Category: Articles

CNBC used to stand for the “Consumer News and Business Channel.” but it is now part of NBC and the left-wing media.  Its job now is to demonize conservative states, especially Texas, as dismal backwaters filled with miserable, uninformed and misguided voters.

But because CNBC is still a business channel, focused on the economy, the workforce and markets, trash-talking the Lone Star State is very difficult to do.

Year after year, the data has forced CNBC to acknowledge that Texas is the best place in the country to do business—or at least one of the best—on their annual “Best States for Business” ranking.  Since they started keeping score in 2007, Texas is the only state to have ranked No. 1 four times.

It was ranked No. 2 eight times and until this year it has never been ranked lower than No. 4. In 2022, CNBC ranked Texas No. 5.  The network also decided to change the way they trumpeted its list. Instead of focusing on the business metrics—workforce, infrastructure, strength of the economy and the cost of doing business—it pumped up its previously described “quality of life” metrics to include “inclusion” and pushed out a new list of 10 states it called “the Best Places to Live” in America.

It’s not exactly clear exactly what metrics they used to determine the “Best Places to Live,” but among other things, they looked at crime rates and “inclusiveness in state laws, including protections against discrimination of all kinds, as well as voting rights.”  Adding crime rates made it impossible for California to climb above a No. 29 overall ranking, but on CNBC’s new woke “inclusiveness” scale Texas ranks No. 49—allowing CNBC to pronounce Texas as one of the worst places to live in the country.

The “best state to live in,” according to their new measure is Vermont, followed by Maine, Hawaii and North Dakota. CNBC’s “inclusiveness” list is clearly designed to give blue states a chance to dig out from the bottom. Washington and New Jersey are also in the top 10 “best states to live” list even though New Jersey, had the highest percentage of people moving out of any state in 2021 and Forbes included Washington on their list of states people are fleeing because of the high cost of living.

In Texas, we all know that when the left says “protections against discrimination of all kinds” they mean that boys are allowed to play on girls sports teams and parents have the right to experiment on their children with risky puberty blockers, hormonal therapy and even surgery. As for voting rights, CNBC apparently didn’t see the poll conducted by the Texas Association of Business before the most recent election reforms which confirmed that Texans of all races and political parties overwhelming support our election laws. Fully 95% of Texans say it’s easy to vote here.

You have to wonder how folks sitting around the conference table at CNBC deal with the fact that their own data shows that the state they have declared the worst place to live in America is where so many Americans want to live. Over a thousand people move here every day. Last year CNBC reported that Houston was number one on the list of top 10 cities people are moving too. San Antonio, Dallas and Austin were also on the list.  Texas was the only state with more than one city on the list.

Texas also just beat out two big blue nation states, New York and California, for the most Fortune 500 companies in the U.S.

And at the end of June, CNBC reported a better than expected jobs report that showed 372,000 workers added to payrolls nationwide.  Their news story did not point out that 82,500 of those jobs—22%—were in Texas, which created more jobs than any other state.

Woke businesses pushing boycotts against Texas haven’t convinced people that Texas isn’t a great place to live, and CNBC is not likely to be successful by stacking the deck on the “Best States to Live” list either.

In 2021, the Houston Chronicle predicted the state would lose $31 billion and 223,000 jobs if they passed proposed election reforms. The reforms passed, voter turnout broke records and the economy continues to soar.

California has banned travel for state workers and universities to Texas, and a couple of dozen other states, because of Texas laws supporting women’s sports and privacy. Since it first passed that law, the number of states on its list has almost doubled and even some major California newspapers are urging them to repeal the ban since it is obviously making no difference.

By contrast, Texas has become a mecca for business and innovation. That is no accident. The conservative policies passed by Texans over the last several decades create jobs, help business flourish and ensure that the state continues to effectively compete in the global economy. The CNBC annual rankings that consistently put Texas at the top show how well this is working for Texans and the world. CNBC should not only report that Texas is at the top, it should also report why.

It has been said that Texas is the best expression of the American idea—and Red McCombs is one of the best expressions of everything it means to be a Texan. He came from a tiny town in the southern panhandle, started as an Edsel salesman in Corpus Christi and went onto become one of the richest men in the world. McCombs has been enormously generous in so many ways throughout his life—a gift to the Lone Star State that keeps on giving.

An advertising genius who, literally, invented product placement, McCombs’ business successes have contributed to Texas’ growth and economic prosperity in a dozen different ways. In my hometown of San Antonio, he is known for bringing NBA basketball to our city with the Spurs. The key for him in his first professional sports venture was understanding the importance of television in moving San Antonio onto a national stage.

When the movie “The Alamo” was being filmed in 1960 at Bracketville, McCombs sought out John Wayne and got him to agree to open the film in San Antonio, pulling the klieg lights and red carpet out of Hollywood and into downtown San Antonio again, putting Texas on the map.

McCombs also brought Formula 1 racing to the United States after he learned that over 1 billion people watched those races. The possibilities of a billion viewers around the globe all looking at Texas motivated him to make sure the “Circuit of the Americas” was located here.

McCombs has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to all kinds of charities in Texas including the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. In 2000, he contributed $50 million dollars to establish the Red McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas, a gift which leveraged an additional $100 million to ensure that the state that has repeatedly been identified over the past two decades as the best state for business anywhere in America has a first-class business school.

Knowing what McCombs has done for the state and for the University of Texas, you can imagine how outrageous it was to see that when the template for the fall schedule at the McCombs School was released this week it included a warning for students that some business topics may be “traumatic.” Professors must promise to give their students a heads up if some really scary business topic is about to be discussed.

Are they kidding? Anyone who knows Red McCombs knows he is not afraid of anything.

There are also directions requiring every professor to “identify their pronouns (she/he/they/zhe).”

Zhe?

They seem to be serious. There is an entire section on “personal pronoun preference.”

Farther down in the syllabus template, professors are directed to let their students know that they “acknowledge that we are meeting on the Idigenous [sic] lands of Turtle Island, the ancestral name for what is now North America.” They must also affirm: “I would like to acknowledge that Alabama-Coushatta, Caddo, Carrizo/Comecrudo, Coahuiltecan, Comanche, Kickapoo, Lipan Apache, Tonkawa, Ysleta Del Sur Pueblo and all the American and Indigenous Peoples who have been or have become a part of these lands and territories of Texas.”

The Comanche arrived in Texas after the Spanish, so why aren’t those great minds over at the prestigious “40 Acres” acknowledging that they are on the lands of Carlos III de Bourbon, His Most Catholic Majesty and King of Spain? And the “Turtle Island” reference is nonsense. It’s a creation story from native tribes in the Northeast, not Texas.

The point is, why aren’t professors at the McCombs School of Business required to inform their students that if it weren’t for Red McCombs, they wouldn’t have a building, desks or, indeed, a business school?

Furthermore, McCombs School of Business students should know that McCombs is one of those Texas giants who understood from the beginning that Texas—now the best reflection of the American idea—is not an accident. It has been and continues to be a hard-fought battle to maintain a state where freedom and liberty are harnessed to ensure businesses are free to innovate to create jobs and prosperity for all. McCombs never walked away from that fight.

Texas universities are on very shaky grounds these days. Enrollment is plummeting because students are no longer willing to pay outrageous tuition to have a steady diet of “pronoun protocols” and “land acknowledgements” shoved down their throats. They have also had it with the constant drum beat of so-called “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” (DEI), which actually means exclusion, injustice and essentially a stacked deck for anyone who does not genuflect to the woke ideology that is destroying our colleges.

Other states are fighting back. Florida passed a “Stop Woke” Individual Freedom law designed to eliminate these kinds of ridiculous and divisive antics on campus and to affirm the principles of actual equality, merit and hard work. It requires that students be reminded that in America, we work together to overcome challenges and hardships—we don’t band together to blame others for them.

The University of Texas needs to wake up before somebody shows this syllabus to Red McCombs—and he demands his money back.

With inflation breaking records, gas prices pushing $10 per gallon and the border exploding with hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, President Joe Biden decided to issue an executive order to “enhance protections for transgender children and take steps to ban conversion therapy as efforts continue in Texas and other states to restrict gender-affirming medical care.”

“Gender affirming medical care” is a woke term that includes chemical castration and puberty blockers, as well as hormone injections from the opposite sex. It also includes actual castration and mastectomies that are not medically necessary. These irreversible and dangerous medical actions are more accurately described as “gender destroying.” They have nothing to do with care.

There’s no way to know what the president means by “conversion therapy” in this context, but it is clearly an effort to prohibit any restrictions by states like Texas against parents who want to experiment on their own children with dangerous “gender affirming” treatments.

Meanwhile, Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently appeared on a show where men dress up as women and mimic their speech and mannerisms — “RuPaul’s Drag Race All-Stars.”

Despite the insulting characterization of women by drag queens, which is increasingly being compared to minstrel black face by discerning feminists, Pelosi told the men dressed up and behaving as the most degrading female stereotypes that she wanted to thank them “for the joy and beauty you bring to the world.”

She added, “Your freedom of expression of yourselves in drag is what America is all about. I say that all the time to my friends in drag.”

Texas public school librarians apparently agree with the speaker that drag queens are what America is all about, because thousands of them attended a session on drag queen story hours at their recent meeting in Fort Worth.

They must have forgotten what happened in the Houston Public Library in 2019 when one of the drag queens brought in to read stories to children turned out to be a registered sex offender.

Drag queen reading programs in public libraries and public schools are increasingly common. Advocates describe them as a fun and harmless way to introduce children to the transgender movement.

Of course, most of America is not looking for a fun way to introduce their children to the transgender movement — which brings us back to Biden’s sinking popularity.

Gloria Romero, a Democrat and former U.S. House member from California, believes wokeism is part of Biden’s problem, at least with Hispanic voters.

After Biden’s approval dropped to 24% among Hispanics and Republican Mayra Flores’s historic South Texas victory, Romero said:

“We’re [Hispanics are] looking at the economy, we’re looking at approaches to immigration. We’re looking at language, my God. Here in California, among the Latino community, we not only celebrate Mother’s Day, we celebrate two Mother’s Days and the birthing people lingo doesn’t cut it for us.”

“Birthing people” is another woke term used to push the absurd notion that both men and women can deliver babies.

Setting aside the many ethical and public policy questions raised by Biden’s transgender executive order, let’s just look at the politics.

There’s no doubt about the fact that Biden has lost support across the board in every age, race and demographic category because of his destructive economic and border policies, but his approval rating is also at 39% because of what Romero said — the country is tired of having Democrat leaders like Biden and Nancy Pelosi push destructive and fringe behavior into the narrative as if it were normal.

Dealing with those who are suffering from gender dysphoria is not a gay rights issue — which most Americans support. Instead, Americans continue to view transgender issues as a medical and mental health challenge where it appears that drug treatments are not effective and can be damaging. We are seeing more and more stories of transgender adults who regret having had surgery in childhood.

Even if Biden manages to rein in inflation, lower gas prices and address the avalanche at the border, his base, particularly in the Hispanic community, will keep slipping away if he continues to be a megaphone for woke issues like “gender affirming treatment” for gender dysphoria victims. Most people are way ahead of him on this, and they just don’t buy it.

Sherry Sylvester is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. She is a political communications and public policy expert who has directed multi-million dollar statewide campaigns in New York and New Jersey and has been involved in dozens of Texas political campaigns.

https://dailycaller.com/2022/06/24/sylvester-inflation-gas-prices-drag-queens-and-bidens-sinking-poll-numbers/

Despite the hair-on-fire, gnashing of teeth and general screaming from Texas liberals about the end of democracy over last year’s election reforms bill—Senate Bill 1—last Tuesday’s primary election largely went off without a hitch.

There were some cherry-picked media reports and sanctimonious statements from the left insisting that some people who wanted to vote by mail were not able to because it was necessary to put either your driver’s license number or the last four digits of your Social Security number on your ballot.

But according to the Texas Secretary of State, fully 95 percent of Texas’ 17 million plus registered voters already have both their drivers’ license and their last 4 digits on their voter registration, so it really wasn’t a problem for most voters.

There was a drop in mail-in ballots, but not because Democrat votes were being “suppressed.” About the same number of Democrats cast their ballots by mail this year as they did in the last gubernatorial election in 2018.  The folks who said no to mail-in ballots this cycle were Republicans. In the top 15 counties, Republicans who voted by mail dropped by 40%. Safe to say it’s unlikely those driving the voter suppression conspiracy will go looking for ways to ensure more Republicans vote.

Not that there weren’t election incidents.

In Harris County, a voter posted a video of an election judge telling a Republican that he couldn’t vote at the polling place he visited. It was only for Democrats. Similar incidents occurred in several places across the state because, despite what Democrats insisted during the debate over Senate Bill 1, it is difficult to find volunteers to serve as election judges.

But by in large, another election has passed and the left-wing, media-driven voter conspiracy theories have not panned out.

In fact, 6,000 Harris County Democrats and 4,000 Republicans can thank Senate Bill 1 for ensuring their votes will be counted this year. Because the Secretary of State’s office is now required to reconcile the number of votes cast in every county with the actual ballot count, they were able to let Harris County officials know that its ballot count was 10,072 short.  The ballots were identified and those votes are being counted now.

Ever since Photo Voter ID was passed in Texas in 2011, Democrats have insisted that Republican-backed laws to require standard identification was an effort to suppress the vote of Democrats—minorities, people of color and poor people—who they think are voting for them.

There is a big problem with their theory: math.

Voter turnout has skyrocketed since photo voter ID passed. In 2012, 7.9 million people voted. In 2020, 11.1 million voted—a 40% increase. Gubernatorial election turnout in Texas increased by 76% since Photo Voter ID passed. In 2012, about 58.6% of registered Texans voted and in 2020, 66.7% voted.

Voter ID is also popular. More than 80% of all Texans, which includes Democrats, support ensuring the common-sense requirement that people prove they are who they say they are in order to vote.

But don’t expect facts to get in the way of the left pushing voter suppression conspiracy theories. What else have they got?

On Tuesday, almost 900,000 more Republicans voted than Democrats. This fact alone does not bode well for Democrat prospects in November, although they never seem to try to figure out why they are losing. Those on the left just don’t understand that as long as they keep putting up anti-business, tax raising, pro-abortion, anti-gun candidates who hate the oil and gas industry, want open borders and support boys playing girls sports, the majority of Texans are not going to vote for them.

This is the same party that shut down the Texas House by decamping to Washington D.C. last summer in order to protest the election reforms that the majority of Texans supported—and were successfully implemented last week.

Despite their threats, there was no election meltdown. Last spring, 95% of Texas voters told a Texas Association of Business Pollster that it is “easy to vote” in Texas. They undoubtedly still feel that way.

https://thecannononline.com/early-returns-no-voter-suppression-in-texas/

In the successful fight to pass Senate Bill 3 in Texas protecting girls’ sports, conservatives were repeatedly told by their opponents on the left that we were tilting at windmills. Trans men were no threat to female sports, we were assured; the legislation we were pushing was a “solution in search of a problem.” Conservatives who pushed to protect sports for women and girls were accused of being transphobic. 

But ask girl swimmers in Pennsylvania what they think about the recently transitioned person who is shattering women’s records in the Keystone State. 

In 2019, when conservatives were working to pass privacy legislation to ensure that boys would not be permitted to enter girls’ restrooms in public schools, leftists and the media again insisted that we were provincial prudes. When Texas state senator and former NCAA champion athlete Lois Kolkhorst declared the bathroom battle “the women’s rights issue of our time,” almost no Texas media outlet reported it. The media ignored dozens of reports of women being attacked by men in public restrooms and changing rooms in Texas.

Similarly, the media ignored what helped spark a triumph of parental rights in the Virginia gubernatorial election. A girl was raped in a school restroom by a boy wearing a skirt.  School officials said that they didn’t know whether to confront him because he might have been a “trans” person. 

In Texas, our legislation to protect sports for women and girls is described by the media as “disqualifying” of boys rather than affirming girls. News reports say that the bill “excludes” those who say that they are girls – instead of noting that the bill protects actual girls.

Which brings me to my question: Where are the feminists? Having fought in the second wave of women’s rights in the 1970s, I do not understand why today’s American women’s movement has been so quick to give those hard-won rights away – to say, essentially, that if a male is suffering from gender dysphoria and thinks that he’s a girl or woman, we should just go along with that. 

Body dysphoria leads to life-threatening bulimia and other diseases, but gender dysphoria should be enabled, even encouraged – at least, according to the left, which believes that parents should be permitted to authorize life- and body-changing hormone treatments, and even surgery, for their children, not recognizing that these actions are irreversible and clearly child abuse. This is a horrible disservice to the victims of gender dysphoria. It is also a setback for women’s rights.

J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, has joined with many European feminists in stepping up and saying the obvious: that sex is a real, biological fact. It is scientifically certifiable, not something that is arbitrarily “assigned” at birth and written on one’s birth certificate. Rowling has attracted the ire of the trans movement because she dared to question the terms “people who have a cervix,” “people who menstruate,” or “people who can become pregnant” as substitutes for the word “women.” 

Similarly, a left-wing British MP, Rosie Duffield, has drawn a line in the sand. Duffield is saying what many feminists have apparently been afraid to say: that most men are stronger than most women. Too often, that reality can be a threat to women. We ought to be able to go to the restroom – where, unlike men, we must partially undress – without being afraid.

Which brings us back to the swimmer who just smashed all the women’s swimming records in Pennsylvania. Texans know that this is unfair, and they don’t want any part of it. 

A full 58% of Texans strongly support legislation that would require high school and middle school students to compete in sports associated with their biological sex. This includes 75% of whites, 64% of Latinos, and 63% of African-Americans. It includes almost half of Democrats, over 90% of Republicans, and 73% of Independents. And while 82% of my generation – the Baby Boomers – support the legislation, so do 63% of Millennials, 69% of Gen Xers, and 54% of Generation Z. 

Back in the 1970s, a battle cry for many of us in the women’s movement was that “the personal is the political.” I’ve long abandoned that motto, but in this case, it has some relevance, as we are watching our rights as women being given away to men. On this issue and many others, Texas conservatives are standing up for women, but I ask, again: Where are the feminists?

Sherry Sylvester is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and former senior adviser to Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick.

If the public had been largely unaware of the pervasiveness of critical race theory in America’s public schools, the shock waves of Virginia’s election have made sure people, particularly parents, are now paying attention.

The Texas Legislature joined several other states and passed an anti-CRT bill earlier this year. To fight back, proponents of the controversial concept have scrambled to downplay its impact and launch attacks against efforts to ban it in schools.

An overwrought editorial in the Houston Chronicle is typical of these assaults on CRT bans. Opponents claim that the legislation frightens teachers into teaching a whitewashed history of America. But this is factually and demonstrably untrue. If only they would read the bill.

The items some claim won’t be taught in Texas schools, such as the evils of slavery and the role of government in upholding that unholy institution, are taught because state law specifically mandates that they be taught.

The new Texas rule on critical race theory, House Bill 3979, not only doesn’t ban teaching facts, but it reinforces that our full and accurate history, scars and all, should be taught. Specifically, the bill states that students should understand “the history of white supremacy, including but not limited to the institution of slavery, the eugenics movement, and the Ku Klux Klan, and the ways in which it is morally wrong.”

Opponents of the law claim it says students should never feel “discomfort” from learning that, for example, Texas hero Jim Bowie owned slaves. Therefore, teaching this fact would be banned.

What the new rule actually says is that “a teacher … may not … require or make part of a course that … an individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of the individual’s race or sex.” In other words, teachers can teach history, but they can’t require students to feel guilt as a condition of passing the class.

The teachings of CRT go beyond simply learning America’s history and, in fact, require white people to accept blame for all economic and social disparities experienced by people of color today.

That is what is being banned by the CRT bill — and for good reason.

Not only does CRT discriminate against white people, but it hurts minorities, too. It forces young black and Hispanic children to accept they will always be victims and that under our current system, there is nothing they can do to improve their lot in life. It also advocates lowered standards for minorities and strips them of agency. Teaching CRT is not just unconstitutional — it is demonstrably false and cruelly immoral. CRT has no place in our schools.

As for the laughable lie that CRT isn’t found in schools, of course it is . What’s more, liberals are demanding more CRT in public schools, and they want parents to shut up about it.

The new law protects speech, debate, and the free flow of ideas. It prevents students from being forced to accept controversial theories as a condition for advancement. And it helps empower parents to address and correct these illegal and unconstitutional activities in their schools.

On one thing, at least, we are in full agreement with the Houston Chronicle’s editorial board: “Hard facts about race and racism, about our flawed heroes or about our inability over the years to live up to our ideals of freedom, equality and justice are part of the Texas story. They’re not the only part, by a long shot, but a well-educated Texan needs to know them.”

We are sure, then, that members of that board will be relieved that those things are taught in Texas schools and will continue to be. If they have any questions, they can read the text of the bill itself .

Sherry Sylvester is a distinguished senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and a former senior adviser to Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. Carol Swain is the distinguished senior fellow for constitutional studies at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and co-author of Black Eye for America: How Critical Race Theory is Burning Down the House.

“Abortion Barbie,” the jab directed at state Sen. Wendy Davis, made it to California recently when a passionately pro-life Texas woman paid for posters depicting Davis as a Barbie doll with a baby in utero to be posted around the Los Angeles neighborhood where Davis was holding yet another out-of-state fundraiser.

The term “Abortion Barbie” was originally coined by RedState Editor Erick Erickson to describe Davis’ over-the-top pro-abortion positions. Democrats wailed in outrage, saying the attack reeked of sexism and would hurt Republicans among female voters. They’re right that it’s sexist — the equivalent of a “dumb blonde” joke. But they’re wrong that it will do much damage among women who vote Republican. 

I’m a lifelong feminist and hate trite putdowns as much as the next woman, but I’m also a conservative Republican, and it’s virtually inconceivable that I could be persuaded to vote for a big-government-supporting tax-and-spender like Davis, no matter how much I identify with her sneakers.

But the smashmouth conservatives who are recycling the term “Abortion Barbie” should stop. It undercuts our message and credibility.

We Texas conservatives proclaim to be people whose principles are rooted in faith. If that’s true — and I believe it is — then we must demonstrate both the principles and the faith.  

There is no way for us to hold the moral high ground if our tactics include name-calling and sexist attacks, even though those tactics are often used against us. Instead, we have to be who we say we are. 

Democrats may be as committed to their own faith as we are, but they have consciously decided not to include faith in their political story. Remember the boos at the 2012 Democratic National Convention when it was proposed that a reference to God be restored in the party platform?

By contrast, we conservative — most of us Christian — Republicans make a point of bringing our faith with us when we enter the public square. We think it’s a good thing.

When we do that, we must hold ourselves to the standard of behavior that is required of Christians — to love our enemies and do unto others as we would have them do unto us. 

I’m not a biblical scholar, but I’m pretty sure there’s no loophole in the Golden Rule for politics.

This does not mean that in the seemingly endless battle for the hearts and minds of Texans that we do not hit back or give as good as we get, and then some. We cannot abandon the basic tenet of political war — that no shot go unanswered.  But we do not have to answer tit for tat. We have to be better. 

Granted, it’s not easy. Our liberal opponents frequently litter their arguments with name-calling and condescension, for which they often get a pass.

You will recall there was no particular outcry of sexism when Sarah Palin was called “Caribou Barbie.”

Recall also the behavior of the women who showed up at the Capitol in support of Davis’ pro-abortion filibuster last year. If you think they were a tolerant group of young women who were simply passionate about an issue, then you weren’t there. They were hateful, in the true sense of the word — filled with hate for the legislators who disagreed with them. Their contempt was echoed on the Senate floor when Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, now the Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, delivered a cheap shot suggesting that she was being ignored by the chair because she is a woman. Her crowd-pandering and opportunistic comment has become part of her narrative, even though it wasn’t really true. Virtually everyone was being ignored.    

Democrats are so hopelessly behind in Texas that they often flail madly, trying to strike some kind of chord with voters. Their fast-talking spokesmouths have adopted sarcasm and hatefulness as a communications strategy, hoping they might somehow manage to climb out of the mid-40s in polls by November. Hard to blame them, given their desperation.

The conservative communication job is harder. We are the majority, and we are the people of faith. The onus is on us to lead with our principles. 

I’m in no position to cast the first stone. Last session, I stood outside a particularly maddening committee hearing in which outnumbered Democrats rambled on for hours, alternating between falsehoods, hyperbole and cheap shots.

I asked the conservative Republican committee chairman afterward how he managed to remain gracious in the face of the Democrats’ deliberately obstructive behavior.

“I just keep loving on ’em,” he said.

It seemed to me that punching out a few lights was a more appropriate response, and I said so.

“Just keep loving on ’em,” he repeated, smiling. “It confuses them.”

So there you have it. Follow the Golden Rule. It’s not only a top commandment, but it can be a good political strategy, too.