Earlier this week, we learned that the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) put pressure on clients of the law firm King & Spalding to get it “to end its representation of the “Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group of the House of Representatives on the constitutional issues regarding Section III of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act.”   After the law firm caved to pressure from this left-wing outfit, it has earned the opprobrium not just of conservative pundits and jurists, but also from left-of-center commentators, even from the editorial board of the New York Times!

Calling “the pummeling” that the law firm has experienced “entirely deserved”, Ruth Marcus dubs HRC, “the bigger culprit” as it “orchestrated the ugly pressure tactics against King & Spalding“:

But strong-arming the lawyer to drop or avoid the unpopular client is not an acceptable tactic. This is not, or shouldn’t be, a left-right debate. It is true whether the lawyer is defending murderers on death row, Guantanamo detainees or a federal law — a law, it must be pointed out, that was passed by overwhelming congressional majorities and signed by a Democratic president. The Human Rights Campaign and its allies ought to remember: Not so long ago, firms were squeamish about taking on gay clients or causes.

Exactly.  Read the whole thing. “King & Spalding had no ethical or moral obligation to take the case,” the editors of the New York Times write, “but in having done so, it was obliged to stay with its clients, to resist political pressure from the left that it feared would hurt its business.”  (Via Jennifer Rubin.)

John Hinderaker reports that “King & Spalding is starting to experience blowback: the Attorney General of Virginia has fired the firm from work it has been doing for the state since 2009. Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli sent King & Spalding a blistering letter which apparently was copied to the Washington Examiner:” (more…)

According to Gallup, nearly “half of Americans, 47%, now have an unfavorable image of the Tea Party movement, the highest since it emerged on the national scene.”  That contrasts with 33% who have a favorable view.  This represents an increase of 5% in the grassroots movement’s unfavorable rating and a decrease of 6 points in its favorables, a pretty significant shift that.

At the same time, as Americans’ negative views of the movement are on the upswing, they continue to embrace its underlying ideal:

The large majority of Americans say spending too much money on unneeded or wasteful federal programs is to blame for the federal budget deficit, while 22% say the deficit is a consequence of not raising enough in taxes to pay for needed programs.

This movement gained momentum two years ago, largely because of the vast increases in federal spending passed by the then-Democratic Congress and signed by President Obama.  In line with Tea Party protestors, “Americans generally favor spending cuts rather than tax increases as the way for Congress to reduce the deficit going forward”:

Given a choice, Americans of all political persuasions are more likely to say that too much wasteful and unneeded government spending is the cause of the federal budget deficit, rather than too little tax revenue. Americans of all political persuasions also say cutting back on federal spending should be a major focus of efforts to reduce the deficit going forward.

Via Washington Examiner.  Do hope the president is looking at this poll.  And that Republican leaders don’t lose sight of it.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, as the fortunes of Barack Obama increased, I asked what this man, who billed himself as the hopeful agent of change, had done to effect real change.  What entrenched interests had he challenged?  What corrupt politicians did he expose and strip of power?

Once in office, as many on the right warned, he has been anything but an agent of change, unless by change you mean an increase in the rate of government growth and a widening of the scope of its regulatory power.  In short, as president, he has become the advocate for the governing class and the big-government status quo.

Suggesting the president’s “intellectualism” is “a mere imitation of the liberal dogma that has dominated elite opinion for 40 years“, Jennifer Rubin finds it “deeply ironic that the president who ran on a platform of change would be so reactionary”:

On domestic policy, Obama clings to Great Society statism and must be dragged into a post-Keynesian approach to economic recovery and fiscal control. On foreign policy, he’s treated popular revolutions ( most egregiously, Iran’s Green Movement) as annoyances that have only complicated his desire to do business with aging regimes. And in the Middle East, he seems stuck in an Oslo time warp long after the Israeli public, the PA and the Arab states have given up on “land for peace.”

What new ideas has this man put forward?  What cost-saving reforms has he effected?  What has he done to change the culture of our nation’s capital?

Seems Ryan learned from the immediate past president on how to deal with critical questions. From Moe Lane at RedState, we get this anecdote from the Republican leader‘s listening tour in his Wisconsin district:

At the last of four events on Rep. Paul Ryan’s “listening tour” of his district Thursday, he called on a man in the front row of a high school auditorium, then instantly recognized him.

“You changed clothes!” Ryan told Steve Jozefczyk. The 54-year old salesman from Franklin, Wis., had asked Ryan several critical questions from the front row of an event six hours earlier in Waterford, when he wore a shirt and tie. In Greenfield, it was a black “Faux News” parody T-shirt.

Josefczyk admitted trying to trick Ryan into calling on him again. But Ryan listened anyway.

I join Moe Lane is emphasizing that last sentence.  So, the Republican Congressman calls on a guy whom he knows to be a traveling critic.

Contrast his attitude to this particular critic to that of the incumbent president toward critics in general.

To the consternation of Roger L. Simon, whose guest I was on Pjtv on Election Night 2008, I proclaimed that, in the wake of Democratic victories that night, Rush Limbaugh was the interim leader of the GOP.  While I might have missed the mark a bit, the talk show host did offer a robust defense of conservatism at CPAC the following February at a time when many of us were despondent and liberal pundits were proclaiming the death of conservatism.  The Tea Party had just been born.  And Sarah Palin seemed content to remain in Alaska, governing the Last Frontier.

Well, the mainstream media may have declared that accomplished reformer and charismatic conservative the leader of the GOP, but while many on the right respected her, few acknowledge her at Reagan’s heir.  Then-RNC chairman Michael Steele never really gained a following with the rank-and-file (it’s fun to speculate how much better the GOP would have done last fall had we had a man with the political acumen and Washington experience of Haley Barbour helming the RNC in the early Obama years).  The Republican congressional leaders, House Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, remain focused on running their respective chambers than aspiring to national leadership.

The media seem eager to declare Donald Trump, currently the most prominent Obama critic, as the GOP leader—without bothering to ask whether his political platform aligns with that of rank-and-file Republicans.  They do seem to forget that since Ronald Reagan, the Republican Party has been built on a set of principles, of small government, personal freedom and a robust national defense, principles of which (alack!) all too many GOP leaders have lost sight.

Until this month.  When, after House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan released the Republican budget plan, left-of-center pundit Jacob Weisberg wrote that if “the GOP gets behind” this proposal “in a serious way, it will become for the first time in modern memory an intellectually serious party—one with a coherent vision to match its rhetoric of limited government”, he all but declared Ryan the leader of the Republican Party, pending the party getting behind said proposal.  And get behind it they have.  To be sure, while most support its general outline, not all Republicans back the plan.  Four House Republicans voted against his budget.  And last week, Senator Susan Collins of Maine was “the first Republican senator to state publicly that she will not support the Ryan budget.”

Back in his southeastern Wisconsin district where he is set to conclude today “his 19th town hall meeting of the last two weeks“, Ryan “is also garnering more attention and bigger crowds than the presidential hopefuls“.  As he meets with his constituents, he’s been explaining why we must cut federal spending and reform entitlements.  In short, he’s been standing firm not only on core Republican principles, but also defending an actual plan to enact them into law. (more…)

“Higher gas prices, severe storms and belt-tightening at the Pentagon,” AP Economics writer Jeannine Aversa contends, “slowed the economy in the first three months of the year.”  She forget to mention increased federal regulation, regulatory uncertainty and moratoria on energy exploration.  And the high corporate tax rate.

New economic data, Neil Irwin reports in the Washington Post, “show the recovery is so weak that it doesn’t take much to knock it off its stride“:

The 1.8 percent pace of increase in gross domestic product in the first quarter, according to a Commerce Department report Thursday, is down from a 3.1 percent gain in the final months of 2010. It is also lower than the level of growth that, over time, would be expected to drive down joblessness. The U.S. economy needs to grow about 2.5 percent annually to keep unemployment steady given continual growth in the labor force and in worker efficiency; even stronger GDP growth is needed to bring unemployment down.

Via Jennifer Rubin who also noted that “inflation also shows a marked change“.  We may officially be out of the recession, but Gallup reports that “Twenty-nine percent said the economy is in a depression and 26 percent said it is in a recession, with another 16 percent saying it is ‘slowing down’.”  (Via Instapundit.)

This ain’t, as Philip Klein details, Ronald Reagan’s recovery:

. . . first quarter GDP grew at a mere 1.8 percent clip. While the number is an advance estimate and could change, it’s not going to get near the 5.1 percent growth in the comparable quarter during Reagan’s first term (i.e. Q1 1983). And while growth is expected to pick up in the second quarter, it won’t get anywhere near the 9.3 percent rate of 1983′s second quarter. . . .

Yet it’s also important to note that Reagan was also fighting a battle on multiple fronts. He took office after a year of 13.5 percent inflation in 1980, and by 1984 it dropped to 4.3 percent. On the flip side, Obama took over at a time of low inflation, and we’re now starting to see prices rise, especially on food and gas, which Americans tend to notice.

Perhaps the Obama recovery is so anemic is because “the government,” as Irwin reports, “is straining for ways to jump-start the economy.”  Government is not going to jump-start this economy.  But, there is one thing it can do to bring it back: get out of the way.

UPDATE: The editors of the Washington Examiner show just why Barack Obama in no Ronald Reagan: (more…)