Debate – Congressional District 1 – Sep 18th – Manassas, Virginia – Congressman Rob Wittman (R)

2014 District 1 Candidates’ Forum ‏
September 18, 2014

Where

Wyndham Garden, 10800 Vandor Lane, Manassas, Va 20109
Moderator Dr. Stephen Farnsworth

Candidates

Congressman Rob Wittman (R)
Norman Mosher (D)
Gail Parker (I) Green Party

Forum: 7:45 PM — Open to the Public

Social 6:30 PM — OPTIONAL
Dinner 7:00 PM — OPTIONAL

* RESERVATIONS are required for dinner: $25 PWC-100 members ; $30 non-members/guests

* To make a reservation, contact: secretarycommitteeof100@gmail.com no later than NOON, Monday, September 15.

About Congressman Rob Wittman | About Norm Mosher (D) | About Gail Parker (I)

As a Member of the Republican Study Committee, he is a leader in the fight against massive government spending and has offered numerous amendments to cut spending. Rob serves on the House Armed Services Committee and the Committee on Natural Resources, where he is well-positioned to represent the needs of the First District. He has quickly earned a reputation for being an advocate for our men and women in uniform.

On the Armed Services Committee, Rob serves as the Chairman of the Readiness Subcommittee, and also serves on the Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces. In addition, as Co-Chair of the Congressional Shipbuilding Caucus and Chairman of the Naval Academy Board of Visitors, he is a staunch advocate for a robust Naval fleet and a healthy domestic shipbuilding industry. Rob has also earned a reputation as a strong supporter of our veterans and is fighting for full concurrent receipt of veterans’ disability and retirement benefits and recently led the effort to ensure the cut to veterans COLAs was overturned.

A champion of the Chesapeake Bay, Rob serves on the House Natural Resources Committee, to which he brings his professional expertise in water quality, the environment, fisheries, and other natural resource issues. He is a leading voice for the Chesapeake Bay – for its economic, environmental, and recreational attributes – and has passed legislation increasing the accountability and effectiveness of Bay clean-up. He also Co-Chairs the House Chesapeake Bay Watershed Caucus to educate others in Congress about the Bay.

Prior to his election to Congress, Rob served most recently as Field Director for the Virginia Health Department’s Division of Shellfish Sanitation. Earlier, he worked for many years as an environmental health specialist for local health departments in Virginia’s Northern Neck and Middle Peninsula regions. He holds a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Administration from Virginia Commonwealth University, a Master of Public Health degree in Health Policy and Administration from the University of North Carolina, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from Virginia Tech.

Rob has served in several levels of government, from Town Council to the United States Congress. Rob won his first campaign for public office in 1986 when he was elected to the Montross Town Council, where he served for 10 years, four of them as Mayor. In 1995, Rob was elected to the Westmoreland County Board of Supervisors and was elected its Chairman in 2003. In 2005, voters in the 99th Legislative District elected Rob to the Virginia House of Delegates, where he served until he was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 2007. Rob’s wife, Kathryn, a teacher at Cople Elementary School in Hague, is a Westmoreland County native whom he met when he spent high school and college summer recesses working in a Leedstown tomato cannery and on a Reedville fishing boat in the Northern Neck. They live in Montross and have two children: a daughter, Devon, son-in-law Daniel Gooch, and son, Josh, and his wife, Tiffany. Rob and Kathryn are proud grandparents to three wonderful grandchildren, Morgan, Mark, and Macon.

Rob is an avid hunter and fisherman, and when possible, he enjoys spending time with his four yellow Labrador Retrievers.

Election 2012 – The GOP got Obama elected … again

I’m a conservative libertarian defector from the GOP. Since the majority of Americans identify with the ‘conservative’ brand then I must not be alone.

The GOP elected Obama president in 2008 and did it again in 2012.

If the GOP were really the party of business then it should understand that winning over your competitors is often based on winning by margin. You have got to convince non-users of your product that you are the right choice.

Things for the GOP to think about:

Social issues must become personal choices, not political mandates. Walk away from running people’s individual lives. Stop talking about ‘freedom’ and then embracing every aspect of national spying on people, groups and individuals possible and justifying it in the name of Homeland Security. Start talking about ‘small business’ as if you are saying something rather than creating deductions, tax breaks, and import/export deals that only large business can take advantage of.

And stop with the name calling. Obama may be, and is, a liberal but he is not a socialist. He is not a proto-communist. He is not someone that tripled our national debt. Get real.

Take a good long look at your family photo: full of white and aging white. It is not that people of color, almost every color, don’t like the GOP. The GOP doesn’t seem to like them. I know that this is not apparent to most GOP members because we all know a Black/Asian/Latino/Indian/Gay person that votes GOP. Yes those people exist. Several do. The GOP needs to show that it understands the problems and the challenges within the lives of the majority of these groups rather than writing them off. And keep in mind that the race card plays both ways — if you want to talk about white then realize that a whole lot of white voted for Obama.

2012 made it tough for libertarian conservatives to embrace what should have been the core GOP message: ‘Fiscal responsibility. Strong defense. Government out of our lives.’

The GOP message did not embrace these core conservative beliefs in a believable way.

Am not crazy about Obama. Did not contribute a penny to his campaign. But I did vote for him. And compared to the alternative offered: No, I do not regret my vote at all.

Dear GOP: get your act together and I’ll be back: ‘Fiscal responsibility. Strong defense. Government out of our lives.’ Skip the social issues!

The Skeptical Libertarian says about being a GOP spoiler vote during 2012

Chances are good in 2012 that a majority of libertarians lean center-right and should favor Republicans.

Libertarians are a bit unpredictable. Leaning doesn’t mean pulling the lever.

From The Skeptical Libertarian, here is one view:

“A lot of people say that the Libertarian Party just works as a spoiler, because it can’t win. Well GOOD. That’s a valuable function: it penalizes the Republican Party for being anti-immigration, anti-gay, pro-war, and lousy on personal liberty. It shows that there’s a significant group of people who are fiscally responsible and are being alienated by the Republicans’ backward social priorities. That’s the kind of pressure we need to put on the GOP, since reforming it from within is evidently a failed project.”

“If it does nothing else but spoil the election for Romney, to me it will have served its purpose entirely.”

Those tax-dodging 47% despised by the GOP are … are mostly GOP Voters. Go figure.

Atlantic Magazine and The Tax Foundation look at who the 47% are, how they vote and … holy cow! This can’t be … must be a statistical mistake … The 47% seem to live in GOP states and heavily vote GOP … and triple holy, holy, holy cow: the states with the lowest membership in the 47% seem to be Democratic-dominated states. WTF?

Reality Check: The chance always exists that the majority of the members of the 47% in the GOP-dominated states are Democrats and not Republican voters — although that would mean that almost every Democrat within the GOP states belongs to the 47%, with maybe a smidgen or two of GOP voters also participating. Logic Flaw: If this logic were true — that mostly only Democrats in Republican states are the 47% — then why do Democratic-heavy states have fewer members of the 47%? The top 10 states with the lowest rates of non-income taxpaying citizens tend to be bastions of Democratic voters and actually have the highest rate of income taxpayers.

Barack Obama – ‘the worst president in history’ – koolaid and destiny

Over and over the faithful repeat the mantra that President Barack Obama is the worst president in history, and the second coming of Jimmy Carter.

Keep drinking the koolaid: The GOP is doing itself longterm damage if it keeps up the mantra that President Obama is the worst president in history. That constant repetition would seem to absolve the GOP of coming up with ideas and having to appeal to people with real alternatives.

Repeatedly saying the worst president in history just means that the rest of America is comprised of idiots if they somehow don’t see it that way. Some of those idiots vote.

Bad news: when it comes to Obama being the worst president in history the rest of America doesn’t see it that way. Not the great majority nor a simple majority see it that way.

Surveys show that fewer than half of Americans blame Obama for today’s economic situation. Two-thirds still blame the Bush Administration — you can’t get to 2/3rds unless a sizeable number of Republicans also believe the same way … and they do.

Surveys show that independents such as myself would like to vote for a conservative candidate … but we aren’t buying the worst president in history mantra. Mitt Romney responded recently to complaints that he wasn’t bashing Obama enough — Romney noted that his own focus groups just didn’t buy in to the storyline of the worst president in history.

Yes, Obama made some promises that he couldn’t keep. As a conservative independent (a real one, not one that votes straight GOP and then claims to be independent), I’m disappointed in a lot of things as regards the Obama Administration. However, I also don’t believe that the GOP has acted in good faith over the last four years. The GOP has shown neither the ideas nor the maturity of real remorse to claim that it can do better than Obama.

I voted GOP and for John McCain in 2008. In 2012 I lean towards Libertarian Gary Johnson but will vote for Obama if it appears that Virginia is on the edge of tipping to Mitt Romney, which at this time it is not.

Yes, I want the GOP to lose. A big loss would be great. Super. I would like the GOP to have a come-to-Jesus moment where it really reflects on how we and it got here.

As a stalwart GOP member from 1980-2009 it hurts me to say that I would like the GOP to go down in defeat in 2012 — but it is also the truth.

For the GOP, the last four years have been all about ‘taking our country back’ … back to what? … and to when? … Occasionally the words get mumbled ‘We could have done better …’. Those few perfunctory words are neither sincere nor followed by examinable public policy that shows the GOP means action, real reform, and not just more empty words that can’t pass a Math 101 review.

President Barack Obama is not the worst president in history.

Chances are good that history will record Obama as a president with a difficult economy that includes an aging population and a revolution in business productivity plus massive outsourcing plus two wars on his hands. History will also record that anything that Obama achieved was done with one of the most intransigent oppositions ever in American history by a Congress that was at a low of 19% approval rating — and has since fallen to barely a 10% approval level lead by folks that want to take us back and to tell us that President Barack Obama is the worst president in history, and the second coming of Jimmy Carter.

Paul Ryan’s speech review by Fox News — NOT what you think: Dazzling. Deceiving. Distracting.

Paul Ryan’s speech review by Fox News — NOT what you think.

Fox News summarized Ryan’s speech as “Dazzling. Deceiving. Distracting.”

From Fox News: “… to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to facts, Ryan’s speech was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech.”

I agree. I agree as someone that likes Paul Ryan and believe that he has/had a bright future.

Ryan’s speech was more pink slime than red meat. Why didn’t he stick to the facts? He actually made a very good case for not voting for the GOP in November. The GOP has truth issues — not that the Democrats don’t as well BUT the GOP really has some truth issues.

Are conservatives anti-women? Are women that think this just anti-conservative?

Women have the right to vote. They should use it.

With Rick Santorum being on a hot streak in recent GOP primaries a lot of talk is being generated about how Republicans are embracing anti-women policies. Certainly the social conservatives are on the blitz in a number of states on almost every aspect of birth control and abortion/choice issues. But does that make the GOP anti-women?

As to whether conservatives and ‘the right’ are anti-women: I’ve got an opinion but will defer giving it because I believe that women need to speak out on this more than we men need to.

I will say however that women seem no more cohesive in their thought than we men if the following is considered:

>> From the Tea Party Patriots coordinator’s notes of 2012.03.14: It may be noted that over 53% of the tea party organizers/activists are women. All 4 of the Tea Party National Coordinators are women. 3 of 5 of the TPP Board members are women. Guess the left thinks we have declared war on ourselves…

Are women just as far left and right as guys? Would seem so.

IOWA – the GOP Holy Trinity Wins: One Party with three very different faces.

Romney squeaked/eked out/slid into the winning spot in Iowa by a whopping 8 votes.

Not able to pull off a real win in an uberconservative state, all the true conservative Romney haters are getting their story ready  that the GOP will lose in 2012 because of Romney.

Romney provides conservatives with a ready made stabbed-in-the-back excuse for not winning in 2012.

The problem is that the right can’t put forward anyone capable of presenting a winning story and getting votes because of it. Even if Santorum had managed to absorb more of the Bachmann, Perry and Gingrich votes it would have amounted to less than half of Iowan caucus voters. Shabby times in conservativeville.

The other two candidates that also won in Iowa were Rick Santorum and Ron Paul.

Rick Santorum is now the default darling of the crony capitalism ‘our next war is in Iran in 24 months’ far right and Ron Paul is largely the polar opposite of Santorum, with Paul appealing to a youth-fueled and old codger alliance of very independent minded supporters that want less debt, less war and more guarantees on their personal freedoms.

With Iowa over, the GOP’s new Holy Trinity of flip-flop, tin foil, and far right wander off to We Ain’t Iowa to see if the party continues for them in New Hampshire.

21 reasons Newt Gingrich won’t be the Republican nominee for president … and that’s the short list

Ezra Klein of The Washington Post has put out his 21 reasons Newt Gingrich won’t be the Republican nominee for president.

Klein is a good level-headed thinker. Gingrich is a trainwreck waiting to happen. When it happens will be very important. Timing matters. If early in the process then the GOP can pick up the fumble and keep moving. If later then it may be the equivalent of scuttling the GOP’s entire candidate fleet.

---

A Summary of GOP Reality per Klein: Romney’s Gingrich dirt file is likely a long, long file.

In the 8 weeks between New Hampshire and Super Tuesday Gingrich might win a few primaries, but can’t survive as frontrunner. He will and should take lots of hits from fellow GOPers.

---

Furthermore, if the Tea Party is serious about anything it has ever said it will join the anti-Gingrich fight.

If the Tea Party does not join the anti-Gingrich fight, or remains silent, it will be the equivalent of admitting that it is now nothing more than an quarrelsome GOP faction, but a GOP support group nonetheless … not that anyone really doesn’t already believe that.  

As to the Tea Party’s independence, Tea Partyers have indeed bucked the GOP establishment to some degree. Yet there is not certainty that the Tea Party will take a stand on Gingrich. Maybe. Probably not. Almost every Tea Partyer elected in 2010 in also in danger at the polls and they must either coalesce into the party mainstream or splinter the party further. That reelection thing affects even Tea Partyers and they need every Republican win that they can muster if they want a chance at changing things to their liking.

For the GOP: Will Gingrich damage Romney badly enough that the GOP needs to find a new candidate to serve as their nominee? And would that candidate want to represent a party that is schizo.

---

We also should not forget how the Democrats plan to portray Gingrich.

He is his own caricature. Gingrich has a lot of explaining to do.

Could 2010 be the year of the black Republican?

THE GRIO – Could 2010 be the year of the black Republican?

By Javier David, thegrio.com

It is a truism that the relationship between African-Americans and the modern-day Republican Party has been marked by hostility and contentiousness. This reality is often difficult to reconcile with the GOP’s historical opposition to slavery and the Democrats’ often whitewashed track record on race relations. Despite an impressive roster of prominent African-American Republicans, blacks and Republicans sometimes seem as compatible as oil and water.

But nearly two years removed from the election of President Barack Obama, a subtle but remarkable political revolution has been set in motion. A cadre of black political candidates is angling to assume its place in Washington – as registered Republicans. With some convincing, they may yet help re-orient the historically troubled dynamic between black voters and the Republican Party.

In fact, no fewer than 20 minority candidates have declared their intention to run for Congress in 2010, a surprising number given that many are running in urban areas with sizeable black populations. Many have benefited from the GOP’s renewed emphasis to gain traction with minority voters, a priority voiced by Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele – the first African-American to hold that position.

And the candidates certainly have their work cut out for them. Not only do black voters voter near-monolithically Democratic, but blacks who self-identify as Republicans or conservatives often come in for what author Shelby Steele once termed “a stunning amount of animus, demonization…and flat-out, undifferentiated contempt” from within the rest of the community. And in the past, black Republicans have won in conservative-leaning (and in most cases, predominantly white) suburbs, thus eluding the skeptical undercurrent that often confronts black GOP candidates from urban voters.

Ryan Frazier, a Republican Congressional candidate from Aurora, Colorado whose national profile has been on the rise, is all too familiar with those sentiments. In a reply to an e-mailed question from theGrio, Frazier described one of his toughest challenges with urban voters as “trying to explain how many conservative principles are more beneficial than big government policies. I like to say that as a country we want to give people a hand up, not a handout.”

Like other black GOP candidates for office, Frazier emphasizes common-sense solutions to intractable problems like the jobs, education and health care reform, all chief concerns of blacks and other voters of color. Widespread dissatisfaction with Washington and the stagnant job market – which has hit black communities hard – may be enough to convince some black voters to reappraise their relationship with the GOP and view black Republican candidates with new seriousness.

And a few of the GOP’s African-American vanguard are taking aim at some fairly powerful targets. Michel Frazier is challenging embattled Democrat Charles Rangel in Harlem; Isaac Hayes, (alas, not a reincarnation of the fallen soul icon but a young Chicago-area minister) is taking on Jesse Jackson Jr in Illinois’ 2nd District; Princella Smith, a former aide to Newt Gingrich, is launching a bid against Marion Barry in Arkansas’ historically Democratic 1st Congressional District; and Robert Broadus is running in Maryland’s 4th Congressional District – one that contains the largest black middle class in the U.S. and is currently represented by Democrat Donna Edwards.

READ MORE HERE – http://www.thegrio.com/opinion/could-2010-be-the-year-of-the-black-republican.php