The American Spectator : Not in 'Our House' You Don't

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Not in ‘Our House’ You Don’t

By J.T. Young on 6.21.12 @ 6:09AM

Just whose White House is it, Mr. Matthews?

Liberals are often unwittingly honest about how they see America. These revelations can be as illuminating to the rest of us, as they are unintended by the liberals making them. We just have to listen a little, to learn a lot.

Late last week, liberal commentator Chris Matthews of MSNBC was playing apologist for attempts to blame the current economy on the past presidency. Seeking to justify a “blame Bush” approach, Matthews said: “If you bought a house and you discovered it had termites and you found out the electricity didn’t work, and every time you plugged the toaster in, you got a short, and by the way, there was a fire because of the bad electrical system. And everything was wrong with that house. Wouldn’t you blame the guy you bought the house from?… That’s what we’re doing!”

There are several problems, and several unintended insights, with Matthews’ unguarded moment.

First, “the house” to which Matthews refers is presumably America’s economy. If so, Obama did not buy “the house,” as Matthews asserts. He did not even rent “the house.” Writing in Federalist Paper #69, Hamilton described the founders’ vision of America’s government: “…[A] government, the whole power of which would be in the hands of the elective and periodical servants of the people…”

The President, and every other civil servant, just works at “the house” Chris Matthews is so eager to give him. And even then, they are only “periodical servants” — i.e., they work there temporarily. While Chris is so eager to turn the keys over to the President and government, the American people still own “the house.” At least that was the original intent, and how most of us still see it.

Second, following along with Matthews’ biased assertion that the house “had termites and you found out the electricity didn’t work, and every time you plugged the toaster in, you got a short, and by the way, there was a fire because of the bad electrical system,” didn’t Obama seek and get the job to fix “the house’s” problems? He was not drafted into some thankless assignment.

As those outside of MSNBC might recall, he spent a considerable amount of time and a considerable sum of money — roughly three times more than the other “bidder,” John McCain — to get the job. Now he has it… temporarily and at the pleasure of the real homeowners.

As homeowners, isn’t there a point in time where — regardless of who caused the problems — you have a right to expect that the person you brought in to fix “the house” — the person who said he could fix “the house,” the person who labored long and hard to land the job to fix “the house” — actually fixed it? Isn’t that part of any work contract — that “the house” actually gets fixed?

At some point, even assuming the homeowners accept that the problems were someone else’s fault, don’t they start to look in the Yellow Pages for another termite exterminator and another electrician, if the problems are still there? Even the most patient homeowner’s tolerance starts to wear a little thin after a reasonable period of time — such as after almost four years, for example?

The implicit part of what Matthews said is as damning as his explicit assertions.

For one thing, Matthews apparently agrees that “the house” is in pretty bad shape. Still. You don’t need his kind of histrionic hyperbole to explain success. The Administration isn’t likely to be thanking him for that observation anytime soon.

Of course, none of this matters if Presidents actually “own” the house, as Matthews asserts. Apparently, it’s theirs to do with as they please for the time in which they are there. We tenants can just shut up, until new homeowners move in.

Matthews has inadvertently revealed his reverse view of what the government’s relationship to its citizens should be. When most of us say “the president owns the economy,” we mean it figuratively — that it’s a political liability. Matthews seems to mean it literally — that it’s a government asset — and is quite comfortable with that ownership.

Admittedly, liberals just see things differently than the rest of us do. Rarely, though, do they admit so clearly just how differently they see them. Thanks nonetheless Chris, for explaining more than you meant to. And for helping the rest of us understand what the liberal vision of government is. If it’s alright with you, we’ll just keep the keys to “the house.”

About the Author

J.T. Young served in the Department of Treasury and the Office of Management and Budget from 2001 to 2004 and as a Congressional staff member from 1987 to 2000.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (58) | Leave a comment Leave a comment

spike59| 6.21.12 @ 6:34AM

here's the deal with Matthews and the rest of the Left:
-they think the United States is defined as 'the Federal Government'

-they think the Federal budget is 'the economy'

-they think that there is this 'entity/thing' known as 'the wealth', and that it belongs to Washington DC, to do with as they see fit-except for the ever-smaller amount they begrudge taxpayers for their living expenses

Moe Blotz| 6.21.12 @ 7:45AM

Also factor in the union attitude: This is my job and you can't take it from me no matter how badly I perform.

Boar Hunter| 6.21.12 @ 12:00PM

WOW! That was one of the most intelligent and concise assessments I think I have ever read. Brilliant in it's simplicity. Talk about cutting to the chase.

Gary B| 6.21.12 @ 8:06PM

I agree...

Bill Hussein O'Stalin| 6.21.12 @ 6:39AM

What if you elected a President who was a liar and appointed Communists to his staff, throwing them under the bus when the public found out not from the American press but from bloggers?
What if that President destroyed millions of jobs with over reaching environmental regulations and while coal fired plants are being shut down around the country not one peep from the American press was heard?

What if the President could not set the economy on fire leading to a lifestyle of "unemployment checks being good for the economy" (Nancy Pelosi and now you have heard it all) and millions of Americans losing their homes but not a peep from the American press.

Could it be that the statement could be turned on it's head and the house in trouble is that of Journalists epitomized by professional sycophants like Chris Matthews, who keep the Presidents posterior from public view while the President wrecks the house of Freedom enabled by the Constitution.

Normally, an incompetent leader would receive some notoriety from the main stream media, but when one reporter tried to ask the President a question he was castigated and reviled.

The house collapsing is that of Journalism and evidence of that can be found quite easily in the collapsing media empires surrounding the New York Times and the Washington Post and many other liberal media outlets.

The solution? Double down with liberal clowns like Chris Matthews who was apparently separated from his moral brain at birth.

TLP| 6.21.12 @ 9:28AM

What about, when you get the House, and then proceed to bring in Carpenter Ants, to deal with the Termites, rip out the Electrical System, and replace it with nothing, and keep using Gasoline to put out the existing Fires? Doesn't that make YOU responsible for the things that YOU'VE done with YOUR Renovations. Or, does responsibility only fall on White Republicans?

Nobody put a Gun to his Head. He wanted the House, and he spent $700 Million on it. He knew Goddamned well, that it was a fixer upper, thanks in large part to Pelosi and Reid's death grip on our Economy, from their perches as the Leaders of Both Houses of Congress. A CO-EQUAL BRANCH OF GOVERNMENT, last time I looked.

Besides.

Who Gives a Fck, what the Freaks on MS Kiss My Ass, have to say, anyway?

Appleby| 6.21.12 @ 7:16AM

Apparently Chris Matthews views the Presidency as a college sophomore left in charge of his parents' home in The Hamptons, including the keys to the Porsche, while Mom and Dad are in France. This kid has promised to keep things spic and span, not let strangers over the doorsill, keep the alarm company paid and in the loop, and make sure the trash is picked up, the car insurance is paid up, the lawn is mowed and the general condition of the home is good to excellent. Instead, the current college sophomore has thrown parties in every room, disabled the alarm system, driven the wheels off the Porsche and let the insurance lapse, and now that his parents are on the way home, is not spiffing things up for their welcome home, but is furiously trying to convince everybody that the place looked like that when Mom and Dad sailed away.

Good luck, as the kids say nowadays, with that.

Albert Constantine Jr.| 6.21.12 @ 8:09AM

"Admittedly, liberals just see things differently than the rest of us do."

No kidding.

Von Mises Jr| 6.21.12 @ 8:43AM

We see a world with personal responsibility, property rights, work ethic, morality and charity.

Liberals/Progressive/Socialist see a world with collective salvation for being a good little commie, greed and envy, sloth, moral relativism and thievery.

Gary B| 6.21.12 @ 9:58AM

And with a common enemy to unite them: the greedy, grandmother-killing, evil perpetrators in the private sector. You know, the ones who create all the jobs.

Von Mises Jr| 6.21.12 @ 10:26AM

Liberals/Progressives/Socialist do not want real jobs. They want a handout, a cut of the action. You know, like the one Moochelle had for some $325K that was a no-show job that was not replaced when she became Marie Antoinette.

Dolor en el trasero| 6.21.12 @ 10:39AM

When I came to this country, I had little idea of what it would be like. I'd been told many lies about the US and actually believed some of them. In Cuba the idea of "collective salvation" is promoted by the Castroist SOCIALISTS and it's a LIE. Also, in no way has greed, sloth, envy, thievery or moral relativism been destroyed. Castro would like his friends in the MSM to think that, but it too is another SOCIALIST LIE. Trust me, a man who came out of SOCIALISM, there is NO SUBSTITUTE for personal responibility, property rights, work ethic and morality and charity. These priciples are unknown to most in SOCIALIST Cuba. Like this country, they aren't taught in school and are seen as "counter-revolutionary" by the Party and the Party HACKS. I would remind everyone, that it was Cuban LIBERALS who allowed the Castro-SOCIALISTS to seize power in Cuba. Had it not been for LIBERALS, their support in both food, money and arms, Castro would have flopped. But even in Cuba, that old quest for "Change" and "Forward" worked for Castro and his THUGS.

Paul McGrath| 6.21.12 @ 11:00AM

You bring valuable insight here, Mr. Dolor. I trust you will keep posting.

JmsA| 6.21.12 @ 11:28AM

You sound like a Batistiano to me. What do mean Cuban Liberals? The Cuban revolution was a middle class phenomenom to rid Cuba of the murdering thug and thief Batista. Batista was allied with the communists. Ever heard of the Tigres de Masferrer, Batista's band of communist thugs under the command of Rolando Masferrer? Masferrer was not only a murdering thug, he had also a member of the Cuban communist party, as well as of the Lincoln Brigade that fought in Spain, and a senator in the Batista government. If it hadn't been for Batista, there would have been no Castro. In case you don't remember, or know, there were two revolutions going on in Cuba: those who fought with Castro in the hills and the rest who fought in the cities. The only ones that didn't fight Batista were the Batistianos. Every one else did. Stop lying to the folks. Without Batista there would have been no Castro.

Boar Hunter| 6.21.12 @ 12:11PM

How interesting that the man simply posts the truth about socialism and "intellectuals" like yourself come out and attack him. The truth is the truth and it stands on its own merit. What difference does it make if what you said is true? Does it change the truth of what Dolor said one iota? The answer is no.

You sound like you believe in communism, socialism and all of the wonderful things that Obama stands for. Obama, raised by trash. Born and raised by a whore and mentored by communists. Obama, the fatherless liar. Beloved by liars and the fleas and locusts of the liberal community everywhere.

JmsA| 6.21.12 @ 12:57PM

He's not posting the truth. He's posting his truth, which is wrong. I don't like communism. My family, like more than 1 million Cubans had their families torn apart, and their lives destroyed by communism. I can't help it if you're ignorant. That's your problem.

You contradict yourself by claiming that what difference does it make if what I said is true. The truth if pure and absolute. And that guy is just lying. There were no Cuban liberals. There were Cuban patriots who fought against Batista, and then had Castro betrayed them, while using the communists to consolidate his power.

My father was almost shot by Castro/Che Guevara, as was also my mother who was imprisoned by Batista. One of my uncles died fighting at the Bay of Pigs against Castro. I'm not an intellectual proper, but compared to you, I'm the smartest human being that ever lived. You wouldn't know the truth if it bit you in the ass. You should inform yourself before you make stupid, non sequitor comments: I never defended Obama. As a matter of fact I have been criticizing him and those like him from day one.

You haven't refuted any of the facts I wrote, for you are ignorant, and as such will believe any red meat any dumbshit throws at you. I dare you and the other dumbshit to call any of the Cuban exiles in Florida or elsewhere a socialist or a liberal to his/her face.

Von Mises Jr| 6.21.12 @ 11:40AM

Dolor, because Cuban people have been enslaved by a socialist government does not mean that Cubans are not good, moral people. Many states and cities in the U.S. are run as socialist enclaves, but that does not mean the people who do not look for a handout or to enslave their brothers are complicit or immoral.
It is those that follow the tenets of Obama, Rev. Wright, Hillary and the Czars, to name a few, that promulgate "collective salvation" that are immoral. The issue today with the Catholic Church and other faithful Christians is that we believe in a one-on-one relationship with GOd taking personal responsibility for our actions and charity.
"Collective Salvation" means that you put man above GOd in that you serve elitist such as the aforementioned who then replace the Almighty with themselves.
In the Bible, we read "how can the Lord not take care of his children when he feeds the birds of the sky? How much more important are you than they."
But socialist of all stripes want to be the dispensers of privileges, justice and salvation. I suspect that they will burn in Hell for their Pride and Envy.

JmsA| 6.21.12 @ 12:59PM

Don't waste your knowledge and time on the ignorant, Von Mises Jr; they will never learn.

JD| 6.21.12 @ 1:17PM

I'm not sure anyone here actually disagrees with anyone else. They're just fighting for the sake of fighting.

JmsA| 6.21.12 @ 1:45PM

I only fight for the truth, and against thus the liars and the dupes, who ignorant of the most basic cause and effect basis of a phenomenon, give them heed and succor just because they've thrown a bone with some red meat on it.

JmsA| 6.21.12 @ 2:03PM

Meant to write: I only fight for the truth, and against thus the liars, and the dupes who ignorant of the most basic cause and effect basis for certain phenomenons, give the liars support just because they've been thrown a bone some red meat on it.

JD| 6.21.12 @ 2:53PM

You all seem to dislike communism, whoever the communists are. I see nothing in Dolor's post that suggests that Batista wasn't communist, nor do I believe that communism could have taken root under Castro without the influence of, well, communists. Your argument over whether Batista or Castro was the worse communist threat is senseless; they were both bad. Arguing over whose fault it was that communists came to power is also senseless; the communists are at fault.

JmsA| 6.21.12 @ 3:39PM

You're obviously unaware of certain historical realities. The other poster referred to the cause for Castro's triumph as brought about by the actions liberals, in the American sense of the term. The only liberals aiding the cause were the New York Times and it's Castro apologist, Herbert Matthews.

The concept of Cuban liberals during the campaign to defeat Batista is an ungrounded fallacy. Cubans, of all stripes fought, suffered and died against Batista. Communism only figures insofar as Batista allying himself with them, as I have previously clearly noted, to retain power; while Castro used them, as they were the best organized because others who opposed Batista were either in prison, exiled, or dead.

Batista's regimen collapsed from its own corruptive and murderous weight, not because of liberals, as nearly everyone in the island came to hate his repression and theft. Communism does not figure until that I previously alluded to; and consistent with it, is the fact that the communists did the least fighting, as they waited in the wings for the victors to be declared, in this case the radicals streaming down from the hills in eastern Cuba. They then allied themselves with Castro and helped install socialism.

Simply as cause and effect, without Batista there would have been no Castro. Extremism begets extremism. You need to expose yourself to the facts before you go around referring to others' opinions as senseless.

JmsA| 6.21.12 @ 3:46PM

Meant to write: its Castro apologists...

Anthony| 6.21.12 @ 8:58AM

Leftists like Chris Matthews are morally and intellectually bankrupt.
They will never concede that their ideas and philosophy are intellectually unsound and completely wrong-headed.
That is why attempting any rational discussion with these people is a fool's folly.
They must be defeated, plain and simple.

Gary B| 6.21.12 @ 10:02AM

They would sell their mothers into slavery to get a seat at the right Georgetown cocktail party. They are driven by simple peer pressure, just like a typical middle-schooler. Obama's administration may not be transparent, but they are.

Louis Jenkins| 6.21.12 @ 12:45PM

Basically, chill runs up and down my leg Matthews is cut off when he appears on the TV. The British burned his house down in the War of 1812. It can be rebuilt once the Obama and his clan of miscreants leave. And why should Obama really care what the place is like, he's trying to destroy the house.

Pecos Pete| 6.21.12 @ 9:16AM

I'd say that the voters hired a plumber/electrician to fix the home's problems and then discovered that the one hired didn't know his ass from left base. He plumbed the water system to the sewer system and the electrical system was disconnected to prevent any more sparks. Thus, the home owners must now hire a new plumber/electrician.

Bill84728| 6.21.12 @ 9:24AM

Right or wrong, when a person is elected President he takes responsibility for the vicissitudes of the economy. By the time FDR took office in 1933, the Great Depression was going on 4 years old. Nevertheless, the Great Depression will always be remembered as FDR's depression, not Herbert Hoover's. FDR stamped his name on that phenomenon.

Similarly, Barack Obama, despite his strenuous efforts, assisted by our society's left-wingers, to blame our hard times on George Bush, has stamped his seal of ownership on the present financial hard times. It's his baby. He's taken step after step for the past three years and had almost no noticeable improvement. Despite that, he and his friends point to TARP and say that was what they inherited. It's time to stop that finger-pointing and stand up to the plate. Americans respect a man who acts like a man.

paintbrush| 6.21.12 @ 9:34AM

I just think that Chris Matthews and other liberal statesmen like Al Franken and Michael Moore shouldn’t really hold back on how they view the American people, if Democrats are ever going to win another election. They really need to hammer it to those thick prehistoric skulls of the masses .

Skippy| 6.22.12 @ 2:57PM

Hammer this through your own thick skull.

benny havens| 6.21.12 @ 9:36AM

Maybe Matthews knows where the $875,000,000,000.00 went.

Bill84728| 6.21.12 @ 10:17AM

It wasn't enough, so say the lefty commentators. Emptying the barrel and scraping the bottom didn't quite do it.

It's the fault of George Bush.

Paul McGrath| 6.21.12 @ 11:04AM

George Bush has become Trotsky to Obama's Lenin.

Bill84728| 6.21.12 @ 4:47PM

Don't you mean Stalin? Trotsky and Lenin were friendly to each other.

Purp| 6.21.12 @ 12:14PM

Regardless of your snarky comments, the "broken house" is far more broken than any president has had to deal with since FDR. There is no comparison to other 20th century recessions, and that's why America still blames the previous president. They don't blame Bush because of anything Matthews says, and they do overwhelming still blame him for this mess, regardless of how much we wish it weren't so. Since Romney's only prescriptions for change are Bush era policies, as a Romney advisor put it "Bush policies, on Steroids", America isn't buying it ... we don't want to go back to the bad old Bush days. And, that's the election.

Riff Raff| 6.21.12 @ 12:31PM

Another ridiculous assertion from a ridiculous person. You are as clueless as the puppet in the White House.

JD| 6.21.12 @ 12:53PM

There is no Bush policy that you can link to the recession at all, despite the fact that Bush did considerable wrong. He did not deregulate anything of significance, nor reduce revenue, increase spending in any long-term significant way, and his only impact on the social welfare state was to expand Medicare. The wars, if anything, produced an economic boost (as all wars do), and 9/11 was clearly something Bush inherited, anyway.

Bush's biggest mistake was not fixing the problems he inherited until they blew up in his face, but on that front, he was filibustered to death by Democrats. Republican efforts to rein in Fannie and Freddie's massive subsidization of subprime mortgages and their derivatives in 2003 and 2004 were well known, but Dodd, Frank, et al refused to allow them to proceed.

Drunken Sailor| 6.21.12 @ 2:17PM

Correct me if I'm wrong (but I'm not) but didn't Obama "Buy" that house knowing full well what problems it had? Sounds like buyers remorse to me. See the difference here is a conservative, if interested, would have bought that house, fixed it up, and turned it over to the next tenant in better shape. Not Obama, he prefers the slums of southside Chicago and has procedded to make the rest of the country look the same.

Oh yea, I almost forgot. Troll!

Warrior| 6.21.12 @ 10:46PM

He sat in and approved of TARP. Both he and his economists stated the recession ended in June of 2009. It ended just before his plan to end the recession stimulus package kicked in which made the economy stagnate. We would have entered a double dip recession except pumping 1.5 trillion fake printed and borrowed dollars a year keeps the economic numbers artificially inflated. He then claims the recession was worse than he thought, an open admission he had no idea what he was doing, especially since it actually ended according to his economists numbers. We can pick any department or policy and apply pretty much the same type of outcomes as I've stated above. None of this was his fault, just ask him.

tonypal| 6.21.12 @ 2:24PM

Purp, you are very confident in what you say and I know you believe every word of it. So here's my request. With reasonable specificity, would you please explain which Bush policies led to the economic downturn. I'd like to know not only which policies, but how those policies brought about the economic conditions of the past 4 or 5 years.

Now this ought to be a snap because you know with absolute certainty that Bush is to blame for the current mess. Only a fool would make the type of assertions you've made without providing supporting evidence. So please provide us with your explanation. We await your response.

Finzi Holst| 6.21.12 @ 11:18PM

Keep saying it. Thankfully Goebbel's did not have the internet to contend with where lies like this only assuage the gormless, feckless, vapid -- well, the Left.

Congress was Democrat controlled in W's second term. Also, Obama knew when he asked W to release the bailout funds he would be able to blame Bush for it -- despite the fact that he wanted it.

Obama asked President Bush on 12 January 2009 to request the release of the second $350 billion in federal bailout funds so he would have "ammunition" if the country's fragile economy weakened further.

This is to say nothing of Bush's attempts -- all blocked by Democrats - to reign in Fannie and Freddie.

Petronius| 6.21.12 @ 12:40PM

Chris outdid himself again. The Termite Queen and her Obamadrone simply displaced the old grafter colony with one that couldn't be more voracious and parasitic if it tried. And they can't even bring themselves to strip out the fixtures like they used to do in the projects and sell them to salvage operators. That's work. At least LBJ peed in the rose garden instead of the corners of the East room. But back to the Mathews analogy. It's bogus. He is the salesman and the gullible public bought his lies, all snake and no oil. There was a much better one last week over on DC. Somebody put up a thread about the destroyer in chief. "If Obama was Captain of the Titanic, he would have backed up and hit the iceberg again." Too true. He doesn't take care of "The White House" or any house because he has no concept of either ownership or value. If he saw it as "his", he would take care of it. It isn't, so he doesn't. That's not his job. The workers of the colony are supposed to do that, but they're termites doing what termites do: turning someone's house into a worthless pile.

JD| 6.21.12 @ 12:40PM

The whole "blame" conversation raises a larger point. Simply electing a Republican, even if he's the ideal conservative, will NOT result in appreciable economic progress.

Witness Wisconsin. A Republican executive was elected, and he had a legislative majority. Despite this, he made very trivial progress in the conservative direction, and it took tremendous effort to do so. Even having done this, he faces twin future concerns: 1) that his gains will be undone by a Democrat in the near future, and 2) that any problems experienced in the next 20-30 years will be blamed on his policies rather than those policies actually responsible, simply because "he was there."

This is the problem we continue to face. Conservative policies work largely by inviting private enterprise to grow the economy, but private enterprise's confidence will forever be stunted by our inability to make SIGNIFICANT conservative gains coupled with the knowledge that the next election will probably wipe out those gains AND move us further left than ever. There's a feedback loop here - the lack of private enterprise confidence ensures lack of economic growth under conservatives, which ensures the periodic election of liberals, which ensures the lack of private enterprise confidence.

JD| 6.21.12 @ 12:41PM

We end up seeing the wisdom of Rand's "Atlas Shrugged", whose central moral was that collectivism is sustained not by collectivists, but by strong individualists who continue trying to save the system from the consequences of collectivism. These people meet collectivism's twin needs: they produce wealth to redistribute, and they serve as targets for blame for all that goes wrong.

I'm left to wonder if electing Romney would be a good idea even if he was the perfect conservative. Not even the perfect conservative will make appreciable policy gains if elected, and he'll take the blame for all the consequences of past debt and social policies. Perhaps, as John Galt recommended, the best policy is to let the collectivists own their policies, even to the point of collapse, so that society finally learns that they are wrong.

Petronius| 6.21.12 @ 2:21PM

No way JD
The purps among us refuse to learn and never will.

tonypal| 6.21.12 @ 2:27PM

Don't worry. I've asked Purp to give us all an explanation as to how Bush's policies caused the current economic crisis. Purp is a smart guy and really knows his stuff. I know that's the case because as I stated earlier, only a fool would make a series of assertions without providing supporting evidence. So please stay tuned for Purp's explanation. I'm sure it will be fact filled and satisfactory to even the most knowledgeable economist.

JD| 6.21.12 @ 2:48PM

We don't need everyone to learn. We need the many gullible fools who call themselves "independents" to learn. If 10% or 20% remain married to collectivism, we can survive that. But as things are, another 50% are swayed by their rhetoric. It's the simple nature of things - their policies seem to be actively pursuing social justice, while ours seem like do-nothings. That removing the causes of problems is a better solution than papering over symptoms just doesn't sink in for enough of the electorate.

MTB| 6.21.12 @ 12:57PM

Matthews is a horses a$$.

Tom Kyba| 6.21.12 @ 1:00PM

Little Chrissie is just doing what all pseudo-intellectuals do. He argues by analogy and then smirks at his own cleverness. Anyone can argue by saying this is like that.
Little Chrissie simply thinks he is being clever and educating us poor yahoos who need his comparisons to make complex issues understandable. Poor Narcissus moved into a fixer-upper when he thought it was a mansion.
The real reason little Chrissie is so hot under the collar is that someone stole his Obama blow up doll and won't give it back.

davelnaf| 6.21.12 @ 3:14PM

I’ve tuned out dem shillmeisters for so long I wouldn’t recognize one if I saw one on the street, that is, except for the ones that are always appearing on Fox or mentions by conservatives of fact-shredders like Matthews. But, on the other hand, the further dems go down the road of what they have to do to save the Bamster’s political hide the more entertaining the spectacle becomes.

David| 6.21.12 @ 3:49PM

"Just let the leftists stay in power until everything collapses so everyone will then KNOW that the leftists' policies never work, AND THEN we can remake America"???!!!

That sure is some nonsensical drivel.

JD| 6.21.12 @ 3:59PM

Why? And what is your alternative?

I maintain that many of America's struggles stem from conservatives' underestimating of their opponents. It is not that their ideas are better than we think they are. Rather, they run circles around us in political theater. They've got a majority of the voting public believing a great many things that are thoroughly untrue, and this will not change so long as we do not acknowledge their ability to do it.

David| 6.21.12 @ 4:00PM

There is one reason enough to do everything in our power to keep dems out of the presidency: JUDGES!

As I have posted before, it is not only the 9 justices on the Sup Ct that are important. And, I will argue that more important are the 179 judges who sit on the appellate courts across the country. And the 677 bankruptcy court judges who are selected by the judges on the appellate courts. And the 677 district court judges.

I just heard yesterday that in Clinton's and Bush's eight years in office they each appointed upwards of 40% of the federal judiciary.

Do you really want Bam Bam to appoint at least 2 more Sup Ct justices, and hundreds of judges at the appellate and district court levels?

JD| 6.21.12 @ 9:15PM

That has always been the best argument for electing conservative executives, but is it enough to overcome the downsides anymore?

Marvin E. Fox | 6.21.12 @ 7:27PM

I like your "Our House" article. It reallys says what most of us know, liberals exempted from the forgoing statement. I will leave my fellow believers with something I share with leberals accaionally. Chris Matthews should read it.
The definition of our Republic is our Constitution, all other definitions are false or incomplete.
Redefining our Republic as "our democracy" is false.
Marvin E. Fox

PalmettoLonghorn| 6.21.12 @ 10:10PM

Chris Matthews! Why would you give this idiot ink?

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Gerson, Wehner, and the Losing Old Ways Crowd

Jeffrey Lord | 2:46PM

Are Young People Souring on Obama?

Matt Purple | 2:24PM

Boehner to Enforce Hastert Rule with Immigration Reform

Jordan Gonzalez | 1:10PM

FLASHBACK TO: 1995

Pope Culture

By George Sim Johnston

A man of faith in a godless age is hitting Americans where it hurts.
Why the GOP Does Not, Like, Totally Suck

By P.J. O'Rourke

Mr. and Mrs. American Spectator Reader, let P.J. O’Rourke talk sense to your kids.
Dames at Sea

By John Corry
In the Absence of Guns

By Mark Steyn

In Britain, defending your property can get you life.
The Metaphysical Martini

By Werner J. Dannhauser
Counting the Costs of Clintonism

By Robert H. Bork

The debacle of this president’s administration is both a cause and a symptom of the decline of American values. Unless Congress impeaches him, that decline will go on unchecked. An eminent jurist surveys the damage and assesses the chances for the recovery of our culture.
Chuck McHagel

By George Neumayr

It won’t take long for conservatives to scratch this presidential wannabe off their 2008 scorecard.
The Legacy of Old John and Mother Fresh-Roasted

By Douglas Bartholomew
It’s the Best Time of the Year

By Mark Steyn

The American Christmas, like the songs that celebrate it, makes room for everybody under the rainbow. Is that why so many people seem to be hostile to it?
The Bush Crack-Up

By Brit Hume

Was the President done in by the economy, or by the politics of the economy?

The American Spectator