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What Good Is the GOP Without a Full Repeal of Obamacare?

February 23, 2017
Staff

WRITER

Matt Kibbe, president and chief community organizer for FreeThePeople.org, joined The Glenn Beck Progra from the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), taking place this week in Washington, D.C. Kibbe gave a boots-on-the-ground report about what he's seeing firsthand.

"It's definitely a more nationalist crowd here. And you may have noticed that none of the Liberty Republicans, except for Ted Cruz, are even attending this year. There's no Rand Paul. There's no Justin Amash. There's no Thomas Massie. Mike Lee is not going this year," Kibbe said.

In fact, a vibrant group of freedom-loving students in attendance at CPAC --- International Students For Liberty --- doesn't feel welcome.

"I would suggest [CPAC] fix that, but I don't know if they're interested in doing that," Kibbe added.

Both Glenn and Kibbe expressed concern over the GOP's willingness --- even with full control of the House, Senate and White House --- to pass legislation mandated by the people, like repealing Obamacare.

"I want to see a commitment to repealing and replacing Obamacare. I mean, Rand Paul has put an idea on the table, and if you don't like that idea, you better come up a better one. Because just loving America is not enough," Kibbe said

Is the GOP up to the test?

"I'm worried about it. I don't think there's a commitment to it, and I think we're going to have to push it from the bottom up," Kibbe said.

Listen to this segment from The Glenn Beck Program:

GLENN: Matt Kibbe, president and chief community organizer for freethepeople.org.

Matt, did you know Alan Colmes?

MATT: I did. (muffled) I think I debated him a few times over the years. And, yeah, he was sort of an old-school liberal in the sense that he loved to debate. He was honest. And I really sort of respected that civility, even though on things like crossfire, he would mix it up with the best of them.

GLENN: Yeah. Could I ask you, are you on Alexander Graham Bell's first telephone?

(chuckling)

JEFFY: Are you in a pool?

GLENN: I don't know what kind of old-timey phone? It's quaint. But what kind of cheap ass phone are you calling from?

MATT: It's actually a tomato can. They told me it would be awesome.

PAT: Right.

GLENN: Right. No, it doesn't sound awesome.

Matt, you're --

MATT: I am moving -- I am moving in the office to see if it can get any better.

GLENN: I doubt it.

Buy yourself a phone from -- I don't know. Try the '90s. Is it one of the phones with the big, huge battery pack that you also had to carry with the other hand?

MATT: It's -- I have no defense. It's an Apple phone.

GLENN: Is it really? Wow. Strange. Okay.

MATT: The latest.

GLENN: So, Matt, you're in Washington, DC. You're at CPAC.

MATT: Yeah.

GLENN: Let's start with the controversy.

This is a really strange thing. Conservatives are defending Milo. And not on the -- the pedophilia stuff. But on everything else. Even though this guy is not a conservative. He's just not a conservative. He even says that.

And there's this strange love affair with him. And people are saying, "You know, he's bringing millennials to the conservative party." Well, how? He's not a conservative.

So what is the mood there with -- with what happened with Milo?

MATT: Well, I got to tell you, you look at the entire agenda at CPAC, and the nationalists -- the Trump's make America great guys have really taken over. And I've always thought of Milo as kind of a troll, a cuter Ann Coulter. Someone that says things just to be provocative. Just to stir up a fight.

GLENN: Yeah.

MATT: And, you know, that's interesting for a comedian. But for someone that tries to represent, A, conservative values. And, you know, on Bill Maher, he said he's a Libertarian, even though he specifically told me that he's not a Libertarian. I think he loves to say things that pisses people off. But that's different than representing a worldview, a philosophy. And it sort of breaks my heart that we're attracted to these provocateurs that don't seem to have any basis on reality. It's just the Twitter world has redefined us.

GLENN: Yeah, I think we're just looking to win. I think we're just looking for someone on our side to be able to tell people to shut up. Because so many times we've been called names and told to shut up and sit down. And I think people are tired of it. So they look for somebody who is -- you know, in some ways, a bigger bully that can get people to shut up and leave us alone.

MATT: Yeah. And I think -- I mean, there are things that we can learn from Milo and Donald Trump about -- about pushing back when people try to mischaracterize your points of view. But it has to be based in a philosophy. And you need to be willing to say that you're wrong. And you need to listen to other people. If we could combine those two things, I think that's what's going to work in the social media world. Yes, be provocative. Yes, be interesting. But why not stand for something that doesn't change from day to day. Because I think he just loves saying things just to see people's reaction. But he'll say the opposite thing tomorrow. And so there's no learning. There's no teaching. And, again, it sort of breaks my heart that young people find that attractive somehow.

GLENN: So we are now looking at a conservative movement that is becoming much more nationalist, much more populist, and much more socialist in some ways. Is that the feeling that you're getting there on the ground at CPAC?

MATT: It's definitely a more nationalist crowd here. And you may have noticed that none of the Liberty Republicans, except for Ted Cruz, are even attending this year. There's no Rand Paul. There's no Justin Amash. There's no Thomas Massie. Mike Lee is not going this year.

And to me, that --

GLENN: Now, is that -- wait, wait. Is that because they refused to come or were not asked? Because I was asked to come and speak, and I couldn't because I'm on my way to Thailand.

MATT: Yeah, I don't -- I don't know if they were asked. And I don't know if they refused. But either way, there's no -- there's no representation of that Liberty wing of the conservative movement.

GLENN: Wow.

MATT: And to me, that's -- I was just at International Students For Liberty last weekend, and I got to tell you, that movement's more vibrant than ever. But they don't feel welcome at CPAC. And I would suggest they fix that, but I don't know if they're interested in doing that.

GLENN: Here we are sitting with a full G.O.P. House, a G.O.P. Senate, a G.O.P. president, a president who can tell everybody to shut up and sit down, a president who is used to winning -- he's going to win so much, we're all going to be sick of it, except when it comes to health care.

No repeal of Obamacare. That's what they're now saying, in Washington, that the G.O.P. will not bring us a full repeal of Obamacare.

What good is the G.O.P.?

MATT: You know, it's been almost 20 years since the G.O.P. had an opportunity to offer a freedom-based, choice-based alternative to Hillarycare. And now Obamacare.

And they've always struggled to do it. Obviously, Rand Paul has stepped into that breach.

But the G.O.P. today is divided into three groups: There's that small Liberty policy reform people who understand how health care could actually work. And that's maybe optimistically a third of House Republicans. There's a third that sort of liked Obamacare. You know, they liked Romneycare. And they would sort of redesign it to be the same thing.

And then there's a third that are just afraid of their own shadows and are going to do whatever they're told to do. And, right now, they're being told in these townhall meetings that Obamacare is a great thing.

So it's inertia --

GLENN: Are those real? I mean, who are those people? The G.O.P. people that are coming out for these town hall meetings. Are those G.O.P., or are those Democrats?

MATT: Oh, I think they're progressives and Democrats. I think there's very few Republicans. But I do think they're real.

GLENN: Yeah, I think they're real too.

MATT: Yeah. Obviously, there's professional community organizers working on this stuff because that's what they do. But by and large, those crowds are real -- real people, frustrated people, people that seem primarily just angry that their guy didn't win. And I think that's your Achilles' heel. They're angry about so many things, the first being the outcome of the election. It's different than the Tea Party in that sense. We had a binding philosophy and a specific policy agenda that we were trying to accomplish.

GLENN: There's a guy you need to meet. His name is Jonathan Haidt. He's a professor up in NYU. And he's written about the immoral theory foundation, where he's identified five moral foundations. And these -- these foundations are what keep us apart, but also what bring us together.

And there is a real opportunity. And we were talking on the radio yesterday that I believe the future is going to split off -- there's going to be a third party. And I don't know whether -- you know, the Republicans or the Democrats survive this. But I'm sensing, in talking to a lot of really powerful liberal people, that they are done with the -- the nonsense of Keith Ellison and the socialist and the Marxist and the radicals. Now that Obama is gone, it's almost as if scales have come off their eyes. And they no longer see the -- you know, the great hope of Barack Obama. They see what's left. And they realize, these are all radicals, Marxists, anti- -- you know, anti-Israel kind of people, and they don't like it.

And they don't know where to go because they can't go to the G.O.P. And then at the same time, I think there's a lot of people in the G.O.P. who, if Donald Trump just continues to do all great things, they may be fine. But there is this classic liberal, this classic constitutionalist that is just leave alone and can we all get together and just stop all this nonsense? I think there's a growing core of America on both left and right that could slip right between these two bogus parties.

Do you see that as a possibility of happening, Matt?

MATT: Oh, definitely. And that's why we started Free the People in the first place. Because I saw this sort of disintermediation, people using technology to discover that they're not just like everybody else. They don't belong to team A or team B. And they know that most politicians are lying to them. And I'm not even sure it's a third party. It may be multiple parties. Because when it really gets down to it, we're all very different. We come from different places and we have different goals and dreams.

GLENN: Sure. I don't mean to say a party. I mean a movement.

MATT: Yeah.

GLENN: There is a real movement out that is dislodged now from both parties. And they're growing increasingly angry with those two parties.

MATT: Oh, definitely. There's more registered independents than there are Republicans and Democrats. And that's particularly pronounced with young people. They choose everything a la carte. They're not really interested in someone telling them that they have to be either a Republican or Democrat, or even a conservative or liberal.

I think people are more complicated than that. And the beauty of what you're calling classical liberalism, Libertarianism, small government conservatism, is that it believes in a simple set of rules. It treats everybody the same under the government rules. But otherwise, you're sort of free to be yourself, as long as you don't hurt people and take their stuff.

GLENN: Right.

MATT: I think we have the only answer to this very complex community we call America.

GLENN: I agree. I agree. So, Matt, just real quick before you go, what is the main thing that we should be looking for, from afar, and the main thing you're looking for at CPAC?

MATT: I want to see a commitment to repealing and replacing Obamacare. I mean, Rand Paul has put an idea on the table. And if you don't like that idea, you better come up a better one. Because just loving America is not enough. You have this opportunity to do stuff. And you promised you would -- you would get rid of Obamacare and replace it with choice and legalize freedom and health care. This is the test. And I'm worried about it. I don't think there's a commitment to it. And I think we're going to have to push it from the bottom up.

GLENN: Thank you very much, man. I appreciate it. President and chief community organizer of freethepeople.org. I love the fact that he has just embraced community organizer. Matt Kibbe.

How America’s elites fell for the same lie that fueled Auschwitz

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

The drone footage out of Gaza isn’t just war propaganda — it’s a glimpse of the same darkness that once convinced men they were righteous for killing innocents.

Evil introduces itself subtly. It doesn’t announce, “Hi, I’m here to destroy you.” It whispers. It flatters. It borrows the language of justice, empathy, and freedom, twisting them until hatred sounds righteous and violence sounds brave.

We are watching that same deception unfold again — in the streets, on college campuses, and in the rhetoric of people who should know better. It’s the oldest story in the world, retold with new slogans.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage.

A drone video surfaced this week showing Hamas terrorists staging the “discovery” of a hostage’s body. They pushed a corpse out of a window, dragged it into a hole, buried it, and then called in aid workers to “find” what they themselves had planted. It was theater — evil, disguised as victimhood. And it was caught entirely on camera.

That’s how evil operates. It never comes in through the front door. It sneaks in, often through manipulative pity. The same spirit animates the moral rot spreading through our institutions — from the halls of universities to the chambers of government.

Take Zohran Mamdani, a New York assemblyman who has praised jihadists and defended pro-Hamas agitators. His father, a Columbia University professor, wrote that America and al-Qaeda are morally equivalent — that suicide bombings shouldn’t be viewed as barbaric. Imagine thinking that way after watching 3,000 Americans die on 9/11. That’s not intellectualism. That’s indoctrination.

Often, that indoctrination comes from hostile foreign actors, peddled by complicit pawns on our own soil. The pro-Hamas protests that erupted across campuses last year, for example, were funded by Iran — a regime that murders its own citizens for speaking freely.

Ancient evil, new clothes

But the deeper danger isn’t foreign money. It’s the spiritual blindness that lets good people believe resentment is justice and envy is discernment. Scripture talks about the spirit of Amalek — the eternal enemy of God’s people, who attacks the weak from behind while the strong look away. Amalek never dies; it just changes its vocabulary and form with the times.

Today, Amalek tweets. He speaks through professors who defend terrorism as “anti-colonial resistance.” He preaches from pulpits that call violence “solidarity.” And he recruits through algorithms, whispering that the Jews control everything, that America had it coming, that chaos is freedom. Those are ancient lies wearing new clothes.

When nations embrace those lies, it’s not the Jews who perish first. It’s the nations themselves. The soul dies long before the body. The ovens of Auschwitz didn’t start with smoke; they started with silence and slogans.

Andrew Harnik / Staff | Getty Images

A time for choosing

So what do we do? We speak truth — calmly, firmly, without venom. Because hatred can’t kill hatred; it only feeds it. Truth, compassion, and courage starve it to death.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage. That’s how Amalek survives — by making you fight him with his own weapons. The only victory that lasts is moral clarity without malice, courage without cruelty.

The war we’re fighting isn’t new. It’s the same battle between remembrance and amnesia, covenant and chaos, humility and pride. The same spirit that whispered to Pharaoh, to Hitler, and to every mob that thought hatred could heal the world is whispering again now — on your screens, in your classrooms, in your churches.

Will you join it, or will you stand against it?

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Bill Gates ends climate fear campaign, declares AI the future ruler

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

The Big Tech billionaire once said humanity must change or perish. Now he claims we’ll survive — just as elites prepare total surveillance.

For decades, Americans have been told that climate change is an imminent apocalypse — the existential threat that justifies every intrusion into our lives, from banning gas stoves to rationing energy to tracking personal “carbon scores.”

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates helped lead that charge. He warned repeatedly that the “climate disaster” would be the greatest crisis humanity would ever face. He invested billions in green technology and demanded the world reach net-zero emissions by 2050 “to avoid catastrophe.”

The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch.

Now, suddenly, he wants everyone to relax: Climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise” after all.

Gates was making less of a scientific statement and more of a strategic pivot. When elites retire a crisis, it’s never because the threat is gone — it’s because a better one has replaced it. And something else has indeed arrived — something the ruling class finds more useful than fear of the weather.The same day Gates downshifted the doomsday rhetoric, Amazon announced it would pay warehouse workers $30 an hour — while laying off 30,000 people because artificial intelligence will soon do their jobs.

Climate panic was the warm-up. AI control is the main event.

The new currency of power

The world once revolved around oil and gas. Today, it revolves around the electricity demanded by server farms, the chips that power machine learning, and the data that can be used to manipulate or silence entire populations. The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch. Whoever controls energy now controls information. And whoever controls information controls civilization.

Climate alarmism gave elites a pretext to centralize power over energy. Artificial intelligence gives them a mechanism to centralize power over people. The future battles will not be about carbon — they will be about control.

Two futures — both ending in tyranny

Americans are already being pushed into what look like two opposing movements, but both leave the individual powerless.

The first is the technocratic empire being constructed in the name of innovation. In its vision, human work will be replaced by machines, and digital permissions will subsume personal autonomy.

Government and corporations merge into a single authority. Your identity, finances, medical decisions, and speech rights become access points monitored by biometric scanners and enforced by automated gatekeepers. Every step, purchase, and opinion is tracked under the noble banner of “efficiency.”

The second is the green de-growth utopia being marketed as “compassion.” In this vision, prosperity itself becomes immoral. You will own less because “the planet” requires it. Elites will redesign cities so life cannot extend beyond a 15-minute walking radius, restrict movement to save the Earth, and ration resources to curb “excess.” It promises community and simplicity, but ultimately delivers enforced scarcity. Freedom withers when surviving becomes a collective permission rather than an individual right.

Both futures demand that citizens become manageable — either automated out of society or tightly regulated within it. The ruling class will embrace whichever version gives them the most leverage in any given moment.

Climate panic was losing its grip. AI dependency — and the obedience it creates — is far more potent.

The forgotten way

A third path exists, but it is the one today’s elites fear most: the path laid out in our Constitution. The founders built a system that assumes human beings are not subjects to be monitored or managed, but moral agents equipped by God with rights no government — and no algorithm — can override.

Hesham Elsherif / Stringer | Getty Images

That idea remains the most “disruptive technology” in history. It shattered the belief that people need kings or experts or global committees telling them how to live. No wonder elites want it erased.

Soon, you will be told you must choose: Live in a world run by machines or in a world stripped down for planetary salvation. Digital tyranny or rationed equality. Innovation without liberty or simplicity without dignity.

Both are traps.

The only way

The only future worth choosing is the one grounded in ordered liberty — where prosperity and progress exist alongside moral responsibility and personal freedom and human beings are treated as image-bearers of God — not climate liabilities, not data profiles, not replaceable hardware components.

Bill Gates can change his tune. The media can change the script. But the agenda remains the same.

They no longer want to save the planet. They want to run it, and they expect you to obey.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Why the White House restoration sent the left Into panic mode

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

Presidents have altered the White House for decades, yet only Donald Trump is treated as a vandal for privately funding the East Wing’s restoration.

Every time a president so much as changes the color of the White House drapes, the press clutches its pearls. Unless the name on the stationery is Barack Obama’s, even routine restoration becomes a national outrage.

President Donald Trump’s decision to privately fund upgrades to the White House — including a new state ballroom — has been met with the usual chorus of gasps and sneers. You’d think he bulldozed Monticello.

If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s ‘visionary.’

The irony is that presidents have altered and expanded the White House for more than a century. President Franklin D. Roosevelt added the East and West Wings in the middle of the Great Depression. Newspapers accused him of building a palace while Americans stood in breadlines. History now calls it “vision.”

First lady Nancy Reagan faced the same hysteria. Headlines accused her of spending taxpayer money on new china “while Americans starved.” In truth, she raised private funds after learning that the White House didn’t have enough matching plates for state dinners. She took the ridicule and refused to pass blame.

“I’m a big girl,” she told her staff. “This comes with the job.” That was dignity — something the press no longer recognizes.

A restoration, not a renovation

Trump’s project is different in every way that should matter. It costs taxpayers nothing. Not a cent. The president and a few friends privately fund the work. There’s no private pool or tennis court, no personal perks. The additions won’t even be completed until after he leaves office.

What’s being built is not indulgence — it’s stewardship. A restoration of aging rooms, worn fixtures, and century-old bathrooms that no longer function properly in the people’s house. Trump has paid for cast brass doorknobs engraved with the presidential seal, restored the carpets and moldings, and ensured that the architecture remains faithful to history.

The media’s response was mockery and accusations of vanity. They call it “grotesque excess,” while celebrating billion-dollar “climate art” projects and funneling hundreds of millions into activist causes like the No Kings movement. They lecture America on restraint while living off the largesse of billionaires.

The selective guardians of history

Where was this sudden reverence for history when rioters torched St. John’s Church — the same church where every president since James Madison has worshipped? The press called it an “expression of grief.”

Where was that reverence when mobs toppled statues of Washington, Jefferson, and Grant? Or when first lady Melania Trump replaced the Rose Garden’s lawn with a patio but otherwise followed Jackie Kennedy’s original 1962 plans in the garden’s restoration? They called that “desecration.”

If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s “visionary.”

The real desecration

The people shrieking about “historic preservation” care nothing for history. They hate the idea that something lasting and beautiful might be built by hands they despise. They mock craftsmanship because it exposes their own cultural decay.

The White House ballroom is not a scandal — it’s a mirror. And what it reflects is the media’s own pettiness. The ruling class that ridicules restoration is the same class that cheered as America’s monuments fell. Its members sneer at permanence because permanence condemns them.

Julia Beverly / Contributor | Getty Images

Trump’s improvements are an act of faith — in the nation’s symbols, its endurance, and its worth. The outrage over a privately funded renovation says less about him than it does about the journalists who mistake destruction for progress.

The real desecration isn’t happening in the East Wing. It’s happening in the newsrooms that long ago tore up their own foundation — truth — and never bothered to rebuild it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Trump’s secret war in the Caribbean EXPOSED — It’s not about drugs

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

The president’s moves in Venezuela, Guyana, and Colombia aren’t about drugs. They’re about re-establishing America’s sovereignty across the Western Hemisphere.

For decades, we’ve been told America’s wars are about drugs, democracy, or “defending freedom.” But look closer at what’s unfolding off the coast of Venezuela, and you’ll see something far more strategic taking shape. Donald Trump’s so-called drug war isn’t about fentanyl or cocaine. It’s about control — and a rebirth of American sovereignty.

The aim of Trump’s ‘drug war’ is to keep the hemisphere’s oil, minerals, and manufacturing within the Western family and out of Beijing’s hands.

The president understands something the foreign policy class forgot long ago: The world doesn’t respect apologies. It respects strength.

While the global elites in Davos tout the Great Reset, Trump is building something entirely different — a new architecture of power based on regional independence, not global dependence. His quiet campaign in the Western Hemisphere may one day be remembered as the second Monroe Doctrine.

Venezuela sits at the center of it all. It holds the world’s largest crude oil reserves — oil perfectly suited for America’s Gulf refineries. For years, China and Russia have treated Venezuela like a pawn on their chessboard, offering predatory loans in exchange for control of those resources. The result has been a corrupt, communist state sitting in our own back yard. For too long, Washington shrugged. Not any more.The naval exercises in the Caribbean, the sanctions, the patrols — they’re not about drug smugglers. They’re about evicting China from our hemisphere.

Trump is using the old “drug war” playbook to wage a new kind of war — an economic and strategic one — without firing a shot at our actual enemies. The goal is simple: Keep the hemisphere’s oil, minerals, and manufacturing within the Western family and out of Beijing’s hands.

Beyond Venezuela

Just east of Venezuela lies Guyana, a country most Americans couldn’t find on a map a year ago. Then ExxonMobil struck oil, and suddenly Guyana became the newest front in a quiet geopolitical contest. Washington is helping defend those offshore platforms, build radar systems, and secure undersea cables — not for charity, but for strategy. Control energy, data, and shipping lanes, and you control the future.

Moreover, Colombia — a country once defined by cartels — is now positioned as the hinge between two oceans and two continents. It guards the Panama Canal and sits atop rare-earth minerals every modern economy needs. Decades of American presence there weren’t just about cocaine interdiction; they were about maintaining leverage over the arteries of global trade. Trump sees that clearly.

PEDRO MATTEY / Contributor | Getty Images

All of these recent news items — from the military drills in the Caribbean to the trade negotiations — reflect a new vision of American power. Not global policing. Not endless nation-building. It’s about strategic sovereignty.

It’s the same philosophy driving Trump’s approach to NATO, the Middle East, and Asia. We’ll stand with you — but you’ll stand on your own two feet. The days of American taxpayers funding global security while our own borders collapse are over.

Trump’s Monroe Doctrine

Critics will call it “isolationism.” It isn’t. It’s realism. It’s recognizing that America’s strength comes not from fighting other people’s wars but from securing our own energy, our own supply lines, our own hemisphere. The first Monroe Doctrine warned foreign powers to stay out of the Americas. The second one — Trump’s — says we’ll defend them, but we’ll no longer be their bank or their babysitter.

Historians may one day mark this moment as the start of a new era — when America stopped apologizing for its own interests and started rebuilding its sovereignty, one barrel, one chip, and one border at a time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.