Imagine Republicans running against Hillary with the slogan: “Not your grandmother’s GOP.” If they choose a young leader, Scott Walker or Marco Rubio for president, and Condoleezza Rice for Vice President, that slogan emphasizes that tired charges of Republican racism no longer work. It also emphasizes the GOP youthfulness advantage: the grandmother in the race is Hillary. And Dr. Rice as VEEP candidate invites a direct contrast between two female secretaries of state.

Rice ran State when the bold Iraq surge turned around a failing war, while Hillary presided over the ill-considered withdrawal from Iraq that spawned ISIS. No personal story captures the American dream better than Dr. Rice’s: in the segregated South, she was childhood friends with victims of the Birmingham Church bombing. She’s not only a brilliant scholar, but a world-class ice skater and classical pianist—as well as a die-hard pro-football fanatic. Her presence could help power the Republican ticket to sweeping victory.

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When liberals and conservatives look at policies to alleviate poverty, they often disagree over the nature of public goods and whether or not the government can provide them. Conservatives ought to be asking whether or not the benefits of public goods are higher than the costs. When we don’t make cost-benefit calculations at the macro level about public goods, the poor pay.

This is a fact. Look at what’s happening in the periphery countries in Europe today. If you don’t pay attention to the macro economy and fiscal stability, you will become insolvent. And if you become insolvent, there will be austerity. And if you have austerity, it’s always the poor who pay. If you want to protect the poor, you must avoid austerity and insolvency, and the only way you can do that is with smart policies.

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For two reasons, Republicans must select a female nominee for Vice President. First, because a woman can play the attack-dog role against Hillary without backlash about sexism and, second, because the GOP must win a decisive majority of white females for any chance of victory.

But which female leaders to consider? Kelly Ayotte is youthful and charismatic, but is busy this year defending her crucial Senate seat in New Hampshire. Governor Nikki Haley is also dynamic, but deeply controversial at home in South Carolina. Carly Fiorina has gathered some momentum running for president but her mixed record as a corporate CEO offers Democrats a juicy target. Susana Martinez, popular governor of New Mexico, has strong blue-collar appeal but if the presidential nominee is also Hispanic—Rubio or Cruz—her nomination becomes problematic.

This leaves one obvious, overwhelmingly favorable choice: former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. No other possibility, female or male, offers comparable advantages.

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Amid the heated rhetoric about gay marriage comes the absurd and dangerous claim that God needs to change with the times.  New York Times columnist Frank Bruni wrote that Christians should rightly bow to “the enlightenments of modernity.”  Speaking of reproductive rights, Hillary Clinton said deep-seated religious beliefs “have to be changed.”

Nothing is more at odds with the First Amendment than arguing that God has to bow to modernity. The First Amendment affirms the free exercise of religion, whether ancient or modern. Legal scholar Richard Epstein points out that “the law is a blunt instrument that lurches first too far in one direction and then too far in the other.”  Unfortunately that’s happening with some advocates of gay marriage, pressing for a larger legal change than necessary.  There is room to accommodate same-sex marriage and its legal benefits without making Christians limit their free exercise of religion. This new liberal orthodoxy—that can tolerate no dissent (even from God)—poses a real danger to religious freedom.

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Despite recent setbacks, Hillary Clinton’s campaign remains serenely confident of victory because of their candidate’s strength among one crucial group in the electorate: white women. Actually, Hillary doesn’t even need a majority of this group; she just needs to come within ten points of the GOP candidate. In 2012, Romney won white women by a landslide margin of 14 percentage points. But Barack Obama still won the overall women’s vote because non-white females, nearly 30 percent of the women’s vote, gave him a three-to-one margin. The Clinton campaign knows they can’t replicate Obama’s historic appeal to blacks and Latinos, so they will focus on white females with feminist appeals to “woman power.”

Republicans must counter with a strong female nominee for Vice President to preserve their strength among white women. A strong female also can perform better than any male in one key role of a running mate: as an attack dog against the Democratic presidential nominee.

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The recent disclosure that computer hackers from China have successfully hacked the system of the federal government and may have obtained personnel date on all 2.1 million federal employees provides for us a lesson we really ought to pay attention to. Remember, this is the government that wants to control our healthcare. And this is the government that’s responsible for Amtrak and the U.S. Postal Service. Over the last 44 years Amtrak has received a whopping $45 billion is subsidies from the federal government. Yes you heard that right. $45 billion.

And the U.S. Postal Service operates with is annual subsidies calculated at $18 billion each and every year. Simply put: Our government is trying to do too much—and it it’s not doing it well. This is the government that wants to do more? The American people ought to be demanding competence on the things that only the government can do and, on other things, we ought to be saying loud and clear: “Thanks, but no thanks.”

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The New York Times recently published a story by Alexandra Alter. Here’s the headline: “Transgender Children’s Books Fill a Void and Break a Taboo.” The most important takeaway for parents is to understand that the transgender ideology is now very much aimed at children. Alter reports, “This year, children’s publishers are releasing around half a dozen novels in a spectrum of genres, including science fiction and young adult romance, that star transgender children and teenagers.”

Middle grade readers are identified as children ages 8 to 12. The people who are driving this revolution understand that they’re going to have to reach children and they intend to. It’s hard to say at this point where the transgender revolution is going to end. But one thing we can say for certain is that it is headed towards a great deal of acceleration in this culture. And the leaders of this revolution know that the way to accomplish such acceleration is by aiming as young as possible.

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