(Adopted by Congress on July 4, 1776)

The Unanimous Declaration
of the Thirteen United States of America

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. –Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

So I thought it would be fun to stir up more controversy and talk about Feminism. And too make it even more controversial, I thought I would interview a Playboy Playmate about her views on Feminism. So here we go…..

SEXISM IN THE LAST PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

In the last presidential election, many feminists felt that the mainstream media bent over backwards avoiding reporting on or legitimizing any racist attacks on Barack Obama but reported and legitimized many sexist attacks on Hillary Clinton. Whether or not that is true, I do believe that Sarah Palin was subject to attacks that were blatantly sexist and completely unacceptable.

The most obvious sexist attack was the accusation from many corners that she had too many children to take care of to have time to do an effective job if she became President. Many male presidential candidates have had many children and never has such an attack been made against them. Yet I did not hear a peep of complaint from the feminist community about this sexist attack or any others. And there were many opportunities for feminists to come to her defense. While I did not agree with many of Ms. Palin’s positions, her treatment illustrated the hypocrisy of many feminists, for whom partisanship trumps principles. So in this issue I would like to address feminism and what feminism really means.

THE CALIFORNIA REPUBLICAN LEAGUE AND FEMINISM

The California Republican League (CRL) is a socially progressive organization. We support a woman’s right to choose, support equal rights for woman and, in general, support the feminist cause.

However, its current president (me) since his halcyon days in college has not considered himself a feminist. Truth be told, since college I have considered myself an enemy of the feminist cause. This may cause many to question my qualifications for holding the position of President of this venerable organization, but at least hear my case. When I entered college I considered myself sympathetic to feminism and feminists, but after going through the “Political Correct” meat grinder of a liberal arts institution, I came out the other end very much a skeptic of feminists and feminism.

FEMINISM AND AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER LEARNING

My college, like many others during the mid 1980s, was going through a phase of shedding its white male-dominated curricula that it had used for over a century and was embracing a new curriculum that exposed students like myself to “alternative studies” courses. So instead of fulfilling my general education requirements by studying Plato, Locke, or Nietzsche, I found myself in a “woman studies” course.

It soon became apparent that the purpose of this class was to purge my “chauvinist programming” which had been indoctrinated in me since birth. Part of this reprogramming regime was to extricate the use of the words mankind, he, him and history from my vocabulary. But the most important goal of this class was to sweep away the smoke screen that had blinded me my whole life and get me to embrace an incontrovertible truth: every aspect of our modern western culture either directly or indirectly, aided and abetted in, the subjugation of and discrimination against the fairer sex.

I was taught only a complete overhaul of the entire system would enable us to purge our vile culture of its intrinsic chauvinism. Capitalism and Feminism could not coexist because Capitalism was a system created and engineered by white males to keep white males dominant. Therefore Capitalism needed to be replaced by a more “socialized” system that could insure gender equality. I was also taught that 95% of all sex was rape, and that fraternities (one of which I was a member at the time) were simply organizations designed with the exclusive purpose of raping and exploiting women.

I left college, and immediately entered a joint JD/MBA program, where much to my surprise my feminist reeducation continued. I had “feminist professors” who imbued their courses with this new progressive thinking, which was an amazing feat considering not one of the classes I took in law school or in business school had the term feminist, feminine, women – or even the term equal rights – in their title. I had a torts professor who taught us that the bonds created through female relationships were much stronger than any familial bonds and supported the idea that socialism was the only way to cure the inequality between men and women. I had a management professor in my MBA program that pretty much treated her class as a sexual harassment sensitivity training program. The main task of a business seemed to be gender sensitivity, rather than making some money.

After suffering through these classes my opinion still remained that the basic goals of feminism – i.e., of letting a woman have control over her own body (through the right to choose and through access to contraceptives) and to be treated equally under the law – were goals I should support. But as an avowed Capitalist, I treated any feminist who wanted to end Capitalism as the enemy, and any woman that wanted to institute affirmative action as the enemy.

Then there was the whole issue of the objectification of woman.

A FEMINIST PLAYMATE? YOU MUST BE JOKING.

Quite through chance, a friend of a friend turned out to be a recent Playboy Playmate. Not only is she a Playmate, but she considers herself a feminist. And not only is she a feminist, but she has the credentials to back it up. She graduated as a “woman’s studies” major from UCLA. So she had gone through the same indoctrination I had gone through in college, but unlike me, this indoctrination was repeated in many classes (in the double digits) and she wrote a thesis about feminism.

During my brief encounter with feminism, I had learned that Playboy was an evil institution created to further the exploitation of women through objectification, and its existence encouraged rape and the degradation of women. So here was the seeming paradox of a woman who had majored in feminism, considers herself a feminist, and at the same time supports Playboy as an institution. So it seemed to me she was the equivalent of an African American being part of the Aryan Nation.

I had the lucky opportunity to meet Ms. Frette to find out her view of this seeming paradox. She is not only a Playboy Playmate, but is a professional artist (yes, she has really sold some paintings) and is a paid writer who has written critiques and articles about other artists and their work. In other words, she is a published writer and professional painter by the age of twenty-four. (By way of comparison, at twenty-four I was still in graduate school honing my drinking skills and pickup lines.)

With Ms. Frette, not only was I able to confront my issues with feminism with an actual credentialed feminist, but I was able to confront a credentialed feminist who was being attacked by other feminists for being a traitor to the cause.

The first big issue we tackled was the Objectification of woman.

THE OBJECTIFICATION OF WOMEN

Objectification, according to Ms. Frette, was any time a woman was treated as a mere object as opposed to a thinking rational being. Obviously, women are objectified in Playboy, but then again they are also objectified by most of the great artists of the world. How many nude women are portrayed in famous works of art? These models were not chosen for their high IQs.

According to Ms. Frette, objectification is fine when women are being appreciated purely for their beauty and their feminine form. According to Ms. Frette there is nothing wrong with the appreciation of beauty. Therefore, objectification is fine as long as women are not being degraded while they are being objectified.

When posing for Playboy, Ms. Frette always felt she was treated with respect, and the work she was posing for celebrated the female form and beauty. At no time when working with playboy has she ever felt degraded. The kind of objectification she finds objectionable is objectification that is degrading, which Ms. Frette has certainly experienced. For example, when she was applying to be a host for a TV program and the producers discussed her physical shortcomings in front of her, it was degrading. They treated her as if she was not there, and that her feelings did not matter. This was degrading objectification.

So Ms. Frette felt that objectification, as long as it was respectful and celebrated beauty and the feminine form, was not degrading and therefore does not conflict with the feminist cause. However, if the woman who is the subject of the objectification is not treated with respect, and her body is not treated with respect, then Ms. Frette asserts that this sort of objectification is degrading and harmful to the feminist cause. Obviously there are a lot of feminists that disagree with her, but I found her reasoning compelling. She clearly had put in a lot of thought into the subject, and probably more thought than most of her feminist detractors.

SEX, CAPITALISM AND FEMINISM

Much to my relief, Ms. Frette did not consider ninety-five percent of all sex to be rape and did not consider all men to be the enemy of feminism. Ms. Frette does have a boyfriend that she is in a committed relationship with, and does not feel used or abused in that relationship. (I got the feeling from our conversation that her boyfriend is a Republican, which unfortunately she is not).

Also to my relief, Ms. Frette does not consider Capitalism to be in direct opposition to feminism, as she believes a well-working Capitalist system provides equal economic opportunity to all. Our system may not provide equal opportunity to men and women, as there is a wage gap and glass ceilings scattered throughout our system, but these problems do not exist because we have a Capitalist system. We just haven’t made our system as truly efficient as it could be. Our system, by not providing equal opportunities, is inefficient and has distorted markets because resources are not being utilized to their fullest extent. In many cases, the best person for the job is not getting that job (the glass ceiling) and in certain places less efficient producers are earning more than more efficient producers (the wage and salary gap). This is a distortion of Capitalism, not a natural consequence.

Therefore once feminists help cure these inefficiencies, it will improve the system for everyone. The problem is not Capitalism, just American Capitalism, which is a good system, but we can improve upon it. I certainly couldn’t argue with that position.

WOMEN IN COMBAT

One interesting conversation we had was about women in the military; specifically, should woman be allowed in combat roles where they might be potentially harmed or captured?

I have to admit that I am against woman serving in combat roles for three reasons. First, female casualties are especially hard on army morale (among the men). Second, it is hard for men to leave women casualties behind in a strategic retreat. Lastly, woman prisoners are more often subjected to sexual abuse and exploitation than their male counterparts.

Ms. Frette insisted that if a woman wants to fight for her country, the perspective of other people or the actions of the enemy should not deprive her of that right. Her position reminded me of the movie Glory where the African American soldiers were told that if they were captured by the Confederate Army, they would not be taken prisoner but would be immediately shot as “rebelling slaves.” The white officers that led these men were also told that if they were captured they would be treated as men inciting slave insurrection and would be immediately shot upon capture. However, most of the African Americans and their officers chose to remain and fight.

Ms. Frette pointed out that just because the enemy might abuse woman more, or men might have a problem fighting alongside woman, women should still have the right to fight for their country just as the African Americans did in the Civil War.

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

The last subject we discussed was a subject on which I was sure we would disagree: affirmative action. Of course I do not oppose the hiring of qualified women and minorities, but I do oppose preferences and quotas. I believe preferences and quotas based on race or sex are reverse discrimination and make our system inefficient. Surprisingly (at least to me), Ms. Frette’s views on the subject are as follows: “I support equal opportunity – affirmative action at best is an imperfect temporary solution to a long-term problem. The best person ultimately should get the job; however, I do not oppose aiming to hire more women in certain job categories if there are deficiencies. In other words, you can endeavor to find more female applicants to add to the field of applicants, as long as in the end, the most qualified person from the field of applicants is hired.” So it seems on that one subject we agree.

There were many more subjects we discussed that I just don’t have the space in this periodical to address. However, Ms. Frette did make me seriously reexamine my ideas about feminism, and hopefully this article did the same for you. If you are interested in further reading about Ms. Frette, you can visit her web page at www.juliettefrette.com. Her web page has clips of many of her writings and pictures of her artwork.

The tea-party movement is pushing the Republicans to the right. That may make it harder to recapture the White House from Barack Obama

IN MOST democracies, politicians have a wretched time in opposition. America arranges things differently. Even in opposition, the minority party can still play a powerful role. It can propose, shape and—thanks to the arcane filibuster rules of the Senate—frequently block legislation. It can run big state governments and try out new ideas there. And because elections in America are so frequent, it never has to wait long for the next chance to win back the allegiance of the national electorate.

For America’s Republicans the 17 months since Barack Obama replaced George Bush in the White House have been unexpectedly sweet. Fewer than 50% of Americans now approve of the way he is doing his job, down from the high 60s at the beginning of 2009. His insouciant handling of the oil spill in the Gulf is under fire from all sides. And his big victory over health-insurance reform has not turned his ratings round. On the contrary, the Republicans hope that “Obamacare” is going to give them even bigger gains in November when 36 seats in the Senate, all the seats in the House, and 37 governorships will be up for grabs in the mid-term elections.

What have the Republicans done to deserve this? Nothing at all, say the Democrats, apart from leaving behind an economic catastrophe and then being as obstructive as possible while Mr Obama struggles to clean up the mess. Democrats now call the Grand Old Party the “party of No”. Not a single House Republican voted for the stimulus package in January 2009. In the end, not a single Republican in the House or Senate voted in favour of health reform. The Republicans showed grudging support for financial regulation but only, Democrats say, because public anger at Wall Street left them no choice.

Republicans make no apology for their obstructionism. When thousands of them gathered in New Orleans in April for the four-yearly Southern Republican Leadership Conference, the word from the speakers was not just No. It was, as Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, put it, “Hell No!” Even mainstream Republican politicians now portray themselves as the thin red line defending America’s constitution, liberties and moral values from an arrogant president who is determined to appease America’s enemies, drown future generations in debt and turn God’s own country over to a godless socialism. In New Orleans Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker and possible presidential candidate, called Mr Obama “the most radical president in American history”, posing as great a threat to America as the Soviet Union once did.

Will Americans believe this apocalyptic narrative? The fast-brewing success of the tea-party movement, a widespread mutiny against big government that erupted after Mr Obama’s election, suggests that many will. The media have a habit of lampooning the tea-partiers as ultra-conservatives and closet racists. But these people tend to be better educated and better-off than the average. Most are middle-aged and white. They care more about the fate of the economy and the growth of big government than culture-war issues such as abortion and religion. They strongly disapprove of Mr Obama, or at least of what he is doing. And they are angry.

Bubbling revolt

Anger is a formidable asset in politics, and the tea-partiers have been a formidable asset to the Republicans. They helped Scott Brown, a Republican, capture the late Ted Kennedy’s former Democratic bastion in Massachusetts in January. Most are or have been Republicans and have no desire to split the conservative vote by creating a third party. The Grand Old Party is naturally eager to benefit as much as it can from the movement’s energy, passion and dollars. Yet there are risks involved. Some Republican strategists fear that instead of the party co-opting the movement, the movement could co-opt the party.

In primary contests across America, tea-partiers are working to ensure that only candidates they deem to be proper conservatives win the nomination. The party establishment dares not ignore this interference, but is not always glad of it. In Kentucky last month the retirement of the junior Republican senator, Jim Bunning, produced a bitter contest between Trey Grayson, Kentucky’s secretary of state, and Rand Paul, son of the Texas libertarian, Ron Paul. Mr Grayson had been selected for Mr Bunning’s seat by the state’s senior senator, Mitch McConnell, who is also the Republican leader in the Senate. But Mr Paul had the ardent support of the tea-partiers, and routed the establishment candidate by a margin of 23 points. This followed hard on the heels of Utah’s Republicans dumping Bob Bennett, a three-term sitting senator who had failed to find favour with the tea-party movement.

In Arizona J.D. Hayworth, a tea-infused challenger running on a strong anti-immigration platform, has forced the defending senator, John McCain, sharply to the right. The former Republican presidential nominee was once proud of his readiness to defy the party line. Now the former champion of liberal immigration reform supports the controversial new law in Arizona that empowers the police to demand the documents of people they stop and suspect of being illegal immigrants.

Tea-partiers know that by dividing the right they are in danger of helping the Democrats. A warning came last November from upstate New York, when the movement forced the official but moderate Republican candidate out of the race for a vacant congressional seat. This split the conservative vote and let in the Democrat. Harry Reid, the Democrats’ majority leader in the Senate, was plainly delighted that a tea-party candidate, Sharron Angle, won the Republican nomination this week in Nevada, where he faces a tricky election in November. Some of her policies, such as the privatisation of Social Security (pensions) and elimination of the Department of Energy, may help him to survive.

A worrying defection

A different sort of drama is unfolding in Florida, where Charlie Crist, the Republican governor of the Sunshine State, is making a run for the Senate. He had the endorsement of the party establishment until the tea-partiers threw their weight behind Marco Rubio, a talented young Cuban-American. Mr Crist is hardly a RINO (a Republican In Name Only, in conservative lingo). He is pro-guns, claims to favour low taxes and opposes gay marriage. But a televised hug he gave Mr Obama early last year at a rally in support of the stimulus bill scandalised conservatives. As Mr Crist’s support drained away, he announced in April that he was leaving the party and running as an independent.

Republicans who do not face re-election this year are freer to follow their instincts, but it is not easy even for them. Tea-partiers, conservative broadcasters and the right-wing bloggers have pilloried Lindsey Graham, an independent-minded senator from South Carolina who does not face re-election until 2014. His readiness to compromise with Democrats on issues such as climate change and the treatment of terrorist detainees is considered gravely delinquent in the party of No. Last month Mr Graham suspended co-operation on energy and immigration, accusing the Democratic leadership of playing electoral politics on these issues. But attacks from his own party may have taken their toll.

By splitting the right, Mr Crist’s defection in Florida could well deliver the state to a Democrat in November. But “true” conservatives consider internal dissent, and even setbacks in elections, a small price to pay for restoring purity. Indeed, a strong theme of the tea-party circuit is that even Mr Obama’s election as president was a blessing in disguise. A McCain victory would only have prolonged the squishy centrism that has puffed up the federal government and crushed the rights of states and the freedoms of the people. Having a “socialist” in the White House, they say, has at least forced the American people to see the danger straight.

Many senior Republicans now argue that voters were right in 2008 to punish a party that had fallen in love with big government. “Conservatism didn’t fail America,” declares a former senator, Rick Santorum. “Conservatives failed conservatism.” Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, a darling of the tea-partiers, has set up a Senate Conservatives Fund to raise money for true conservatives and fend off the impostors. It helps “only the most principled candidates nationwide…who believe in the timeless conservative principles of limited government, strong national defence and traditional family values.”

The right of the party crackles with such initiatives. The tea-partiers have produced a ten-point “Contract from America” they would like all candidates to sign. In February a gathering at George Washington’s estate in Virginia issued a portentous “Mount Vernon Statement” reaffirming the founding ideas of limited government, individual liberty, free enterprise and the “prudent” (Iraq and Afghanistan have taken their toll) advancement of freedom overseas. “The truths we endorse once again have not changed since the American revolution,” said one signer, Grover Norquist, the influential president of Americans for Tax Reform. “They will not change in another 200 years.”

It is, of course, easier to insist on purity if, like Mr DeMint, you do your politics in a solid red conservative state such as South Carolina, or, like Mr Norquist, you do not seek elective office. But can this be a winning strategy across the nation as a whole?

Republicans from blue or purple states have reason to doubt it. Consider Mr Brown, the heroic conqueror of Massachusetts. Once safely ensconced in the Senate he indicated to voters in the liberal state that he would not be a doctrinaire opponent of every Democratic initiative. When he voted in favour of a controversial jobs bill in February the tea-partiers who had helped to elect him accused him of betrayal. But without leaning a bit to the left he is not likely to be elected to a second term. By the same token, Bob McDonnell, a conservative to his bones, took care in Virginia to campaign from the centre, and mainly on economic issues, to defeat the Democrats in last November’s governor’s race.

Party veterans fret that a fixation on purity could hamper the Republicans’ ability to conduct canny election-winning politics. Haley Barbour, governor of Mississippi, chairman of the Republican Governors’ Association and possibly a presidential hopeful for 2012, argues that to win in November Republicans have to avoid division. That means embracing tea-partiers even if they defeat established Republicans in primaries. But it also means resisting the danger of being “torn apart” by demands for ideological conformity. “In a two-party system,” he once said, “both parties are necessarily coalitions.”

Tea-flavoured demands for purity are not the only danger to unity. Another is the absence of a leader. Michael Steele has been a disastrous chairman of the Republican National Committee. On his watch, the organisation has suffered numerous embarrassments, culminating in a party-financed visit to a lesbian-bondage club in Hollywood. Mr McConnell, the Senate minority leader, is probably the closest thing the party has to a strategic co-ordinator, and he is a shrewd one. But nobody has emerged as a clear front-runner to take on Mr Obama in 2012.

Take me to your leader

Republican activists have had two chances this year to choose a favourite in straw polls. They voted in February at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, DC, and in April at the meeting in New Orleans. At CPAC Ron Paul, the father of Rand, came top with 31% of the vote and Mitt Romney, a presidential hopeful last time, second with 22%. In New Orleans their places were reversed: Mr Romney beat Mr Paul by a single vote (439 to 438). But these results, based on a few thousand votes by self-selecting activists, are not much of a guide. And neither Mr Romney nor Mr Paul is an obvious Obama-slayer.

Mr Romney, a thoughtful self-made multi-millionaire, has been promoting a new book, “No Apology”, designed to counter the reputation he earned in his last campaign of having no fixed beliefs. His Mormon faith remains unpopular with many voters. And this time round he faces a new obstacle. As David Axelrod, Mr Obama’s senior adviser, puts it, he has had to “twist himself into a pretzel” to conceal the fact that the health reform he introduced when he was governor of Massachusetts bears a striking resemblance to the hated Obamacare.

If Mr Romney’s problem is the fluidity of his beliefs, Mr Paul has the opposite handicap. He has run twice before, once for the Libertarian Party and in 2008 as a candidate for the Republican nomination. But if his affiliations waver, his beliefs do not. At 74 he remains a true radical, whose vision of paring government to the bone excites a youthful following. But some of his ideas—taking America out of the United Nations and NATO, abolishing the Federal Reserve—stray far beyond the comfort zone of the average voter. Soon after winning the Republican nomination in Kentucky, his son Rand implied that the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which desegregated the South, should not have applied to private businesses. He later corrected himself—but not before reinforcing the impression that the Pauls can be cranks.

The most luminous object in the Republican firmament is Mr McCain’s former running-mate. Sarah Palin has metamorphosed into a media star, multi-millionaire and tea-party pin-up. ABC News estimated recently that she had made more than $12m since resigning as Alaska’s governor last year, about $7m of it from her book, “Going Rogue”. But will she run? Since her celebrity and earnings depend on keeping the speculation alive, opinion about her real intentions is divided. And for all the buzz she generates wherever she roguishly goes, she does not poll that well. The latest survey by CNN suggests that in a head-to-head Mr Obama would beat her by 55% to 42%. Worse: 69% say she is not qualified to be president and only 30% that she is.

More than two years before the next presidential election is too early to rule out a Republican return to the White House. Ample time remains for Mr Obama to stumble (or for the economy and his ratings to recover), for Mrs Palin to improve her credibility or for other candidates to gather stature and momentum. The former governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee, is still a contender: the CNN poll placed him first (24%), ahead of Mr Romney (20%) and Mrs Palin (15%). Other names to conjure with include Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and Mississippi’s Mr Barbour. A few even hope that General David Petraeus could be lured in.

Place your bets

Republican hopes of reclaiming the White House will of course soar if they win control of Congress in the mid-terms. Most pollsters doubt that they can add the ten seats they would need to capture the Senate. But the 41 seats they need to gain for a majority in the House are within their reach. The Democrats, after all, are stumbling. Massive stimulus spending has barely dented the jobless numbers and has pushed the deficit to vertiginous heights.

But what if the Republicans do capture the House? Moving on to the White House in 2012 will require more than alighting on a plausible candidate. They will also face a tricky question. Will the policy of Hell No continue to produce political dividends once they become part of government?

History offers a clue. In 1994, propelled by Mr Gingrich’s small-government manifesto, the “Contract with America”, the Republicans gained control of the House for the first time in 40 years. As speaker, Mr Gingrich then launched an immediate guerrilla war against President Bill Clinton, culminating in a budget battle that led to a prolonged shutdown of the federal government. But the drama did not end as scripted. Most voters chose to blame the debacle on the Republicans rather than on the president. Mr Clinton was elected for a second term in 1996.

With the help of the tea-party movement, Republican politicians are once again embracing the most radical wing of the party. A new manifesto, the “Commitment to America”, is in the works. Republicans promise that the guerrilla war they have been waging against Mr Obama from opposition will merely intensify if the mid-terms produce a Republican Congress. Obamacare will be repealed—if necessary, says a Mr Gingrich unchastened by what happened last time round, by shutting off the money and engineering a crisis.

That could be a perilous strategy. By 2012 the economy may well be pepping up, and familiarity might make Obamacare, and indeed Mr Obama himself, look less frightening. Besides, although Americans say they hate big government, they are also quick to defend their “entitlements”. By the time they come to decide whether Mr Obama is to stay or go, they may prefer the president they know to the small-government radicalism today’s Republicans appear to have embraced.

Too much anger and too few ideas. America needs a better alternative to Barack Obama

HAPPY days are here again for the Republicans, or so you might think. Barack Obama’s popularity rating is sagging well below 50%. Passing health-care reform has done nothing to help him; most Americans believe he has wasted their money—and their view of how he is dealing with the economy is no less jaded. Although growth has returned, the latest jobs figures are dismal and house repossessions continue to rise. And now his perceived failure to get a grip on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is hurting him; some critics call it his Hurricane Katrina; others recall Jimmy Carter’s long, enervating hostage crisis in Iran. Sixty per cent of Americans think the country is on the wrong track.

All 435 seats in the House are up for grabs in November. The polls portend heavy losses for the Democrats, who currently enjoy a 39-seat majority there. Quite possibly, they will lose control of it. The Republicans stand less chance of winning the Senate, where a third of the seats are contested this year, but they should win enough to make it almost impossible for the Democrats to break a filibuster there by picking off a Republican or two. The second two years of Mr Obama’s presidency look like being a lot tougher than the first.

Malice in Wonderland

Mr Obama deserves to be pegged back. This newspaper supported him in 2008 and backed his disappointing-but-necessary health-care plan. But he has done little to fix the deficit, shown a zeal for big government and all too often given the impression that capitalism is something unpleasant he found on the sole of his sneaker. America desperately needs a strong opposition. So it is sad to report that the American right is in a mess: fratricidal, increasingly extreme on many issues and woefully short of ideas, let alone solutions.

This matters far beyond America’s shores. For most of the past half-century, conservative America has been a wellspring of new ideas—especially about slimming government. At a time when redesigning the state is a priority around the world, the right’s dysfunctionality is especially unfortunate.

The Republicans at the moment are less a party than an ongoing civil war (with, from a centrist point of view, the wrong side usually winning). There is a dwindling band of moderate Republicans who understand that they have to work with the Democrats in the interests of America. There is the old intolerant, gun-toting, immigrant-bashing, mainly southern right which sees any form of co-operation as treachery, even blasphemy. And muddying the whole picture is the tea-party movement, a tax revolt whose activists (some clever, some dotty, all angry) seem to loathe Bush-era free-spending Republicans as much as they hate Democrats. Egged on by a hysterical blogosphere and the ravings of Fox News blowhards, the Republican Party has turned upon itself.

Optimists say this is no more than the vigorous debate that defines the American primary system. They rightly point out that American conservatism has always been a broad church and the battle is not all one way. This week California’s Republicans chose two relatively moderate former chief executives, Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, to run for governor and the Senate. But both had to dive to the right to win, which will not help them in November. And in neighbouring Nevada the Republicans chose a tea-partier so extreme that she may yet allow Harry Reid, the unloved Democratic Senate leader, to hang on to his seat. Many of the battles are indeed nastier than normal: witness the squabble in Florida, where the popular governor, Charlie Crist, has left the party; Senator Lindsey Graham walking away from climate-change legislation for fear of vile personal attacks; and even John McCain, who has battled with the southern-fried crazies in his party for decades, joining the chorus against Mexican “illegals” to keep his seat.

As for ideas, the Republicans seem to be reducing themselves into exactly what the Democrats say they are: the nasty party of No. They may well lambast Mr Obama for expanding the federal deficit; but it is less impressive when they are unable to suggest alternatives. Paul Ryan, a bright young congressman from Wisconsin, has a plan to restore the budget to balance; it has sunk without a trace. During the row over health care, the right demanded smaller deficits but refused to countenance any cuts in medical spending on the elderly. Cutting back military spending is denounced as surrender to the enemy. Tax rises of any kind (even allowing the unaffordable Bush tax cuts to expire as scheduled) are evil.

This lack of coherence extends beyond the deficit. Do Republicans favour state bail-outs for banks or not? If they are against them, as they protest, why are they doing everything they can to sabotage a financial-reform bill that will make them less likely? Is the party of “drill, baby, drill” in favour of tighter regulation of oil companies or not? If not, why is it berating Mr Obama for events a mile beneath the ocean? Many of America’s most prominent business leaders are privately as disappointed by the right as they are by the statist Mr Obama.

Down the rabbit hole and beyond the Palin

Out of power, a party can get away with such negative ambiguity; the business of an opposition is to oppose. The real problem for the political right may well come if it wins in November. Just as the party found after it seized Congress in 1994, voters expect solutions, not just rage. The electorate jumped back into Bill Clinton’s arms in 1996. Business conservatives are scouting desperately for an efficient centrist governor (or perhaps general) to run against Mr Obama in 2012. But tea-party-driven success in the mid-terms could foster the illusion that the Republicans lost the White House because Mr McCain was insufficiently close to their base. That logic is more likely to lead to Palin-Huckabee in 2012 than, say, Petraeus-Daniels.

Britain’s Conservatives, cast out of power after 18 years in 1997, made that mistake, trying a succession of right-wingers. Only with the accession of the centrist David Cameron in 2005 did the party begin to recover as he set about changing its rhetoric. There may be a lesson in that for the Republicans—and it is not too late to take it.

People can change the volume, the location and the composition of their income, and they can do so in response to changes in government policies.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the nine states without an income tax are growing far faster and attracting more people than are the nine states with the highest income tax rates. People and businesses change the location of income based on incentives.

Likewise, who is gobsmacked when they are told that the two wealthiest Americans—Bill Gates and Warren Buffett—hold the bulk of their wealth in the nontaxed form of unrealized capital gains? The composition of wealth also responds to incentives. And it’s also simple enough for most people to understand that if the government taxes people who work and pays people not to work, fewer people will work. Incentives matter.

People can also change the timing of when they earn and receive their income in response to government policies. According to a 2004 U.S. Treasury report, “high income taxpayers accelerated the receipt of wages and year-end bonuses from 1993 to 1992—over $15 billion—in order to avoid the effects of the anticipated increase in the top rate from 31% to 39.6%. At the end of 1993, taxpayers shifted wages and bonuses yet again to avoid the increase in Medicare taxes that went into effect beginning 1994.”

Just remember what happened to auto sales when the cash for clunkers program ended. Or how about new housing sales when the $8,000 tax credit ended? It isn’t rocket surgery, as the Ivy League professor said.

On or about Jan. 1, 2011, federal, state and local tax rates are scheduled to rise quite sharply. President George W. Bush’s tax cuts expire on that date, meaning that the highest federal personal income tax rate will go 39.6% from 35%, the highest federal dividend tax rate pops up to 39.6% from 15%, the capital gains tax rate to 20% from 15%, and the estate tax rate to 55% from zero. Lots and lots of other changes will also occur as a result of the sunset provision in the Bush tax cuts.

Tax rates have been and will be raised on income earned from off-shore investments. Payroll taxes are already scheduled to rise in 2013 and the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) will be digging deeper and deeper into middle-income taxpayers. And there’s always the celebrated tax increase on Cadillac health care plans. State and local tax rates are also going up in 2011 as they did in 2010. Tax rate increases next year are everywhere.

Now, if people know tax rates will be higher next year than they are this year, what will those people do this year? They will shift production and income out of next year into this year to the extent possible. As a result, income this year has already been inflated above where it otherwise should be and next year, 2011, income will be lower than it otherwise should be.

Also, the prospect of rising prices, higher interest rates and more regulations next year will further entice demand and supply to be shifted from 2011 into 2010. In my view, this shift of income and demand is a major reason that the economy in 2010 has appeared as strong as it has. When we pass the tax boundary of Jan. 1, 2011, my best guess is that the train goes off the tracks and we get our worst nightmare of a severe “double dip” recession.

In 1981, Ronald Reagan—with bipartisan support—began the first phase in a series of tax cuts passed under the Economic Recovery Tax Act (ERTA), whereby the bulk of the tax cuts didn’t take effect until Jan. 1, 1983. Reagan’s delayed tax cuts were the mirror image of President Barack Obama’s delayed tax rate increases. For 1981 and 1982 people deferred so much economic activity that real GDP was basically flat (i.e., no growth), and the unemployment rate rose to well over 10%.

But at the tax boundary of Jan. 1, 1983 the economy took off like a rocket, with average real growth reaching 7.5% in 1983 and 5.5% in 1984. It has always amazed me how tax cuts don’t work until they take effect. Mr. Obama’s experience with deferred tax rate increases will be the reverse. The economy will collapse in 2011.

Consider corporate profits as a share of GDP. Today, corporate profits as a share of GDP are way too high given the state of the U.S. economy. These high profits reflect the shift in income into 2010 from 2011. These profits will tumble in 2011, preceded most likely by the stock market.

In 2010, without any prepayment penalties, people can cash in their Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs), Keough deferred income accounts and 401(k) deferred income accounts. After paying their taxes, these deferred income accounts can be rolled into Roth IRAs that provide after-tax income to their owners into the future. Given what’s going to happen to tax rates, this conversion seems like a no-brainer.

The result will be a crash in tax receipts once the surge is past. If you thought deficits and unemployment have been bad lately, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Mr. Laffer is the chairman of Laffer Associates and co-author of “Return to Prosperity: How America Can Regain Its Economic Superpower Status” (Threshold, 2010).

—————————————————————————————————

Hi friends – I’m supporting Tom Campbell for U.S. Senate because he’s a conservative free-market economist who will fight federal spending and debt – and because he’s the only Republican who can defeat Barbara Boxer, as shown by his 7% lead over Boxer in the latest LA Times/USC poll (which also shows his opponents losing to Boxer).

Tom Campbell is our chance to finally retire Senator Boxer and stop her profligate spending. He and Boxer are miles apart on issues – which you’ll see in this new video.

Please watch this video and then copy and paste this message and send to 10 friends. If 30,000 people send this message to just 10 friends, we will reach 300,000 voters in one day. Consider the impact!

Can some one out there give me one reasonable and rational reason that our President should receive this award (I almost said honor, but in my mind it is no longer an honor)?