CAN MIKE McINTYRE BE CONVINCED THAT THE NC SEVENTH DISTRICT DOESN'T NEED HIM ANYMORE?

Mike appears to be telling this crowd to stop chanting
Republican slogans. Sorry the photo is a bit blurred.
It was free. You get what you pay for.

By Verne Strickland / December 14, 2011

One of my most adorable (I did not say ‘adoring) fans told me in an email recently that I am “terminally partisan” or something like that. I can’t remember the exact words. I did not see that as an insult, but as a badge of honor.

This gentleman, who claims he’s one of the two people who regularly read my vapid drivel (my words) says I should just leave Mike McIntyre alone.

But why? Mike is such a natural foil and fop – before an election, during a campaign, and even after an improbable win – that I, an inveterate conservative punster and renegade, cannot resist poking sport at the guy.

I ask again – why? Because, since my political schooling at the knee of Jesse Helms, one of my greatest pleasures in life has been skewering liberals, atheists, effete poseurs, cynics, Mormons with more than six wives, and most of all – phony politicians. 

Mike may fit into one or more of those categories, although I wouldn’t want to fathom a guess as to which ones might apply. I am fairly certain about at least one of them.

I used to also delight in trashing communists and communism, although I’ve become less fascinated by them since the rise of the upwardly mobile and infinitely more threatening radical Muslim hordes of the world, who have proven their affinity for insufferable arrogance, ignorance, ambition, deceit, killing, persecution of women and Christians, and world domination. 

Some things do change, don’t they? But not Mike. We’ll soon get to see the Robeson County flash – now an excessively incumbent insider Democrat – as he limbers up for another go at it. 

He’ll be back with the same old schtick – talking like Jesse Helms when he’s in the district, but acting like Nancy Pelosi’s lapdog when he’s on the Hill.

Can Mike be convinced that the Seventh doesn’t need his “service” anymore? 

Conservative GOP candidate Ilario Pantano, gearing up for a return match with the Mikemeister, will have plenty to say about that. And, after almost taking McIntyre down for the count in 2010, he looms as an even more formidable challenger when the starting gun sounds for 2012.

It promises be the shot heard from Leland to Lumberton. Can't wait.

Former Navy SEAL wows audience at Ronald Reagan tribute at Wrightsville Beach Blockade Runner.

By Verne Strickland / October 30, 2011

Popular Nevada Constitutional conservative Sharron Angle was the headliner at last week’s Reagan Tribute before a packed house at the Wrightsville Beach Blockade Runner hotel. She is the Nevada GOP activist who almost brought liberal Democratic leader Harry Reid to tears in the 2010 election. He hasn’t fully recovered yet. 

But the preliminary to the main event – former Navy SEAL Benjamin Smith – fired up the Republican faithful with his own brand of rock-solid Christian-based patriotism that was exactly what the evening required.

Smith, whose imposing size and bearing shouted “SEAL” before he uttered a word, brought a rapt audience through the personal trials and tribulations that shaped and toughened him for the challenges that members of this elite corps seem to take in stride. 

This man on a mission for God and Country – despite his accomplishments – speaks with an unassuming candor and humility that has endeared him to many an audience.

These are excerpts from his presentation:

I was up in New York City, and got a call from Ilario Pantano. I stood for him last time he ran for office, while serving as national speaker for Tea Party Express and Move America Forward. I came down to stump for him. This happens to be my voting district. This year Ilario’s call came again and I came down to back him because I support his rules of engagement on decisions he makes -- he is not a politician, he is a leader.

I know that everyone in this room believes in the things that have made this country great. You have a belief in this fundamental concept of American exceptionalism, that we are something amazing and rare in this world. You understand that the sacred flame of liberty, when it is threatened, when it is led astray, at those times you may have to stoke the very furnace of liberty itself. It seems we have entered those times now, with Barack Obama in the White House, the strange things we see up on Capitol Hill.

I just have a fire in my gut. I know when something is wrong. I knew that when I saw Obama coming on. I’ve always been conservative. I survived through UNC Chapel Hill, and made it out still a conservative. When I was there I didn’t understand what Jesse Helms meant by wanting to build walls around that campus. But I eventually came to know what that man was talking about. You here in this room understand that now -- our moment in history – will determine whether our cause is won or lost by our actions for future generations, and for millions unborn.

History now is being rewritten and erased within our very lifetime. Most of the values you have grown up with are considered old and antiquated. Or archaic. And you are mocked for them. That is so wrong to me. I think we have all started to look at history for answers. We look to our founders for answers. And to God. I have been that atheist in the foxhole. But no more. Seeing what is threatening our nation now, I am rediscovering that faith in God and confidence in the wisdom of our founding fathers.

When I saw Obama moving toward the White House, I became angry. He has never believed in American exceptionalism or in the America that I know, where you have to earn respect, earn your living, earn everything that is dear and worthwhile. I do thank Obama for one thing – he has brought us together tonight to refocus, and work together to get our America back.

American exceptionalism can be seen in our founding documents, which for the first time in human history brought forth the idea that individual liberty is the best way to achieve prosperity and security. Those documents also assure us that we have the purest form of freedom than any other nation ever, because we believe that man is born to be free, and the master of his own fate – to have free elections and decide who will represent you. It’s a rare privilege, but one we have to earn over and over again.

During my travels around this nation, I have been driven by my heart, and realized why I served in the military, why I fought in Iraq, why we’re facing Islam, why Islam is absolutely wrong for this country – and wrong for the world. I have seen our American society as I traveled, and I can tell you that there is fear across this land.

This threat we feel is part of what brought all of you hear tonight. Use that challenge to fight back, revive our unique spirit, and turn our nation back to God, back to the America we know still exists, and back to the family. These are the things that are worth fighting for, worth any sacrifice, and I challenge you to personally give of yourself heart and soul for this cause.

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THE RONALD REAGAN TRIBUTE WAS SPONSORED BY THE NEW HANOVER COUNTY REPUBLICAN PARTY, CHAIRED BY WILMINGTON RESIDENT RHONDA AMOROSO. IT WAS ATTENDED BY A WHO'S WHO OF LOCAL, COUNTY, STATE AND NC CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT SEVEN GOP LEADERS.

rhonda.gopchair@gmail.com

Iconic conservative statesman Jesse Helms died on July 4, 2008. He made the Reagan Revolution possible. Here's the story.

March 22, 2011

By John Dodd
President, Jesse Helms Center
Wingate, NC


WINGATE -- Thirty-five years ago, on March 23, 1976, voters in North Carolina helped shape the course of history. Their decision to support the presidential hopes of former California Gov. Ronald Reagan in the Republican presidential primary kept Reagan in the race for the 1976 GOP nomination and opened the way for his 1980 election as the 40th president of the United States.

Why did North Carolina voters choose Reagan instead of his opponent Gerald Ford? Ford, after all, was the sitting president. Primaries had been held in six other states, and Ford won every one of them. How did Reagan win in North Carolina?

While the full answers to those questions offer rich lessons for campaign strategists, the single most important reason for Reagan's victory was obvious. In North Carolina, Reagan had the promise of U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms' support. That promise meant something.

We know that in 1980 Reagan was elected to the first of two successful terms as president. We know that today that there probably are not enough stadiums in our nation to hold all of the politicians who claim some sort of kinship to Reagan. We've seen the highlight reels. 

We assume that the popular figure we remember moved from victory to victory. The real-time circumstances in the winter of 1975 and the spring of 1976 were quite different. Just about all of the seats on the Reagan bandwagon were empty. That did not deter Helms when he made his decision to support Reagan in the fall of 1973.

In mid-October of that year, the two enjoyed lunch together at Reagan's Los Angeles home. Friends since they met years earlier, they had followed each other's political careers with interest. When Helms ran for Senate in 1972, his TV ads included an endorsement from Gov. Reagan. Now, as they talked privately, Helms offered his strong support if Reagan ran for president in 1976.

Coincidentally, that same day in Washington, D.C., Rep. Gerald Ford was selected as President Nixon's vice presidential nominee. Ten months later, upon Nixon's resignation, Ford became president.

As circumstances developed, no one would have blamed Helms for determining that as a first term senator, it would be sensible for him to support Ford, whom he personally liked. However, Helms had made a promise and he disagreed with the Ford administration on some matters, particularly in the areas of foreign policy and the ever-expanding federal budget.

In what would become a familiar pattern over his 30 years of public service, Helms refused to pick pragmatism over principle. Helms had made a promise to a man whom he believed could make America "the shining city on the hill" once again, and that promise meant more than including his name on a list of supporters.

Helms devoted his efforts to the Reagan campaign. For more than a year, he traveled across the country. In Florida he rallied supporters at a statewide Reagan Steering Committee meeting with a blistering speech detailing the differences between President Ford and Gov. Reagan. In a Wisconsin television spot, Helms candidly said, "Now, you may ask: Why is a senator from North Carolina presuming to talk with us -- the people of Wisconsin? It's a fair question, and my answer is this: We're all Americans; we share the same concerns about our country."

Between mid-summer 1975 and late summer 1976, Helms pursued every possible vote. In North Carolina, he was at Reagan's side at breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and rallies across the state. He maintained his own barnstorming schedule to speak on Reagan's behalf wherever he was invited. At every stop he took pains to state that his support of Reagan over Ford was about the conservative philosophy of governance that he and Reagan shared.

Ignoring the Washington, D.C., professionals who wanted to feature Reagan's resume, Helms focused on Reagan's conservative views and the difference those views would make in the way the United States made decisions on national defense, control of the Panama Canal, and relations with the USSR.

In North Carolina, with the considerable help of his political ally Tom Ellis, Helms proved that voters cared much more about these issues than the Reagan operatives realized. Following Helms' lead, the Reagan campaign won seven more primaries in May and three in June.

When the Republican National Convention opened in Kansas City, Mo. in mid-August, Reagan received more than 1,000 delegate votes. That wasn't enough to prevent Ford's nomination, but it was a powerful showing. Reagan delegates strongly influenced the GOP platform, adding conservative planks that would influence the direction of the Republican Party well into the 21st Century.

At the close of the convention, Ford graciously invited Reagan to speak. With that speech, Reagan solidified his place as a party leader and the probable GOP nominee in 1980. 

It was a victory for Helms as well. By following through on his principled decision to support Reagan, he helped restructure the Republican Party to better represent conservative views. And as he watched the stream of new supporters climb on the once-empty bandwagon, he was certain that Reagan could indeed become president of the United States.

John Dodd is president of the Jesse Helms Center in Wingate.

http://www.carolinajournal.com/opinions/display_story.html?id=7548

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John Bolton, tough former US Ambassador to UN, testing waters for 2012 run.

By Verne Strickland 

Blogmaster USA DOT COM

May 20, 2011

There have been few Americans in the political arena more polarizing than Jesse Helms and John Bolton. 

That is, unless you’re willing to go to the far side of the aisle to include serial lefties like Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, Charlie Rangel, Joseph Stalin, and – perhaps my favorite – Barack Obama. 

But my mission here is to talk about – and praise – the rock-ribbed Americanism of John Bolton, protégé of the late U.S. Senator Helms of North Carolina, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and surrogate conscience of the so-called “United Nations”.

Jesse was derisively – and affectionately – known as "Senator No". He single-handedly trash-canned more hare-brained anti-American bills than a shredder in the basement of the U.S. Capitol. He drove them crazy. 

Well, while John Bolton has never been a household name in the same league with Helms, his pedigree has always been close enough to satisfy me.

Bolton really blew off the lid on the world stage when he was appointed in 2005 as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., a bully pulpit from which he boldly bashed every phony, deceitful, demagogic position the sketchy world body ever took. 

Now, he hints that he is considering lobbing his fedora into the ring for a run at the White House in 2012. He has a lot of work to do on that, but he’s accustomed to going up against the odds. Who knows?

But what do we know of this irrepressible bull in the U.N. china shop – Mr. John Bolton? For some, who may agree with him and not know it – much too little. For others, who hate him without fully understanding why – way too much.

Allow me to offer just a few things I have known about him, and others I have gleaned from arduous research. Whoever you are, whatever you believe, you will not come up neutral.

One problem. There’s way too much information here to stuff into one article. This can happen when a writer can’t summon the courage to pare down a treasure trove of facts too good to ignore.

That writer turns out a series. So I am going to produce a series on John Bolton, potential candidate for our nation’s highest and most prestigious office – Dean of the Political Science Department at Harvard University.

Strike that. Bolton, in truth, cannot even get a phone call through to Harvard, Stanford, UNC, Brown, Blue, or any of the many stuffy, effete scholastic bastions of socialism we sometimes call “universities”. Yale is probably an exception, since he took a couple of hefty degrees out of there.

As I sort through the wheat and the chaff about Bolton, I am impressed more by what his detractors say about him than by what his ardent supporters pony up. Strange, you may say – but definitely true.

Anyway, as an introduction to Bolton 101, I am first going to present a few choice Boltonisms assembled by one of my favorite political writers -- Mark Steyn.

What I love about Bolton, America's new ambassador to the UN, is the sheer volume of "damaging" material.

 Usually, the Democrats and media have to riffle through decades of dreary platitudes to come up with one potentially exploitable infelicitous soundbite.

But with Bolton the damaging quotes are hanging off the trees and dropping straight into your bucket.

Five minutes' casual mooching through the back catalog and your cup runneth over. To wit:

The U.N.? ''There is no such thing as the United Nations.''

Reform of the Security Council? ''If I were redoing the Security Council, I'd have one permanent member -- the United States.'

International law? "It is a big mistake for us to grant any validity to international law."

Offering incentives to rogue states? "I don't do carrots."

But he does do schtick. I happen to agree with all the above statements, but I can see why the international community might be minded to throw its hands up and shriek, "Quel horreur!"

Sending Bolton to be U.N. ambassador, then, says Steyn, “is like . . . putting Sudan and Zimbabwe on the Human Rights Commission. Or sending a bunch of child-sex fiends to man U.N. operations in the Congo. And the Central African Republic. And Sierra Leone, and Burundi, Liberia, Haiti, Kosovo, and pretty much everywhere else.”

VS: Here’s some of the street cred on Mr. Bolton: He was born in Baltimore on November 20, 1948. 

Many would say that Bolton is no gentlemen, but it cannot be denied that he is a scholar. He graduated with a B.A., summa cum laude, from Yale University and received his J.D. from Yale Law School. 

John Bolton has spent many years of his career in public service. Previous positions he has held are Assistant Secretary for International Organization Affairs at the Department of State, 1989-1993; Assistant Attorney General, Department of Justice, 1985-1989; Assistant Administrator for Program and Policy Coordination, U.S. Agency for International Development, 1982-1983; General Counsel, U.S. Agency for International Development, 1981-1982.

Bolton is an attorney who held two assistant attorney general positions in the Reagan administration's Justice Department and was assistant secretary of state for international organizations in the first Bush administration, enjoyed the staunch support of the committee's chairman, Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C.

Helms called Bolton "a treasured friend" and repeated his earlier encomium that "John Bolton is the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at Armageddon."

Said Helms: "John is a patriot. He is a brilliant thinker and writer. And, most importantly, he is a man with the courage of his convictions. John says what he means and means what he says. And that is precisely what is needed at the State Department and elsewhere in the government." 

 Implacably loyal to the United States of America, from whence he came, John Bolton was and is a paragon of American virtue and nationalism. 

 

Though he offended many – chiefly stiff-backed U.S. liberals and elitist Europeans – he has friends and admirers who see in him a refreshing candor and an unabashed American spirit which bows no knee to those who strut about with an Old World air of superiority. 

Let's give him a chance. 

This is our first in a series of posts on Ambassador John Bolton, who has expressed his interest in a run for the Presidency in 2012. To learn more about this patriotic defender of America, watch for our second installment soon.