Charles Signorile's blog

Barack Obama may have thrown the controversial Reverend Wright under the proverbial bus, but Wright’s message still resonates in his comments. In the upcoming issue of Essence Magazine, Barack Obama was asked about race in America, and his reply seems somewhat different than what we have heard in the past:

“I don’t believe it is possible to transcend race in this country. Race is a factor in this society. The legacy of Jim Crow and slavery has not gone away. It is not an accident that African-Americans experience high crime rates, are poor, and have less wealth. It is a direct result of our racial history.”

Certainly the legacy of our nations racial division has not gone away, but does that mean it will continue to plague our nation? It is because of this lingering legacy that the House of Representatives deemed it necessary to officially apologize for the actions of our ancestors, in the process reminding African Americans of their victim status. When Obama speaks of high crime rates in the African American community being a result of our racial history, this also reminds African Americans of their victim status, with the exception that those crimes are committed by their own community.

When Obama spoke back in March on race he told Americans “But I have asserted a firm conviction — a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people — that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.”

Presumably his faith in the American people has since floundered, as he now does not foresee our country healing those racial wounds. Obama continues to see a country divided on race while denying that it is our efforts to transcend race which continue to make race a factor. Issues such as affirmative action, only enhance the racial division in our country by declaring to minorities they are somehow inferior and in need of additional assistance in order to succeed.

If we are to ever transcend race we must do so by first looking past race. Efforts should not be made to improve poverty in the African American community, nor the Hispanic community, as Americans we should all be one community. Those efforts should instead focus on improving poverty, where ever it may lie. Similarly with crime, efforts should be made to reduce crime nationwide, not specifically in communities of color.

Unlike Senator Obama, the ills of this world such as poverty, crime, and disease, are color blind. Only when we as a people disregard skin color as an issue, will we truly be able to transcend race. It appears Senator Obama is not ready to do that.

Crossposted at Constitutionally Right

The Onion would be hard pressed to mock Obama’s message of “Hope” better than MoveOn has done, albeit unintentionally. Their newest ad starts by implying that Hope is some form of a sexually transmitted disease, presumably meaning that American’s have been making efforts to avoid “contracting” hopeyness. The end of the ad is even more amusing even somewhat ironic when looked upon through skeptical eyes.

The reference being made to the famous “this is your brain on drugs” commercial sums up the Obama campaign quite nicely. Illegal narcotics thrive in this country because Americans use them as an escape from reality. They become an addiction because of the perception of living a happier life while intoxicated by the drugs affect. As anyone who has experienced withdrawal symptoms will tell you however, when the affect of the drug wears off, you are certainly worse off then when you took it. Your pockets are empty, your depression has worsened, you may even be unemployed, all because a salesman convinced you his product would change your life. While that change did occur, it was a change for the worse you have experienced. This is your brain on Obama, Any Questions?

Michigan residents are set to vote on a proposal to amend the State’s Constitution with the goal of streamlining the State Government. The ballot measure proposed by Reform Michigan Government Now is championed as a non-partisan proposal designed to reduce the members of the legislative branch, reduce the number of judges on both the appellate and supreme courts, as well as reducing the benefits paid to government officials.

This proposal has overwhelming public support with a recent poll indicating that 70 percent of Michigan voters are in favor of it, with Republicans showing moderately more support than Democrats. On the surface this would seem to make sense as Republicans are generally more likely to support the downsizing of government. Unfortunately for the residents of Michigan, this measure was not adopted for that purpose, as the Detroit Free Press recently uncovered a power point presentation shows the ballot measure was actually designed for the purpose of allowing Democrats to control all branches of the State Government, as well as the redistricting process.

The overhaul of Michigan's political structure contained in a proposed constitutional amendment targeted for the November election was designed to allow Democrats control of all branches of state government and the redistricting process, according to a presentation that surfaced today

The documents contained in a PowerPoint document outline the difficulties state Democrats have experienced for decades in gaining control of the legislative, judicial and executive branches simultaneously and promotes a "government reform" ballot proposal as the best means to "changing the structural obstacles to Democratic control."

The very first page of this presentation has a heading which reads “Changing the rules of politics in Michigan to help Democrats”. It goes on from there to describe exactly what is necessary to ensure Democratic control of the branches by means of amending the State Constitution in their favor. It lists the redistricting process as crucial to allowing Democrats to gain control of the legislative branch, citing the Supreme Courts ability to overturn redistricting proposals passed by the House, Senate and Governor. The group notes that it is very unlikely Democrats would be able win a majority in any of the three branches of government via the election process, so their solution would be to simply remove the Republican majority via “reform”.

As is noted in the proposal, “Redistricting reform by itself will not be approved by the voters”. “To succeed, redistricting reform must be part of a larger, popular state government reform proposal”. Under the heading of “Reforming the Judicial Branch”, the group details why it is necessary to reduce the number of Judges on both the appellate as well as the Supreme Court. It states:

• Reducing the number of Supreme Court Justices from seven to five; two GOP Justices eliminated
• Reduce the Court of Appeals from 28 to 20 judges, most of them Engler appointees.

Towards the end the group outlines the cost associated with pushing the ballot initiative and having it pass in November. It concludes “If the proposal passes, it will reduce the cost and increase the prospects of winning the State Legislature every cycle”.

The entire ballot initiative is presented to the people under false pretenses, with Michigan voters believing they are actually voting to reform and streamline their State Government. The expressed purpose of the ballot measure however is simply a power grab by Democrats hoping to take over the State Government through deception.

Crossposted at Constitutionally Right

Democratic Representative James Fagan was in the Massachusetts State House yesterday railing against Jessica’s Law, which would mandate 20-year sentence for rape of a child under 12. As a defense attorney he took offense to the idea that someone convicted or raping a young child should have a mandatory sentence imposed on them, arguing it would force him to attack the little girl in order to defend his client:

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"Let me tell you why it’s so wrong, It’s so wrong because in these situations . . . that 6-year-old is going to sit in front of me, or somebody far worse than me and I’m going to rip them apart. I’m going to make sure that the rest of their life is ruined. That when they’re 8 years old they throw up; when they’re 12 years old, they won’t sleep. When they’re 19 years old they’ll have nightmares and they’ll never have a relationship with anybody. And that’s not because I’m a nice guy. That’s because when you’re in court, and you’re defending somebody’s liberty, and you’re facing a mandatory sentence of those draconian proportions, you have to do every single thing you can do on behalf of your client. That is your obligation as a trial lawyer.”

While it is true that it is a defense attorney's obligation to defend his or her client to the best of his of her ability, that is true in all cases. Mr. Fagan would have you believe that he would be harsher in his cross examination of the victim if his client is facing 20 years then if he was only facing 5 years. His illogical, and downright offense argument is that by mandating a sentence of 20 years, the State legislature will be victimizing the child by forcing him and his peers to traumatize the little girl on the witness stand. In essence, he argues that the only way to prevent him from "ruining" her life, is by offering leniency to the child rapist in the hopes he does not attack another young girl.

Crossposted at Constitutionally Right

While the Associated Press spends their days worrying about how much they should charge bloggers for the privilege of quoting their articles (Note to AP, bloggers should charge you for providing traffic to your website), they have curiously missed what would otherwise be considered a very newsworthy story. On Monday, President Bush announced the withdrawal of 30,000 troops by July.

U.S. President George Bush on Monday announced the withdrawal of 30,000 troops by July, highlighting that any further withdrawal of the troops will depend on the security conditions in the country.

This came during a joint press conference with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in London.

The U.S. president linked any further withdrawal of U.S. forces with the improvement of Iraqi forces’ capabilities and their abilities to bear more responsibilities, as well as the economic improvement and more progress regarding political reconciliation.

“This strategy aims at handing Iraqis more responsibilities,” Bush said.
For his part, Brown denied any impact of the political argument on his government’s stance.

“There is a work to do in Iraq and we will continue our work,” Brown added, stressing that he would not outline any time table for British forces withdrawal.

The media silence on this story is deafening as I had to go all the way to an Iraqi news source to find the story (via GatewayPundit). The silence however was predictable as many media outlets were anticipating a withdrawal of troops due to failure in Iraq, yet the reason for the reduction in troops is actually due to their success. In fact the media coverage of Iraq has declined 92% from the same time last year, indicating that the more progress is made, the less the media consider it an issue.

If John McCain expects to contend in this election it is imperative he remind the American people of these successes. He should be reminding Americans every week of the progress being made in Iraq, and the Congressionally set benchmarks which have already been met.

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Barack Obama pushed past Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries largely on his stance against the war in Iraq. As one of his principle positions, it would be political suicide for him to change his policy at this point in the game, therefore he must “stay the course” as it were, and continue to promise the American people an immediate withdrawal of troops under an Obama Presidency. Thus far this has been working in his favor as a small majority of Americans agree that we should withdraw from Iraq, but I believe as the election draws closer, Iraq will become Obama’s weakness rather than his strength.

His recent conversation with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari leads me to believe he is already softening his position on Iraq, however he refuses to do so publicly for fear of losing his anti-war base:

The foreign minister said “my message” to Mr. Obama “was very clear. . . . Really, we are making progress. I hope any actions you will take will not endanger this progress.” He said he was reassured by the candidate’s response, which caused him to think that Mr. Obama might not differ all that much from Mr. McCain. Mr. Zebari said that in addition to promising a visit, Mr. Obama said that “if there would be a Democratic administration, it will not take any irresponsible, reckless, sudden decisions or action to endanger your gains, your achievements, your stability or security. Whatever decision he will reach will be made through close consultation with the Iraqi government and U.S. military commanders in the field.”

Despite Obama’s public statements that he will push for an immediate withdrawal, Mr. Zebari says Obama has assured him that he would heed the advice of the Iraqi government and U.S. military commanders… which incidentally are currently advising not to pull out. If Mr. Zebari’s account of the conversation is accurate, it is at least mildly reassuring to those of us who believe a continued military presence Iraq is in our nations best interest.

Obama however, seems to have a different opinion of the conversation between himself and Zebari, one which emphasized Iraqi sovereignty and expressed the need to set a timetable for troop withdrawal.

At a press availability in Michigan, I [Jake Tapper] asked Obama if Zebari had expressed any concern to him that his plans to withdrawal U.S. troops as president would undo any security advances.

“No, he did not express that,” Obama said. “He did emphasize his belief that we’ve made real progress and I think was eager to see political accommodations between the factions follow up in the wake of this progress.

“I think that he expressed what President Maliki has expressed as well,” Obama continued, “which is that the Iraqis are obviously concerned about their sovereignty and are not seeking a long term occupation by the U.S. And so my sense is that we should be able to execute a withdrawal and set a timeframe - a timetable that continues to allow US forces to support Iraqi forces in going after terrorists, that continues to train the Iraqi police and military as long as we’re not training militias that are turning on each other. One area that I think is important to emphasize is that as a consequence of a huge spike in oil prices - the Iraqi government’s budget is twice as large as it anticipated and so I think its important for the Iraqis to start picking up more of the tab both for reconstruction efforts as well as the need to continue to boost their military capacity.”

(As a side note, I would like to express my agreement with Senator Obama’s statement that the Iraqi government needs to start picking up more of the tab.)

While Obama has at least publicly recognized the progress made in Iraq, he appears undeterred in his opinion that a withdrawal in the near future is our best course of action. The progress he was referencing were those 18 benchmarks set by Congress which we heard so much about last year, which have been curiously absent from the news this year. As Abe Greenwald reports today, that is because most of the 18 benchmarks have been met:

Seven of the 18 benchmarks relate to Iraq’s national security. We can just about put a check next to each one. We can even look at some of those and marvel at the low expectations behind them. Number 9, for example: “Providing three trained and ready Iraqi brigades to support Baghdad operations.” There are far more than three battle-ready brigades in Baghdad. The galvanization of Sunni Awakening groups who have wrested their country back from al-Qaeda and the decisive efforts of Iraqi forces in Basra and Sadr City have been the two most vital developments of the entire post-Saddam period.

The other eleven benchmarks are the political ones. And these are not so easily sniffed at. However, with Iraq’s parliament passing three critical laws in February and the Maliki government’s surprising tenacity, the four most challenging of these benchmarks have been met: a plan for provincial governance, de-Baathification reform, an amnesty for former insurgents, and legislation on the procedures to form semiautonomous regions.

Of the remaining benchmarks, some were always too ill-defined to be worthwhile. (Consider 18, for example: “Ensuring that Iraq’s political authorities are not undermining or making false accusations against members of the Iraqi Security Forces.” Can we even say with confidence that America’s political authorities are not making false accusations against our own armed forces?) Others are also subjective, but admittedly important — equality under the law being one. And on these there is continued and demonstrable progress.

Obama faces a tough task in the general election as Iraq will be one of the most prominent issues debated on between himself and McCain. While it is clear he has begun to tone down his rhetoric with regards to “immediate withdrawal“, his website still indicates that is what he plans. “Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months.”

As the American people begin to learn more about the progress being made in Iraq (the media silence on the issue is deafening), I believe he will eventually admit it will be necessary for a continued troop presence there… although he will never admit he was wrong.

Crossposted from ConstitutionallyRight

They say that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and while that has been resorted to in recent decades by history professor’s as a joke towards their students, those who would lead our country should also take note. While declaring his support for the recent Supreme Court ruling granting captured terrorists rights to civilian courts, Barack Obama cited possibly the worst historical example to back up his opinion:

Obama, a former senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, cited “that principle of habeas corpus, that a state can’t just hold you for any reason without charging you and without giving you any kind of due process — that’s the essence of who we are. I mean, you remember during the Nuremberg trials, part of what made us different was even after these Nazis had performed atrocities that no one had ever seen before, we still gave them a day in court and that taught the entire world about who we are but also the basic principles of rule of law. Now the Supreme Court upheld that principle yesterday.”

(Though Obama was clearly referring to the principle of giving criminals a day in court, it’s worth pointing out the distinction here, that the Nuremberg trials did not give Nazi war criminals access to U.S. courts, but to a special international military tribunal created by the U.S., USSR, France and the U.K. Though Nuremberg currently is considered a model for international law, it’s not as if Rudolph Hess had access to challenge his detention in U.S. federal court.)

This is the entire essence of the Supreme Court ruling, which it appears Obama has yet to read. The Supreme Court did not simply rule that detainees in Guantanamo have the right to question their detention, they already had that right via the Military Commission Act, what the ruling stated was that detainees had the right to do so in a civilian court. Conservatives have argued that at no point in our nations history did we grant access to civilian courts for captured enemy combatants, and Obama has inadvertently reminded his supporters of that.

As Ed Morrissey notes:

It’s not as if the military tribunals offered by Congress and the Bush administration fell below Nuremberg standards, either. They allowed for even more rights for the defendants than Nuremberg, or would have if the Supreme Court hadn’t twice stopped them before determining whether they worked. In fact, the tribunals as conceived in the last iteration closely match what American soldiers receive for their own trials under the UCMJ.

If Obama really understood the Nuremberg example, he would be criticizing the Boumediene decision, not praising it. The fact that he uses Nuremberg as an example shows how little he comprehends either, and the war on terror.

What the ruling in Boumediene has actually done is grant rights to unlawful combatants that would not otherwise be granted to lawful combatants. If we are at war with a nation and capture an enemy soldier in full uniform, that soldier has rights granted via the Geneva conventions. The Geneva conventions however has listed explicit conditions which had to be met in order to qualify as a POW:

• (a) that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
• (b) that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;
• (c) that of carrying arms openly;
• (d) that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

Illegal enemy combatants do not meet these conditions which was why Congress deemed it necessary to pass the Military Commission Act. This ruling will now offer an incentive in future conflicts for enemy soldiers to not abide by the laws and customs of war, offering them greater privileges for operating outside of those guidelines than within them.

Had Barack Obama learned his history regarding the Geneva conventions and the Nuremberg trials this would be abudnantly clear to him, instead he has chosen to ignore history in favor of ACLU talking points.

A recently released Senate Select Intelligence Committee report has accused President Bush and Vice President Cheney of knowingly making untrue statements leading up to the invasion of Iraq.

“Before taking the country to war, this administration owed it to the American people to give them a 100 percent accurate picture of the threat we faced. Unfortunately, our Committee has concluded that the administration made significant claims that were not supported by the intelligence,” said committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV, D- W. Va.

Among the reports conclusions:

• Claims by President Bush that Iraq and al Qaida had a partnership “were not substantiated by the intelligence.”
• The president and vice president misrepresented what was known about Iraq’s chemical weapons capabilities.
• Rumsfeld misrepresented what the intelligence community knew when he said Iraq’s weapons productions facilities were buried deeply underground.
• Cheney’s claim that the intelligence community had confirmed that lead Sept. 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta had met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001 was not true.

Curiously, although the report does mention Iraq’s chemical weapons capabilities, it does not appear to say anything with regard to their nuclear capabilities which were of much more concern. I can only assume that Rockefeller left this out of the report to avoid having to answer for his own comments made on October 10, 2002:

“There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years … We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction.”

It is true what they say that hindsight is always 20/20, but I believe if Senator Rockefeller wishes to condemn the Bush administration for making statements that were not supported by intelligence, he must also explain why he chose the words “unmistakable evidence” although there clearly was not.

Ed Morrissey has more on the claims laid out by the committee, most notably on the meeting between Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001.

The last claim comes from Czech intelligence, which they have repeatedly defended. The 9/11 Commission reported concluded that it was unlikely, given the pattern of use from Atta’s cell phone, but (a) no one can put Atta in the US outside of that data, and (b) it ignores the possibility that Atta loaned his phone to an associate while he traveled abroad. With the Czechs standing behind that intelligence before and during the war, it’s nothing more than a political cheap shot to call it a “deception”.

The article he references had this to say:

The CIA is convinced that Atta’s terrorist group must have been led by professionals from an intelligence service, perhaps Iraq’s. U.S. experts believe that during the two aforementioned Prague visits, the execution of the terrorist action was to be confirmed. Atta was to visit Prague a third time in April 2001. The Czech secret service received from one of its informers a warning that Al-Ani, the Iraqi consul, was to meet with a “distinguished Arab student” from Hamburg—this is information that up until now was top secret. BIS monitored the meeting: The men met in a Prague restaurant on the evening of April 8. To this day, it remains unclear whether this “Hamburg student” was Atta. Yet again, three days after that meeting, $100,000 arrived in Atta’s Florida account.

Responding to the conclusion of this report that “Claims by President Bush that Iraq and al Qaida had a partnership “were not substantiated by the intelligence”, Captain Ed reminds us of a Pentagon report release just 3 months ago the Senate Committee must have overlooked. The New York Sun wrote about the report:

A Pentagon review of about 600,000 documents captured in the Iraq war attests to Saddam Hussein’s willingness to use terrorism to target Americans and work closely with jihadist organizations throughout the Middle East

The report, released this week by the Institute for Defense Analyses, says it found no “smoking gun” linking Iraq operationally to Al Qaeda. But it does say Saddam collaborated with known Al Qaeda affiliates and a wider constellation of Islamist terror groups.

The report concludes that Saddam until the final months of his regime was willing to attack America. Its conclusion asks “Is there anything in the captured archives to indicate that Saddam had the will to use his terrorist capabilities directly against the United States?” It goes on, “Judging from Saddam’s statements before the 1991 Gulf War with the United States, the answer is yes.”

It is also important to remember that it was not Bush or Cheney who first made the connection of Al Qaeda and Iraq. As early as 1998 the Clinton administration was making those same assertions:

The Clinton administration talked about firm evidence linking Saddam Hussein’s regime to Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network years before President Bush made the same statements.

In fact, during President Clinton’s eight years in office, there were at least two official pronouncements of an alarming alliance between Baghdad and al Qaeda. One came from William S. Cohen, Mr. Clinton’s defense secretary. He cited an al Qaeda-Baghdad link to justify the bombing of a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan.

While it is true that intelligence was flawed leading up to the invasion of Iraq, the intelligence appears to be less flawed than this Senate report.

This weekend, the Washington State Republican Party adopted a platform which includes a provision aimed at oppossing automatic citizenship for babies born in the United States to illegal immigrants. While it is nice to see the Republican Party adopt a platform that coincides with their Conservative base, it remains to be seen if this is merely rhetoric, or if they actually intend to act on it. Some of the positions of the party leaders within the State lead me to believe no actions will be taken on the issue.

State Attorney General Rob McKenna, one of the state’s most prominent Republicans, said he doesn’t support banning automatic citizenship for children born to illegal immigrants.

“We have more than 200 years of history in which children born in the U.S. are deemed U.S. citizens,” said McKenna, before reading the platform language. “What matters is where the children are born.”

Not all delegates attending the convention support the position, either.

“The Constitution says that if you’re born in the United States you’re a U.S. citizen,” said Scott Workman, of Sequim. “I’m not willing to change the Constitution. If we’re going to let them in and they’re going to have babies here, then they’re U.S. citizens.”

Both of these statements are factually incorrect and I am dissapointed hearing them come from high ranking Republicans. The Constitution does not stipulate that citizenship is determined solely by the place of birth. The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution states "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside".

I had addressed this last year when I wrote about the Birthright Citizenship Act of 2007, affirming that it is a common misconception that place of birth is the sole determining factor to citizenship.

In ELK v. WILKINS, 112 U.S. 94 (1884) the Supreme Court ruled:

The main object of the opening sentence of the fourteenth amendment was to settle the question, upon which there had been a difference of opinion throughout the country and in this court, as to the citizenship of free negroes, (Scott v. Sandford, 19 How. 393;) and to put it beyond doubt that all persons, white or black, and whether formerly slaves or not, born or naturalized in the United States, and owing no allegiance to any alien power, should be citizens of the United States and of the state in which they reside.

This section contemplates two sources of citizenship, and two sources only: birth and naturalization. The persons declared [112 U.S. 94, 102] to be citizens are 'all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.' The evident meaning of these last words is, not merely subject in some respect or degree to the jurisdiction of the United States, but completely subject to their political jurisdiction, and owing them direct and immediate allegiance. And the words relate to the time of birth in the one case, as they do to the time of naturalization in the other. Persons not thus subject to the jurisdiction of the United States at the time of birth cannot become so afterwards, except by being naturalized, either individually, as by proceedings under the naturalization acts; or collectively, as by the force of a treaty by which foreign territory is acquired.

This definition put forth by the Supreme Court was taken from the Slaughterhouse cases which ruled:

The phrase, "subject to its jurisdiction" was intended to exclude from its operation children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States. (emphasis mine)

Those who cross our borders illegaly cannot be legally defined as falling under the complete political jurisdiction of the United States, without first accepting the legal ramifications of breaking our immigration laws. If the childrens parents were not subject to the political jurisdiction of the United States at the time of birth, the children should not be granted automatic citizenship according the the Fourteenth Amendment.

The sole intention of the 14th Amendment was to gaurantee citizenship to freed slaves, and was not meant to adress citizenship of foreigners, in fact the author of the Amendment, Senator Howard specifically stated he intended to exclude aliens:

“This amendment which I have clarified is simply declaratory of what I regard as the law of the land already..[It] does not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors, or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of person. It settles the great question of citizenship and removes all doubt as to what persons are or are not citizens of the United States.”

The Republican party should remind the American people of those words.

Ed Morrissey has a reminder today to those of us here at The Next Right, and although he does not mention this website by name, I think we should heed his advice.  For the last several months I have read numerous Conservative bloggers (myself included), who have condemned the Republican party for their fiscal recklessness, and poor immigration policies, but most of all what I have witnessed is a large group of Conservatives who are disgusted by the fact that the Republican party has abandoned it core principles.  As Ed reminds us today, it is this core principle of Conservatism that will allow us to recapture a majority:

What is the first principle of conservatism? Limited government. Our founders understood this, which is why they tightly constrained the jurisdiction of the federal government in the Constitution. Henry David Thoreau famously wrote “That government is best which governs least”, and that encapsulates what has been the overarching philosophy of conservatism as applied to governance. Furthermore, it exists in opposition to and as a counterbalance for the competing philosophy of socialism, which postulates that government improves as it governs more.

How did conservatives lose their way? They focused on everything but the core principle of limited government. Issues like gay marriage and mottos on coins took precedence. It’s not to say that there aren’t other issues that should concern the citizenry, but it is a matter of priorities, and the first priority of the “conservatives” who ran DC from 2001-2006 was re-election and spoils, not reducing government to a manageable and affordable level.

The point Captain Ed is basically making here is that the more issues we have attached to the Conservative movement, the more we will find those who oppose those issues, and they will then oppose Conservatives in general.  Our focus on abortion has us labeled as anti-woman, our focus on affirmative action has us labeled as racists, and our focus on same sex marriage has us labeled as homophobic.  While those labels are untrue, they are a marketing strategy being pushed by the Democratic party, and it is working because those labels are beginning to stick.

Luckily for us, politics is all about "what have you done for me lately".  Just as voters have forgotten that the KKK was an arm of the Democratic party, and it was the Republicans who were responsible for the Civil Rights Act, so shall they forget about our stance affirmative action once we pull it off the table.

As a party we need to move past affirmative action and focus on earmark reform, and forget about same sex marriage and worry about balancing the budget.  Once Republicans can prove to America that they can be trusted with fiscal issues, Americans may be more receptive to social issues as well.