Lawmaker News

Sarah Palin, now and always, has the instinct for grass roots; and as consummate strivers in our times see the presidency merely as a stepping stone to $100 million trips abroad and a globalist future with 50 gold watches like Bill Clinton’s, Palin slips in with the crowd to get down with the people.

Enough is enough. The House Oversight Committee under Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has been discredited as a fair and neutral source of investigations. 

The abuses of the committee majority have descended into a derecho of undocumented innuendo, petty slanders, political cheap shots, false charges, partisan propaganda and abuses of power that bring discredit to the committee, the Congress and the Republican congressional leadership. It is time for reform. 

Frank Lautenberg died today. He was 89.

Most political pundits will immediately turn their attention to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) and whom he will appoint to the Senate to replace Sen. Lautenberg (D).

There’s not a lot of sentimentality in Washington, so that’s not that unusual. You die in Washington, and the first thing people think about is who will take your place.

But I learned something about Lautenberg’s career that I found to be fascinating and important to anybody who gets on an airplane.

It is one thing to raise millions from grassroots activists or appear on record numbers of TV talk shows or give rhetorically charged speeches before adoring crowds – it is quite another to do the hard work of governing.

Both Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin were political lightweights who were full of sound and fury and accomplished very little. Both quit their posts like spoiled children, after meteoric rises that had precious little to do with actually getting anything done.

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Why Sarah Palin? Because when I write a blog here on Jeb Bush or President Obama, it will bring in maybe 10 comments. A piece on Sarah Palin last week brought 135. Same every time. She strikes a chord which runs deep.

She has a purpose here. She may be today the most important person in American culture and politics. She may always have been.

The flak you draw tells of your truth and importance, and no one has taken more flak than Palin. Most has been neutralized now as Tea Party meets the mainstream with the IRS affair in particular, but with Kentucky’s Sen. Rand Paul (R), Utah’s Sen. Mike Lee (R) and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R) acceptance to the common culture as well. Cruz is smart as paint. Rand is folkloric. Others are just ahead. Kristi Noem (R-S.D.) may run for Senate and Alaska's Joe Miller, a former magistrate and 2010 candidate, is right behind.

It was a terrible week for the right.

In my column about The GOP's Hillary problem, I suggested why the latest attempt of the GOP to exploit the death of Americans at Benghazi will probably drive Hillary Clinton's favorable ratings from 67 percent to 66 percent while favorable ratings of House Republicans may fall from 22 percent to 21 percent and the usual suspects who predicted a great Romney victory predict similar GOP landslides to come.

What did Hispanics do to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to deserve such punitive treatment from him on immigration? What did Texans do to Cruz and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) to deserve their deliberately keeping federal judgeship posts in Texas vacant for partisan reasons, as I stated in my last column?

Texas is indeed going blue. The only question is when. If Republicans sabotage immigration reform, Texas Democrats may not have to wait for a Hillary Clinton presidential campaign in 2016. Some leaders of the conservative movement and talk radio are mounting a campaign to defeat or destroy the immigration bill, acting in a way that suggests what some Republicans have called "the party of stupid."

The latest attempt by House Republicans to exploit the death of Americans at Benghazi, a one-party congressional report, cost money at a time of high deficits.

Because the report was so partisan and political and did not even offer a pretense of bipartisanship, Republicans should reimburse taxpayers for the cost of this partisan waste of their money.

Rand Paul hit the wall this week in trying to explain himself at Howard University.

He did so in trying to reach out to an African-American audience, and he should have learned the lesson at his first TV interview with Rachel Maddow. Paul defaulted back to a small-church libertarian explanation of states’ rights and federal dominance that would be perhaps useful in a legal history course and is unfortunately standard in certain libertarian circles.

“Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) decision to mount a rare talking filibuster over President Obama’s drone strike policy has — for the moment — propelled the Kentucky lawmaker to the forefront of the 2016 Republican presidential conversation,” writes The Hill’s Alexandra Jaffe.

The Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer’s claim that Rand Paul’s filibuster was a work of “political genius" indicates that we have reached the historic turning point, and the CPAC 2013 convention will reflect it. That is, the generations have shifted, and the influential Krauthammer recognizes that Paul's recent trip to Israel was sincere and enlightened and that Paul came back a different man — one who could be trusted to bring in the new generation. The fight now between Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) of the “old guard” vs. Rand Paul, Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Sarah Palin and Alaska’s Joe Miller (“young bucks”) will clearly turn the way generations always do in history’s generational conflicts: to the rising generation. And they will turn at CPAC 2013.

Rand Paul has turned the tide. He will be the new leader.