Originally written for and posted at: www.thesub-urban.com

2010 is going to be a big year for Republicans.

I’m talking huge.

Colossal.

Oprah’s waist size big.

Obama’s ego big.

Ted Kennedy’s liver size big (too soon?).

Very few people are debating this point at the moment. There are different reasoning’s and explanations that have been thrown out there, along with a general inquisition as to who is going to lead the party in 2012, but very few aren’t in agreement when the question is asked: Who is going to win big in these in 2010, Republicans or Democrats? Now, there are many different reasons why R’s are going to dominate, and I’ll avoid the usual snark responses like, “We’re smarter,”, or, “We’re better at just about everything,” in order to come up with a real coherent understanding of the political realities that we are tied to this coming election. To start with, it’s the midterm elections, and those classically sway to the right anyways. Statistically speaking, a good chunk of the Democratic voters just don’t come out on midterm elections. Sure, they’re bussed in in droves during the presidential election (a little joke there, I’m here all night) but for whatever reason they don’t show up the following year (possibly because the homeless don’t stay in one area for longer than a couple years? All right, all right, I’m done…) . That block is typically younger voters and African American voters. Sure, there has been a very positive looking uptick in both youngsters and blacks showing up at the polls at all, but unless that uptick really rises, there will still be a dismal showing.

The House and Senate both have Democratic majorities, with a Democrat in the White House, and historically when that sort of situation is presented, the American independent voters level the playing field a bit. This pretty well goes for either party, and has been a more recent trend (relatively speaking, because it’s more of a trend that has developed more since the past couple of decades) where independent voters may vote in a D or an R President and then during midterms replace a D or an R in the House or Senate seats. It happened in the 90’s by putting Newt Gingrich and the Republicans in control of the House while Bill Clinton and the Democrats had the Presidency. It happened again in the 2,000’s when Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats dethroned the decade of Republican House rule while George Bush was President, and it will probably happen again this year with the major Democratic dominance in government.

Also, there is the stagnant economy, an overall disenchantment with government, and a whole lot of grass roots activism on the right that has never been so vocal or active. Right now Republican’s are battening down the hatches, working together, and, for the most part, placing good candidates in important races. Yes, 2010, even admitted by most political scientists of a more liberal persuasion, is going to be an unstoppable Republican year (unless some cover up to massacre children is found, which is very very unlikely). A lot of this has been happening at the more local levels, since although members of Congress are often looked at nationally, at the end of the day they aren’t voted on by everybody in America but rather those that live in their individual districts. This is the reason that Nancy Pelosi can continue to be reelected, even though her national approval rating hovers around 15%. Just from my own experiences here in my little corner of Northwest, Indiana, the party has been pristine with their organization and the candidates have been hitting the road hard, knocking on doors rain or shine, handing out pamphlets, and involving the grass roots with their campaigns, showing their recognition of the hard work these groups put in and showing that the groups are energized and happy with the over all lurch of the party back to the right (otherwise, these same very helpful grass roots organizations would turn on the party, and would be pulling for a third party candidate or fielding their own primary opponents. While we’ve seen a little of that with the libertarian sects, it hasn’t been an unusual amount because the libertarians, no matter how far to the right the Republican party goes, will always peg the party as not sufficient for their libertarian means. Ron and Rand Paul are more the exceptions that prove the rule than anything else, and even though they have R’s after their names, a lot of Republicans won’t claim them, including this one. And in any effect, if Ron Paul hauled any more pork back to his district while constantly preaching economical efficiency, he’d have change his profession from doctor and Congressman to butcher and hypocrite.)

However, on a national level right now, there is much to worry about. During this period of Republican re-invigoration, there’s an onward battle between many different faces, sects, and aspects of the party to be the leader and, subsequently, the 2012 Republican nominee for president. This next year and half, depending on presentation and determination, will decide if it will be Sarah Palin with her espousing of traditional conservatism, Mike Huckabee with his Christian right and evangelicals, Ron Paul and his libertarianism, or John McCain again with his moderate views. Granted, there may be an “out of the blue” candidate that could jump into the race (perhaps a John Thune or a Mitch Daniels) but as of right now, that seems to be the most likely handful. The only reason I didn’t include a Romney or a Giuliani in this mix is that neither one has been as vocal, and neither one have done a very good job of putting themselves out there for conservatism, especially when conservatism is the key word this year with Republicans. Of course I’m sure their names will end up the ballot, but I don’t think they will get far in the primary and so, for the sake of keeping this mostly about the possible nominations, I’m not going to dwell on them nearly as much.

On a public level, you don’t hear a lot of in-fighting and baring of claws as of yet (which is good, I think it would make the party look disorganized and petty if that were to happen so far away from 2012) but when you look at the grass roots level, whether it be through blog sites, Facebook and MySpace rantings, or even rhetoric at different events, an internal warring of ideologies is eminent and real. For example, while I do believe that there are indeed RINO’s in the party (Republican’s In Name Only), not EVERY moderate Republican is a RINO. I don’t believe John McCain to be a RINO. I don’t think that every member of Congress should be thrown out and publicly exonerated. Yes, there are members of Congress that are inadequate for the job, at least in my eyes, however that is ultimately up to the voters in those districts to take care of that situation. Regionalism in politics is a very real thing, and the voters in Tennessee don’t influence, say, the voters in Arizona.

Another prime example is the constant usage of the term “neoconservative” to describe any Republican that doesn’t tow a certain libertarian line. Every Republican that is in support of the Iraq war, or that agrees we need a more hawkish foreign policy, is not automatically a “neoconservative”. There has been this odd fascination with libertarian leaning R’s to weed out the hawks under the guise of eradicating the “neocon’s”, and though it isn’t going to happen any time soon, there is a small danger of losing the elderly vote that has a much more hawkish foreign policy (but I could rattle on about that all day, I’ll save it for another piece). There are hundreds of others that I could speak of, different ways of looking at things, different ideologies, however I think you all get the point. There is some fighting with in the family for the head of the dinner table, and only one man/woman can carve the bird.

This isn’t too uncommon, though. The Republican party has always been the “Big Tent” party because it incorporates so many (needed) elements. The different ideologies are there to counter balance each other and to (usually) come up with the best possible legislation for the most people as possible. We need the libertarians to keep us fiscally sound, but we have to be weary of their protectionism and often nutty foreign policy platforms. We need the traditional conservatives, not just because it’s such an enormous block of votes, but so that we don’t become knee jerk reactionaries and take things slow and steady, like most conservatives universally agree is the best, most effective method of passing good legislation. And we need some moderate voices in the party as well, because not everyone is politically tied down to one ideology or the other, and in fact more and more people consider themselves independent voters.

Also, this isn’t uncommon for a party that is in the throes of reconstruction, either. During the long stretch of Democratic President’s (FDR, Truman, an eight year break of the trend with Eisenhower, who was a rather moderate conservative, following by Kennedy and LBJ) there was worse infighting than now. Rockefeller represented the liberal wing of the Republican party, Nixon the moderates, and Goldwater the conservative wing, and many more dirty tricks and underhanded things were done back then compared to now because we didn’t have 24 hour news channels, cell phones with camera and video recording capabilities, or shock news hounds that wanted to dismantle politicians with a rather unhealthy passion (this changed with the Watergate scandal, of course). Hell, wire tapping itself was commonly ordered from the White House, and the Kennedy and Johnson administration had ordered at least double the wire tappings that Nixon had, not to mention the dirty Chicago politics that probably got Kennedy elected, or the dirty deals that Johnson was known to cut in order to get what he wanted. Politics was different then, less transparent and less accountable to the American people. There was a lot less “sun light” on the politicians, and so not only were they less accountable when in office, but the in fighting was less publicly known during that time or even in election cycles.

Right now the Republican party is like a giant game of king of the hill. Every ideology has their hat thrown in the ring, and they are all scraping to end up at the top and be able to mold the party as they each individually see as the best fit. It’s one of the reasons that I love politics. The different people with different ideas battle it out and the person who has conveyed his/her thoughts on the issue, and has done a good job hitting the streets, and has…well, just been lucky, runs and becomes de facto leader of the party for that period of time. Hopefully at the end of the day they can all do what past politicians have been able to do: shake hands and smile. Because while they may all be vying for power, they have to realize that the over all goal is better, if not good, government that does well for our nation and is supported by the people. If any one of them begin to lose sight of that over all goal, and I’m not convinced that any of them have, then all is lost.

It’s Tuesday and I decided that I wanted to dive deeper into what it’s actually going to take to get my PhD. Luckily, I live 20min. away from one of the greatest institutions of higher education, Dartmouth College. From what I gather, they don’t have a PhD program in Political Science, but I’m sure the professors there would be able to help. So I read through my daily sites and here are the links

Who would have thought that factory farming might lead to mass contamination of our food supply? Factory farming may bring down the human race before anything else. Here is a link that talks about the massive egg recall.

The most confusing thing about this whole Glenn Beck deal this past weekend was that he makes his living in producing these mass-hysteria hyper-partisan political battles and when he gets his biggest stage of his life, he uses it to try and re-cast his aura as a mostly religiously based battle. I’m not buying it and here is an article that explains the confusion in detail.

For those that pay attention, I wrote about Paul Ryan a couple months ago talking about his Road Map for American fiscal responsibility. I thought this thing might get some traction but I’ve been hearing more and more about it, and today there are two articles I found that talk about the utilization of his program as a major party platform. Other leadership, most John Boehner, hasn’t really come out and endorsed the program, so it’s unlikely that it will get put into action unless there is enough support from other members. But it’s got potential. Here is the first link about candidates hitching their wagons to Ryan and his plan. Here is the second providing a bit more detail about his plan overall.

Again, President Obama keeps moving forward. It’s uncanny. This guy isn’t about to slow down either. He promised the troops out of Iraq and has done it. The only thing he really hasn’t come through on is the only thing that matters, the economy and its recovery. Here is a good story from Politico about Iraq.

Senator Tom Colburn says he wouldn’t vote for Newt because he doesn’t know how to stay married. So I guess that Sen. Colburn wouldn’t vote for half of the people in the United States for President. I’d be interested to hear what he has to say about Sen. David Vitter.

Finally, Deepak Chopra talks about mediation and other matters of the spirit on Oprah.com. I’ve been having some trouble dealing the reality of my new job as a gas station attendant and that I may end up working low wage jobs the rest of my life if I don’t figure out how to succeed. Meditation and prayer have helped me focus more easily in my goals and figuring out steps to take in order to achieve them. It’s just what’s worked for me and I may help others.

I’m sure that President Obama is relieved that Glenn Beck took the headlines this weekend and even though Politico cares that Mr. Obama didn’t watch the Rally, most people don’t. I was pondering this question over the weekend and I think I have some solutions: What can President Obama do to repair his image and be a better President? To be completely fair, I feel kinda bad for the guy. Everyone coming down on him about vacations and crap that he can’t control, even though he said he could, and I just feel bad, so here’s some advice that I would give him.

1. GO AWAY. Dear Lord, can this guy just shut the hell up about anything? Why does he have to share his opinion on crap that doesn’t even matter? My theory about why he comments on everything is because he thinks it somehow shows he is connected with “the people.” This couldn’t be further from the truth. No one cares who Obama thinks is going to win the NCAA Tournament, American Idol or whether or not some Harvard Professor’s arrest was or wasn’t racism. JUST SHUT UP. I honestly think that if Pres. Obama went into the White House for two months and the only time he spoke or we saw him was through Press Sec. Gibbs and matters of grave national importance (some terrorist attack) it would benefit our nation and his Presidency. I don’t want to see pictures of you on the biking, snowboarding, at some extravagant concert at the White House, on vacation, at some burger joint in Virginia, just go away. Sometimes it’s better to remain silent.

2. Get back to policy, but attack both sides. Mr. President, you’re being dragged down into partisan battles and pegged as a Loony Leftist. You may be a Leftie, but a President has to fight for ALL Americans. If you go away and all of your tools of communication have the united message about policy and give a ruthlessly harsh examination of both sides of the political spectrum, you will be a success. You don’t have to be a centrist, but if it is about the economy, neither side has all the answers. The reason I believe this is a good idea: During the Presidential election, you were at your best when people believed the ideas you were supporting were YOUR ideas. People bought in to it and as you famously said “Democrats don’t have a monopoly on good ideas.” I suggest keeping on message and that message is about policy.

3. Steal the “Jobs” campaign slogan. It should sound different from the current talking point, which is “When Obama was elected we were losing 750,000 jobs a month now we are creating 150,000.” It needs to be something like “Where WERE the jobs?” The problem is that there really were no jobs when you got into office. You have to find an enemy and if you frame it well, they are ESTABLISHMENT Republicans and Democrats. If you really want to represent your “bipartisan nature” you should have a healthy critique of your own party’s platform here as well. You should create a link between their history and the loss of jobs and your history and the creation of jobs. And this needs to be put into an image, chart, graph or visualization that speaks to that, otherwise it’s just words that flow in one ear and out the other.

4. Let the Bush Tax Cuts expire and offer no explanation. When the press asks you say “We thought it was the best option for the American people.” First off, it will drive Republicans and conservatives up the wall. They will crow from the mountaintops that you’re killing jobs and don’t understand the economy. A month later your team comes back with, guess what, we just eliminated a third of our national debt, but don’t mention that’s because you just let those cuts expire. That’s what people wanted, right? To fix the problem of the national debt? You’re not going to be able to do that without raising taxes somewhere and these cuts are just as good as any other.

5. Go visit Afghanistan. To be fair, Vlad Putin is kicking your ass in the “manliness” department and I’m not sure any American likes to be shown up. You gotta go to Afghanistan and run with a patrol for a couple days. You don’t have to go directly onto the front lines because that would be irresponsible. Go over there, release one picture and a press statement that you went over and ran with the boys a bit. People would love it. No speeches, no press conferences, just a picture and a paragraph.

This piece originally written for the NWI Times and published August 30th, 2010

Here I sit, a 24-year-old husband and father of a 15-month-old son (with another on the way as well, thank you very much). I have a mortgage, a car loan, and probably too many credit cards. I work 40-plus hours a week, plus attend school full time, plus my plethora of hobbies and commitments with politics. I can be drafted, I can be called on for jury duty, and I’m expected to pay my taxes.

Yet I’m deemed so stupid and apparently childish that I can’t make my own decision as to whether or not I wear a seat belt. I can only buy so many cans of beer at a time, and certainly not on a Sunday. In some cities, I’m not even allowed to salt my food! And God forbid a want a few tasty trans fats on my burger.

What’s happened?

I remember thinking when I was in high school about all the freedom I’d have when I became an adult, how I wouldn’t feel like I was being treated like a child anymore. I don’t want to go as far as calling this a “big brother” society just yet; there are quite a few other liberties that would need to be eroded before I’ll be willing start espousing such quips. However, with the direction that we’ve been moving as a country, I wouldn’t be surprised if such a horror could become a reality.

“Adult kids” are becoming more of a norm than the exceptions to the rule. It’s one thing to live with mommy and daddy while attending school, or saving up some money, or because an individual is just dealt a few bad hands in life and needs some recoup time. It’s another when no too little effort is put forth to become a productive member of society.

While this is ultimately a job of the parents to give the “adult kid” a good swift kick in the behind for some motivation, and granted not enough parents are willing to do this and so the fault falls on them in a major way, the laws that we’ve been passing are not helping out at all.

Take this latest health care reform bill, for instance. All other parts aside, agreements and disagreements and politically charged debate aside, the worst thing we could do is to extend the age to 26 for “adult kids” to stay on the insurance of their parents.

Now, a college student? I could understand that. But there are no such stipulations. Should I, as a husband and father and adult, be able to piggy back on “daddy’s” insurance? Absolutely not! At age 26, one is supposed to have some kind of direction, some goals of one sort or the other. They aren’t supposed to be given even more incentive to leech off of their parents.

But these are only a few of the instances where we, as society, are treated like children, and they are only the symptoms of the greater problem — that so many in government truly believe we should all be taken care of, with no regard to the examples being set and incentives that make people in society shrug their shoulders and let their proverbial diapers be changed.

I can clean up after and take care of myself quite well, thank you very much, Mr. and or Mrs. Politician. I already have somebody to tell me what to do: she’s called my wife.

Here’s the rundown for the weekend. I just couldn’t resist with some of these stories.

1. President Jimmy Carter keeps doing work internationally. Pres. Obama and Sec. of State Clinton put Jimmy in North Korea to get back some American who had entered that country illegally and he did. What an awkward President, but a strong international figure. Thanks Jimmy, keep up the good work.

2. You are being tracked. Listen, if the government wants to do something they are going to do it and justify that it any way that they want. Period. If credit card companies know instantly whether a purchase you make is typical and will call to ask if you are in possession of your card, having the government track your GPS is nothing. There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in this world. Not only are most of us offering up our information for free, but at any moment someone can hack into your account, steal your stuff, and publish anything they want. Hell, for all I know I’m not the only person using all of my email addresses. That being said, it’s not that big of a deal. OnStar has been doing this crap for YEARS.

3. The U.S. is looking to EASE deportation policy. Isn’t this crazy? A month ago we were talking about how Arizona’s immigration law was the most racist bill of law ever passed and today I read this on the Miami Herald site. The biggest problem, from what I can gather, is that there are SO many people that are waiting to get deported, but we are trying to focus just on those who have committed crimes. Smart policy. Interesting story.

4. This is a strong article from FrumForum addressing some solutions for fighting obesity. I’ve known for some time that corn, soy and wheat are killing people, but it will take time for the consciousness of America to come along. I think it will soon enough and we will stop subsidizing single crop production and start subsidizing bio diverse farming.

5. Another strong article in favor of legalizing/decriminalizing pot. It doesn’t make much sense that pot is still illegal. It’s a huge cash crop and it funds rogue military/political organizations. Would wouldn’t eliminate all of our problems, but I think it would change a balance of power into worth-while commerce and away from the shadows of the black market. People say that it will screw up our nation and our kids. I don’t see it happening because our kids are already screwed up pretty bad. I also don’t buy the argument that it would hurt production simply because if you are the owner of a company and you don’t want your employees to be under the influence of pot, test them. We just need to legalize this and move on.

6. Some candidate in South Dakota (my mother’s home state) has a bunch of traffic violations. Is this what the world is coming to? Who cares? Guess what, people drive fast, forget to put money in the meter and don’t wear seat-belts sometimes.

7. The “non-celebrity” daughter of “non-celebrity” Sarah Palin is going on Dancing with the Stars. I hope that Bristol Palin and The Situation get together. It’s the American dream. Have a kid as a teenager, marry an older man who’s rich and better looking that your baby daddy. I hope The Sitch takes care of business and meets her in green room. Pretty soon, The Sitch and Sarah will be best friends or moral enemies. My hope is best friends.

I’m really struggling to find a topic to write on today, but it is Thursday, so let’s look to the future. I read this article recently by David Harsanyi that discusses a political topic known as Gridlock.

I don’t want to talk about specifics of the article, just what it is going to look like when the Republicans win the House. We would quickly name John Boehner the Speaker of the House and he would keep chanting “Where are the jobs?” at the top of his lungs while leading a party that, at least at this point, offering no substantial alternatives other than “cut taxes.” Just so people know, cutting taxes is not a cure-all. During the Bush Administration we cut TRILLIONS of dollars in taxes and we still ended up sitting in shit, so there is no way you can tell me that by raising taxes we would instantly kill jobs and by lowering taxes we would instantly by flushed with jobs. It just doesn’t make sense. There’s got to be more to an economic argument than taxes and jobs. Just because they make good one-liners, doesn’t mean it’s good policy or practice.

Anyway, back to what Gridlock would look like. Let’s assume that all the Republicans take is the House, as normal, you would initially get episodes of grand standing where the House would push through 15-20 pieces of legislation that have no real impact on the over process of Congress, i.e. they would most likely die when shipped to the Senate, and a couple of really good pieces of legislation that may get some traction. Most likely we would have good ol’ fashion stand off between both Chambers of Congress and the President standing their nearly helpless. It would be much like the last two years of the Bush Administration (from 2007 on) where the only substantial thing they did was pass TARP, which no one liked, but by most accounts had to be done.

So in all likely-hood we would send hundreds of thousands of people to Washington, D.C. to basically do nothing. And I’m not kidding when I say nothing. If we see the Republicans take over just one Chamber, nothing will get done. They’ve already been the party that has refused to do anything to work with President Obama and if winning the House comes to fruition like being predicted, they have no incentive to buck that trend and start helping him out. And likewise, Pres. Obama has no incentive to work with a group of hostile Republicans, though he might attempt to reach out to them, but my feeling is, under a Speak Boehner led party, we would mock the Pres. for trying to reach out saying “We tried to work with the President when they rammed their socialist agenda down the throats of the American people. He’s just trying to score political points now by putting up a facade of ‘trying to work with us.’” “Oh yeah, and where are the jobs?” You know, I like John Boehner, but until he gets his head out of the hyper-partisan sand, I just can’t trust the Republicans as genuinely fighting for the collective good.

I’m done with the rant, but I think a time of Gridlock would be nice. It would be more stable than what we’ve had in the past. At least when you would be able to count on nothing happening as opposed to “some scary job killing trick legislation that Democrats are going to pass in the dark of night” every other week.

We’ll see if there’s anything else tomorrow.