When cleaning house, don't forget the GOP

Lisa Murkowski, the liberal U.S. Senator from Alaska who was re-elected in 2010 as a write-in after she lost the Republican primary to a conservative, is running for re-election in 2022. The question is, what is the constitutional conservative plan for beating her?

Conservatives do have a challenger, Kelly Tshibaka, Alaska's former commissioner of administration. President Trump endorses her; Mitch McConnell and the swamp-drenched National Republican Senatorial Campaign representing the old guard establishment endorse Murkowski.

Murkowski's favorability rating with the American Conservative Union has steadily declined, from a high of 83 (meeting Reagan's 80-and-we're-allies threshold) in 2005 to 52 last year.

She opposed the Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination. She voted against Obamacare repeal. She voted to convict Trump on impeachment charges following the Jan. 6 Capitol demonstrations. And she is one of three Republicans, along with the usual suspects, Romney and Collins, to vote for confirmation of Rajesh D. Nayah, a radical leftist, as assistant Secretary of Labor. Let's dig into that one a bit.

Nayah is best known for promoting ways to grow the unelected, unaccountable regulatory state. Last year he co-wrote a piece for The American Prospect on how to use the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs “for progressive regulation.” He is an attorney at a leftist Harvard think tank and was deputy chief of staff in Obama's Labor Department.

“We propose using OIRA as a force to help address existential threats, not to mention modernizing its version of cost-benefit analysis to support progressive structural change and center equity,” Nayah wrote.

(An existential threat, we note here, is defined as any idea or action that opposes leftist ideology or policy.)

If this isn't frightening enough, consider Nayah's next statement: “That’s where our recommendations come in. For one thing, we propose the creation of a new Regulatory Planning Office (RPO) within OIRA that would serve as a think tank within government to identify areas of under-regulation.”

Under-regulation! Quick, other than Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, and Twitter, which American companies are under-regulated? Name one, please.

If there is one thing Biden voters certainly must welcome, it's another government bureau. That's on their list of why they voted to sack President Trump – his taking a meat ax to the stiffling job-killing mountains of government regulations.

In Nayah's Utopian bureaucratic dream world, the Regulatory Planning Office could “even partner with outside academics and academic associations to add research capacity.” Oh boy, can't wait.

He wants the RPO to enact a “bold transformational industrial policy of the kind needed to respond to pandemics, soaring inequality, and climate change.” And if this isn't enough to make you vomit, here is some more mental syrup of ipecac for your consideration:

“We also explain how OIRA could use re imagined standards to compel agencies to center equity and inclusion in crafting regulations. By considering the disparate costs and benefits shouldered by women, people of color, immigrants, people with disabilities, and other communities that are too often marginalized in the policy making process, a new equity analysis could highlight differential impacts of policies on those populations, whether intentional or not. In anticipation of these disclosures, agencies would design policies with greater equity; and the disclosures would provide impacted communities hooks for their own campaigns to advance regulations or demand changes.”

So here is your new assistant Secretary of Labor, fellow Americans, thanks to Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney, and Susan Collins. It is not enough for Kelly Tshibaka, who will challenge Murkowski in the 2022 primary election, to remind Alaskans that Murkowski is an anti-Trump liberal. She has to deliver her message with specifics that demonstrate Murkowski's leftist votes, and how they damage fiercely-independent Alaskans. She could hammer on the Nayah confirmation vote with relentless ferocity.

For constitutional conservatives, it's important to contribute directly to individual campaigns and never to any Republican Party organization. It isn't enough for Republicans merely to retake the Senate. They must elect enough new conservatives to neutralize the Three Mouseketeers and a host of others, none of whom, besides Murkowski, unfortunately, faces re-election next year.

Voters in North Carolina and Pennsylvania do, however, have the opportunity to replace retiring establishment Republican Senators Richard Burr and Pat Toomey with constitutional conservatives. Of the seven Senators who voted to convict Trump, only Romney will face voters in 2024. Utah constitutionalists should already be knee-deep in mapping the plan to remove him, and former Rep. Jason Chavitz could be the one to do it.

A victory for mob rule

We keep hearing that jurors in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial fear for their safety, even their lives. The rationality of this fear was pretty much confirmed when they learned a freelancer for MSNBC was following their bus to photograph and identify them. This is what the left wants: scare the jurors and judge. It's working.

This whole affair could have been prevented if Wisconsin’s governor hadn’t withheld aid — for purely political reasons — while Kenosha burned during the deadly Black Lives Matter and Antifa riots in August of 2020.

Regardless of the verdict, mob rule has won. The idea that the state presents evidence and the defense tries to refute it is lost on the savages who are drum-beating outside the Kenosha County courthouse, demanding a guilty verdict and, as the ignoratti at MSNBC insist, life in prison without parole. In their minds, guilt beyond a reasonable doubt is established because they say it is. And the longer the jury stays out, the worse it will get. Those who foment violence do not have unlimited patience.

A purported insider claims that two female jurors are holding out for conviction because they are terrified. I don't walk in their shoes and have no standing here, but I do have to ask a question. Didn't they know what they were getting into?

These jurors, picked from the local population, saw what happened when Gov. Tony Evers turned down President Trump's offer of troops to defend the city from BLM and Antifa anarchists, who burned the city as police stood idly by. Did they honestly think they could acquit and expect the BLM children to take it in stride, move on to the next arson and looting gig?

They are to be admired for accepting their civic duty. But they also should have done their due diligence and know that the state would do nothing to protect them. It seems to me that a prospective juror could refuse to serve in such a situation and retain his honor. Just say no thanks, I enjoy breathing.

Once they took the oath, they agreed to decide the defendant’s fate on the rule of law. That’s a tough one in this volatile atmosphere, and most of us, I suspect, are sympathetic to their dilemma. But their obligation is to the law, to the rights of the defendant, who shall be acquitted absent proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, period. If Kenosha burns again, if the leftstream press stirs up more riots and killing, that is a matter for the Kenosha Police to handle.

And yet it’s another thing to wonder if you’ll be drawn and quartered in the public square.

The judge is also in a very tight spot, and that could explain his reluctance so far to declare a mistrial. He could be lynched, or his house burned down. The mob has already made promises in this regard.

“The judge said in court that the prosecution had committed a grave constitutional violation,” political commentator Matt Walsh wrote Thursday. “No mistrial. Then they withhold evidence. No mistrial. Media follows juries home. No mistrial. What the hell has to happen to cause a mistrial? This is madness.”

It is madness. Until our educational system figures a way to teach children about the rule of law, the right of a defendant to a fair trial and so forth, we must remove from power all those who support this mayhem. For now, the mob has won.

Short takes on the news

Great moments in criminal justice. Calling prison time “inappropriate,” Niagara County, N.Y., County Court Judge Matthew J. Murphy III sentenced a 20-year-old man to eight years of probation for raping several teenage girls while he was in high school. Meanwhile, slightly off-balanced but harmless Jacob Chansley was sentenced to 41 months in federal prison for entering the House chamber last Jan. 6. Dressed as a Viking and carrying a spear as a theatrical prop, Chansley is called “QAnon Shaman” in leftstream media reports. He got the short end of the spear, so to speak, libeled as a “rioter” at Just the News for merely walking down an aisle and sitting in a chair, unchallenged by a Capitol Police officer who seemed more amused than alarmed. . .

New definition of workplace skills. Kammy's aides have the perfect explanation for why she is failing as vice president: She's been given assignments that aren't right for her “skill sets.” What are her skill sets? She's the first woman and the first “woman of color” vice president, says White House flack Jen Psaki.

Today's quotes

“We never had a better country run by worse people.” – Tucker Carlson at the American Patriot Awards

“The water's not going to clear up until we get the pigs out of the creek.” – U.S. Senator John Kennedy

Recommended reading

“Trump is necessary to restore two-party rule,” by Conrad Black at American Greatness.

“Why the Left Always Projects,” by Victor Davis Hanson at American Greatness