Nature is uneven in its treatment of Democrats. It seems that in the few instances Nature allotted intellect, it was paired with the sinister mien of Dr. Evil and Mr. Bigglesworth. Think Paul Krugman. To those it gave greed, it was matched with the thuggery of Josef Stalin. Think the SEIU. To those on whom Nature bestowed a saint’s devotion to progressive social causes, it booby-trapped their frontal lobes to freeze over upon encountering reason. Think of the doe-eyed coeds camping in Zuccotti Park. And the rest were given the easy conscience to always let somebody else pick up the check.

I highlight the aforementioned categories to give you a leg up should you meet a specimen this week at Starbucks, your son’s T-ball game or the dog park.

Our goal is not to exert excessive energy attempting convert Democrats. Conversion is best done by example. Be interesting, reliable, likeable, funny and hard-working and you will make a fine ambassador of conservatism. But if you do decide to engage a Democrat, do so playfully. If you find very little genius in his initial argument, just see what’s in store after you’ve raised his heart rate an extra 30 beats per minute.

Here are some examples how:

If a Dr. Evil Democrat says, “Austerity is bad policy.Washington needs to invest in clean energy and road projects to gin up the economy.”

You say, “Interesting. Keynesian economic policy prolonged the Great Depression, stagnated our economy during the Carter years and had no measurable effect after trillions of stimulus spending since 2008. Out on a limb here but I’m thinking it didn’t help Greece either. Let me guess, either you won the Nobel Prize or were promised a cabinet spot during Obama’s second term.”

If a Thug Democrat says, “We need good payin’ jobs. Republicans are in the pockets of big corporations and rich guys who don’t pay their fair share. I’m lookin’ out for the middle class.” [Note: Thug Democrats tend to drop the ‘g’ at the end of their participles.]

You say, “For sake of argument, let’s suppose we increased tax rates to 70% on corporations and ‘rich guys’ in New York and lowered them to 10% in Pennsylvania. Using your imagination skills, tell me which state would generate more ‘good payin jobs’? Before you respond, I wanted to get your thoughts on California, which, once again, was ranked dead last by CEOs as the worst state to do business. Knowing this statistic, would you still take a job in California as John Travolta’s masseuse?”

If a Progressive Saint Democrat says, “We are a very, very rich country and we have millions of homeless and dolphins are still caught in tuna-nets and Republicans hate women because they are soooo mean that there will be no free health care and birth control and many of us have thousands of dollars in student loan debt it is so unfair!”

You say, “Oh hey, can I see your iPad for a second. Nice one! You know, I’d feel so bad owning one of these because Steve Jobs was really really rich and he created thousands of super high paying jobs and billions in shareholder value for ordinary people’s retirement accounts in the United States as well as thousands of jobs in developing China turning subsistence farmers into that country’s booming middle class. So I hope you don’t mind I’m going to donate your iPad to the homeless guy holding up that lamppost right over there to ease both of our sensitive consciences.”

Initially I was not enthused by either Mitt Romney or Barack Obama. I mean, the old tail, which wags at the merest provocation, was rendered motionless by the thought of both Men. I distinctly recall last September being jarred awake from a slobbery nap on the Nice People’s sofa by radio news (apparently old) that Mitt fastened his Irish setter to roof of his car on a 12-hour family trip from Boston to Canada.

Now I know Irish setters. They’ll stick their heads out of car windows with the best of them. I, myself, am partial to a stiff wind in my face on a car ride to the park. But, being a dog, I need to refresh the senses with frequent naps. The wind-in-the-face routine for 12 hours would surely dull my vigilance as Protector of the Nice People until I caught up with a solid 8 to 10 of dreamland. Nor is this idle speculation, my friend. Three years ago October the Nice Man met me in a town called Chicago and flew me in the belly of a 737 on a flight to Philadelphia. At one year old I was too young to understand that the air transport was perfectly safe. Needless to say no naps were forthcoming. In fact, so alarmed was I that I relieved myself in the crate. Not the proudest moment, as you can imagine, but by sharing that unpleasant episode you can better understand my reticence with Mitt.

You may find the circumstances under which I learned that Barack dined on my brethren similar to those by which I learned Mitt had an insensitive streak. Again, I was recumbent, but this time upside down in the kitchen. Before you cast aspersions on me for inherent laziness, I should note that resting on a ceramic tile is qualitatively different from full-on REM sleep on the Nice People’s sofa. First off, one must be alert to unmonitored butter plates left within 14 inches of the countertop edge. Also, with young kids in the household it’s odds-on that manna will indeed fall from heaven, or at least from the eat-in counter where two of the days’ three meals are served.

Back to Barack. The radio news (I cannot read so this is my primary source of national and world events) reported that the president of these United States had eaten dogs. Sure, it happened in Indonesia. Sure, it happened when he was a youthful 10 years old. But none of this matters to me. To say I was mortified does not capture the depth of my disgust and alarm. How we think we are safe on these shores! You know, the amber waves of grain thing. For dogs, we have no Magna Carta, no Constitution. We have solely 15,000 years of domestication as faithful companions to Mankind. We rely on your civility. We know no other world but ours with big box pet supply stores offering up super premium foods and American-made rawhide of every shape and style. Yet you let this Man, this dog-eating Barack, into the White House? And then I got to thinking, is Bo, his Portuguese Water Dog, aware of his owner’s sordid past? I would hope not, actually. If I ever found out that the Nice People had eaten my kind I’d have jumped this joint faster than you can spell Great Pyrenees.

The Nice Man spends much time chattering on about Barack being a socialist with disastrously costly plans to make every American dependent on the National Government the way I am ward of the Nice People. It’s not that I am unsympathetic to his viewpoint. Indeed, if I spent less time thinking about food, naps and the suspicious mailman, I’d be right there with him. In fact, he would be quite proud to know that I draw the same conclusion from a different analytical matrix. If I could vote (which, thanks to Pennsylvania’s new Voter ID law, I cannot), I would definitely not cast it for the dog-eater presently inhabiting the White House.

Imagine for a moment that you are a Democrat running for Congress. (I know, I know, just bear with this).

Since we are already suspending disbelief, I want you also to imagine picking your own congressional district. For this envisioning exercise I will present two hypothetical districts for your consideration:

District A has a 3.5% unemployment rate, 5% of the voting public on food stamps, 4% union membership, a median household income of $85,000 and the 10 largest employers are privately-held corporations.

District B has a 9.5% unemployment rate, 38% of the voting public on food stamps, 20% of residents carrying federally-subsidized cell phones, 16% union membership, a median household income of $47,000 and the two largest employers are the school district and the city government.

Which do you choose?

Presumably you’d opt for District B expecting a bit of quid pro quo from the dependency set. It would be reasonable to infer that District A voters would be generally allergic to high tax rates and ridiculous debt required to sustain free salaries, free health care, free food, free cell phones, interest free student loans, overpriced stimulus projects and other budget-busting government bennies for District B residents.

Keep that Democrat hat on. Just for another minute.

District B elects you in a landslide. One year from the date you were elected to a $174,000 per year government job and you’ve light-touched every dinner check at The Palm during that corresponding period, an angel comes down from on high with a proposition. You can choose to enjoy a long career as a Congressman, maybe even become a U.S. Senator, complete with all the CNN appearances and free dinners you ever desire. Or, alternatively, the angel will wave her magic gavel and turn down-and-out District B into prosperous District A and you’ll never be reelected again.

Now snap out of it. You are once again a Republican, independent, Tea Partier or Libertarian.

Let that settle in your grey matter for a moment and tell me why, unless waterboarded, would a Democrat ever vote for a prosperity agenda? That would be akin to dinosaurs in the Cretaceous Period voting for a mile-wide flaming asteroid to hit our planet.

If you agree, print this blog post and mail it to Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Gluten allergies announce their arrival in otherwise healthy adults who, after a lifetime of eating one too many Pop Tarts, must then wean their diets of processed flours. So it is with my allergy toward progressives. In disapproval of costly, bloody nation building in the Middle East, I cast more votes than I care to recall for anti-war Democrats. Now just reading a Paul Krugman column gives me a rash. Thus Willard Mitt Romney will have to wait until November for my first vote; I will spare my sensitive constitution and vote for Ron Paul in Pennsylvania’s primary.

The Mainstream Media will use the occasion of Rick Santorum’s departure from the race to write gleeful eulogies of the Tea Party’s demise. This miscasts the narrative. Rick wasn’t of the Tea Party. In Congress Rick was a master appropriator. On the campaign trail Rick was a master at raising the Left’s blood pressure. But a constitutional conservative he was not.

Yes, we in the Tea Party completely bungled it. Most of the blame I’ll pin on our faulty assortment of candidates. Ron Paul is the only one of the lot who actually read the Constitution but he looks and sounds like grandpa gone mental. And that’s how we wind up with a guy who resembles Martin Sheen and has a political resume left of Bill Clinton’s. But the Tea Party proved viable, if not terribly organized. You may recall that Mitt’s polling barely passed 25% last year. The other 75% weren’t rooting on Jon Huntsman.

In martial terms, we lost the battle but can still win the war. Here’s how:

1. Defeat President Obama and his dependency agenda. Yes, that likely means voting for Mittens in November.

2. Work to get constitutional conservatives elected to office. In Pennsylvania, Sam Rohrer would be a fine choice to take on Bob Casey. In Texas, Ted Cruz is as Tea Party as they come. In Arizona, Jeff Flake is a proven conservative reformer.

3. Get actively involved with one of the many Tea Party, 912, Veterans and Patriots, Tenth Amendment Center groups in your state or region.

4. Join with like-minded conservatives to take over your municipal, county and state Republican committees. Boot out the RINOs.

5. Educate your friends and neighbors. The Tea Party message is an easy sell. We advocate limited government, lower taxes, fiscal responsibility, sound money, free markets and individual liberty. Democrats promote government dependency, job-killing taxes, horrific deficit spending, currency devaluation, crony capitalism and identity politics.

So Mitt, you’ll get my vote later this year. But it’s the Tea Party that will save our Republic.

“The problem with our country today is not Barack Obama,” author Tom Woods wryly observed at the Tenth Amendment Center’s Nullify Now conference in Philadelphia last Saturday. Woods is a constitutional conservative of the first order, claims the title of Senior Fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, has written more than 11 books by the age of 39, and (here’s the best part) is really, really funny.

No, Woods is not an Obama bundler. He is rather a bundle of intellectual energy on par with Newt Gingrich, just a whole lot more likeable and with many fewer wives.

Think of our Constitution as a sturdy ship designed by master craftsman to ride long and secure in often uncooperative seas. In 1913 a good-sized hole was gouged into the hull by ratification of the 16th Amendment which gave Congress the power to raise an income tax. Another small hole was bore in 1913 when Congress authorized the Federal Reserve. Then came the New Deal, supported by a U.S. Supreme Court packed with FDR’s cronies, which grew thick barnacles on the ship’s underside. Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush all added barnacles to barnacles.

One can reasonably argue that our ship was listing starboard and taking on water by the time Barry took the helm. Certainly the excessive ballast of Obamacare, Stimulus I and II, QE1 and QE2, Cash for Clunkers, Dodd-Frank and Eric Holder weren’t aiding buoyancy. But a 5-4 decision nixing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will not alone save the ship.

Enough with the boat metaphors. Woods’ point, one that all liberty-lovers need to understand, is that the massive, unconstitutional expansion of the Federal government and loss of individual and state sovereignty started before you were old enough to pronounce the word “progressive”.

That the President spent this week unpresidentially cat-calling the Supreme Court suggests insider information that the Court is finally yanking the reins on a Commerce Clause. I hope it does. But we, the people, now fully awake and caffeinated, need to demand the return of all our rights guaranteed by the Constitution.

Woods noted that the Federal government “cannot have a monopoly on deciding what its powers are”. Giving the Supreme Court the final say on whether a Federal law is constitutional is akin to letting your son decide whether his behavior merits a time out. In both cases the bias favors exoneration.

Keep that thought under your hat. In the next installment I’ll explain nullification, or How to Keep the Feds’ Sticky Hands Off Your Stuff.

It is no surprise that gas prices are soaring again this week, with all the squadrons of motor coaches that trekked across the country to deposit partisans for and against the Federal take-over of the medical profession at the Supreme Court Building. The unpopular Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act remains the signature achievement of Barack Hussein Obama, to which his name has been lent in perpetual brand identity.

Obamacare can be credited with one positive outcome; heretofore the progressive shredding of our Constitution has been in whisper mode. The chainsaw that is the PPACA rousted citizens out of a century-long slumber, giving birth to the Tea Party, a more potent antidote against the Left than neo-conservatism ever could be.

All Americans who fear a Hunger Games-style dystopia should read and understand the Constitution. The Founding Fathers did not need to read George Orwell or Suzanne Collins to understand suffocating despotism – they were regularly and directly fleeced of property and liberty by inbred British overlord King George III.

The Left claim that they, too, dig constitutional rights, but whose constitution they’re talking about I’m not so sure. They favor make-believe constitutional rights, like the right to snap a pre-born baby’s spine in her mother’s birth canal, or the right to receive a federally-subsidized cell phone with 250 minutes per month.

With the Nine Robed Ones hemming and hawing this week on whether to preserve our nation’s liberty for posterity or flush our Enlightenment charter down the toilet for good, I’ve compiled a list of dumb things liberals say about the constitution. Yours, free.

1. “But the government requires car insurance!” This argument by analogy fumbles a critical constitutional distinction. As best observed by constitutional scrivener James Madison, “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.” So liberals are half right: yes, state governments can and do require car insurance. Indeed, they can mandate health insurance, too (see generally, Romneycare). And New York can require each of its citizens to buy a Yankees t-shirt. But the Federal government must operate within a finite list of constitutional powers (see generally, the Tenth Amendment), and doling out free appendectomies, psychoanalysis and contraceptives happens not to be on that list.

2. “Wait, the general welfare clause of the Constitution lets the federal government set up all kinds of welfare programs, like free health care for everyone!” The General Welfare Clause (Art. I, Sec. 8 ) appears in the preamble to a cover a list of specifically enumerated powers. If your mom gave you ten bucks to pick up milk, bread and carrots at Giant Eagle but you bought a ferret instead, you might be susceptible to the Left’s logic on this one.

3. “Under the Commerce Clause, Congress has broad power to regulate all commercial activity.” A progressive U.S. Supreme Court peopled with Franklin Delano Roosevelt cronies deserves credit for turning our Constitution inside-out with its Commerce Clause decisions, most notably Wickard v. Filburn (1942) which signaled the end of state sovereignty by upholding a law preventing an Ohio farmer from growing wheat for his own consumption. The actual Commerce Clause equates trade among the States with that of foreign Nations and Indian Tribes. Congress has absolute authority to prevent Pennsylvania from levying an import duty on New Jersey blueberries and zero authority to subsidize Chevy Volts and require citizens to buy rationed medical services from government cooperatives.

4. Responding to Justice Scalia’s comment at oral arguments yesterday, The New York Times editorialized that “Congress has no interest in requiring broccoli purchases because the failure to buy broccoli does not push that cost onto others in the system.” I don’t know where to begin with this. Not even the sovereignty-ending Wickard case compels citizens to enter into commerce against their will. If pushing “costs onto others” becomes the new constitutional standard, can we push the costs of our grotesquely expensive welfare state solely onto the registered Democrats who gave it to us?

5. I saved the dumbest for last. Liberals, especially those whose day-jobs are law professors, excuse the Federal leviathan with the line that “it’s a living Constitution and should change with the times.” Well, that’s cheating. If Liberals wish to create a federal Santa Claus that gives each citizen a solar panel bicycle and free teeth-whitening for life, the how-to manual on amending the Constitution can be found in its Article V.

Paul Ryan is the scourge of Democrats everywhere. His mere existence they find bothersome. That he has wide access to both sober thoughts and computer keyboards causes them acute dyspepsia. The bleating rose to a feverish pitch Tuesday after Mr. Ryan released The Path to Prosperity, a mildly ambitious blueprint for preventing Greek-style economic collapse.

The Path to Prosperity tackles drunken binge spending and a tax code that penalizes entrepreneurial activity. It is not perfect, as the other Paulites (of the Ron genus) will tell you. It does not resurrect the 10^th Amendment. Nor does it simplify our federal tax code with the enthusiasm of Herman Cain and Steve Forbes. But it does smack socialism upside the head, and for that it deserves conservative support.

The Left responded as if Mr. Ryan poured salt on their pet slugs. White House spokesman Jay Carney called the plan “aggressively and deliberately ignorant”. The shrill Ezra Klein blogged that it “funds trillions of dollars in tax cuts, defense spending and deficit reduction by cutting deeply into health-care programs and income supports for the poor”. (Credit for the Orwellian use of the verb “funds”, as in letting you keep your own money is now deemed an expenditure). The New York Times observed that “his plan could hardly be more bleak”. And the Daily Kos whined that The Path to Prosperity “invokes a slash and burn mentality to programs that millions of Americans depend on from their government”. The scalier the liberal, the more pathetic the response.

I do credit Democrats on their fidelity to tax-and-spend policies. At least you know where they all stand. Back in the 1980s about seventeen Democrats embarrassed by Walter Mondale making new taxes central to his wildly unsuccessful presidential bid formed the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. Master triangulator Bill Clinton briefly served as the DLC president until he became the President.  But by 2010 conservative Democrats went from Endangered Species to the extinct list, and in 2011 the DLC archives were acquired by the Clinton Foundation for its “Curiosities” exhibit.

Before writing this blog I perused no fewer than a dozen liberal columns and blogs looking for some sign of intelligent discourse on Mr. Ryan’s plan. Perhaps a creative proposal to save Medicare. Maybe a plan to eliminate the national debt for our children and grandchildren. Or an idea to simplify our tax code to encourage capital formation and its corollary, job and income growth for all. I’m sorry to report, none, nada, zilch. Just the familiar screeching against tax cuts for the rich and spending cuts for government dependents.

***

On Tuesday CBS News committed what Rush Limbaugh would call a random act of journalism. In news parlance, this is not exactly what is referred to as a scoop: “In 3 Years, Obama Creates More Debt Than Bush.” Even so, this begs the question as to who gave the mainstream media smelling salts. Expectations raised, I now anxiously await “Obamacare To Cost Billions in New Taxes” and “Democrat Policies Favor The Lazy.”