Iowa Liberal-Funniest Post of the Year (thus far).

As much as I hate to say it, I’ve got to give the hand off of funniest story of the year to Iowa Liberal. Seriously, the Lib has truly found a way to identify the ultimate manifestation of the Nanny State.

Is the irony lost on the liberal mind?

Great effort by Rants in defense of marriage.

Our Minority Leader Christopher Rants made a great effort today on Jan Mikelson’s 1040 AM talk show. Like a hammer head shark, Rants devours the red herrings that the liberals employed to justify their unjustifiable support of homosexual marriage rights over the pronounced opposition of most Iowans.

I won’t belabor the point, please give it a listen.

Where were Jimmy and Tom in 33?

Here’s a surprise. Hugo Chavez’s communist dictatorship in Venezuela, led by Jimmy Carter’s favorite dictator (and that is saying something since Jimmy Carter has supported every anti-American dictator in the last 32 years) is involved in attempts to overthrow the American allies in Ecuador and, more importantly, Colombia.

As Chavez continues to push Venezuela closer to a regional war with Colombia and Ecuador, Iowans should remember that another long time ally of anti-American dictators, Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, is also a major domestic ally of the Venezuelan monster. Harkin has spent most of his career supporting the very worst regimes on earth.

How unfortunate the Harkin and Carter weren’t around in 1933 to lend the imprimatur of the United States to the Nazi triumph in the 1933 German general elections.

The next President of the United States…………..John McCain of Arizona

Congratulations to Senator John McCain of Arizona. Johnny Mac clinched the Republican nomination tonight with impressive wins in Ohio, Texas, Vermont and Rhode Island.

The McCain comeback will be the subject of political and historic debate for decades. Modern history has no antecedent for Mac’s political revivification. McCain showed strength and courage is standing by the need for victory in Iraq, creating a clear distinction between the Democrat's almost universal policy of defeat in Iraq and appeasement everywhere else.

Mac has drawn the brightest, and increasingly vivid, line with the duplicitous Clinton-whose thirty five year history includes the eight year hiatus from history in which she and Pres. Clinton indulged themselves at the American national interest. The McCain contrast is even brighter with the neophyte Barack Obama, who offers nothing but the simplistic and routine rhetoric of blaming America for our enemies animosity and offers only appeasement and weakness as the remedy.

The McCain victory speech is the best he has given in the campaign thus far. Johnny Mac hit smoked the line like another famous Johnny Mac in exposing the absurdity of Democrat economic claims that they will keep jobs and business in America by making it harder and more expesive to do business in America. Mac closed with a line that I think will resonate throughout the campaign. “We are Americans. We don’t hide from history, we make it.”

The clearest contrast of all.

A bright line-Democrats now officially endorse homosexual marriage!

The Iowa House of Representatives today made a very bold vote. Every single Democrat, even the few usually sensible ones, today voted against 10,000 generations of human experience and social morality.

Today, the Democrats voted to leave the Defense of Marriage Bill in committee, effectively killing the bill and all debate on it. Six Democrats changed their vote from 2005 to now support Iowa‘s recognition of same sex marriages.

Ms. Dandekar of Linn County
Mr. Ford--Polk County
Ms. Mertz--Kossuth County (a CO-SPONSOR of this Protect Marriage bill)
Mr. Quirk-Chickasaw County ( a CO-SPONSOR of this Protect Marriage bill)
Mr. Reasoner-Union County
Mr. Shomshor-Pottawattamie County
Mr. Swaim--Appanoose County ( a CO-SPONSOR of this Protect Marriage bill).

Today’s Democrat vote blocked even the discussion of homosexual marriage on the floor of the House. There are indeed few way in which one can express greater approval of anything than by silencing even a discussion of it.

The Democrat response, that the vote would derail the “judicial process”, is silly. In fact, just one word defeats the argument “how”. A discussion wouldn’t stop the Supreme Court’s review of the pending case law on homosexual marriage. Even allowing the amendment to get on the ballot in 2010 wouldn’t stop the pending appeal.

Don’t buy a word of it and remember that every single Democrat voted to sustain homosexual marriage. That’s what Democrats do-accelerate the trip to Gomorrah from a slouch to a sprint.

Hurley and Ratliff-even better than Murphy and Nolte

Today’s Des Moines Register has again returned to Chuck Hurley’s fight to preserve the traditional concept of marriage from disintegration in the moral vacuum of liberal hedonism.

Today’s article focuses on the alliance between the inner city black minister Rev. Keith Ratliff, and his Maple Street Baptist Church, and Chuck and the Iowa Family Policy Council.

The Hurley/Ratliff alliance on what is perhaps the most significant social question before Iowa’s voters proves a couple of important theories we have advanced here at TRS about the benefits of openly and aggressively pursuing protection of marriage as a cornerstone of the Iowa GOP agenda.

The first, and more short term benefit is the creation of a bright line issue between Republicans and Democrats in which a significant majority of black voters side with us. Leadership, and Chuck Hurley is providing an example of just such leadership, is reaching out and persuading the reluctant audience to agree. Intellectual and ideological marketing, so to speak.

The second, and more long term benefit is the opportunity it provides the GOP to dismantle part of the emotional resistance the black voter has to the GOP agenda. We can build on agreement about homosexual marriage with agreement about other moral/social issues. We here are guessing that Rev. Ratliff is concerned about illegitimacy and economic failure in black families-so is the GOP.

Agreement on one issue at least opens the door to discussions of other issues. We forego this opportunity at our own great peril.

Chuck Hurly and the slings and arrows of the Democrat slime machine.

The Iowa Family Policy Council’s Chuck Hurley has been leading the fight to preserve Iowa’s place among the civilized cultures of the world in recognizing the definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

Although Democrats surely understand that 10,000 generations of human history and every major religion on every continent have evolved the foregoing definition as a badge of civilization and that around 75% of Iowans favor that definition of marriage they cannot retreat from the radical demand for changing the definition of marriage. Expansive victimization is, after all, one of the two or three major premises of the modern liberal Democrat ideology and amidst the prosperity and freedom of 21st Century America real victims are becoming much harder to locate.

In doing so, Chuck has exposed the extent, $170,000 of extent, to which out of state homosexual groups have attempted to impose the liberals’ attempt to reverse those 10,000 generations of civilization. Rather than debate on the merit, the Democrat Machine did what the intellectually bankrupt liberal does, call Chuck names and accuse him of “hate mongering“.

No substantive debate, of course. The true mongers of hate will not allow even the modest one hour of debate that our Minority Leader Christopher Rants has requested. It wouldn’t even take an hour to expose the bizarre syllogism that purports the moral value of homosexual marriage and the Democrats don’t want to risk public exposure of the logical vacuum in which their position resides.

We here at TRS are thinking that Hurley isn’t going to be intimidated by the catcall that union thugs substitute for argument.

Barone predicts a new map.

Real Clear politics has a great article by Michael Barone regarding the suddenly fluid electoral map.

The emergence of John McCain and to a lesser extent, Barack Obama (who is, after all, merely a more likeable and less hysterical liberal socialist/paternalist/pacifist) create the potential for an entirely new electoral map.

Good reading. Johnny Mac has a chance to turn Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin and a lesser shot at Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Michigan. The Drama has a good shot to turn Iowa, New Mexico and Ohio, with a lesser chance at Virginia and Montana.

That much fluidity and eight months to go. 2008 might just be an eventful year.