressed - that has taken the ruling left quite by surprise. Thinking the silent ones happy with their brilliant plans, many in Congress have been shocked to discover voters they thought happy - or at least complacent -- have instead been gradually building a head of steam to rival Old Faithful. When the pop-off valve went, the reaction of Congress has been sometimes comical, sometimes dramatic.

One hesitates to use the term "liar" because it is a polarizing thrust. But "town hall moment" Rep. Joe Wilson (R.-SC) could not contain himself during the President's speech delivering health care misinformation. Yet that blurted comment echoed booing at town hall meetings as Congressmen repeated statements that voters who had read the bills and proposals knew to be false. We may not be brilliant like the elite. But we can read and write and tell when we're being lied to. One of the "mob's" favorite chants at town hall meetings was, after all, "Read the bill!"

In the win column, place Sen. Harkin's decision to trade his chairmanship of the Senate Ag Committee for the departed Sen. Kennedy's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions chairmanship. While Harkin knew about agriculture, he certainly did not favor a free market, may-the-best-producer-win type farmer or rancher. His was the utopian, populist view that all farms should be a few hundred acres or less, tended by one man and one tractor.

While he at least would fight the activists for us, so that we could keep the tractor - activists prefer horses or mules or a man (woman) with a hoe - Blanche Lincoln (D.-AR) should take a more modern, free market view of agriculture. Sources tell us the activists who want to return to yesteryear, returning to the farming of our respected but long departed grandfathers, will find the road a lot tougher with Lincoln minding the reins.

In the loss column, put the delayed confirmation of Cass Sunstein. Several different senators had placed holds on that confirmation, as they were able to do by Senate rules, but rules don't count for much in a knife fight. And when Majority Leader Harry Reid decides it is a knife fight, it is a knife fight. And Harry wanted Cass. So Sunstein's confirmation went forward, dragging senators' holds right along with it.

Sunstein didn't make a slip of the tongue once in commenting on animals. He wrote scholarly articles as a professor of law. He edited books on animal "rights." Yet, the Senate glossed over some really rather outrageous positions like he was talking about preferences in beer. And in the halls of Harvard, Laurence Tribe has got to be smiling. Here's another brilliant lawyer in a position of power believing animals are really people - just without the ability to think, communicate with humans beyond the rudimentary, organize and build cultures and societies or leave a record of their accomplishments; but able to thrive in heat and cold that would destroy humans.

Perhaps some rural state senators will be made to pay for voting for an avowed, animal legal rights attorney. Click here to see the voting list on Michelle Malkin's website:

Sad but true. It has taken the boldest, most outrageous assaults on the Constitutional rights of Americans since FDR's time to galvanize the conservatives and some "moderates" in both parties to protest. We must keep building enthusiasm.

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