by Bob Barr | Mar 3, 2021 | Townhall Article |
TownhallThe annual CPAC conference, now in its 47th year, is the premier stage on which GOP stars and neophytes can strut their stuff and position themselves as potential contenders for national office. Notwithstanding the scaled-back venue for the event last weekend in Florida instead of Washington, DC, the event presented a parade of talent which, if Republicans play it smart, should provide a generation of strong leadership for a political party needing a winning strategy and a clear message.While the media’s attention understandably was focused on former President Donald Trump’s Sunday afternoon speech, the real worth of the conference showed through in the “farm team” of GOP representatives, senators, and state governors who addressed the gathering in-person and virtually.Having the former president deliver the keynote address made perfect sense. After all, until the unforeseeable COVID pandemic reared its ugly head one year ago, the last four years under his leadership delivered a booming economy, energy independence, lower taxes, stability abroad, and regulatory reform unseen since Ronald Reagan’s first term in office. Trump’s message of economic freedom and secure borders must continue to undergird the Republican Party. Ultimately, however, the key to future electoral success for Republicans is by who and how that message is delivered, and the spotlight for that stage must be broadened to highlight not only the former president but beyond.Trump has much to commend himself to the GOP moving forward. The motherload of anti-establishment sentiment he tapped into five years ago propelled him to an extraordinarily unexpected victory in 2016. He also showed voters that it is possible to be elected to national office and actually deliver on campaign...
by Bob Barr | Mar 1, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller As recounted by Lewis Carroll in his timeless parody “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” Alice discovers her surroundings to be “curiouser and curiouser.” In many ways, the fictitious world conjured by Carroll more than a century and a half ago aptly describes the state of affairs in our nation’s capital after only the first weeks of the Biden Administration. The speed with which the new administration and its Democrat cohorts in both houses of the Congress are undermining substantive historic and common-sense norms of behavior and law, is deeply disturbing. For nearly two months now, since the violence on Capitol Hill in early January, Washington, D.C., has been turned into an armed compound. Thousands of armed military personnel patrol its streets, and miles of razor wire and metal fencing encircle the Capitol building itself and several blocks in every direction. This militarization of the Capitol, clearly with the approval of the president himself, is not only unprecedented but pointless from a substantive security standpoint, insofar as no threat as might come close to warrant such massive response has been cited and no evidence in support thereof has been produced.But what has been happening inside that secured perimeter is stranger still.Just last week, for example, Merrick Garland, nominated by Biden to serve as the next attorney general of the United States, stated with quite a straight face that he simply was unable to decide whether the act of entering our country illegally should remain an unlawful act. Other matters clearly appropriate on which a nominee for this high office would have views, confounded him as well.At the very same confirmation hearing...
by Bob Barr | Feb 24, 2021 | Townhall Article |
Townhall Last week, members of California’s Oakley Union Elementary School Board were caught in a “hot mic” moment. In a video conference these board members mistakenly thought included only themselves, they mocked and disparaged parents who wanted to see their students finally return to the classroom. It could not have been a more perfect summation of how the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed America’s public education system, or “Big Ed,” as the tone-deaf Ivory Tower it truly is.In fact, “tone-deaf” is the most forgiving way to phrase their conduct over the last year. It would more accurately be described as cowardly, heartless, and derelict; in a word, craven. From the very beginning of the pandemic, the National Education Association, Big Ed’s largest union, seized on COVID as an opportunity to turn in-classroom learning into a partisan wedge issue, which they believed could help put more Democrats into office. Even when data and research began rolling in, suggesting that schools were both scientifically safe for in-classroom learning, and that students – especially poor and minority students – were severely harmed emotionally and academically by the farce of “remote” schooling, the NEA and its membership maintained the charade of refusing to return to work for “safety’s sake.”This is not to say that school boards, highly paid district officials, and “concerned” teachers were not hard at work during the pandemic. They just had more important matters than spending their precious time getting kids back in the classroom; important matters, like removing names of former American presidents such as Abraham Lincoln and George Washington from school buildings.COVID quite clearly has demonstrated that the welfare of school children...
