The Next Meeting of Texas County Republicans will be TUESDAY, JANUARY 23, 2007 at the Lions Club on US 63 north of Houston starting at 7PM. A pot luck supper will be at 6PM. NO MEETING is scheduled for the month of December.

The Next Meeting of Republican Women will be at the home of Pat Honeycutt in Cabool starting at NOON, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 9. Those coming from the north should follow city route 60 into Cabool and turn right on Pine Street (at the Cabool Christian Church). Follow Pine to Maple Street. (one short and two long blocks) The Honeycutt home is the large brick house on the far left corner.

Republicans Maintain a Strong Majority in the Missouri Legislature. After last month’s election, Republicans outnumber Democrats by 91 to 72 in the House and 21 to 12 in the State Senate. It seems amazing that Republicans could have that kind of a majority when 40 of the Democrats that ran for State Representative were unopposed by a Republican. Only 20 Republicans were unopposed by a Democrat. Libertarian candidates ran in 13 districts. (Source, Missouri Secretary of State)

Governor Blunt Met with Japanese Industry Leaders in New York last month to promote more trade with Japan. The governor and members of the Missouri Department of Economic Development and the Missouri Chamber of Commerce met with Motoatsu Sakurai, Ambassador and Consul General of Japan and other Japanese business leaders to open more markets for Missouri-made products. Last year Missouri exported $504 million in goods to Japan. Missouri exports to Japan are up 61 percent in the last five years. Chemicals are the top exports to Japan, followed by food and food products. Missouri is home to 70 Japanese-owned manufacturing companies that employ 6,400 workers. (Governor’s News Release)

The Missouri Economic Research and Information Center (MERIC) has forecast that Missouri will have more than 200,000 thousand new job openings through 2007. The fastest growing job openings will be among computer software engineers with a 9.5 percent increase. This amounts to 483 new jobs with an average annual wage of $73,690. St. Louis is expected to have 282 of these opening and Kansas City 139. For more information on Missouri’s economic outlook go to:  < www.missourieconomy.org/occupations. >
(Governor’ News Release)

Governor Blunt has Requested the Underwriters Laboratories, Inc (UL) to approve and certify E-85 fuel pumps for use at gasoline service stations. The E-85 pump components have been approved but not the actual dispensing station. UL has assured they are working to approve an E-85 pump so that Missouri produced alternative fuels can enter the marketplace. (Governor’s News Release)

Governor Blunt Has Pardoned four men who had been convicted of non-violent offenses. All have served their sentence for crimes committed many years ago and all have remained law-abiding citizens. The action was recommended by Missouri’s Probation and Parole Board with no opposition from local law enforcement.Two were teenaged and two in their twenties at the time of the crimes. (Governor’s News Release)

“Now that the Democrats Have Won both houses of Congress I think we can count on the left-wing media to start reporting on the Bush Boom…..as soon as it figures out a way to credit the Dems for the economic recovery and full employment. Most of the economic commentary for the last six years has been journalistic disinformation designed to malign the Bush administration’s economic policies.” (BrookesNews.com)




The Most Important Lesson is that Democrats didn’t win. Republicans lost. This wasn’t swing voters swingiing over to the left. This was conservative voters swinging back to the right. And the Democrats, of course, are taking all the wrong lessons out of the election results, a fact which can’t but help Republicans to regain their bearings and regain their majorities two years from now. Had this reckoning with conservatives happened in 2008 instead of 2006, Republicans would have not only lost the congress but the White House as well. (Election post-mortem by Chuck Muth)

The National Taxpayers Union says the election was not a mandate for more government. Only two Republican House members who lost their seat were considered the “Taxpayers friend” with a rating of 70 or better. The remainder only scored an average of 56. And at least five of the Democrat winners are more moderate than the party’s leadership and have pledged support for holding the line on tax increases or putting a lid on budget growth.

It Must Be Recognized that this was NOT a referendum on Iraq. One of the most pro-Iraq lawmakers in Congress, Senator Joe Lieberman, ran as an Independent and trounced anti-Iraq Democratic nominee Ned Lamont. And of the five remaining Republican members who voted against Iraq, three lost: Sen. Lincoln Chafee (RI), Rep. John Hostetter (IN), Jim Leach (IA). Only two anti-Iraq Republicans will return to the 110th Congress, Reps. Jimmy Duncan (TN),  and Ron Paul (TX). It seems that America is a center-right country, rather than a center-left one, though the northeast is an exception. ( James Taranto, Wall Street Journal)

Nancy Pelosi Says the first item on her agenda after becoming Speaker of the House will be a vote requiring lawmakers who sponsor “earmarks” to be identified. She told  USA Today “I’d just as soon do away with all earmarks, but that probably isn’t realistic. Conservative groups have charged that anonymity in promoting earmarks fosters wasteful spending and some have pointed to Republican’s failure to deal with the problem as a reason behind the Democrat’s win in the midterm elections. (NewsMax.com)

It Must Also be Recognized the Democrats will not have anywhere near the number of votes in the House or the Senate to override a presidential veto. And no one will claim the 2006 election was stolen.

Democrats Captured Congress Claiming they would not raise taxes. But, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin tells them they should do so anyway. “You cannot solve the nation’s fiscal problems without increased revenues,” He also said, “I think if you increase taxes right now, it would probably have a zero negative effect on the economy.” It must be reassuring that Rubin now thinks the economy is strong enough to withstand a tax increase. In 2003 he opposed the Bush tax cuts and the U.S. economy proceeded to grow by an average of 4% for three years. In October, the first month of fiscal 2007, revenues rose by 12% from a year earlier. Apparently Mr. Rubin doesn’t think this is enough revenue increase. (Wall Street Journal)

The New Chairman of the Republican National Committee is Mel Martinez replacing Ken Mehlman. Martinez fled Cuba as a 15 year old in 1962. He was placed with a foster family in Orlando, studied English and working odd jobs to put himself through college and earned a law degree. He served as president of the Orlando Utilities Commission from 1994-97 and was elected as party chairman of  Orange County, serving from 1998 to 2001 when he was appointed by President Bush to be Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. (NewsMax.com)

Senator Hillary Says “We are ready to roll up our sleeves and work with our Republican counterparts….”
She said: “Health care is coming back,” and added, “It may be a bad dream for some.” (NewsMax.com)

Who were the Winners in last month’s election? Senator Joe Lieberman for sure. But Jeb Bush gets significant credit for keeping Florida’s governorship in Republican hands in a bad year for the GOP. Add the name of Florida’s Attorney General Charlie Crist who beat his rival 52 to 46 percent. This may be a good omen for ’08 in this hugely important swing state. Add Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was the come back kid whose approval rating had dropped below 40 percent. And, include Sen. Hillary Clinton who was re-elected with 67% of the vote. Now, if she can only learn from Joe Lieberman how to be authentic. (NewsMax.com)




In making the case to be elected House Minority Leader in the next Congress, that of Minority Leader, Rep. John Boehner, (OH) sounds this hopeful note: “Our ability to recover our majority is in our hands.”

There is historical precedent for the optimistic view that a party repudiated at the ballot box can regain voters’ confidence in two years. In 1952 Democrats lost control of the White House and Congress as Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected president. Two years later, Democrats retook Congress and then proceeded to hold the House for the next 40 years, even as Republicans won six presidential elections.

What many Republicans are wondering now is whether this is 1952 in reverse, a momentary setback for the GOP before it comes roaring back to take lasting congressional majorities. Or, is this a replay of 1954, the beginning of a near-permanent Democrat majority?

History offers a few clues. Republicans captured control of Congress in 1994 thanks in large part to a rebellion against President Clinton’s attempt to nationalize the country’ health care system. The GOP then held on to the House for 12 years (and the Senate most of that time) through the power of the incumbency and by passing a handful of far-reaching reforms, overhaul of the welfare system being the most notable.

This year Democrats benefited from a voter rebellion against the GOP. But, the party did win a mandate for its legislative agenda for the simple reason that Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi and others did not lay out their own Contract with America. Instead, in recent years Democrats voted in near lockstep against every piece of Republican legislation that came up for a vote. The lack of voter endorsement of a party’s animating ideas may seem like a handicap, but it hasn’t always been. The last time Democrats won back control of Congress by stymieing the Republican agenda without also offering a broad vision for the country was…..1954.

Following that defeat, Republicans were able to hold the White House in 1956 as President Eisenhower won re-election, and in 1960 Richard Nixon nearly extended the GOP’s hold on the executive branch for another four years. But, Democrat John F. Kennedy emerged the victor in a very close election and the party went on to run the political tables for much of the rest of the decade.  With its monopoly on elective power in Washington, the Democrat Party spent the 1960’s implementing the Great Society…the most far-reaching (and destructive) domestic program since the Depression. Elections, even though those that leave the ruling party with no mandate, can prove to be a watershed of political moments.

Whether 2006 will prove to be a similarly pivotal year in the long term depends on Rep. Pelosi. Many Republicans believe that after she becomes speaker, she will quickly become a polarizing political figure. This belief lives on the assumption (or hope) that she will attempt to enact the very ideas voters rejected in 1994. But, the assumption that Ms Pelosi will quickly overreach and destroy her new majority isn’t a safe one to make. Democrats are mindful that the 2008 presidential elections could prove to be even more beneficial for the party than the gains they made this year, if only they don’t scare voters back in the arms of the GOP in the meantime. And with Hillary Clinton along with Barack Obama and other presidential hopefuls in the Senate, it’s a safe to assume that any legislation that would endanger a Democratic presidential candidate would be off the table.

Independent pollster Scott Rasmussen noted that the nation had just experienced two close presidential elections and that the country was split between the two political parties. The U.S. has had similar periods of a nearly divided electorate, but such periods tend not to last long. Eventually one party maneuvers itself to align line with a majority of voter and gains a near lock on the policy agenda for a generation or more.

The fate of each political party is always, to some degree in its hands. Unfortunately for the GOP, the Democrats’ fate now rests with Ms Pelosi and incoming Senate Leader Harry Reid, either moving President to the left or passing nothing of consequence that would alienate a significant number of voters. And Congress, regardless of who is in power can manage to do nothing for a while.





It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.            ~President John F. Kennedy, October 22, 1962~

Now that’s deterrence. Kennedy was pledging that if any nuke was launched from Cuba, the United States would not even bother with Cuba but go directly to the source and bring apocalypse to Russia with a massive nuclear attack. The remarkable thing about this kind of threat is that in 1962 it was very credible. Indeed, its credibility kept the peace throughout a half-century of the Cold War.

Deterrence is what you do when there is no way to disarm the enemy. You cannot deprive him of his weapons, but you can keep him from using them. We long ago reached that stage with North Korea.

Everyone has tried to figure out how to disarm North Korea. It will not happen. Kim Jong Il is not going to give up his nukes. The only way to disarm the regime is to destroy it. China could do that with sanctions but will not. The United States could do that with a second Korean War but will not either.

So, we are back to deterrence. Hence the familiar echoes of the Cuban missile crisis with North Korea’s rude entry into the nuclear club this week. The United States had to immediately put down markers for deterrence. President Bush put down two.

One marker, preventing a direct attack on our allies in the region, was straightforward, if bland: “I reaffirm to our allies in the region, including South Korea and Japan,” the president said in a nationally televised statement, “that the United States will meet the full range of our deterrent and security commitments.” It is understood by all that the decades-old American nuclear umbrella in the Pacific Rim commits us to attack North Korea…presumably with in-kind nuclear retaliation…were it to attack allies first. Gruesome stuff, but run-of-the-mill in the nuclear age. The hard part is the second marker Bush tried to put down: proliferation deterrence.

We are in an era far more complicated than Kennedy’s because his great crisis occurred before the age of terrorism. The World in 1962 was still technologically and ideologically primitive: Minituarized nuclear weaponry had not yet been invented, nor had modern international terrorism. Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization gave the world that gift half a decade later with their perfection of the political airline hijacking. Terrorism has since grown in popularity, ambition and menace. Its practitioners are in the market for nuclear weapons. North Korea has little else to sell.

Hence, Bush’s attempt to codify a second form of deterrence: “The transfer of nuclear weapons or material by North Korea to states or non-state entities would be considered a grave threat to the United States, and we would hold North Korea fully accountable for the consequences of such action.

A good draft, but the phrase “fully accountable” does not instill fear. The phrase has been used by several administrations in warnings, after which we did nothing. A better formulation would be to say:

Given the fact that there is no other nuclear power so recklessly in violation of its nuclear obligations, it shall be the policy of this nation to regard any detonation of a nuclear explosive on the United States or its allies as an attack by North Korea on the United States requiring a full retaliatory response upon North Korea.

This policy has a hitch, however. It only works in a world where there is but a single rogue nuclear state. Once that club expands to two, the policy evaporates because a nuclear terror attack would not longer have a single automatic return address. That is another reason for keeping Iran from going nuclear





Democrats aren’t telling us about their agenda, so we will. A joke in Washington these days is that the only thing that can save the Republicans on Election Day is the Democrats. House Speaker-in-Waiting Nancy Pelosi seems to get this joke, because with few exceptions she’s kept her members tight-lipped and unspecific: As Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has put it, why take the focus off the GOP?

This is in notable contrast to 1994, when the Gingrich Republicans ended a 40-year Democratic House majority by laying out a ten-item agenda known as the Contract with America. What Democrats are campaigning on this year is a Non-Contract with America…mostly generalities about “helping the middle class” and ending corruption in Washington.

As a campaign strategy, this may well pay off. But if they do win, Democrats will have to fill their campaign vacuum with something, and the best clue to what would be is what they’ve already proposed. We’ve taken some time to inspect these policy priorities and thought we’d share a few of the highlights, if that’s the right word.

Tax Increases, The Bush tax cuts expire in 2010, and any chance that they’ll be made permanent will vanish with a Democratic Congress. The question is will Democrats try to raise taxes even sooner. Most Democrats voted against the Bush tax cuts, but this week Ms Pelosi said on CNBC’s “Kudlow & Co.” that Democrats like tax cuts. We support middle-class tax cuts.”

The same isn’t true, however, for the “investor” tax cuts of 2003 that coincide with the acceleration of the current expansion. Ms Pelosi says reversing these tax cuts “at the high end” would be “an early resort.” This would raise the top income top income and dividends tax rate back to 39.6% from 35%, and the capital-gains rate back to 20% from 14%, substantially raising the cost of new investment in the United States. Economist John Rutledge estimates that raising the dividend rate alone would reduce the value of the S&P 500 stocks between 5% and 8.5%, roughly a $500 to $700 billion decline in the wealth of the 52% of American households that own stock.

“Pay-as-you-go Budgeting.” President Bush would no doubt promise to veto any direct tax increase, but having the power of the purse would give the Democrats plenty of leverage. What if they framed the political choice as a tax increase on “the rich” versus funding the war on terror?

Democrats have also pledged to restore so-called pay-as-you-go budget rules, which sound like a restraint on budget deficits but in practice restrain only tax cuts. They don’t apply to the growth of current entitlement programs or to domestic discretionary spending, only to tax cuts or new entitlements. This formula would probably take us back to the 1980’s, when Democrats insisted on higher domestic spending while fighting Ronald Reagan’s increase in defense spending.

Health-care regulation Big Pharmaceuticals and private insurers, watch out. Michigan’s John Dingell, who would run the Energy and Commerce Committee, has co-sponsored the “Patients Before Profits Act” that would gut funding for the new Medicare Advantage plans that are proving so popular with seniors. Instead, he and other Democrats who run health-care panels want to direct all seniors into a single government-run Medicare drug plan.  Another proposal from Democrats, the Medicare for All Act, would make all Americans of any age, eligible for Medicare and pay for it with a new 1.7% payroll tax on workers and 7% on employers.

Ms Pelosi has also pledged to pass, in her first 100 hours as Speaker, legislation to require the government to “negotiate lower drug prices.” That’s a euphemism for imposing price controls on new medicines, which can take as much as $800 million in research and development to bring to market. Price controls would delay the introduction of new treatments for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s or cancer.         Continued on the following page.






The Union Label AFL-CIO headquarters would rock with hope again. A job-killing (and inflationary) minimum wage of $7.25 per hour up from $5.15. Congress would pass it and Bush would likely sign it. Senate. This would allow labor to turn workplaces into union shops without an election or secret ballot. Unions would merely have to gather signatures from a majority of workers at a work site, which means labor organizers could strong-arm employees who oppose such a petition. This would almost surely pass the House.

Democrats have also moved well to the left on trade since the Bill Clinton-NAFTA era. Mr. Bush’s trade-promotion authority, allowing up-or-down votes on trade deals without amendment, expires next July, and there’s little chance House Democrats would extend it. The entire Democratic leadership opposed free trade with tiny Oman and with Central America, so deals now in the works with Vietnam and other countries would also be long shots.

Energy The Pelosi Democrats favor a “windfall” profits tax on oil companies and a virtual moratorium on drilling for more domestic oil in Alaska and on the outer continental shelf (where the U.S. may have more energy than Saudi Arabia). These policies would make the U.S. more dependent on foreign oil. There would also be an effort to pass new and higher fuel-mileage mandates, which could make things tougher on what’s left of Detroit. And lobbying would begin for the U.S. to sign the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and to subsidize, even more than Republicans already have, ethanol and other alternative fuels.

We could go on, in particular in the regulatory arena, where agencies would be under greater pressure to restrict mergers, among other things. But you get the idea. A Democratic triumph would produce a major shift in the national policy debate, and we can understand why Ms. Pelosi isn’t plastering most of this agenda on billboards around the country.  Not everything would become law, to be sure, especially if Mr. Bush were finally willing to use his veto pen. However, elections have consequences, and we thought our readers might like to know about them.


Please accept, with no obligation implied or implicit, our best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.

We also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2007, but not without due respect for the calendar of choice of other cultures whose contribution to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere and without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee.

By accepting these greetings you are accepting these terms. This greeting is not subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration of the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for herself or himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher.

This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher. (Thanks to John Ayer for contributing this item.)




Reporting on Iraq:

The assumptions of a forgetful chattering class are badly off the mark. By Victor Davis Hanson

What is written about Iraq is exclusively critical. The story is suicide bombers and explosive devices It. is never about how many terrorists we have killed or how many Iraqis have been given a chance for something different than the old nightmare.

Long forgotten is the inspired campaign that removed a vicious dictator in three weeks. Nor is much credit given to the efforts to foster democracy rather than ignoring the chaos that follows war.....as we did after the Soviets were defeated in Afghanistan, or following our departure from Lebanon and Somalia. And we no longer appreciate that Syria was forced to vacate Lebanon; and that Libya gave up its WMD arsenal: that Pakistan came clean about Dr. Khan; and that there have been beginnings of local elections in the Gulf monarchies.

Yes, the Middle-East is “unstable,” but for the first time in memory, the usual killing, genocide and terrorism are occurring in a scenario that offers some chance at something better. Long before we arrived in Iraq, the Assads were murdering thousands, the Husseins were gassing Kurds, and the Lebanese militia was murdering civilians. The violence is not what has changed, but rather the notion that the United States can do nothing about it; the U.S. has shown itself willing to risk much to support freedom in place of tyranny or theocracy in the region.

Instead of recalling any of this, Iraq is seen only in the hindsight of who did what wrong and when. All the great good we accomplished and the high ideals we embraced are drowned out by the present violent insurgency and sensationalized effort to turn the mayhem into an American Antietam or Yalu River. Blame is never placed on al Qaeda, the Sadr thugs, or the ex-Baathists. It is only the United States, who should have, could have, or would have done better in stopping them, had its leadership read a particular article, fired a certain person, listened to an exceptional general, or studied a key position paper.

We also forget that Iraq, contrary to popular slander, was not “cooked up” in a Texas or Washington  think tank. Rather, it was a reaction to two events: a decade appeasement of Middle East tyrants and terrorists, and the disaster of September 11. If one were to go back and read the most popular accounts of the first Gulf War, The Generals’ War by Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor, or Rick Atkinson’s Crusade, or research the bi-partisan arguments that raged across the opinion pages in the 1990s following the defeat of Saddam Hussein, certain themes appear constantly that surely help to explain our current presence inside Iraq.

One was a shared regret that Saddam was left in power in 1991. No sooner had the war ended than George Bush Sr. appeared, not joyous in our success, but melancholy, and then distraught, once images of the butchered and refugees beamed back from our “victory” in Iraq. Culpability for thousands of dead Shiites and Kurds, the need for no-fly zones, and worry about WMD were the charges then leveled.

We praise the first Gulf War now. Yet, almost immediately in its aftermath, critics accused us of overkill, of using too many soldiers to blast too many Iraqis. The charge was not that we had too few troops, but too many; not that the Pentagon had understated the need for troops, but overstated and sent too many; not that we had too few allies, but an unwieldy coalition that hampered American options; not that it was too costly, but we were too crassly commercial in forcing allies to pony up cash as if war was to be a profitable enterprise.

There were other issues now forgotten. After the debate over Iraq in 1990, followed by the successful removal of Saddam Hussein, Democrats were determined to never again be on the wrong side of the national security debate. So they supported the present war because they were convinced after Panama, Gulf War I, Bosnia and Afghanistan they could regain credibility by supporting muscular action. Only since polls showed public dissatisfaction with Iraq have Democratic supporters of the war bailed out. This article was condensed due to space limitations. Thanks to Lois England .for providing the complete article.