2009 is going to be a tough year for conservatives. We face a new liberal president in the White House, an adoring and compliant media establishment at his disposal, and safe majorities in both the House and Senate. But all hope is not lost. President-elect Barack Obama knows he campaigned on many conservative themes and that the American people simply will not tolerate a sudden lurch to the left. The New Year is just eight days old and yet conservatives have already scored some minor victories that we can build on.

It was just one month ago that Obama was demanding an economic stimulus package be on his desk by his January 20th Inauguration Day. But now, thanks to conservative leader calls for an open and honest debate about whether we really need $1 trillion in new government spending, the Obama transition team is acknowledging that the stimulus bill will have to be delayed at least until mid-February.

More importantly, conservatives are also making progress on significantly changing the actual content of the stimulus bill. Tacitly accepting a core conservative belief, Obama’s team has dropped any plans to raise taxes because the plan is “focused on measures that create jobs.” And not only is Obama promising not to raise taxes: the size of the tax cuts in the plan also keep rising and are now at 40%. In addition to the payroll tax cut Obama floated earlier, his latest plan also includes $100 billion in tax incentives for businesses. Now of course, many of these business “tax incentives” are terribly ill conceived and will do nothing to stimulate economic growth (Obama’s one-year tax credit for businesses that make new hires or forgo layoffs is one example. How exactly will the IRS determine which companies would have laid off people and which companies would have hired people anyway?)

Cornyn standing strong

From The Associated Press - The top Senate Republican said his caucus would block any attempt to seat Democrat Al Franken until an anticipated court case over Minnesota’s close election is finished and an official election certificate is conferred.

Texas Sen. John Cornyn said Friday that Republicans would object to seating the race leader Franken sooner. A filibuster would require 60 votes to break — a few more than Democrats currently hold in Washington.

Read the full story here.

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels

Daniels has announced that state employees would not get a pay raise next year as one step toward eliminating a projected $763 million state budget spending gap through next June.

Daniels said Tuesday he hoped all public employees — including those who work for cities, counties, schools and universities — also will skip pay raises next year.

He says it would take pressure off local and school budgets and ensure continuity of vital public services during tough economic times. - The Associated Press

Not surprisingly, $4-a-gallon gasoline focused the public’s mind on energy issues in a way that hadn’t occurred since the OPEC oil embargo of the mid-1970s.

Barack Obama even modified his long-term opposition to offshore drilling, suggesting he would consider opening up additional areas of the outer continental shelf (OCS) to exploration and production as part of a comprehensive and environmentally sensitive national energy policy.

Three months later, the election is over, and oil and gasoline prices have fallen to three-year lows. Since President-elect Obama and Congress will be preoccupied with a deepening recession, and oil and natural gas prices have moderated, energy will likely find itself on the back burner next year.

But to ignore energy policy at this time would be a serious mistake. (Read the whole article at the Star Tribune here.)

Barack Obama stated his support for the unions

Obama strongly supported a union-backed card-check bill during the campaign, as does his choice for Labor Secretary, Hilda Solis. So his intentions should be clear. Except for one thing: Since his election, Obama has gone out of his way to make peace with the business community — in the choices for his economic team, in suggesting he won’t immediately repeal the Bush tax cuts.

Opening a bloody war with business over card check could sap all that good will.

Read the full story at CNN here.

“The president is not going to allow a disorderly collapse of the companies,” White House press secretary Dana Perino said Thursday. “A disorderly collapse would be something very chaotic that is a shock to the system.”

But, she added, “There’s an orderly way to do bankruptcies that provides for more of a soft landing. I think that’s what we would be talking about.”

President-elect Barack Obama today named Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colorado, as the Secretary of the Interior. (Reuters/Jeff Haynes)

The Interior Department started the process to consider selling leases to drill for oil and natural gas off the coast of Virginia in November.

Many Republicans and representatives of the oil industry are pushing to begin exploring the Outer Continental Shelf, but Democrats could pursue reimposing the ban or adding more restrictions on drilling. Obama could also reinstate the executive order against offshore drilling that Bush lifted.

Excerpted from Reuters: …The key issue will be selling leases for offshore energy exploration. Offshore drilling was banned in most areas outside of parts of the Gulf of Mexico for more than 20 years before Congress allowed its prohibition to expire at the end of September.

He's the Tax Man.

Trying to close a $15.4 billion budget gap, Paterson called for 88 new fees and a host of other taxes, including an “iPod tax” that taxes the sale of downloaded music and other “digitally delivered entertainment services.”

“We’re going to have to take some extreme measures,” Paterson said Tuesday after unveiling the slash-and-burn budget.

The proposal, which needs legislative approval, did not include broad-based income tax increases, but relied on smaller ones to raise $4.1 billion from cash-strapped New Yorkers.

Read the whole article at the New York Daily News.

Over the past month, accusations have been flying against several Southern senators who oppose a $14 billion bailout for the beleaguered big three automakers and support the the alternative of Chapter 11 bankruptcy. These senators, critics say, are representing the interests of foreign automakers that donate heavily to their campaigns. But what has been largely ignored is the other side of the equation – the influence of the United Auto Workers (UAW) on the members of Congress that voted for the bailout.

According to campaign finance data from the Center for Responsive Politics Web site OpenSecrets.org, when broken down by how members of Congress voted, for the 2008 election cycle the UAW gave more than eight times as much in campaign cash to members that voted for the bailout than those that voted against it — $1.14 million to proponents versus just $136,500 that voted against it.

Overall, the UAW gave to 176 members of the House and Senate that voted for the bailout and only 22 members that voted against it. The union also gave to 78 candidates that were either unsuccessful in their congressional election bids or those that have yet to be sworn in, for a total of $768,800. The UAW donated $70,500 to nine members that didn’t didn’t participate in the vote. The union gave over $1.8 million altogether.

As Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., pointed out last week – much of the force behind the push for the bailout can be attributed to the UAW – for fear that Chapter 11 bankruptcy would spell the end of their influence.

“The primary driver behind this is the unions, because bankruptcy allows the auto companies to basically restructure all their contracts in a way that a bankruptcy judge says will make them sustainable,” DeMint said. “And if they do that, then essentially the unions lose all their leverage. It’s the unions that have brought them to the brink. So definitely, I think the reason they want a political solution and a car czar is because a car czar can protect the unions through this whole process at the expense of the taxpayer.”

Despite this data showing the UAW has overwhelmingly gave to bailout proponents versus its opponents, the media have largely ignored the union and has attacked bailout opponets for representing the interests of foreign automakers with manufacturing facilities in the United States.

In his Dec. 15 New York Times column in which he compared bailout opponents to those in Europe against a rescue plan for the E.U., Paul Krugman resorted to name-calling.

“But there’s a problem: conservative politicians, clinging to an out-of-date ideology – and, perhaps, betting (wrongly) that their constituents are relatively well positioned to ride out the storm — are standing in the way of action,” Krugman wrote. “No, I’m not talking about Bob Corker, the Senator from Nissan – I mean Tennessee – and his fellow Republicans, who torpedoed last week’s attempt to buy some time for the U.S. auto industry. (Why was the plan blocked? An e-mail message circulated among Senate Republicans declared that denying the auto industry a loan was an opportunity for Republicans to ‘take their first shot against organized labor.’)”

And CNBC’s Jim Cramer took as similar shot at Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., the ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee and a staunch opponent of the automaker bailout. His “Stop Trading” segment on CNBC’s Dec. 4 “Street Signs” followed a segment in which Shelby was interviewed by host Erin Burnett.

“I’m following the Senator from Toyota – oh I meant Alabama,” Cramer said.

Shelby told The Wall Street Journal on Dec. 12 that if he had five GM or Ford plants in his state, he would have still opposed the bailout and noted his opposition to the 1979 Chrysler bailout as a member of the House of Representatives.

“He opposes all these bailouts because he doesn’t think the taxpayers should be paying for it,” Jonathan Graffeo, a press representative for Shelby, said to the Business & Media Institute. “It is genuine and it’s simple. I’m around the guy 10 hours a day – I know.”

On the Web: http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2008/20081215141548.aspx

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC)

On card check legislation, DeMint said that conservatives will have another difficult battle. Right now — assuming Norm Coleman hangs on — they have 42 Republicans, but they know they’ll lose Arlen Specter. So what that means is that if just one more Republican flips on the legislation, it passes, making it a very difficult fight.

In response to my question, he said it’s a real possibility that Democrats would drop the most controversial element of the legislation that denies workers the right to a secret ballot vote, acting as if they’re being magnanimous, and thus getting a few Republicans to vote for a stripped down bill that nonetheless still includes the potentially even more destructive binding arbitration clause.

DeMint said he’ll support legislation that would say that workers could not be forced to join a union if they don’t want to. Though it wouldn’t have a chance of passage, it would make an important statement, he said.

On the web: http://www.spectator.org/blog/2008/12/11/demint-says-republicans-have-c