by Bob Barr | Nov 13, 2024 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerAs with any national election, there are winners and losers. There are celebrations and there are postmortems. There is recrimination and there are congratulations. After their shellacking at the polls Nov. 5, Democrats unsurprisingly are pointing fingers, casting blame and channeling their anger; some already scheming for 2026 and 2028.Meanwhile, the one person most responsible for what still is unfolding as a historically significant election is doing exactly what he should be doing. Donald J. Trump is laying the groundwork to begin dismantling a federal government that has been allowed to grow into a morbidly obese and regulatory oppressive behemoth under successive Democrat and Republican administrations. Not since Ronald Reagan took on Uncle Sam in his first term has the left faced such a serious threat.What makes this go ‘round far different from Reagan’s 1980 drubbing of Jimmy Carter is the magnitude and multitude of attacks leveled at Trump before the election – a barrage no presidential candidate before him had endured. Sure, Reagan was attacked by the Democrat Party throughout the 1980 campaign, even as he had to fight off efforts by the GOP establishment that never really warmed to his anti-Washington rhetoric. But the campaign against Trump, which began even before Joe Biden was sworn into office Jan. 20, 2021, is something our country never previously had witnessed. To the horror and dismay of Democrats and many moderate Republicans, and against all odds, Trump still prevailed.Also unlike Reagan’s 1980 win (with his coattails ushering in a GOP majority in the Senate) — after which politics settled down into a “normal” transition — Trump’s opponents largely have refused to accept Harris’ loss...
by Bob Barr | Nov 7, 2024 | Townhall Article |
TownhallHindsight may be 20-20, but it can be illustrative and reliable. Here are nine errors Kamala Harris should not have committed during the course of losing her admittedly truncated campaign.Above all, don’t define your campaign as one centered on “change” and then declare there was nothing at all you would change in your own record as vice president. I mean, who couldn’t see this one coming a mile away? Less than one month out from Election Day, Harris gleefully appeared on “The View” with its six uber-liberal glamour gals, and was thrown the softest of softball questions by co-hostess Sunny Hostin — “What, if anything, would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?” The whiff of her milquetoast answer that she would not have changed a thing reverberated all the way to her drubbing at Trump’s hands on Tuesday.You’re a “change agent” who wouldn’t “change” a thing? Kiddo, you deserve to lose on that one alone.But there’s more lessons to be learned here. Use celebrities sparingly and certainly don’t rely on them. Sure, voters, especially young ones, love celebrities like Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Oprah Winfrey, and the host of others the Harris campaign trotted out over the four months of her campaign. But any campaign manager worth their salt will tell you that celebrities are like snowflakes – beautiful to look at but quickly melt. This lesson un-learned by Harris was especially obvious when compared to Trump’s campaign which wisely avoided playing the “look-at-me” celebrity card. Trump, after all, doesn’t need celebrities to burnish his image. Trump is his own celebrity. Speaking of celebrities, it is not a...
by Bob Barr | Oct 24, 2024 | Townhall Article |
TownhallIt is a time-honored tradition that high-ranking U.S. government officials are – a few easily surmountable legal limitations notwithstanding — permitted to cash in on their public service when they leave Uncle Sam and enter or reenter the private sector. Even modern-day presidents have done so; some more than others (can you say, the “Clinton Foundation?”), but all have gained significant wealth after leaving office.The circumstances involving Barack Obama’s Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who apparently has signed on as a lawyer representing a Chinese drone-manufacturing corporation, however, raises concerns that go beyond post-public service profiteering and impact our national security. Not only is Lynch serving as an attorney for Shenzhen DJI Innovation Technology Co., Ltd. (“DJI”) – the world’s largest manufacturer of commercial drones – but she has sued the U.S. Department of Defense on behalf of her Chinese client.This is troubling in a number of ways, most importantly because the Chinese drone manufacturing company DJI has for the past few years been listed by the Pentagon as a company with which our government should not deal, because of problematic relationships with the communist Chinese military. Apparently this is of less concern to our former attorney general that what is certain to be a significant retainer her firm is receiving for representing the company.The close relationship between “private” Chinese companies and the communist-controlled government in Beijing and its military arm, the People’s Liberation Army or “PLA,” is well-established and open to no real dispute. Despite superficial steps orchestrated by President Xi in recent years to appear more benign and market-oriented, according to experts these relationships in fact are more significant today than in years past. The...
by Bob Barr | Oct 17, 2024 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerFormer “Shark Tank” star Mark Cuban likes to position himself as a humanitarian. But it turns out he might be just another well-connected celebrity using his high-profile political connections to rig the marketplace in his favor. The healthcare scheme Cuban seems to have cooked up recently with Vice President Kamala Harris reveals his true motives. Cuban has aligned himself with Big Pharma in pushing for healthcare regulations that would advance his business interests. Hardly by coincidence, Harris announced Oct. 8th that she would do their bidding if elected president. The game plan concocted by Cuban and Big Pharma looks to unleash the power of the regulatory state against pharmacy benefit managers, known as “PBMs.” These are groups that businesses’ health plans hire as a way to lower drug costs for their employees. It happens also to be a strategy used by many government agencies.PBMs are effective because, combined, they manage the health plans for just about every business in the country, with 275 million Americans benefiting from their services. Their size and scale gives them significant leverage at the negotiating table with the drugmakers, leading to lower consumer drug costs. A study by the Coalition for Affordable Prescription Drugs found that the great majority of businesses are happy with their PBMs. This unsurprising finding is reflected in research by Casey Mulligan, who chaired former President Trump’s White House Council of Economic Advisers from 2018 to 2019. Mulligan’s research found that PBMs provide more than $145 billion in value every year.Why, then, are Big Pharma, Cuban and Harris pushing to regulate these companies?For Big Pharma, the answer is simple — its otherwise laudable goal of making as much money as...
by Bob Barr | Oct 10, 2024 | Townhall Article |
TownhallFirst came the self-revelation that Vice President Kamala Harris “Owns a Handgun” as blared in a New York Times headline last month. Next, in no less a substantive forum than an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Ms. Harris startled the liberal media by declaring that she would shoot anyone daring to break into her house.Coyly claiming that she “probably should not have said” she would actually shoot an intruder, Harris then took advantage of the moment to assert that her gun ownership and her avowed willingness to use it in defense of home and family, was absolute proof that claims she is anti-firearms are nothing other than a vile, Trump-created canard.While Kamala’s “Dirty Harry” act may have pulled the wool over the liberal media’s eyes, the fact remains that both Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim — “Tiananmen Square” — Walz, have a demonstrable history of favoring anti-Second Amendment policies that belie their professed, late-night conversion to gun advocacy.The New York Times may swoon over Harris’ new platform of “Freedom” as reflected in her tough rhetoric on gun ownership and protecting her home – already tightly guarded by numerous firearms-wielding Secret Service agents – with a Glock handgun, but “freedom” is not reflected in any of the following policies advocated by the Democrat Party’s current standard-bearers:As San Francisco District Attorney, Harris signed onto a legal brief asserting that the Second Amendment does not guarantee an individual right to keep and bear arms, but only a collective right. The U.S. Supreme Court, in its 2008 Heller decision, correctly found otherwise – that the Second Amendment does indeed guarantee an individual’s right to possess that Glock handgun...
