“So blue, I can’t begin to say”.

• USC suspended a male student for an incident that likely never happened.

  He and girlfriend were shrieking in an alley, one night. They say it was horseplay. Sleeping “witnesses” weren’t sure, and talked about it. One of the sleepy-witnesses’ roommate’s fathers (!) reported it as a serious incident. Based on that distant hearsay report, the male student was suspended. A camera did record whatever happened, and USC refuses to release the recording. While student and girlfriend want it released, saying it exonerates him. When the girlfriend tweeted about that, USC threatened her, “Don’t ever tweet anything like that again”. As Ashe Schow puts it:

  The school believed that she was a battered girlfriend, too afraid of her boyfriend to admit what he had done. Why, then, did they retaliate and threaten her? The school was so sure she was a victim, it treated her like garbage…

• Germany shuts down a left-wing web site, Germany’s version of Antifa.

  My feelings are mixed. To the extent that the site incited violence (and it probably did), the action is probably justified. But it shows how the State’s power can be used against anyone, Left or Right, at the State’s whim.

• Google has stepped up its crackdown on “extremist” YouTube videos.

  Problem: The restrictions on viewing, search and sharing are themselves extreme – and are almost certain to be applied unjustly to reasonable Trump supporters, libertarians and/or conservatives. Because Google has already been doing some restrictions and even the wonderful Diamond and Silk were hit by those.

The greatest threat to your future, the greatest risk to the American Republic, is from the unprecented assault on Free Speech, committed by the media, Silicon Valley, politicians, Hollywood producers, and the academy.

Unlike Antifa, #BlackLivesMatter and a couple of idiots on the far right too, I don’t believe that violence is the answer to political disputes. That’s why I’m staging Berkeley Free Speech Week, a week-long festival of free expression, for libertarians, conservatives, and their liberal friends too, including everyone who has been prevented from speaking at UC Berkeley in the last 12 months.

Hmm, no web site yet. Stay tuned. (UPDATE, from Nanny G in the comments: Check freespeechweek.com. Also, Milo has a blog post with a few details.)

News you can use – Getting free of Biased Google: I have not tried all of these yet, so I can’t vouch. Please comment with your experiences. Hat tip, Black Pigeon Speaks.

• Interesting new web browser, Brave.
• Search engines, DuckDuckGo and Qwant.
• Email, ProtonMail.
• Video platforms, DailyMotion, Vid.me, BitChute, Minds.
• Social media (this is more getting rid of Facebook), Gab, Line.
• Smartphone – I’m not sure here; you can ditch Android for iPhone or Windows, but is Apple or Microsoft (co-founder of MSNBC) an improvement?

As I noted earlier, language evolves (or devolves). “Alt Right” is now owned by the neo-Nazi/KKK types (whom we reject). It was once a label for the kicky, fun, we-refuse-to-keep-losing type of conservative. Legit. But in the last 12-18 months, the racists (who btw are socialists or crypto-leftists) inserted themselves and took it over.

I say, fine: Let the National Socialists keep it. Let’s never use it for ourselves. That’s a good thing. Because now we can brand the equally (or more) violent/nasty Left, as Alt Left. We can tell lefties, in all sincerity, Of course we condemn the Alt Right…and your stinkin’ Alt Left, which isn’t any better…and we expect you to join us.

Some say that Hannity introduced “Alt Left”, and President Trump picked it up. Whatever. Our own V the K says the term is not meaningful because, when you look at how CNN and NYT and WaPo and Democrats are justifying left-wing violence, it’s really the entire Left, without distinction. He has a point.

But that’s the beauty of it. We can call CNN, etc. the Alt Left Media (as long as they keep excusing left-wing violence). We can refer to any leftie who justifies violence as Alt Left, exposing their moral equivalence to the violent and/or racist people of the Alt Right. Anyway, I’m on board.

The kicky, fun, we-refuse-to-be-cucked type of conservatives seem to be re-branding themselves as New Right. I’m not on board there; I mean, the name is a bit weak and I think it has to be replaced with something better. What are your thoughts?

I mentioned last Thursday (before Charlottesville) that a 9-city March on Google was planned for Aug 19. Just to follow up, it’s postponed:

The Peaceful March on Google has been postponed due to credible Alt Left terrorist threats for the safety of our citizen participants.

Despite our clear and straightfoward statements denouncing bigotry and hatred, CNN and other mainstream media made malicious and false statements that our peaceful march was being organized by Nazi sympathizers.

Following the articles, credible threats from known Alt Left terrorist groups [were received]…

We hope to hold our peaceful march in a few weeks’ time.

We look forward to the day when the human right of peaceful Free Speech is once again able to be practiced in America.

Addendum about the march’s organizers: (more…)

A fair argument from Tucker that Google can no longer be trusted and, due to its out-sized influence, should be regulated as a public utility:

I don’t necessarily agree; competition to Google could still punish their evil ways. But I found Tucker’s case interesting.

An editorial from James Damore himself, in The Wall Street Journal.

In my document, I committed heresy against the Google creed by stating that not all disparities between men and women that we see in the world are the result of discriminatory treatment.

The March on Google is still on for this Saturday, August 19.

• List of cities here and here.
• Explicit disavowal of the so-called “Alt Right” – and Antifa – here.

At the link, Caitlyn Jenner defends President Trump and expresses a belief in limited government and making the U.S. a better place to do business.

Of course I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I’m glad to see Jenner saying sensible political things to a left-leaning audience. On the other hand, I know that Jenner has willingly served as either a source, or at least a mascot, for some of the rather foolish Transgender Fever that has swept America in the last year or two.

As to transgenders in general: I’m glad when they stand up for their legitimate rights as any human should – for example, practicing self-defense skills with Pink Pistols – and, I’m not glad when adult biological men think they have a right to impose their brand of political correctness on others, take over girls’ bathrooms, etc.

Overall, file this one under “People Are Complex”.

I mentioned looking forward to Sharyl Atkisson’s new book, The Smear: How Shady Political Operatives and Fake News Control What You See, What You Think, and How You Vote.

It came. I’m not far into it, but it seems pretty good. I already knew some of what she has to say, but the organized wealth of details makes the cake.

Chapter 2 is on David Brock and his Soros-funded empire. As you probably know, Soros-Brock have Media Matters and a vast array of other organizations, meant to seem independent (but not), with armies of paid trolls that astro-turf Twitter, the blogosphere, the media pages and employees, etc. in order to plant their favored narratives and terms, crush their enemies (and disfavored narratives/terms), and generally get the Controlled Media to do Hillary’s bidding – oops sorry, their bidding.

I have no doubt that the Soros-Brock armies are a big part of the Trumprussia hysteria. Meanwhile, Atkisson suggests that a lot of terminology is spread by them. She suggests that the Soros-Brock armies established climate change (when Global Warming didn’t work on people anymore), progressive (for liberal), and the over-use of racist, white nationalist, alt-Right, microaggression, body shaming, white privilege, etc.

Many know that David Brock was a rightie in the 1980s-1990s and was the chief agent of smearing Anita Hill. (Who deserved a little of it, at least, in that she had helped smear Clarence Thomas.) In the late 90s, Brock transitioned to extreme Clintonite, and hooked up with Soros for funding.

It’s funny but…the late Nineties / early Naughties are about when I started transitioning to the liberty-loving Right, after noticing that the Left was getting more silly, dishonest and hysteria-prone – which I thought the Right had been too much of, up to that point. And Milo has also expressed the idea that in the 90s, the Right was too much into saying nasty ridiculous things and he would have been anti-Right back then, but today the Left is much worse (so Milo has to be anti-Left).

Could it be that Milo and I each felt – and rejected – the creepy, hateful, dishonest spirit and work of David Brock, as it traveled from Right to Left? Without knowing what it was?

And the current, widespread distrust in the media – is that also about 2 decades of the baleful influence of Soros-Brock, boomeranging?

• After famously lying to the American people about what happened in Benghazi, and spying on Obama’s domestic opponents, Susan Rice now suggests (while pretending to be above suggesting it) that people criticize her just because they’re racists and sexists.

  OMG!

• Even CNN left-wing kook, Van Jones, will tell you privately that Trumprussia is a “nothingburger”.

  OMG!

• A new study shows that Seattle’s $15 minimum wage is costing jobs.
  

  …boosting pay in low-wage jobs by about 3 percent since 2014 but also resulting in a 9 percent reduction in hours worked in such jobs. That resulted in a 6 percent drop in what employers collectively pay…

  The report also estimated that there are about 5,000 fewer low-wage jobs in the city than there would have been without the law.

  Yet lefties still support these job-destroying, business-destroying, income-destroying laws.

  OMG!

• The Federal Reserve’s chair, Janet Yellen, says that we won’t see another financial crisis in our lifetimes.

  OMG! Famous last words?

On a fun note…Milo had a Coming Out Conservative event in New York.

I’m sure GP readers can relate to idea that nowadays, it is MUCH harder to come out as conservative than as gay.

Figuring out what’s happening in Washington – under the surface, with the Deep State factions – is a guessing game. Highly uncertain. Of course I don’t “know anything”, in the sense of having sources. I read the tea leaves as best I can, and I guess.

When President Trump unexpectedly did a huge Saudi arms deal, I had a feeling that former FBI Director Comey’s testimony would then turn out as a net win for Trump. What’s the connection? Hard to explain. I’m going to say some stuff now which could easily be crap; feel free to shoot it down in the comments, or to add your own ideas.

(more…)

At least some people are noticing that the Controlled Media witch hunts against Trump are an attempted coup d’etat against a lawfully-elected president.

What’s the endgame? Does President Trump resign in disgrace? Or does he triumph, as the hysteria is exposed and burns itself out? Or does he allow himself to be neutered, governing from now on as a captive of the Democrats? I don’t know.

Nobody’s perfect, and the Controlled Media is great at keeping up drumbeats; so yes, they will find something real or semi-real against Trump eventually. Let’s face it.

I could dismiss the Controlled Media as an irrelevant province of old people, and to a large extent that would be true. But they have ongoing relevance to the extent that they can scare the Congressional Republicans into rejecting (or at least unsupporting) Trump.

To get his appointees in office (including judges), to build a wall, to pass his desired infrastructure spending or tax reform, etc., Trump needs Republican unity. The purpose of the manufactured hysteria is to destroy intra-Republican unity and so to derail Trump’s appointees, criminal investigations (of the Left) and legislative agenda.

I could see a scenario where Trump resigns in contemptuous frustration. He denounces the hysteria (rightly) as he does so, and his Tweets remain a force in American politics. What happens next?

Do the Deep State and Controlled Media play the same game on President Pence? Will it work again, so soon? If it does work again so soon, does America slide into civil war at some point?

Whom does President Pence choose, as his Vice President? Does he let the Deep State run wild, taking us into another war? Questions, questions. Please let us know your thoughts, in the comments.

I have unblocked the word “faggot” in our comments section. It was past time, for 2 reasons:

• South Park “The F Word” made “fag” OK in 2009.
• Milo – it’s impossible to cover him without mentioning his “Dangerous Faggot” lecture tour.

As to Milo, he has re-launched. (He appears around 58:45 in the video.) Highlights:

• He has raised $12 million for a new media and book-publishing company that will be dedicated to ending political correctness and “making the lives of journalists, professors, politicians, feminists, Black Lives Matter activists and other professional victims a living hell.”
• He will be suing Simon & Schuster (presumably for breach of contract?), asking another $10 million.
• He is still planning MILO’S FREE SPEECH WEEK (no dates on it).

I saw this coming, after the Left’s coordinated attack on him in February. He’s not one to stay down and out.

By the way, Vanity Fair hates him. And if you’re thinking “pedophilia”, Milo had a few words for you back in February: “I do not support pedophilia. Period. It is a vile and disgusting crime, perhaps the very worst.” We at GayPatriot agree.

After Milo’s trouble in February, I knew he’d be back. He has a lot to say, he needs the attention, he’s fun and the camera loves him.

Via Breitbart.com, it’s MILO’S FREE SPEECH WEEK. (I think the all-caps are part of the shtick?)

In light of recent controversies, I am planning a huge multi-day event called MILO’S FREE SPEECH WEEK in Berkeley later this year. We will hold talks and rallies and throw massive parties, all in the name of free expression and the First Amendment. All will be welcome, regardless of political affiliation.

[…]
During MILO’S FREE SPEECH WEEK, we will give out a new free speech prize — the Mario Savio Award — to the person we believe has done most to protect free expression at UC Berkeley and its surrounding area. Each day will be dedicated to a different enemy of free speech, including feminism, Black Lives Matter and Islam.

If UC Berkeley does not actively assist us in the planning and execution of this event, we will extend festivities to an entire month. We will establish a tent city on Sproul Plaza protesting the university’s total dereliction of its duty and encourage students at other universities to follow suit.
I intend to return Berkeley to its rightful place as the home of free speech — whether university administrators and violent far-left antifa thugs like it or not.
– MILO

Mario Savio was, per Wiki, “a key member in the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. He is most famous for his passionate speeches, especially the ‘put your bodies upon the gears’ address given at Sproul Hall…on December 2, 1964.”

P.S. I respect and admire Ann Coulter, but do you want to know the difference between her and Milo? A penis and $20,000. (My understanding is that she charges 20K to speak to College Republicans, while he charges them zero. If that’s incorrect, I would be happy to hear it in the comments.)

Long story short, he gave up on the left because it became an intolerant cult. (Which makes me ask, if you still are on the left, why? Do you like being in an intolerant and increasingly violent cult?)

A few choice excepts.

A good friend of mine, who also happens to be an outstanding author, once quipped, “If I am forced to choose a side, I choose the side which is not forcing me to choose sides.”

…

There was the woman on the street who said, “Go Army, rape those Iraqis!” when she saw me wearing my Army sweatshirt outside my apartment complex on Lake City Way. This somewhat startling comment would be reminded to me a couple of years later, when a classmate at Seattle Central Commun(ist) College told me it was a shame I signed up with the Reserve, because my job was to kill people. Uhhhh, what? Since when does being an HR Specialist at a Garrison Support Unit involve killing people? It got even worse when the students at SCCC began throwing water bottles at Army recruiters, as well as destroying Army recruiter literature. The students ran the recruiters off campus — and cheered themselves doing it!

…

When the Obama election rolled around later that same year, even being in Utah was not sufficient to insulate me from the same attitudes I used to face routinely in the Puget Sound. Because suddenly, if you weren’t fainting to the ground with love and adoration for Saint Obama, you weren’t just called stupid, you were declared evil. You were RACIST! Because nobody could not vote for Obama, without being a RACIST! could they? 

…

If you weren’t “With Her!” you were deplorable. Everybody who was anybody, was going out of his or her way, to wave the Hillary flag. It was wall-to-wall virtue signalling, dialed to eleven.

Interesting stuff over at NRO.

The top Republican consultants of today are Baby Boomers like Karl Rove and Mike Murphy. Rove wasted $300 million in 2012 trying to get voters to oppose Obama. Murphy is wasting over $100 million trying to get Republican primary voters to support Jeb Bush.

The old political shorthand no longer works. It means nothing to Millennials. Cutting taxes to revive the economy is something that rich people say. Rove’s 2012 anti-Obama ads were terrible.

Voters think that conservatives (especially establishment Republicans like Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush) are ignorant and hostile to their interests. They have never heard a reasonable conservative argument for anything. They have only heard incomprehensible cliches that were designed to manipulate different people from a different generation.

It is something I have been saying for a long time. Low-information voters, especially millennials, have been brainwashed by the Democrat Media Complex into believing that Republican was synonymous with Conservative, and Conservative Republican was shorthand for “hates gays, hates blacks, hates Hispanics, and wants to outlaw sex.”

The Republican Party has been a poor apologist for Conservatism because the Republican Party is not, at its core, conservative, nor does it exist to advance conservative values.

The Conservative Movement needs to take an entire generation of voters to school and teach them what conservatism really means; which, at its core, is that people can be trusted to make their own decisions rather than having them dictated by Government bureaucrats; and this results in a stronger, more prosperous, and more civil society.

Of course, it will have to be dumbed down a bit for the LIV’s.

First off, in the UK, a left-wing politician gets surprisingly candid about immigration’s importance:

Stella Creasy, the Labour & Co-operative MP for Walthamstow, said that Britain either needs immigration or a massive baby boom in order to support the growing number of pensioners, or else “our ability to sustain our economy” will collapse. She added that this would leave the NHS in crisis.

In an interview with Progress magazine, Ms Creasy said: “There are now more people over the age of 65 than under the age of 16 in Britain, so unless women like me have a lot of children very quickly, our ability to sustain our economy, to sustain our public services [will come under threat].”

Perhaps her horror at the thought of women “like her” needing to have children feeds into the horror that UK establishment parties feel about the rise of the UK Independence Party?

She said that this made UKIP leader Nigel Farage “deeply unpatriotic” as his party has campaigned for an end to mass immigration. UKIP are “basically talking about managing the decline of Britain” she said.

And it is true that UKIP voters believe that Britain needs tighter border controls. But does that make them “deeply unpatriotic”? Perhaps over-the-top name-calling is a tactic of the Left in the UK, as well as in America.

In reality, the UKIP stands in a libertarian-Thatcherite tradition; hardly unpatriotic, and not even very anti-immigrant. Its leader, Nigel Farage, has explicitly said “We’re not going to join in with extremist-nationalist groups” in the European Parliament. To the extent that Farage is required to ally with parties from other countries, he prefers Beppe Grillo, the comedian who leads Italy’s anti-establishment 5-Star movement.

“I met Beppe Grillo last week … I am hoping we can do a deal with him and our group will sit bang in the middle politically of that parliament with a strong Europsceptic agenda,” Farage told the BBC in an interview…

Farage repeated previous comments that he would not work with France’s National Front leader Marine Le Pen, who this week struck a deal with four other Eurosceptic parties. “They come from a different political family,” he said. “We want nothing to do with that party at all.”

Which brings us to the point. To its great shame, the UK’s Conservative Party *is* now going to work with parties that it calls “unacceptable”, against Farage and the UKIP. Because the Conservative establishment is that frightened of Farage’s upstart movement, or of any effective challenge to Big Government.

I am reminded of nothing so much as how the Republican establishment treats the Tea Party (i.e., stab them in the back whenever possible, and even if it means betraying principles). It’s a sad moment for the once-great party of Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher.

CPAC speeches! These guys, at least, understand what’s wrong with America – namely, Big Government – and the corresponding importance of liberty and small government:

• Rick Perry on why Red States do better than Blue States.
• Ted Cruz (scroll down). “If you were to sit down and try to design an agenda to hammer the living daylights out of young people, you couldn’t do better than the Obama economic agenda.”
• Marco Rubio. “They love to sell Big Government as a way to help those who are trying to make it. What they don’t tell you is that they actually hurt the people who are trying to make it.”
• Rand Paul. “You may think I’m talking about electing Republicans. I’m not. I’m talking about electing lovers of liberty. It isn’t good enough to pick the lesser of two evils.” And it gets better from there.
• Sarah Palin. “There’s no free ride. Someone always pays. And if you don’t know who that someone is, it’s probably you.” – And too many other zingers to count. I love this woman!

That’s all I could watch in one sitting, while fighting my cold. Here is the full playlist; if you have a favorite, call it out in the comments!

I think the argument could be made, re: the recent confrontation over the debt ceiling and Obamacare. Via Ed Morrissey, Sen. Cruz hints at it in his ABC News interview:

“I will say that the reason this deal, the lousy deal was reached last night, is because, unfortunately, Senate Republicans made the choice not to support House Republicans,” Cruz told ABC News. “I wish Senate Republicans had united, I tried to do everything I could to urge Senate Republicans to come together and stand with House Republicans.”

First, let’s note that eighteen GOP Senators did stand with House Republicans, leaving 27 who didn’t.

But what about the 27? Some seem clueless about the larger issues, as for example, Sen. McCain who said “The real losers [in the shutdown] were the American people,” when the reverse is true: Americans lost when government re-opened under terms of greater debt, and with Obamacare intact.

As Morrissey didn’t support the recent confrontation, he goes on to argue that “The only way to dismantle ObamaCare is to win [future] elections.” I disagree.

Since raising the debt ceiling brings America closer to its coming default, and since Obamacare is bad law that harms our economy: then patriotic lawmakers should use any legal, constitutional means available to obstruct or delay them, with whatever votes they can muster today. Yes, rock the boat!

But 60% of Senate Republicans, it seems, would rather undercut the boat rockers – or even attack them. If their problem isn’t a form of Stockholm Syndrome, then I suspect it’s the GOP’s real civil war, K Street vs. the Tea Party.

K Street, or the GOP’s Washington / Big Government wing, has won a round and now presses the advantage by trashing the boat-rockers in the media. But I say, kudos to Sen. Cruz for at least having tried to do the right thing.

As former Sen. Jim DeMint has just said, of Obamacare:

The reason [we fight] is simple: to protect the American people from the harmful effects of this law…

More and more people have had their work hours cut, their jobs eliminated and their coverage taken away..

We know that premiums are going up due to ObamaCare—Americans are getting notices in their mailboxes every day…

[Americans] shouldn’t have to wait three more years for Congress to give them relief from this law, especially when the president has so frequently given waivers to his friends. Full legislative repeal may not be possible while President Obama remains in office, but delaying implementation by withholding funds from a law that is proven to be unfair, unworkable and unaffordable is a reasonable and necessary fight.

Raising the debt ceiling is equally bad law. Would that more of the GOP had seen clearly on that as well as Obamacare, and stood up to obstruct both.

Interesting piece from Timothy P. Carney / Washington Examiner, Tea party loosens K Street’s stranglehold on the GOP.

…the Tea Party smashed K Street’s monopoly on Republican fundraising. The Club for Growth was founded in the late 1990s, and early last decade, it began targeting liberal Republicans in primaries…
In 2009, Sen. Jim DeMint founded the Senate Conservatives Fund…

While GOP leaders backed candidates like Charlie Crist (Fla.) and Trey Grayson (Ky.) in 2010 primaries, the SCF backed Marco Rubio and Rand Paul. K Street and the National Republican Senatorial Committee worked hand-in-hand — but for a change, there was a countervailing force.

Which led to Rubio’s and Paul’s victories:

The Club for Growth was Paul’s biggest source of funds, giving him $105,000…[SCF] kicked in $36,685. These two groups, together with FreedomWorks, also spent big on independent expenditures for Paul.

Ted Cruz also came to Washington by defeating K Street. The Club for Growth spent more than $2.5 million helping Cruz in the Texas GOP primary, while the SCF spent about $800,000. K Street was backing Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst — he got $500,000 from business PACs (33 times Cruz’s take), and GOP lobbyists hosted a fundraiser for him at the Capitol Hill townhouse of Democratic superlobbyist Tony Podesta.

As Cruz put it, “Everyone who makes their living from continuing the government-spending gravy train is supporting Dewhurst.”

[…]

“I don’t think there’s a way for Wall Street to punish the 25 to 50 hardcore House Republicans,” one Wall Street lobbyist told Politico in the first couple days of the shutdown. Referring to an anti-establishment libertarian freshman congressman, the lobbyist said, “I don’t think Justin Amash cares if Bank of America gives to him or not.”

A Republican who doesn’t care about Bank of America checks wasn’t possible before the Tea Party.

“Follow the money.”

All this may tie in with President Obama’s demand that the GOP reject the Tea Party. He said (8:46 in Beck’s clip):

I’m not going to [negotiate] until the more extreme parts of the Republican Party stop forcing John Boehner to issue threats about our economy.

First, remember that Obama is the one issuing threats about our economy. But his comments reflect that the Tea Party, because they want to actually halt the growth of government spending and change the Washington spending game, are an existential threat to Obama’s “Big Government” brand of politics.

And so, Obama wants the GOP to expel them and go back to Washington’s business-as-usual. They’re all in it together. The Democrats are 100% Big Government; the GOP are less so, but nonetheless have an establishment (K Street) which is fairly Big Government and 100% dedicated to playing the Washington game.

Our freedom is at stake. Ted Cruz and the GOP so-called “bomb throwers” protect it.

Hat tip, DrewM at Ace for airing Carney’s article.

At the time of the Supreme Court rulings on same-sex marriage this summer, it seemed to me that by ruling as it did, the Supreme Court had involuntarily handed many conservatives a great opportunity to move beyond the issue of gay marriage in ways that they hadn’t in the past.  Instead of making it a social or cultural issue, many conservatives could have sidestepped the issue entirely by talking more about economic issues and questions of taxation and state-sponsored benefits instead.

After all, the plaintiff in the case which challenged the Defense of Marriage Act was moved to file suit largely because of the estate taxes she incurred when her partner passed away.  So instead of viewing  it as a social or cultural issue, they could have taken up the cause of greatly reducing estate taxes for all regardless of marital status.

While I’m obviously biased on the issue, it seems to me that running on an anti-gay agenda is not a winning issue for conservatives.  I recognize that social conservatives played a very big role in the Reagan revolution, and I acknowledge that social conservatives are still an important part of the base that the Republican Party needs to keep winning elections.  But I believe that there are ways to accommodate social conservatives without alienating other potential voters.  Talking about court appointments is one way of doing this, because one needn’t be a social conservative to believe that the court should focus more on applying and interpreting the actual intent of the Constitution rather than legislating from the bench.  Likewise, one can have an honest debate about tax policy and whether or not it is in the state’s interest to carve out special exceptions for marriage or whether the state should get out of the marriage business all together and just simplify the tax code instead.

There are some signs that more and more Republican are getting this message.  On September 11 of this year, Politico reported on a survey that showed that more and more Republicans are embracing libertarian views about government.  (Hat Tip: The Blaze.)

FreedomWorks commissioned a national survey of registered voters last month, shared first with POLITICO, that finds 78 percent of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents self-identify as fiscally conservative and socially moderate.

It’s not that Republicans are suddenly self-identifying as “libertarians” and devouring Ayn Rand novels, but more that they seem to be embracing underlying libertarian priorities and views about the role of government.

The Politico piece goes on to quote the Republican pollster who ran the poll saying that more and more voters are disturbed by both the size and the intrusiveness of government in the Obama era:

Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway, who ran the poll, said she’s seeing a spike in voters who feel the government is too expensive, invasive and expansive.

“The perfect storm is being created between the NSA, the IRS, the implementation of Obamacare and now Syria,” she said. “People are looking at the government more suspiciously. They’re looking with deeper scrutiny and reasonable suspicion.”

Congratulations to Tony Abbott and Australia’s Liberal Party, for their victory in Australia’s elections on September 7!

Note that “Liberal” is considered conservative, in Australia. I suspect it’s something like “classical liberal” (my own preferred political designation), the concept that it is liberal to believe in liberty, that is, in individual rights under a small(-ish or small-er) government.

HotAir has it covered, including links to Tony Abbott’s victory speech, and a Townhall link about how “War on Women” distraction tactics did not work for Australia’s Left.

As a bonus: Center-right bloc takes power in Norway, headed by Ms. “Iron Erna” Solberg, who also deserves our congratulations. Not that she’s perfect – for example, I do not like what I’ve heard of her past stances in favor of Islamic Sharia councils in Norway – but Norway has turned a new leaf, and let’s hope she leads it wisely.