by Bob Barr | Mar 3, 2021 | Townhall Article |
Townhall The 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...
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...
by Bob Barr | Feb 17, 2021 | Townhall Article |
Townhall Next month will mark effectively one-year suffering under the COVID-19 virus. Here is the good, bad, and ugly about what we have learned about ourselves, and our country, when the chips are down. The Good: Free Markets. With the exception of the genuinely unforeseeable panic-buying of paper supplies and disinfectants during COVID’s initial days, the free market did an outstanding job rising to meet spikes in demand. A flurry of new products hit the market, helping to fix product shortages of crucial items. Even breweries and distilleries, crippled by government-mandated closures, stepped up to make hand sanitizer at a time when supplies were strained. Most astoundingly, thanks to advancements in internet broadband technology (the result of keeping government out of the way by Republicans fighting odious regulatory measures like “Net Neutrality”), tens of millions of Americans were able to instantly pivot to “remote” work, saving the economy from certain collapse as government attempted to shut down virtually all in-person business. However, the crowning achieve of the private sector during COVID was its development of COVID vaccines at historic speed, thanks to both technological developments and a demand by the Trump Administration that bureaucrats step out of the way as much as possible. Additionally, the private sector is developing not just vaccines at record speeds, but advanced treatment methods like synthetic monoclonal antibodies as well, which will potentially address new COVID variants far quicker than developing new vaccines – saving countless lives over the years. None of these things would have been possible even a few years ago but are today only through private sector innovation and a push to rollback...
by Bob Barr | Feb 3, 2021 | Townhall Article |
Townhall Once upon a time, stock trading served as a way for businesses to raise capital and for traders to make investments. If companies flourished, stocks rose and investors made money; if not, stocks fell and investors lost money. This was the way the stock market was intended to function. Over time, however, more and more rules and regulations were added, each to address something that at the time was thought necessary to prevent cheating and manipulation. Just like the proverbial “Road to Hell,” Wall Street became paved with regulatory good intentions. Instead of eradicating cheating, manipulation, and fraud every new “rule” or “failsafe” implemented by Congress or government regulators simply created new ways for inside players to game the system. Thus, an event like the “GameStop” phenomenon last week — where the coordinated efforts of a social network group (Reddit’s “WallStreetBets”) drove up the price of GameStop’s stock, thereby costing short-sellers tens of billions of dollars — is both unsurprising and was entirely predictable. The only surprising element was that the new kids on the block (retail investors) quickly turned the tables on the supposed Grand Masters. “Short selling” occurs when an investor borrows stock from a company and immediately sells it, hoping when it is time to buy stock in which to return to the company, the price has gone down resulting in profit for the investor. On the other side, a “short squeeze,” which is what the Reddit group of retail investors instigated last week, involves buying-up stock to drive the price higher, forcing short sellers to abandon their position before taking a potentially astronomical loss....
by Bob Barr | Jan 27, 2021 | Townhall Article |
Townhall Imagine how much more difficult it would have been for America’s Apollo moon landing program to have succeeded as it did so spectacularly in 1969 had NASA scientists been subject to being fired for failing to use the correct pronouns when referring to their colleagues. Worse, consider if in the early 1950s as the world faced the scourge of polio, how many children’s lives would have been lost, if funding for Jonas Salk’s miracle polio vaccine research had been cut because the board of directors for the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis lacked sufficient “diversity.” America and the world would look far different today if “woke” politics were then as they are now. Whereas once America’s exceptionalism could literally take us to the moon and back, today, half a century later, government cannot make even the most basic of decisions without coursing through a long list of regulatory and policy self-checks to ensure its actions will not be perceived as racist, sexist, jingoist, or in any way “triggering” to an individual or collective “victim” somewhere. The disease of 21st century “wokeness” has become not only embarrassing, but crippling. Just ask our neighbor to the North, which has seen the Keystone XL Pipeline project stopped dead in its tracks, after millions already had been spent to construct it, solely because the new Biden Administration is beholden to the woke Green Crazies now in control of the Democrat Party. If you are wondering how the country that once sent Hitler running to a Berlin bunker to die like a coward is now paralyzed to take decisive action against a worldwide pandemic...
by Bob Barr | Jan 20, 2021 | Townhall Article |
Townhall It is perhaps fitting that President Donald Trump would wait until his final days in office to deliver what was perhaps the finest speech of his presidency. In his January 13th remarks delivered from the White House, Trump calmly and directly denounced the January 6th Capitol Hill violence still raw on the minds of most Americans. He stated clearly that such violence was an insult to both the “MAGA” movement he launched five years before, and to America itself. The speech was the perfect speech; or, at least, would have been the perfect speech had it been delivered when it was needed most, instead of being lost among the ensuing fallout from that day of shame one week prior. Sadly, this speech serves only as a tragic reminder that if Trump somehow could have adopted this stately – one might say, “presidential” – tone years before, it very well could be his Inauguration being celebrated today, not Joe Biden’s. Instead, it will be his remarks on January 6th to his supporters massed on the Washington Mall that will at least for the foreseeable future define his presidency. There is, however, an important lesson for the GOP in this episode; one that could help it out of its present morass. It is a lesson so basic and obvious it is often overlooked in today’s social media driven political environment. The lesson? Substance and principles remain always the most valued currency of political leadership. Rather than the poise demonstrated in last week’s speech, Trump’s leadership throughout the past year was clumsy and unclear, as Democrats and media gadflies baited him into distracting squabbles. Missing were...
