A Conservative's Political Wish List For 2014.

Brad Cummings | A conservative's political wish list for 2014

My home has been overflowing with Christmas cheer this season. Along with the usual decorations and accoutrement, my wife and I have managed to watch nearly every Christmas movie on the Hallmark Channel (or HMC for us true fans). Television ratings say I’m far from alone. In fact, I’d be willing to bet the only difference between you and me is that I’m actually willing to admit I’ve watched “Annie Claus Is Coming To Town” ... twice.

There is a nostalgic appeal to these kinds of movies. They embrace the magic of the season, often relying on miracles to solve problems. They teach that with a little Christmas Spirit, anything is possible. And they show the importance of making a list for Santa Claus. How else is he to deliver us the gifts we hope for each year? And so in the spirit of these cinematic masterpieces, I thought I’d share my political wish list for 2014.

• A Republican Majority in the Senate — We have been unable to pass a conservative agenda through Capitol Hill for years now and with good reason. As it is often said, elections have consequences. In 2014, we need fewer Ted Cruz filibusters and more energy pointed toward winning elections across the country. The electoral map is opening up to give Republicans a real shot at taking back the Senate with tight races in traditionally blue states like Michigan and Iowa showing signs of a shift to the right due largely to the unpopular rollout of the president’s health care law. Let’s resolve to not put up unelectable candidates as has been done in the recent past.

This Christmas, I’m asking Santa for Republicans to follow the old William F. Buckley rule of electing the most conservative candidate who can win. Those who discount the importance of winning elections are destined to stay in the political hell that is controlling only one half of one branch of government. I’d rather have coal in my stocking.

• A Clearly Communicated Republican Health Care Plan to Replace Obamacare — A variety of conservative alternatives to the Affordable Care Act were pushed to the side during the left’s unprecedented march off this policy cliff. But our job as conservatives is always harder because the mainstream media do not care to help our cause. (Can you imagine the enema reporters would have given the GOP if we had passed a similar law?) But with new forms of media often driving the political discussion nationally, we can show the American people we aren’t “The Party of No” by not just being against this failed health care plan but by offering a real solution to this problem.

There are now more people without health insurance in the U.S. than when the ACA was officially implemented in October. A major piece in a Republican victory for 2014 will be the ability for the GOP to lay out a health care message that solves the problems created by this disastrous law. A good communication strategy coupled with common-sense policy will likely put the Republican lawmakers on the nice list.

• A President who Learns the Power of Unity — President Obama famously believed he would have a cooling off of the political rancor in 2013 after his victory in the 2012 election. But when he claims your unifying principle “is making sure that 30 million people don’t have health care,” how can our president believe anything of substance be accomplished with this attitude toward his brothers and sisters whose only difference is the path they see to solve our nation’s problems?

Believing your political opponent is that evil makes compromise nearly impossible. Think of the last time you responded to vicious accusations with the spirit of generosity. President Obama must change his rhetoric in 2014 or he faces the very real possibility of being a two-termer without a major accomplishment during his tenure. That would truly be a Christmas miracle.

• A Concentration on Economic Policy — Nothing divides like a good old-fashioned conversation about social hot plates like abortion or gay marriage. We tend to hold very strong and uncompromising views on these issues. When we lead with them, we often run the risk of cutting our target audience in half or worse. Instead, I’m asking Santa for a Republican Party that knows its strength is in economic policy.

A balanced budget is an 80 percent issue. Entitlement reform that allows programs like Social Security and Medicare to thrive beyond our children’s and their children’s generations is an 80 percent issue. Not sacking those future generations with crippling debt is an 80 percent issue. Stay in the 80 percent and this time next year, Republicans will be knocking down some serious egg nog.

Brad Cummings is COO of PM Advertising, and he previously served as Jefferson County Republican Party chairman. His column appears every third Wednesday. He can be reached atbradford.cummings @gmail.com

Did I Mention Joel Pett Doesn't Love Mitch McConnell?

Year In Review, For Joel Pett's Cartoons! Enjoy.

Go here for more and view "full gallery".

Joel Pett Is Still Picking On Rand Paul!

Words To Live By, Words Of Wisdom, And Words To Ponder.

What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?

-- Romans 8:31, New King James Bible

Bob Marley: Live in Santa Barbara [COMPLETO] (+playlist). Feel Irie.

"I have not come to fight flesh and blood, but spiritual wickedness in high and low places." -- Bob Marley

Congrats To Louisville Cardinals, Winners Of The Russell Athletic Bowl Champions, For Spanking Miami Hurricanes. Go Cards.

last night the defense showed up for #louisvillecardinalfootball team and strangled #miamihurricanes. had the arrived for the only game louisville lost, we would be practicing to gear up for the national championship game!

oh well, there is next year, if #teddybridgewater returns, which i believe he will if his mom assures him she will be fine.

next year, not only will he be primed for a #nationalchampionship trophy, but he will not be denied the #heismantrophy, with no real competitor!!

as for the #basketball team, they gotta figure defense includes getting rebounds and storming the boards, and that russ is not the only player on the court!

ok, i've said my peace! go cards!!

NSA To Ed Snowden: Stop Violating My Privacy!

On Target!

Happy Kwanzaa To Those Who Celebrate It.

yes.

To Our Anglophile Family And Friends, Happy Boxing Day.

yes, box it up.

Real War On Christmas.

Merry CHRISTmas To One And ALL Believers And Lovers Of Christ. Our Savior Is Born.

In America, We Have An Excuse For Every Bad Behavior!

In Banana Republic Of Nigeria, Everything Invites Fraud, Including The Churches!

In Nigeria, Miracles Compete With Modern Medicine
End-of-life care is a tough sell, one doctor says, “because everybody wants a cure.”

An assistant pastor at Celestial Church of Christ leads the congregation in a bout of "deliverance"—prayer against spiritual attacks. (Rowan Moore Gerety)
IBADAN, Nigeria — Marcus Chukwu was having a hard time coming to terms with the idea that he should refrain from evangelizing to a patient on his deathbed. “Religion is always effective, when the patient gets to the end of the road,” said Chukwu, who works as a nurse at an Anglican hospital in the southwestern Nigerian city of Ibadan. “When you are seeking medical help, and you know there is nothing left to do, then the next step is God; even a Muslim, in that situation, 70 percent of them will go to church.”

Chukwu and a handful of colleagues were gathered around a horseshoe of folding tables at the Center for Palliative Care in Ibadan, a cream-colored stucco bungalow that houses Nigeria’s oldest hospice program, established in 2007. The occasion was a three-day “Training for Carers”, which for the first time included a session on the role of spirituality and religion in end-of-life care. As an oversized fan hummed in one corner, Chukwu and other caregivers working for local religious organizations went over the basics and boundaries of palliative care.

Life-threatening illness can bring anyone face to face with the supernatural. In Nigeria, though, the supernatural peers out from posters and billboards everywhere. It invites you to attend “Miracle Arenas” and “Anointing Revivals,” and reminds you in block letters on hospital walls, “We care, God cures.” Nigeria is roughly 50 percent Christian, and an increasing number of the faithful are “Renewalists,” a subset of Protestant Christianity including Pentecostal and so-called Charismatic churches, whose adherents believe in God’s ongoing intervention in daily life. This is thought to occur through the physical presence of the Holy Spirit, which possesses believers and wards off illness and all manner of misfortune.

In Nigeria, the supernatural peers out from posters and billboards everywhere.
For these reasons, Nigerians, who attend church at rates that are among the highest in the world, often echo the words of their pastors when faced with a terminal diagnosis. “It's not my portion, in Jesus’s name,” they declare. To say anything else would be to cast doubt on God’s power. That makes delivering end-of-life care difficult—particularly in a region, sub-Saharan Africa, where faith-based organizations administer 40 percent of hospitals and clinics.

The growth of Renewalist Christianity in Nigeria mirrors a trend throughout sub-Saharan Africa, and indeed much of the world. Renewalists represented just 6 percent of global Christendom in 1970; today, they account for one in four Christians worldwide, or more than 500 million people. In Nigeria, that increase has been spurred along by religious services that attract more people than the Super Bowl and showcase the power of miracles. While I was in Lagos, evangelists stood at busy intersections in neon-green vests advertising the “Only God can do this” crusade, to be held by the Lord’s Chosen Church the following week. The church’s general overseer billed the two-day gathering as a place where “problems that have defied solution will … receive solution.”

The challenge for Nigerian doctors providing palliative care, then, is to make the case for treatment that is explicitly not about solutions, or at least not about the sort of solutions you encounter at a Christian crusade. O.A. Soyannwo, an anesthesiologist who founded the Center for Palliative Care, says it’s difficult to persuade patients that some diseases can only be managed. “Everything about palliative care is new, because everybody wants a cure,” she notes.

If the country’s radio and television programming is any indication, Nigeria is a place where miracles happen every minute: HIV, tuberculosis, diabetes, and cancer melt away at church services every Sunday and at all-night prayer vigils on Fridays.

Across town from Soyannwo’s clinic, I visited the Apete branch of the Celestial Church of Christ, one of several popular churches where believers walk barefoot and wear white robes from head to toe. Pastor Emmanuel Adewale, known to his followers as Daddy, showed me a medical clinic his congregation had recently built in the church compound, where members are screened for diabetes and high blood pressure. He proceeded to tell me, however, that many medical problems are caused by “spiritual attacks” and therefore cannot be cured until they’re resolved spiritually. Accordingly, Daddy encourages members of his congregation to pray and ask for deliverance before seeking conventional medical treatment.

To demonstrate how commonplace miracles had become, he asked an aide to bring him artifacts from a kind of museum of miracles past. Exhibit A was a plastic water bottle filled with rusty nails, which he emptied onto a clean white sheet of paper on his desk. A nine-year-old boy, he explained, had vomited them up without explanation during a revival a few months earlier. At the service that same day—between choral singing backed by synth-keyboards and African drums, and fire-and-brimstone preaching by Daddy—a woman in her forties gave raucous testimony over a fuzzy PA system. Terrible stomach pains had plagued her for years before subsiding once and for all at a revival led by Daddy the year before; she blamed the problem on the Devil.


Pastor Emmanuel Adewale sifts through a pile of nails he says a nine-year-old follower vomited during a revival. (Rowan Moore Gerety)
“There needs to be a re-orientation,” Soyannwo says, starting with the causes of illness. “If people believe a disease is caused by witchcraft, then they believe there’s nothing an orthodox hospital can do.”

Rather than contend with broken machines, brusque treatment at the hands of overburdened doctors, and lab tests they can’t afford, patients often seek cures at churches and alternative providers instead. Nigeria’s health system is vastly underfunded and ill-equipped to respond to the needs of a burgeoning population of 168 million (doctors in the country’s public hospitals were on strike for most of October over unpaid salaries stretching back several months). Fees for service in public hospitals, introduced in the 1980s, have risen steadily over the last 25 years, making treatment for chronic illnesses like diabetes and sickle cell anemia unaffordable for most Nigerians. It’s hard not to see the rising popularity of Christianity-as-medicine as an externality brought on by the failures of the health system.

“If people believe a disease is caused by witchcraft, then they believe there’s nothing a hospital can do.”
“There’s inadequate provision of public services in Nigeria almost across the board, so people fill in through private services,” says Peter Lewis, a political scientist who chairs the African Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University. “If they have money, they go to private [medical] clinics. If they don’t have money, they go to traditional healers, churches, and elsewhere.”

According to Soyannwo, patients who do seek help at hospitals like UCH Ibadan commonly delay treatment for financial reasons while they try to gather the money for surgery or costly medication from friends and family. This delay can necessitate palliative care down the line rather than other forms of treatment—as illnesses like cancer worsen over time. Ultimately, Soyannwo says, “If you can’t get what the hospital has to offer, the patient is the loser, in terms of pain and suffering.”

Until recently, Nigerian hospitals also didn’t have a lot to offer patients battling late-stage cancer and other terminal illnesses. Access to morphine, which is widely used to manage chronic pain in the industrialized world, was restricted by treaties designed to control drug trafficking. It was only last year that the government began importing the drug in significant quantities—55 pounds in 2012, or enough for about 4,000 patients receiving palliative care. That’s a small fraction of what would be needed to provide pain relief to the 181,000 Nigerians who die with pain from cancer and HIV each year.

And only a handful of African countries offer formal medical training in palliative care; the nurse leading the training in Ibadan got her degree in Uganda. But as training expands alongside access to painkillers, Soyannwo says the widespread adoption of palliative care depends on both caregivers and patients accepting that some illnesses simply can’t be cured. “People talk about denial, but it’s not really denial,” she says. “It’s just a different conception of illness.”


O.A. Soyannwo, an anesthesiologist and one of Nigeria’s leading advocates for palliative care, talks with a group of nurses during training at the Center for Palliative Care, in Ibadan. (Rowan Moore Gerety)
Obafemi Jegede, who lectures on African religion at the University of Ibadan, scoffed when I brought up the idea of incurable illness. “Incurability is your concept; it doesn’t exist in the African medical paradigm,” he said. Then again, it isn’t a concept that comes easily to Americans either. In the U.S., a 2012 survey of palliative care and hospice doctors found that more than half have had colleagues or patients’ relatives accuse them of practicing euthanasia or murder. The difference is that American resistance to palliative care usually comes in the form of demanding more medical interventions in the form of respirators and feeding tubes; in Nigeria, patients are more likely to seek life-extending treatment at church.

Mercy Awogboro, a health liaison for the Christ Apostolic Church who participated in Training for Carers alongside Chukwu, told me her congregation practices what the pastor calls “total healing,” where any ailment can be cured using a combination of anointed water, fasting, and prayer. When Awogboro herself falls ill, she says she appeals to God to learn whether she should speak with her pastor or with her doctor, then acts accordingly.

Others are more resolute. At the time of the training, Awogboro said, there was a woman in her congregation who’d just been healed of chronic kidney disease after fasting for 21 days, and steering clear of medical care of any kind. When I asked Awogboro about the woman’s choice to forgo medication, she said, simply, “that is her own faith.”

Tolu Ogunlesi, a Nigerian journalist who has written extensively on religion, says “Christianity has done a good job selling itself as a pipeline of solutions: you’ll never hear of the 999 people who went to church and never got a baby, but you’ll always hear of the one woman who went and got a set of twins.”

Since these victories are usually framed in terms of an individual’s faith, the failure to achieve a miracle—whether it’s childbirth or a permanent cure to an illness physicians have declared incurable—sometimes leads to shame and low self-esteem. Soyannwo says a large number of her patients request in-home care, and ask visiting nurses to arrive out of uniform, to avoid being judged either for having a chronic illness or seeking scientific treatment.

As Soyannwo sees it, advocates for palliative care in countries like Nigeria have to strike a delicate balance between preserving the hope miracles can offer, and preventing that hope from driving patients away from the hospital.

“There’s no point in criticizing churches,” she stressed when we met in October. “There’s good work they’re doing, in terms of social and psychological support.... I’m a believer myself.” If patients do benefit from a miracle, she added, it’s for the best. “But if they take medication and eventually they die, they’ll still go to God, so nothing is lost.”

Aha! The Obama Administration Announces Special Waivers For Insurance Cancellations Because Of ObamaRomneycare!

Santa, According To Faux News!

Cartoonists Christmas Wish. LOL.

News!

GOP AS Santa.

Moderate (And TEA Party) Republicans!

Impeach The Pope?!

Kentucky Federal Court Of Appeals Upholds Life Sentence For Bowling Green Iraqi Born Terrorist, Mohanad Shareef Hammadi.

Appeals court upholds life sentence in terror case

An Iraqi man who pleaded guilty to terrorism charges wasn't entrapped into assisting in a plot to ship cash and weapons to al-Qaida in Iraq in 2010 and 2011 and the government did not take part in any misconduct, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the life sentence of 26-year-old Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, who pleaded guilty in 2012 to taking part in the plot, which was actually being run by a confidential informant for the FBI in Bowling Green.
 
"The government provided Hammadi with an opportunity to commit a crime, and he took it," Judge Karen Nelson Moore wrote for the three-judge panel in the case.

Hammadi and 32-year-old Waad Ramadan Alwan pleaded guilty in 2011 and 2012 to working with a man they thought was an insurgent in the United States to ship thousands of dollars in cash, machine guns, rifles, grenades and shoulder-fired missiles to al-Qaida in Iraq from 2010 through 2011.

Prosecutors said the two were actually working with a confidential informant who recorded the pair's activities and no money or weapons ever left the United States.
The two were arrested in May 2011 in Bowling Green, Kentucky, after a federal sting operation.

Hammadi is in a maximum-security prison in Colorado. Alwan is being held at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind.
Hammadi alleged that the federal government resorted to entrapment in pursuing the case against him and sought to enhance any possible prison sentence by including certain types of weapons in the scheme.

Moore, joined by judges Julia Smith Gibbons and Jeffrey S. Sutton, noted that Hammadi willingly took part in the plot.
"The government's conduct in this case is not irregular, and Hammadi offers no evidence that the government acted purposefully to trigger a twenty-five-year mandatory minimum (sentence)," Moore wrote.

Hammadi and Alwan admitted to working and planting explosives near Bayji, Iraq, where multiple U.S. units were working.

Prosecutors described Alwan as a seasoned terrorist in Iraq. They said he worked with the Mujahidin Shura Council, a violent group that claimed responsibility for the kidnapping, torture and deaths of two soldiers with the Fort Campbell-based 101st Airborne Division and the death of a third soldier from the same unit while they were patrolling about 60 miles south of Baghdad in June 2006.

Prosecutors linked Hammadi to Jaish al Mujahidin, also known as the Mujahidin Army, a group that claimed responsibility for shooting down American helicopters in Iraq in 2006 and 2007.
Alwan and Hammadi arrived in the United States in 2009. Both admitted to taking part in insurgent activities in Iraq in 2005 and 2006. Prosecutors said federal authorities became aware of Alwan when they found out he had been held in an Iraqi prison in June 2006 for insurgent activities.

It is unclear how or why Alwan was released from prison. Later, federal authorities found his fingerprint on an unexploded bomb in Iraq and launched an investigation.
Alwan recruited Hammadi into the plot in January 2011 and the pair spent five months working with the informant, prosecutors said.

Joel Pett Is STILL Funny!

Lexington Herald Leader Editorial: "Eastern Kentucky can't SOAR While Public Corruption Thrives"! .... But Public Corruption Is A Part Of The Culture!!

Eastern Kentucky can't soar while public corruption thrives

At the risk of dampening SOAR's good vibe, we must point out a major obstacle to economic development in Eastern Kentucky that got little to no mention at last week's summit: corruption.

According to the United Nations, "corruption deepens poverty, debases human rights, degrades the environment and derails development (including private sector development) by creating disincentives for investment."

The U.N. observed International Anti-Corruption Day Dec. 9, while in Pikeville 1,700 people rallied under the Shaping Our Appalachian Region banner.

Meanwhile, U.S. prosecutors were unveiling the latest in a long string of criminal charges against Eastern Kentucky officials. Morgan County Judge-Executive Tim Conley pleaded not guilty to federal charges that he exchanged government contracts for kickbacks.

Regardless of how the latest prosecution ends, corruption is not a mountain stereotype or a comic form of local color. It's real, and it impedes investment.

The Herald-Leader's Bill Estep recently cited data from the U.S. Department of Justice showing that from 2002 through 2011, there were 237 public-corruption convictions in the Eastern District of Kentucky compared to 65 in the state's Western District.

Public corruption has abetted a drug abuse epidemic and denied youngsters a decent education. A Manchester pastor told Estep that honest people in Clay County saw no reason to vote until the feds broke up a vote-buying ring.

Ask yourself: What business or bright young person would stake their fortunes or futures on such a place?

Eastern Kentucky is full of honest people. The region is no more bound to be corrupt than it's bound to be poor or dependent on a single extractive industry.

Still, poverty can't be overcome without tackling corruption.

But how? The legislature should require local governments to beef up the ethics codes they were first required to enact in 1996, create some real penalties for violations and make ethics training mandatory for local officials.

Obviously, federal prosecutors and courts and Kentucky's attorney general must be vigilant.

But ethics in government — and business, for that matter — is more than just not doing wrong things.

Ethical government puts the greater good first, makes decisions in an open, accountable way, and invites everyone, including those on the margins, to the table.

Transformations that occur from within are always more successful than those imposed from without. Voters in Eastern Kentucky have the power to make change, provided they're given real choices. Those who care about the region must get busy making sure voters have real choices and honest candidates.

Healthy politics won't divide a community into feuding factions that also stifle development.

Both community and trust are critical to the spread of entrepreneurship, according to a study published this month in the American Sociological Review and summarized by Richard Florida in The Atlantic: "Entrepreneurship of all sorts — from the creative cutting edge, high-tech enterprises to building a small business — is in fact a social process, depending upon teams of people working together and broad social networks. And community itself, the place where entrepreneurial activity happens, is a crucial part of the mix."

A lot of SOAR speakers came close to gigging the elephant in the room. Instead of looking to pave a road where there are 35 votes, Senate President Robert Stivers said, the mind-set should become looking for ways to create 35 jobs.

U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers said that SOAR's real reward might not be the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow but the rainbow itself. That certainly would be true if a new culture of honest, accountable government spreads across the mountains.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2013/12/15/2989539/eastern-kentucky-cant-soar-while.html#storylink=cpy

Miss Barack Obama Yet?

Is It Real, Or Is It Saturday Night Live?!

Why I Plan To Vote For Mitch McConnell Come May.

I know the Kentucky Republican primary elections is not until May, but I have not been convinced not to cast my vote for Mitch McConnell for Senate!

Yes, I am for term limits but the term MUST first appear in our U. A. Constitution in order that I may be assured all the other states of the Union will abide by it also!!

#Kentucky. #USSenate. #MitchMcConnell

Today Is Friday, The 13Th! Are You Spooked?

Are you?

Poor Blacks!

Waterboard!

Two Freedom Fighters Unite!

Did You Miss POTUS Barack Obama's Eulogy To Nelson "Madiba" Mandela? Well, Not Anymore! Watch It Here.

You can watch this: Or this:

How Democrats See Republicans. LOL.

Mandiba, The Great One!

some people have chosen to vilify #mandiba, even in death. permit me to observe, that your opinion of him matters not, but if it did it is based on the notion that your thoughts about him depends on "whose ox is" in your judgment "being gored".

if you supported the evil #appatheid, which enslaved folks in THEIR OWN COUNTRY for having "the wrong skin color", then go on and vilify him. if not, and you loathed the evil, then join the rest of us civilized folks and celebrate the great one, mandiba.

Words To Live By, Words Of Wisdom, And Words To Ponder.

One who chooses to oppress another, must be willing to live with the consequences of the wrath of the oppressed.

-- Osi Onyekwuluje

#Mandiba. RIP.

We Mourn The Profound Loss Of Nelson "Madiba" Mandela. He Was 95. May His Soul Rest In Very Perfect Peace. Amen.

RIP, #NelsonMandela.

Sensitive To Brain Injury!

Lies, Failed Leadership And President [Barack] Obama.

Brad Cummings | Lies, failed leadership and the president

“Liar.” My head turned in shock as one of my lifelong friends said this one word under his breath while we were watching President Obama’s Veterans Day speech just last month. His uncharacteristic attack on the president was based on the promise that under Obamacare, Americans could keep their insurance and doctors if they liked what they already had.

I’m a Republican and a conservative so it may not shock you that a friend of mine held this view. But my background far from fits into a stereotypical political box. My first career was as a stage actor and many of my closest friends are still part of the American theater community. It’s no secret that most artists are liberal-minded (I even identified as a Democrat in my early 20s) and my aforementioned friend falls into this category.

He’s not a hardline Democrat but left-of-center nonetheless. He’s predisposed to support the Democrat in any election and voted for President Obama twice. But because he’s not a blind partisan, he’s also interested in hearing from both candidates in any contest and is the type of voter Republicans can win in wave elections. He’s my completely anecdotal barometer for the mood of the swingable Democrat. So when negative words come out of his mouth regarding a Democratic president, I listen. And in a more general sense, so should Republicans.

Voters that Republicans haven’t been able to reach for years are open to another path forward but our ideas won’t resonate with mere opposition to a destructive policy, even one as botched as the Affordable Care Act. Republicans must present a clear, easy to understand alternative to fix our health care system if they are to maximize this opportunity.

This moment is bigger than just a political victory for Republicans. It exposes the misguided beliefs of those on the left who think government can effectively accomplish big things with multiple moving parts like private companies do so often. It illustrates how important profit motive is to innovation and efficiency because only when the bottom line doesn’t matter do simple things like end-to-end testing of a centerpiece website somehow slip through the cracks. Progressivism is a well-intentioned political viewpoint that ultimately ignores what motivates the human condition beyond mediocrity.

 But winnable voters don’t care about political victories or the triumph of one ideology over the other. They aren’t ideologues and tend to believe there is more than one way to find a solution to a problem. These voters need to be given a better alternative or they are likely to support the devil they already know. And they have much distaste for partisanship.

This disgust for division (one can see a 6 percent approval rating for Congress as Exhibit A) also presents an opportunity for the GOP, a chance to shed the recent Republican image as “the party of no” and obstructionism.

Imagine if you heard this from Republicans: “Thank you, President Obama. Thank you for making health care reform such a priority. We’ve failed to prioritize this important problem even when we had majorities in both houses of Congress and the presidency. While we disagree on how to get there, we agree the health care system as we knew it before was broken and in desperate need of repair.” This would cause a nationwide, unison jaw drop for the ages.

The follow-up to this would necessarily be a cohesive, workable and compassionate plan for health care reform. It would include ways to cover those with pre-existing conditions, drive down costs through portability and the ability to sell insurance across state lines. Take care of those who cannot take care of themselves. Work toward common-sense tort reform and empower doctors to treat their patients as individuals, not as a mandated checklist of universally approved procedures.

Most importantly, it’s important to remember that it’s not even enough to lay out a plan. Republicans must develop a communication strategy not unlike the Contract for America from the mid-90s that swept the GOP into power under a then-rudderless Clinton administration — an administration that also lost political capital from its own failed health care solution. This new plan and communication strategy must extend beyond health care and include big solutions for the myriad issues facing the country.

President Obama’s biggest failure is one of leadership. It’s his unprecedented inability to work with elected officials from across the aisle. (His current health care issues have more to do with the fact he could not convince a single Republican to sign onto Obamacare than any other singular factor.) Republicans must learn from his mistakes and model the importance of being bigger than your political opponent. Then build a vision for the future of America that is solution-oriented and inclusive of all our citizens. That’s the path forward for the GOP.

It’ll be hard work. The messy art of compromise while staying true to your principles will be essential to any success. It’s the way our system is designed. And it’s what winnable voters want to see. They don’t care about ideology. They care about results. And they don’t want to be lied to in the process.

Brad Cummings is COO of PM Advertising, and he previously served as Jefferson County Republican Party chairman. His column appears every third Wednesday. He can be reached atbradford.cummings @gmail.com

NSA.

Where's This All Coming From?!

Words To Live By, Words Of Wisdom, Words To Ponder.

Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer.http://bible.com/547/psa.19.14.kjva

Psalm 19:14 King James Version, American Edition | The New Bible.com

bible.com

University Of Kentucky.

Friends In Need!

Never loan a "friend" money. When it comes time for you to be paid back, you would have gained an enemy!

Word!!

Praying.