Politics, Political Parties, Election Regulations

America’s Right Confronts the 21st Century

By Christopher DeMuth - Nov. 18, 2022

Principles of Government · November 24, 2022 ·

Christopher DeMuth’s near perfect aspirational agenda to conserve the American nation.
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Re-establish national borders, reduce our million plus annual illegal entries to zero, and calibrate lawful immigration to the needs of cultural assimilation, social harmony and economic growth
Abolish all official racial and other group preferences, quotas and gerrymanders
Liberate the energy sector
Return to a balanced federal budget outside of wars and other emergencies
Redirect federal spending from personal entitlements and income transfers to public goods such as national defense, basic research and infrastructure
Withdraw the collective-bargaining privileges of public-employee unions
Institute stable currency—not today’s official goal of 2% that quintuples prices in a lifetime, but zero.
Universal school choice
Initiatives to mobilize science and enterprise to dominate China in advanced computation, communication and weaponry and to repatriate production of national essentials
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The GOP’s Lost Vote Harvest

By Kimberley A. Strassel - Dec. 8, 2022

Principles of Government · December 15, 2022 ·

The GOP did plenty wrong in this midterm, and any honest autopsy would reckon with its decisions to saddle itself again with subpar Senate candidates (remember 2010?) and to tie its fortunes again to Donald Trump (remember 2020?). But the other big takeaway: Republicans got whupped by Democrats’ early-voting game and may be years behind in a major shift in turnout tactics. The party spent more time grousing over Democrats’ 2020 voting changes than it did asking itself why its opponents were so laser-focused on making mail-in and early voting easier. Read More

Harvesting the 2020 Election

By Kimberley A. Strassel - Nov. 12, 2020

Principles of Government · December 12, 2022 ·

Pelosi’s top priority was remaking the electoral system. The virus gave her a boost.
H.R. 1 would make states register voters automatically from government databases, including federal welfare recipients. …. require “no fault” absentee ballots, allowing anyone to vote by mail, for any reason. …. It would cripple most state voter-ID laws. It left in place the “ballot harvesting” rules that let paid activists canvass neighborhoods to hoover up absentee votes.
Mrs. Pelosi’s bill didn’t become law, … But … Using the virus as an excuse, Democratic and liberal groups brought scores of lawsuits to force states to adopt its provisions. Many … courts happily agreed. States mailed out ballots to everyone. Judges disregarded statutory deadlines for receipt of votes. They scrapped absentee-ballot witness requirements. States …signed off on ballot harvesting.
…the beauty of ballot harvesting is that it is nearly impossible to prove fraud. … mail-in voting is the “single worst form of election possible” because “it moves the entire election beyond the oversight of election officials.”
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Republicans Need to Embrace Early Voting

By Arthur Herman - Dec. 1, 2022

Principles of Government · December 4, 2022 ·

But the GOP’s real problem wasn’t its message or the messengers. It was a more basic failure: not understanding or accepting how Americans today participate in elections. Early voting and mail-in balloting have irrevocably changed things. Election Day no longer counts as it once did. Yet Republicans continue to rely on a massive Election Day turnout to prevail, while conceding the rest of the electoral terrain to Democrats. When Democrats win, some Republicans blame election fraud or unfair practices instead of their own failure to adjust their ground game. Read More

The 2022 Midterm Election Endangers Democrats, Not Democracy

By Gerard Baker - Nov. 7, 2022

Principles of Government · November 10, 2022 ·

…This isn’t complacency. We’re all familiar with the role eternal vigilance plays in the defense of liberty. But it is central to understanding how dishonest and hypocritical the closing Democratic argument in these midterm elections is. It is, after all, the Democrats themselves who have become the most insistent evangelists for the idea that the very system that has protected American democracy for two centuries is not fit for its purpose.

It is the progressive left—with the ready endorsement of the top figures in the Democratic Party—that wants to dismantle many of the most important constitutional institutions and principles that protect American democracy: states’ rights, the separation of powers, the independence of the judiciary, due process and the enforcement of the rule of law.

This isn’t some fringe view or even merely a cynical attempt to remake the system for political advantage. The party is in the grip of an ideology that believes the entire American constitutional construct is illegitimate; that the Constitution itself was founded to preserve a hideous racial tyranny, and therefore that all those quaint ideas enumerated in it that have become synonymous with America’s republican democracy—equal rights and protection, freedom of speech—are all merely instruments of repression…. Read More

The Partisan Bureaucracy

By Kimberly A, Strassel - May 11, 2021

Principles of Government · June 12, 2021 ·

Would the IRS violate your privacy to further Democratic policy objectives?….The lesson is that Republicans must realize that Democrats are no longer their only political foe. They face an equally potent and dangerous federal bureaucracy—committed to destroying GOP officials and propelling a liberal agenda. Read More

Democrats ‘Charity’ Voter-Registration Scheme

By Kimberley A. Strassel - Sept. 22, 2022

Principles of Government · October 25, 2022 ·

A 501(c)(3) nonprofit isn’t supposed to engage in partisan activity…

A New York Times article this week confirmed a political reality that Republicans have been slow to publicize: Democrats are openly abusing charities to stack voter rolls in their favor. … Read closely and you notice the story is entirely about Democrats, confirming a longstanding scheme by which foundations and private donors funnel tax-exempt dollars into “charities” that microtarget and register Democratic voters. Read More

From Migrant Busing to Climate Change, Fake Virtue Abounds

By Gerard Baker - Sept. 19, 2022

Principles of Government · September 30, 2022 ·

It’s easy to portray compassion for a refugee or a welcoming hand for the economically disadvantaged as a signifier of moral values. But the scales of virtue must balance, and it isn’t simply a case of administrative incompetence but an act of abject moral failure by a government to fail to secure its borders.

There is no higher obligation for a sovereign power to its own people. The reckless toleration of the entry of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of illegal immigrants threatens a nation’s security, undermines its cohesion, interferes with its orderly economic and social functions. It places undue burdens on law-enforcement officers (against whom the president then issues casual calumnies) and actively undermines respect for the rule of law. Read More