The just-completed C-PAC annual meeting has–gain–shown us that we on the Right do not have a front-runner or even a plausible candidate to unite us as we head into the crucial 2012 presidential and congressional elections.

In fact, C-PAC demonstrated that the organized Right, which sold its soul to a faux conservative in 2000, G.W. Bush, and then supported him and an irresponsible GOP-run Congress as they partnered to bankrupt our public fisc and squander our moral and military advantage for six years, is now devoid of a true conservative who understands and believes in the principles that separate us from the squishy middle and the out-of-touch Left.

First, this C-PAC event shamed itself by inviting Donald Trump to speak. Who can take him seriously in a political context? He is not, nor has he ever been a conservative. How quickly C-PAC organizers apparently forget Trump’s support of and praise for both Bill and Hillary Clinton in all their campaigns–as well as the scores of other liberal Democrats he has financed in states where he buys their influence for his business interests. How quickly they also forget Trump’s sordid marital and sexual history.

This is someone to be listened to? Especially as he trashes the one candidate, Ron Paul, who has maintained steady and consistent principles for over thirty years?

Last Sunday we celebrated the 100th birthday of America’s greatest conservative leader, Ronald Reagan. But by Thursday we were listening to Donald Trump comment on public issues?

Do we need any more proof how far off the rails the Right has gone?

As for the other possible GOP 2012 presidential candidates, it is clear none of them connected in any emotional way with the majority of conservative activists sitting in that hotel ball room over the weekend and who came to DC desperate to find a new leader.

Instead, the candidates demonstrated their ability to pander–and their scripted anti-Obama rhetoric–but noneof them–other than Ron Paul-touched the souls of the thousands of activists who are the Army of the Right.

A note about Ron Paul: he is indeed a libertarian more than a traditional conservative. But the key to Ron is his constant adherence to his principles no matter how many times he has been defeated or his ideas rejected. Ron is the Energizer Bunny of the libertarian right–and we on the Right all respect that perseverance, as we have all been rejected, humiliated and treated with contempt over time by the smug leftists who think they are smarter than everyone else.

It was poor form of Trump to come to C-PAC and dump on Ron Paul. And it shows that Trump did not know his audience—or did not care about their respect for Congressman Paul.

What is clear is that we do not have a candidate–yet-who can unite the Right and win a majority of the crucial independent voters. Romney, Pawlenty, Huckabee and Barbour? It doesn’t look like any of them can do it. Nor can the others we have seen. They are lackluster and boring and without that special spark that could ignite a prairie fire that sweeps all across this land and then arrives in Washington determined to change the role of the federal government in our lives.

It may be that the GOP will again nominate a dud, ala McCain and Dole–and, frankly, both Bushes, who were uninspiring candidates who won because of other factors (Bush I won because Reagan was President and was handing the Oval Office off to Bush and Bush II might not really have won at all!).

If we do pick another uninspiring, inarticulate, unprincipled bore, Obama will win a second term.

But maybe–somewhere, somehow–in the next year a new candidate will emerge who can bring the passion of the Tea Party and the legacy of the Republican Party together and then give us a chance to save this country from the leftward lurch that threatens to bankrupt us all.

This year’s elections are going to be a smash success for the GOP–and for conservatives and for traditional small-government, lower-tax conservatism–and especially for the Tea Party movement. Emphasis should be placed on the word “movement” because the Tea Party is not a political party. At least not yet.

It is not the 1992 Reform Party of Ross Perot with a place on the ballot in most states. That Reform Party took votes away from the GOP and was responsible for electing Bill Clinton as President–twice (1992, 1996).

But the Tea Party in 2010 is simultaneously at war with the GOP Establishment and helping the GOP versus the Obama-Pelosi-Reid Democrats this fall.

The Tea Party movement has entered GOP primaries and caucuses and defeated the establishment seven times – most notably Utah, Nevada, Kentucky, Florida, Alaska – and are trying it yet again in Delaware on September 14th.

This movement has nowhere to go in November except to vote for Republicans. It is the energy that will power the Republican to an incredible victory on November 2, 2010.

But there is a much bigger story lurking here: this alliance between the Tea Party Movement and the GOP may evolve into an all-out, gut-ripping civil war in the 2012 GOP Presidential primaries and caucuses that could help re-elect President Obama.

Here is how that might play out: if Sarah Palin were to run for President in 2012, she would take all the Tea Party energy into Iowa and South Carolina and other early states. She might very well win those early contests.

While she and the Tea Party Movement are riding high, she/they will not be warmly embraced by the GOP Establishment. They are deathly afraid of this outside movement taking over their cherished party. In fact, there are some Establishment Republicans who would prefer to lose an election with one of their own candidates than win with an outsider, who they cannot control.

In 2012, the GOP will run two simultaneous primaries: A) A Tea Party/anti-Establishment race to find their candidate, especially if Palin does not run; and B) The GOP Establishment will run a separate race to find their candidate to stop the Tea Party/Outside candidate.

This is because there is not a candidate who can bridge the differences between these two camps. Reagan could do it–and did it in 1980 after the GOP Establishment (Ford) bitterly opposed him in 1976. But none of today’s present GOPers can have a foot in each camp and have the other camp accept them. Gingrich thinks he can. But he is un-electable in November and has so many problems surrounding him (ego, marriages, hypocrisy) that in the end neither camp will accept him.

Thus the inevitable train wreck. And the possibility that a bitter divide between the GOP Establishment and the Tea Party Movement may very well allow a weak President Obama to be re-elected.

None of this is being talked about today. Instead, all eyes and hopes are on the inevitable GOP gains on November 2.

However, these mid-terms are the sign-post of what is to come in 2012. Sadly for conservatives who want to defeat Obama, that year may not be as happy as this one.

(To all my loyal readers who have been emailing me to ask if I am still writing columns, I apologize for not writing a column for the past two weeks. I was finishing a new book. More on that in the weeks to come. But I am back writing my regular column and I look forward to hearing from all of you!)

Today’s announcement from President Obama that he is making the final push for his signature health care bill has enormous political, economic and medical ramifications:

1) It means that Obama will indeed use the Nuclear Option—a Senate Rules change that will be seen by the American people as “changing the rules in the middle of the game.” (Predicted here on November 11, 2009)

2) This will drive down Obama’s poll ratings because he will be seen as even more manipulative and shifty than the politicians he ran against in 2008. Change? Yeah, the change is that Obama is actually even a dirtier dealer than Bush, Cheney and Karl Rove were perceived to be.

3) November 2010 will now become a blood bath for the Democrats. Contrary to an earlier prediction here on January 1, 2010, the GOP will now likely win back control of the House. The Senate is less likely, but not impossible. Indeed, the Democrats have committed political suicide throughout this health care process. Have you ever seen a President and Congressional leadership push a bill that the majority of Americans oppose? And the more they push, the more the American people oppose the bill! Yet they keep on pushing! Crazy…crazy…crazy…

4) Obama is now on track to become one of the most unpopular presidents—ever.

5) Medically, if this bill passes—and it might—it will throw the entire medical/insurance world into chaos. All our premiums will go up—contrary to what Obama promises. American-trained doctors will flee the system. In sum, it will be a total disaster.

6) The same for 17% of our national economy: if this bill passes, the markets will hate it. And then the more that is learned about it the more it will hurt any chance of an economic recovery.

7) Obama seems to already have forgotten the lesson he was supposed to have learned from Scott Brown’s Massachusetts upset on January 19th. Jobs and economic recovery are the top priority of a majority of people. He said he “got” that message. But within two weeks he was back on his health care obsession. And it is an obsession.

8) LBJ was obsessed with “pinning the coonskin on the wall” in Vietnam. It sunk him. Richard Nixon was obsessed with secrecy and finding out his opponents’ secrets. That obsession sunk him. Bill Clinton was obsessed with seducing women. That ruined him. George W. Bush was obsessed with avenging Saddam Hussein’s attempted assassination of his father. That obsession will forever taint the Bushes.

9) Now we have a clear obsession of Barack Obama. And it will ruin his political career.

It has not been reported—yet—but look for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to follow President Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s lead and go to any length—even to alter Senate rules—to pass the health care reform bill with the public option included.

This will happen because the Democrats—led by President Obama—feel they absolutely must pass this bill with the public option included.

They believe that a failure to pass it will mean a failed, one-term Presidency and the loss of Congress.

Ironically, passing it may result in exactly what they dread.

They are misreading the 1994 Congressional debacle after the failure of Hillary Care. And Bill Clinton is helping them misread what happened back then. He just went to the Senate to urge them to pass this bill.

Their belief is that the failure to pass any bill is what cost them control of Congress. So they are determined to pass a bill this time—no matter the political cost to get it passed.

(Their misreading of history is typical of liberals. They didn’t lose Congress because of no health care bill; they lost it because they were seen as too entrenched, too corrupt and too arrogant. The same thing happened in 2006 and 2008 to GOP control of Congress.)

Let us examine what has already happened in the past week:

In the House Pelosi and the Left did something that shows us just how desperately they want to pass this public option: they abandoned one of the Left’s foundation principles—government funding of abortions for poor women.

Yet the liberals were willing to sacrifice that basic tenet of liberalism in order to pass this health care bill.

What does that tell us?

That Obama, Pelosi, Rahm Emanuel and Harry Reid will pull out all the stops to pass this bill with the public option included.

This public option is code for National Health Insurance—or Single Payer Plan—with the Feds paying for it all and running it all.

This is a key component of the Left’s long-held Utopian Plan: cradle to grave health care coverage to go along with Federal control of much of what used to be called private enterprise; the government determining salaries of CEOs; the Feds overseeing all education with Washington clearing all the material taught in schools, including textbook content; DC regulating the content of the Internet—and taxing it, too; and the FCC sticking their fingers into Talk Radio to mute conservative voices.

Barack Obama has had it in for private health insurance companies ever since they denied cancer coverage to his dying mother. His obsession with putting them out of business because of how they treated his mother is equal to G.W. Bush’s obsession with getting Saddam because of what the Iraqi leader did to his father.

So it all comes down to the upcoming debate in the U.S. Senate.

If they can get 60 votes for the Public Option, then they can break the filibuster and pass the bill.

But, as of today, they cannot get those 60 votes.

However, if they can get 51 votes—and it looks like they might be able to as of now—they will use this obscure parliamentary maneuver, nick-named The Nuclear Option because it blows up the Senate, destroys Senate precedent and destroys the ability of Senators to ever trust each other again.



The Nuclear option is best described in Wikipedia: “In U.S. politics, the "nuclear option" is an attempt by a majority of the United States Senate to end a filibuster by majority vote, as opposed to 60 senators voting to end a filibuster. Although it is not provided for in the formal rules of the Senate, the procedure is the subject of a 1957 parliamentary opinion and has been used on several occasions since.”

So all the talk by the Republicans and Senator Joe Lieberman that they will run a filibuster to prevent a bill with the public option might be all for naught. Harry Reid—with desperate prodding by Obama and his bulldozer chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel—will use this tactic to ram their sacred Public Option through the Senate and proclaim victory.

One other factor to consider: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is in serious re-election trouble next year in Nevada. He will want something to run on. Proclaiming himself an “the Majority Leader who gave all of you health care!" may be what he believes wins him another term in the Senate.

In sum, this Nuclear Option is coming. Get ready.

After the Bill Clinton Years of immaturity and sexual misconduct, the G.W. Bush Frat House Years filled with excessive federal spending and wars based on lies and now a clearly in-over-his-head Barack Obama and his Let‘s Spend Everything We Have Now—including our money and his political capital—program, the American political world needs an adult voice, an experienced and wise hand at the rudder who knows what to do and how to do it and, most importantly, what not to do.

Recent history tells us much abut this situation:

After more than a dozen disastrous years of LBJ and Richard Nixon, Watergate and Vietnam, the nation looked for something “different”—and settled on former one-term Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter.

He soon proved to be in clearly over-his-head.

So the nation searched again in 1980 for the antidote to Carter and we found it is the previously-unelectable former movie actor Ronald Reagan.

In other words, things were so bad that the nation went with someone who, in more normal times, would not have been seen as “electable.” And it worked out! Reagan proved to be much better than even his critics had expected. His age, the vicissitudes of his up-and-down career and marriages and his years of working for conservative causes had created a wise, experienced leader who earned the respect of almost all people once they got to know him directly—not through the filter of a biased, liberal news media.

Now cut to 1999. The Clinton-Gore years were coming to an end. The Republicans were mortified over the thought that Al Gore might win in 2000 and continue the Clinton Legacy. So they orchestrated the most amazing spectacle: hundreds of GOP officials and elected leaders traipsing down to Austin to beg George W. Bush—as if he was the New Savior—to run for the GOP nomination. This charade was all a scripted masterpiece by the Bush Family which held the levers of power inside the national GOP back then.

The image-meisters morphed G.W. Bush into the Son of Reagan, replete with the obligatory ranch, cowboy boots, belt buckle and halting diction.

Only he was no Ronald Reagan.

He turned out to be the anti-Reagan.

He almost single-handedly destroyed conservatism and the Republican Party.

Instead of repeating all that happened over the past 8 years, suffice to say that the Bush Administration so screwed up things that they made two previously un-electable candidates—Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton—into viable candidates for the White House.

The Left preferred Obama and morphed him into their version of the New Savior—The One—the New Messiah.

Eight months into his Administration, it is clear he really has no clue how to run anything. He has taken a vast reservoir of political capital and popularity—handed to him not for anything he has ever done in his life or in his political career—and frittered it away.

His throwing everything into this health care debate at this time of a sour economy makes no sense at all. He was elected in the midst of a financial meltdown that was not caused by the health insurance industry. So why spend all his political capital on this—now—including hundreds of speeches and Sunday’s almost-full Ginsberg spate of morning TV appearances?

Because he really is too inexperienced—and too young—to know better.

The wisdom earned through the ups and downs of political battles won—and lost—is not in Obama.

The knowledge of political history is not in Obama. His team just wants to not repeat G.W. Bush’s mistakes—as if that alone will make Obama a success.

It won’t.

So, looking at the future, here is where we are headed:

The Democrats will lose double-digit seats in the House in 2010 but probably not enough to lose control. (The Bush Hangover is still too strong for the nation to revert to GOP control.)

If the economy rebounds and starts to improve substantially by the second half of 2011 or early 2012—and that is most measured by new job creation and the public “believing” things are indeed getting better—then Obama has a real chance of winning a second term.

But, if we continue this feeling of sourness, then he will be in Big Trouble.

However, you can’ beat somebody with nobody. To defeat Obama in 2012 there must be a better candidate who is seen as wise, experienced, knowledgeable, steady and capable of settling down a political system which appears to be out-of-control.

None of the present-day GOP names fit this bill. Nor do they need to—yet. We have a long, long way to go before we need a New Leader.

But the country cannot afford to lurch back-and-forth between Presidents who do not have a clue how to behave or how to run the Federal Government.

We need a new candidate who truly is The One—the one who knows how to use the Presidency to address our problems in a coherent, logical manner—and who knows that most of these problems come from the government itself!

So don’t give up hope. Carter gave us Reagan. Maybe Obama will give us someone who can get this country back on track.