Jan 13^th

Last evening was President Obama’s last State of the Union message. I watched a short replay of his peroration and at its finish Vice President Biden rose to his feet smiling and applauding; Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, apparently afflicted with a touch of the lumbago, slowly and ponderously rose, looked around, seemingly bewildered, and seeing everyone else applauding chose to contribute his mite.

Later I heard South Carolina Governor Haley deliver the “Republican Response,” now a tradition for after the state of the union message. The governor is the daughter of two Sikh immigrants and was born in Georgia. She claimed that the loudest voice (Could that be Trump?) should not carry the day. Naturally she excoriated the President, except for his ability to make speeches. ACA was predictably awful and would have to be replaced with something predictably vague. When she had finished her rebuttal to the President she had the honor of discovering that Anne Coulter had said she should be deported. Of course she should, she has “swarthy skin” and we know what both Trump and Coulter think of swarthy skinned people even if they were born here.

Mona Charen attended the “Kemp Forum on Expanding Opportunity” last Saturday in South Carolina. She tells us that even at “8:15 AM it was tough to find a seat.” Her column about this event is titled “Fighting for the soul of the Republican Party.” (I will avoid commenting on the futility of fighting over something that doesn’t exist.) Of particular interest at this event is the absence of both Senator Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. The attendees were: Bush, Carson, Christie, Rubio, Kasich and Huckabee. (Fiorina missed her plane.) Trump and Cruz do not believe that the party will gain by being more centrist; the party can win only by motivating the “missing conservatives” who stayed home in previous elections because the party was too moderate.

Mona Charen claims that “Where the conservatives shine is in their emphasis on the importance of mediating structures in the lives of the poor. The family, the church, and private charities can give people more than a check: they can provide guidance and supervision.” Well that’s great if the poor person has a family functioning well enough and willing enough to provide guidance, very often they do not; what then? There are the churches of course and surely none of them would have any strings attached to their help; nor would any “private charities.” Charen’s “guidance and supervision” sounds like what is given to children in Sunday school. What the poor need are skilled social workers; there is a vast difference between those and Sunday school teachers.

Charen’s enthusiasm for the Kemp program is dampened somewhat by the program’s consensus that ‘too many people are being incarcerated for simple drug possession. She says “that has become the conventional wisdom but it’s wrong.” No evidence is provided of course. This is typical “Charenspeak;” the woman obviously has had little contact with those most in need of help, the alcoholic, the semi-literate and the marginally competent….still she rants on.