About all the Guardian could say about Christine O’Donnell’s victory in the Delaware GOP primary was to blubber incredulously that a person who “is pro-gun, anti-abortion, fiscally conservative and believes masturbation is a sin” could win 53% of the relevant vote. They could only maintain self-respect by sneering that the “Delaware result will at least give the Democrats hope that they can hold it. The seat might hold the balance in the Senate.”
If that’s the good news, the bad news is that a “surge of anger among US conservatives both with Barack Obama and the Republican Party” — the Guardian‘s way of saying “Washington, D.C.” — is such it gave victory to someone “widely regarded as being so far to the right as to be unelectable” — the Guardian’s way of saying “someone we didn’t expect to win.” Their crystal ball is cracked and now they’re pretending they don’t need it. The Washington Post saw a silver lining in the dark cloud and argued that with Michael Castle out of the way, a seat the Democrats once thought was lost is now safely in hand.
Castle was the heavy favorite to win in November and take the seat Biden held for three decades before he resigned to become President Obama’s vice president. Polls showed Castle leading Democrat Chris Coons, the New Castle County executive, and many Democrats considered the seat virtually gone.
Now those calculations are out the window, as exuberant Democrats predicted they would hold the seat and the GOP establishment in Washington weighed whether to shift its resources to other more attractive contests. A senior Republican, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer a candid view, said the national committee would “walk” out of the Delaware race.
But how could the conventional wisdom, both Democrat and Republican, be so wrong? Maybe they were counting the wrong chips. As the video below suggests, it may no longer be possible to consider contests, at least in the GOP primaries, as matchups between two candidates. It is no longer Candidate A vs Candidate B. It is “us versus them” and now necessary, to the consternation of Karl Rove, to see elections in terms of the contest of narratives. Maybe it wasn’t O’Donnell who beat Castle, any more than the multitudes at the “Restoring Honor” rally came to see Glenn Beck, just that they channeled a wave of disgust that is looking for a way to send a message to Washington any way it can.
embedded by Embedded Video
YouTube Direkt
It’s news that nobody from the establishment wants to hear. The Democrats may win Delaware, but at the price of watching a new political fault line define itself without being able to take much advantage of it. To the traditional horizontal divide between Republican and Democrat is added a vertical one: Washington insider vs outsider. It has divided politics into quadrants. Now the problem facing many a politician isn’t just whether to cross the aisle, but whether to speak to those outside the building. The GOP is still on course to win the House and had only an outside chance to win the Senate even had Castle triumphed. So O’Donnell’s result will not mean that much in raw arithmetic. But it does scads for atmosphere. While the total GOP vs Dem numbers might not be all they could have been without the anti-incumbent mood, those who do gain their seats in 2010 will be operating in a vastly changed environment.
The defeat of Castle serves further notice that anyone wanting to return to business as usual will probably be punished by the voters. Since the economic crisis is likely to continue, the same forces now tearing through the ranks of the establishment will continue to rampage unabated in 2011. There won’t be enough Tea Party candidates to directly alter policy, or hang a rap on. However, there will be sufficient numbers to focus the energies of a movement whose energies have not yet run their course.
The status quo remains in control of Washington. But unless they are saved by a sudden upturn in the economy, they will be trapped in a terrible dilemma: unable to run to the Left for fear of electoral retribution; unable to run to the Right out of concern for their privileged positions. And there they are likely to remain; frozen into relative immobility, waiting for the wave, or the sudden realization that it’s over and they have to find their place in the new paradigm rather than the old.
I propose a position at the Hoover Institute @ Stanford for Richard Fernandez– if he wants it we should make it happen–let us get to work if, he agrees.
Karl Rove is the architect of Karl Rove. He is the man who forced Arlan Specter on us, and did not have the class to apologize. I would dearly love to see this man run in a primary against a nobody and discover how well he is loved. Can we never be free of these types?
I’ve been reading The Blueprint, on the Democrat takeover of Colorado politics, so this might be tinged with a little “fix the glitch” bitterness – take it as you will.
I’m beginning to wonder if caucuses aren’t the way to go. You get the activist-types involved in nominating candidates, then hold a district or state convention to determine the nominees. The candidates can lobby the delegates as they wish at all levels of the convention, and have to do so mostly for themselves, rather than through the typical run-the-opponent-down method.
The result is a nominee that everyone who cares at least should be able to support, without all of the circular firing squad that destroys everyone involved before the general election even starts. Thoughts?
Talk about ta’qyi. Andtonio Lopez de Santa Victoria has offered our host most
generous terms of surrender in #1 above.
Wretch, may I suggest you channel Buck Travis? Answer with a shell and a rousing rebel yell!
Reid finds himself locked in a close contest at home, leading 46 percent to 44 percent among likely voters over Sharron Angle
Reid should be much lower in the polls–what happened?
She should be way more ahead in the polls
2010 is a tipping point year. The Tea Party is about to become a real political party, gaining strength at every turn, driven by one overarching idea, the idea that the government is broken and needs fixing. The last time this happened was in the 1850s when the just formed Republican Party, whose one overarching idea was the abolition of slavery, saw that idea draw people from both political parties, but particularly from the Whigs, who were subsumed into the Republican Party and disappeared. It is time now for the Republican establishment to disappear under the swelling voices of those who do not like either party very much, and who want real hope and change, not the Marxist kind, and not the country club kind. The Republican Party is changing, involuntarily it is true, but changing nonetheless. The name may remain, but in 2012 the nominee of the Republican Party will be a small government get off my back Tea Partier.
We’re at a time when all the bigs
Who sit in their palatial digs
Hauling loot in diesel rigs
Laughing, grinning, dancing jigs
Should know that their nice lifelong gigs
Are due to have one of those zigs
That cause these fattened oily pigs
To join the late lamented Whigs
As much as it may sound like a compliment to Richard Fernandez to find him a job at the Hoover Institution, I am concerned that such a position would undermine his influence rather than enhance it. I don’t want him “kicked upstairs” into obscurity.
Richard Fernandez has a variety of courage that is equally valuable as direct courage in battle, but different. During the Algeria War, brave members of the officer corps who defected to the OAS would sometimes hide in a room and stay away from everybody else. These men were experts at counterinsurgency, so they knew their opposition, yet they lacked the raw nerve necessary for intelligence warfare.
Our fighting men and women are excellent. They do a good job of fighting. It’s a different kind of warfare than politically organizing against one’s enemies. There are times when the only armor one has against one’s enemies is deception. Richard Fernandez respects many forms of courage, as opposed to some fools who seem to think the only form of courage is the Charge of the Light Brigade.
Are there any Tea Party candidates running in the democrat primaries? If not, why not? It seems that even though they will probably lose, we would have an idea about the level of dissatisfaction in that party.
It was really fun watching Rove’s make-up slither and slide a bit as the sweat rolled down his face when he realized the game has changed and he has no idea of the new rules. How can he “fix it”? Answer: He can’t.
The smartest thing the RNP could do would be to swallow their pride and jump on O’Donnells bandwagon, but they won’t figure that out until 2011. Watching bull elephants slowly starve to death is not a pretty sight.
Establishment types like Rove learn and understand the guts of the conventional political ecosytems in which they operate. While the ecosystem was stable the experts thrived and successfully predicted its behaviour. You might say they were fully clothed in conventional wisdom.
Now the political ecosystem has suffered a disturbance causing the experts to lose their clothes along with losing their wisdom. You might say they are bare-assed naked. Naturally they find their sudden nudity uncomfortable. They get disoriented and angry and try to cover up.
I don’t know where all this upheaval will lead in November but no-one in the establishment appears able to read the tea-leaves. A natural succession is taking place where one political ecosystem replaces another (like open grassland being invaded by Aspen followed by Spruce replacing the Aspen). Surely it’s got some years to run.
One can disagree about liberating Iraq. One can disagree about liberating Afghanistan. However, much of the opposition to fighting on this or that front isn’t tactical in terms of seeking victory on another front but rather strategic in terms of seeking America’s defeat through stifling any means whatsoever of attacking our enemies. In other words, there is a political movement dedicated to tying America’s arms behind its back so we are prevented from doing anything to defeat Islamists.
The problem isn’t just leftists, but also Faustian strategists with a basic worldview of “What do we want and how can we get it?” Whenever they see a business advantage, they demand immediate “talks” with their enemies so they can profit at the expense of American national security. Imagine if a group of industrialists had demanded immediate peace talks with Japan during World War II so the United States could sell more petroleum to Japan! No matter how tantalizing terms of surrender can be, especially to a greedy man, they are still terms of surrender.
The most interesting event in American politics isn’t what is happening, but rather what is not happening. The Democratic Party is not rising up against Barack Obama. The Democratic Party is not facing student protests, but rather student apathy. I think the Guardian fails to see how the discontent within the Republican Party is a sign of health and vitality while the Democratic Party’s seeming stability is a sign of stagnation.
The reality of the grassroots Tea Party movement is finally becoming apparent to the GOP as well as the Dems. No more “progressivism” (socialism). No more Rinos. No more big-government.
We the people have had enough. We don’t want a babysitter government. We don’t need a nanny-state. Leave us alone, and let us go about our business.
Government is the problem, not the solution.
@7. Alexis
I see your point– to a point
Hoover is a strong platform and Fernandez is well qualified and would be a great asset if you look at his body of work and point of view– he would also serve the cause well by publishing a book.
Christopher Hitchens, who is not long for this world, has an appointment at Hoover– Fernandez is more academically and ideologically qualified IMHO–I cannot see any downside and there is a potential great upside– Hoover needs new blood to carry the American Vision forward and Fernandez will do that for the greater good– just my opinion–maybe a visiting scholarship @ Hoover could be a first step–but I, and I believe many others want to see and hear his voice there.
It will take more than one set of primaries or one election for “mainstream” RNSC types to acknowledge that the river has forever burst it’s banks. They won’t like it. They don’t like it. But any party or official continuing to compromise the core principles of the electorate will sooner or later be swept from office. As the old saying goes “Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way.”
Congrats to Christine!
We don’t need anymore unreliable betrayers like Castle in the Senate. Adding one more finger in the wind wimp would have just given more cover for those Republicans who are always willing to sell us out. We need stalwarts like O’Donnell who are willing to fight for our rights and our Country when the going gets tough. If your Senator isn’t willing to fight for you, who needs ‘em? Hope this win for O’Donnell scares the crap out of GOP old guard.
Rove as much as any RINO is the reason the Republicans are in such sorry shape in this time of great crisis. He stuffed the RNC with as many conservative hating RINOs as he could find, and was the strategist behind a lot of disgusting capitulation to the Left during the Bush administration on issues like illegal immigration. spending, the Medicare Drug plan, and No Child left Behind. Principled he ain’t.
I’m kinda glad he beclowned himself tonight; he exposed himself as one strategist we definitely don’t need to listen to anymore. Rove has lost all credibility now.
The buzz on the blogs is all about “losing the Senate” and, as Wretchard says, the “arithmetic”.
There is something to be said for that, but it overlooks the wildfire that is clearly sweeping across the political landscape.
Comments are place for your opinions on the subject. Compliments extended to the post author, however well meant, are probably not appropriate.
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside
And it is ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’.
It doesn’t look like O’Donnell is an ideal candidate, and she may lose the general, but that doesn’t matter that much to me. If you see things in team red – team blue terms, you may consider her nomination a travesty. I happen to think that the GOP has one thing they need to accomplish over the next couple of years: to define their purpose. Since I think that the likes of O’Donnell and Angle will move that conversation forward, I’m all for it. If the DEMs retain the Senate majority, so be it.
This is a long struggle, and it won’t be resolved this election cycle. It’s just starting. The only thing that can bring this insurgency to a halt is the economy righting itself in time for the 2012 elections, and I don’t see that happening. If anything, I think things will be worse.
The GOP establishment is appalled, and rightly so. They have no interest in changing the game, they just want to control it. They’ve banked on victory in 2010 by being “not democrats”, figuring that their supporters will fall in line and vote for their candidates, because “they have nowhere else to go”. Some have decided that they do have somewhere else to go.
Rove and the rest are analyzing this using an outmoded model, and they can’t quite bring themselves to see that. If you don’t want things to change you’ll jump through all sorts of hoops to deny that change is occurring.
We will soon see who the real enemy is, and that’s the GOP establishment. They have as much disdain for us rubes as the Dems do, they’re just more circumspect about it, since they don’t have the media to downplay their “gaffes”. They’re used to being portrayed in a very negative light, so are more likely not to say things out loud that they don’t want repeated. But the contempt is real, and it’s going to come out now that they’re threatened. I welcome that.
There’s a lot of danger here. The 2012 GOP primaries may bear a striking resemblance to the DEM primaries in the run up to the 1860 elections, although I doubt we’ll see the GOP split in two in 2012. But who knows? Things move very fast in this age. The 1860 election was disasterous for the DEMS, led to a civil war, and kept them out of power for 20 plus years. They and the Country lost big time, and many will say that’s exactly what will happen if we don’t relearn how to “go along to get along”. The problem is, many aren’t getting along, and they likely won’t be in 2012.
In 1860 the DEMS lost big time because their cause was not just – slavery was an evil, and there was no way around that. This time, as our host says, the unified establishment is standing on very shifting sands. DEM and GOP have colluded over years to put us in a box where there’s no visible way out. The things they would have to do to salvage this are radical, would hurt many people, and are just not politically viable (another way of saying they don’t want to consider them, much less do them). Some of them realize that, but many are still living the lie. If we just enact policy X, things will turn around. Not this time. This time the established are on shaky ground, and moral force lies with the opposition.
I want to see a party emerge that reflects a truly different political philosophy, and I think this is a good start. If the GOP shortly goes the way of the dinosaurs I think that’s a small price to pay.
I’ve never heard Karl Rove sound so bilious, not even against a Democrat. Heretofore, he was a “one eyed Jack”. I had only seen one side of him. I’m sending a campaign contribution to O’Donnell.
I’ll say it again.
The Socialists have hijacked the Democratic Party/
The actual Democrats (Bush, Rove, Graham, et al) have hijacked the Republican Party.
The TEA Party is the effort to take back the Republican Party from the Democrats.
Forget winning in November. Win now! No more Snowe, Collins, Graham, McCain, etc…. If that means we fail in Novenmber, so what?
The funny thing is, it is the path to victory in November. Honest, flawed candidates with all their warts.
This November shall signal the death knell of the dinosaur media. It shall demonstrate that their power is broken, and Republicans no longer need to dance to the MSM tune.
Rove is appalled that a candidate as flawed as O’Donnell is going into the lists as the GOP’s hope to turn the Senate. What if she has been living illegally off her campaign funds? Do you think the Delaware Dems can gin up a criminal investigation by the election? Do you believe that Mike Castle has had a gay affair as some in her camp have claimed? Do you think that O’Donnell is constrained by by anything but her strange desire to enter public life as a US Senator? Do you think that she was being “followed” by Mike Castle in 2008? The woman sounds delusional. In no sense has she been held accountable.
Having watched the Dem media lapdogs attempt to dismember the wholly likeable and transparent Sarah Palin (AP put 11 fact checkers to work on her book; how many reporters did it ever put on Obama’s life and thoughts?), we are about to watch the public flaying of an extremely dubious character– a cute but irresponsible grifter. Dem opposition research will destroy her by the election.
I’ll say the same thing about O’Donnell I have said about Obama–I wouldn’t let her run a candy stand. This is a total whiff by the Tea Party, and lovers of liberty are going to pay the price.
Karl gave the Dem’s some great sound bites. Dare they use them? “Even Karl thinks she nuts.”
The Washington Post ran a picture of O’Donnell with her mouth open wider than I’ve seen a mouth open. “Freeze that Frame and print it!” No, they are not taking sides.
I think the message that comes out to most voters is that the Republicans are getting rid of the dead wood and the Democrats are running away from the mess they’ve made.
When Sarah Palin endorsed candidate who lost a few months back they talked like she was done, finished. And now Sarah is running the table. Hmmm. Does that indicate she is back in the game?
Is the Tea Party the new Fashion? Obama is so 2008. Tea Party style!
This “angry rejection” thing is starting to pizz me off. It is not true.
Voters are simply choosing the most conservative candidates. And ignoring party bosses desperate to tell them what to do, who to vote for.
sometimes the most conservative one is easy… and sometimes it puts a fly in the republican ointment. Sometimes the most conservative one is a personally wobbly young woman who seems to not have lived a perfect life. Big deal. We are voting for conservatism, not the person.
It is “anti” only in the sense that we are rejecting establishment types who circle their wagons and protect their own groups.
Karl Rove was apoplectic last night. Unbecoming of him, not much of a republican.
we the voters are measuring the candidates based on their commitment to conservative principles. A lot of us voters have had financial problems in life. SO FREAKIN WHAT? I would jump in with both feet if someone elected ME to the Senate, and I would do my damndest to help this country out of a DEEP HOLE by using brains, morals and good judgment, the latter hard-won in my instance. Real life is great prep.
But it’s not about the people, not about the candidate. It’s about conservatism.
/end of story
Rove’s phillipic against O’Donnell on Hannity last night was reminiscent of Perez Hilton’s nasty rant against the young woman in the Miss U.S.A. pageant last year. Castle was defeated, good riddance.
O’Donnell’s win enormously increases the influence of the Tea Party, starting tonight, over every Republican elected official in the country. They are all now on notice that if they go along with the Democrats, voting for more spending and a bigger government, then the Tea Party will not only come after them, but also that it can’t be stopped or bargained with, negotiated with or scared off by arguments about losing the seat to a Democrat in November. The Tea Party has now emerged as the Terminator for ‘big government’ Republicans.
We will see who plays a better game of ‘chicken’, but right now given the mood among voters this looks like it may turn out to be a spectacularly successful political strategy against the country’s ‘political class’, even though it’s an emergent phenomenon rather than something cooked up by a Karl Rove.
It’s also worth noting that an emergent, unorganized movement is extraordinarily difficult to target using Alinskyite tactics, which is why the left and the media keep trying to appoint a leader for the Tea Party, or attach to it any of their usual negative labels. If they could just pin it down they could go after it with their usual tool set, demonizing everybody supporting it through ‘guilt by association’, but so far every weapon they try against it just seems to convince another chunk of the electorate that the Tea Party candidate, even if a bit kooky, is way more likely to be the only one on the ballot who is on their side.
It’s impossible to say how far this may or may not go; for all we know tonight could mark the high water mark of the tea Party phenomenon. Nevertheless, what it would mean to incumbents of both parties if it were to continue, as they must now be starting to understand, is the looming bankruptcy of the credibility of an entire political class.
The conventional political view sees O’Donnell’s election as meaning that the Pubs have lost their chance at the Delaware seat. However:
(a) the “establishment” thought there was no way Scott Brown could win in Mass.
(b) the Donks successfully got Al Franken elected in Minn.
This is a “wave” election. I think the Pubs could run a dead chicken against Coons, and if the so called moderate Republicans cease their hissy fit and stop their cranial-rectal inversion and go out and vote for her, that yes she could win. Because notice in the primary the Republican voters outnumbered the Democrat voters by 2 – 1.
So if the Donk vote is depressed in the general, and a huge number of people are turning out to vote AGAINST the party of Pelosi and Reid and Obama — well she could very well win. Especially since Coons is a “progressive” e.g. Marxist. She could be Daffy Duck and still win.
#17 – beware the ides of september!
“unless they are saved by a sudden upturn in the economy…”
The condition applies to the Right as well as the Left. The electorate demands instant gratification – and expects someone else to pay for it.
Are any of these “Conservative” candidates running on a platform that tells taxpayers they must be responsible for their own personal well-being and financial stability? That the ultimate solution to our domestic fiscal crisis will require considerable voter sacrifice and perhaps an adjustment in living standards and income expectations? That we may have to go back to the idea of a single-provider family unit? I haven’t seen it.
The “Tea Party” supporters I talk to want the government to “take their hands out of my pockets” and to stop “stealing my money from me.” When I ask them then what happens to the millions of people who have been brought up to anticipate the established entitlements, they say, in effect: “too bad.” (And this, amazingly, even from people already living on the retirement dole!)
These same people think we can simply pack ten or twelve or twenty million (pick your number) illegal Mexicans on trains and ship them back south of the border and “the fence.” Then we can put more Americans to work (washing cars and chopping broccoli?). We can stop being the world’s policeman, and bring all our troops home from Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq and wherever (and simply bomb the stuffing out of our adversaries?). We can tariff the profits out of foreign manufacture to “keep American jobs in America” (remember how well that worked with steel in the early 2000s?).
The “Conservative” successes in this election cycle reflect dissatisfaction with the current administration’s failure to deliver on its promises: to end partisan bickering and resolve complex global economic difficulties while “cutting taxes on 95% of taxpayers.”
Perhaps Obama and Axelrod are counting on the inevitable, equivalent voter disappointment when the opposition finds itself similarly stymied. Then in 2012 they can say “See – I tole ya so.”
“They are all now on notice that if they go along with the Democrats, voting for more spending and a bigger government, then the Tea Party will not only come after them, but also that it can’t be stopped or bargained with, negotiated with or scared off by arguments about losing the seat to a Democrat in November.”
I think that’s worth a Senate seat, even if it turns out to be the 51st seat.
To a Senator control of the Senate means more staff, a larger share of the Senate overhead budget and maybe better offices. For conservatives it means the slow torment of one or two Republican Senators grandstanding, extorting favors and collaborating with and possibly switching to the other side. This primary was a perfect opportunity to warn Senators against such behavior.
W: About all the Guardian could say about Christine O’Donnell’s victory in the Delaware GOP primary was to blubber incredulously that a person who “is pro-gun, anti-abortion, fiscally conservative and believes masturbation is a sin”
The Euro-Socialists hate traditional Americans, our love of individuality and our Judeo-Christian Values. Like Karl Marx they wish to create a totalitarian Brave New World and a Brand New Man (serf) to fit inside. This Brave New World will also be pro-gun, but all the guns will be in their hands – in the hands of government agents. The Brave New World will be pro-abortion and will consider heterosexual marriage a sin.
“We’ll cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman… In the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth as one takes eggs from a hen… Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card… There will be no loyalty except loyalty toward the Party. There will be no love except the love of Big Brother… There will be no heart, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science… Do you begin to see then what kind of world we are creating… a world of fear and treachery and torment… ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph and self-abasement; everything else we shall destroy…it will be a world of terror… The more the party is powerful the less it will be tolerant; the weaker the opposition the tighter the despotism… Always we shall have the heretic at our mercy, screaming with pain, broken up, contemptible; and in the end utterly penitent, saved from himself, crawling to our feet of his own accord. That is the world that we are preparing.” George Orwell – 1984
It’s not really big news that America is a center right country. What is big news is the resurgence of the country’s self-confidence and the emerging reestablishment of Americanism as a cultural force.
After a decade of being on the ropes, wobbling to maintain its feet, the resurgence of America proper is at hand, and that will eventually be seen in a renewed belief in American exceptionalism. Just in time for the rest of the world, most likely.
How do you like the “Can You Hear Us Now?” shout-out from our tiny corner of Delaware? Congratulations to all the candidates of people’s choice.
I will be ‘restocked and reloaded’ for the coming battle. The fight to take back control has just barely begun.
W: About all the Guardian could say about Christine O’Donnell’s victory in the Delaware GOP primary was to blubber incredulously that a person who “is pro-gun, anti-abortion, fiscally conservative and believes masturbation is a sin”
How about this one from The London Daily Mirror:
“Were I a Kerry voter, though, I’d feel deep anger, not only at them returning Bush to power, but for allowing the outside world to lump us all into the same category of moronic muppets. The self-righteous, gun-totin’, military-lovin’, sister-marryin’, abortion-hatin’, gay-loathin’, foreigner-despisin’, non-passport ownin’ red-necks, who believe God gave America the biggest d*ck in the world so it could urinate on the rest of us and make their land “free and strong.”
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/columnists/reade/2004/11/05/god-help-america-115875-14832124/
Mark Steyn rebuts the anti-American Euro-Socialists:
“But the fact remains: Europe is dying and America isn’t… A North Country non-gun owner might tire of all the Second Amendment kooks with the gun racks in the pickups and move somewhere where everyone is, at least officially, a non-gun owner just like him: Washington, D.C., say, or London. And suddenly he finds that, in a wholly disarmed society, his house requires burglar alarms and window locks and security cameras…. it’s the Christian fundamentalists, Holy Rollers, born-again Bible Belters, and Jesus freaks of Godly America who are rational and skeptical, especially of Euro-delusions. It’s secular Europe that’s living on faith. Uncowed by Islamists, undeferential to government, unshriveled in its birth rates, redneck America is a more reliable long-term bet… In the end, the world can do without American rap and American cheeseburgers. American ideas on individual liberty, federalism, capitalism, and freedom of speech would be far more helpful… But America can survive, prosper, and defend its freedom only if it continues to believe in itself, in the sturdier virtues of self-reliance, in the centrality of family, and in the conviction that our country really is the world’s last best hope.” Mark Steyn – America Alone
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/224240/god-and-guns/mark-steyn
I don’t think there’s any chance the economy will improve in time to influence an election in the forseeable future.
I do think there’s a pretty good chance that big changes in the national security picture will influence the 2012 election.
I wonder how that would influence these rifts. Would it re-shape the quadrants Wretchard discusses here?
More interesting than O’Donnell or any other individual Tea Party candidate is the grassroots political pushback that is occurring. That I think is Wretchard’s point. The candidates are less important than the movement itself. The movement will make mistakes (I’m not saying O’Donnell is one, just making a generic point). What’s significant is the Tea Party movement itself.
A literary parallel is Frank Herbert’s Dune. Those ruling the Empire were so complacent with the status quo they couldn’t conceive that anything could change. All the political players knew the rules and maneuvered within them. Paul Atreides changed the rules and won. More importantly, Paul Muad Dib’s Fedaykin were a force unto themselves, one even their titular leader had little control. It was they, not Paul who destroyed the Empire.
Is a political tsunami on the horizon or is it just an unusally high tide? The foolish discount, the wise adjust and prepare.
Karl Rove is fighting the last war. Not yet realizing that the game has changed.
Don @ 36: Does this mean we have to be concerned about guys riding giant worms? Don’t let the Islamists get ahold of that idea.
I have been disgusted with the Republcican Party in Florida for years; ideolgy aside, they have made one stupid or venal misstep after another, and it was all attributable to personalities protecting their perks.
The supposedly Republican governor realized he was toast in the Republican Senate primary and went independant. The former representative and current attorney general is so P.Oed at being beat by an outsider that he refuses to endorse the winner of the primary. The former state party chairman is under indictment for embezzlement.
And this is not bad. They were incompetant before and now, by a strange coincidence, we are getting rid of the incompetant by focusing on ideology rather than the Old Boy network. Funny how that works out. And that is what the Left really has to be afraid of. Getting rid of the old wood means getting rid of the dead wood, too.
I think it’s very easy to misread the message being sent by voters. The guardian, a leftist rag of absolute zero objectivity has a prism so thick, it’s astonishing that they can puke out even their narrow and myopic tripe so regularly.
This land of ours is essentially centrist. It may be center right on most issues, a live and let live center left on a couple of other issues…but it DESPISES extremism.
Funny that…because, the voters will seek balance and equilibrium by shifting as far as needed to balance what it sees as the current “too far”. Currently, it loathes the arrogance, crooked, condescending, tone deaf EXTREME leftism.
It sees the balance point as being wayyyyyyy too far left and it is pulling hard right to fix it, and drag it kicking and screaming to the center. If you are a typical leftist Democrat and you aren’t in a brain dead safe harbor like Cambridge or Berkeley…you are in deep trouble.
If you are a go along to get along Republican, unwilling to get in the trenches and fix your stare on your opponent…as well as fix the extremism that this electorate hates…you are not likely to win against a more determined primary opponent.
People keep reading the tea leaves from THEIR prisms. The voters aren’t throwing a tantrum, they aren’t wildly voting in a fit or spasm…they are “fixing” the spectrum’s equilibrium. The legacy media is recoiling from the truth, they don’t particularly like facts anyway…they will continue to insult the masses.
The Democrats are so arrogant and vacuous, they think they need to simply do a better job of talking down to the great unwashed, so that the mouth breathers finally “get it” why rampant, unchecked leftism is really, really, in their best interests after all. Brain dead and arrogant…they will never get the message being sent back. “You don’t need to talk more, you need to listen…jackass.”
The Republicans know they have some sort of advantage, they simply don’t grasp what it is….and what it isn’t. They can’t harness it, because they are …in typical fashion…running around in circles, trying to react from a standard playbook that doesn’t apply any longer. They don’t grasp what the Tea Party is all about, they don’t grasp why “nice guys” are being tossed aside, they don’t understand how to capitalize on the tsunami roaring toward November.
They are going to get swept up on shore, like so much flotsam and jetsam…and when it all subsides, they are just as likely to not know what the hell just happened.
Why are Chris Christie and Mitch Daniels popular. Why is Paul Ryan popular? Why did Delaware turn out the way it did?
Bury the old paradigm. Stop looking through the same old prism. Defeat rampant, unchecked, extreme leftism. Mirror the center right electorate, listen to them, heed their message. Or get swept out to sea in the massive undertow.
Add Karl Rove to your ignore list. If Castle is so “electable” then why was he beaten so handily?
O’Donnell following so closely on the Terry Jones incident is another indicator that the Establishment has lost control of the Narrative. People are no longer interested in hearing the story they have to tell. Rove is still counting Rs and Ds while the great unwashed are looking for candidates who know that we still have a Constitution.
I read somewhere that 14 million guns and 14 billion rounds of ammunition were sold in the US last year. Nothing says “Don’t Tread on Me” quite like a musket hanging over the fireplace.
The voters have demanded a choice, not the same thing in D and R wrappers. It’s our country and our money and we’re taking it back.
The Country Class has, it seems, begun it’s revolt against the Ruling Class. What better place to start than in the Party that is supposed to be representing them. I don’t think that anyone seriously entertains any hope of returning the Dems to any sort of patriotism or responsibility-in-government so there were two options; start another party or take over the Repubs.
This very idea was discussed on this forum about a year ago, with many commentors suggesting a winnowing-out of the RINOs and replacement with Tea-Party afilliates. It has come to pass, win or lose the primary winners have placed the other Repubs on notice. RINOs will soon be an endangered species with any luck. Having them in the party is like having a weak rower on your sculling team, dead weight that contributes little to the team effort.
Getting nominated is the easy part (OK, not really easy with your party working against you at times) winning is tougher, but the real test is getting something accomplished in DC. That will be the toughest struggle.
On the home front we should all emulate Papa Ray in each and every way that we can, contribute to candidates we like, deliver flyers etc etc. Down the road we must also continue to hold the Congresscritters feet to the fire, not slip back into the political lethargy that allowed this mess to happen in the first place. DC isn’t the only place that we can act, local government and state houises all need a good cleaning as well. You all pay taxes, supervise the people that are spending your money.
Better yet keep your money and spend it yourself.
41. Peter Boston
“…Nothing says “Don’t Tread on Me” quite like a musket hanging over the fireplace.”
I think an AR-15 does pretty good too, not so loud as a musket but it does speak a little faster. Not nearly as pretty to look at though.
And don’t forget that by FBI estimates there already were between 60 and 80 million guns in civilian hands before the Dems elected the Greatest Gun Salesman Ever as our Resident.
Thanks you Delaware wingnuts for the gift of O’Donnell!
Thank you Delaware wingnuts for the gift of O’Donnell!
“Forget winning in November. Win now! No more Snowe, Collins, Graham, McCain, etc…. If that means we fail in Novenmber, so what?”
This if it makes you feel good do it attitude is absurd. Rove went off, but after reflection, I can appreciate where he is coming from. My worst fears are likely to come true…the Tea Party movement may change the Republican Party, but it will not slow Obama’s change of the country, quite the contrary. Hope I’m wrong.
NOTE TO RINOs; Call your country club and renew your membership now….if they will have you.
PS: dont have your aide make the call as they will likely want to hear directly from you that you still have access to the funds required.
Here’s a disturbing thought:
The establishment Republicans are not tone-deaf or clueless. They understand that in the aggregate, the country has shifted significantly to the left from where it was, and they are accomodating the majority of those who consider themselves “right” but who would be really left in another era. The propanganda has been so marvelously insidious, they don’t even realize how they have been shunted to the other side.
The Tea Party, while numerous and energized, still only represents a minority admist the majority who have bought into the left’s ideas enough to make our undoing inevitable.
I hope that is not the truth, but I sometimes wonder…
As I have said before, the election of Barak Obama was not in and of itself the disaster; that has been ongoing for a while with a ruling class that simply views itself as a modern aristocracy and a population which increasingly does not understand the founding principles of the nation. They are okay with a ruling class, even if because many of them don’t realize what that really entails.
The only way we are REALLY going to turn it around is to cut the Federal government off at the knees by both electing true conservatives or libertarians, rolling back Federal power and reach and getting State governments to begin reasserting their power instead of suckling at the Fed teat.
Anything else is stalling for time.
However, unless there is a true and solid majority out there that is truly center right at the least, we won’t get a solid majority, and certainly not a large and dedicated one that can overcome the inertia.
As Richard pointed out many weeks ago, the 2010 election is about the self proclaimed ‘elite’ establishment and the rest of us. Castle was a RINO and part of the establishment game of “heads I win , tails you lose”.
By running a Democrat as a Republican, the Democrats would win every time.
The voters have figured out that a crook is a crook is a crook and it matters not if their hair is parted on the left or the right. Notice how well those that put their hair in a pony tail are doing?
It is starting to look like 2010 is the year of the Woman. “Das is goot” to quote Rommel.
Palin is SOOOOOOOOOO smart. By helping females get elected in 2010, she is preparing the battlefield for 2012. She is building a solid base of support for her campaign as well as her legislative agenda.
GO SARA GO! Channeling Flash Gorden this morning.
The tea party is the 21st century American version of the mob that stormed the Bastille.
All the talk makes me wonder about two things.
Why would Wretchard want to give up a world wide audience and the revenue it could produce for a tiny little niche market on the verge of extinction? Belmont Club could be put into syndication for a whole lot more then some Pundit at an obscure MSM outlet makes.
Two, is the anti-troll squad ready to admit that Victor is a lot of things, but a troll isn’t one of them? Or was the Victor the troll thingie just an attempt to abuse a new found power? Censorship breeds mental disorders. It is more harmful to the censors then the censored.
Thank you, Sharron Angle. Thank you, Christine O’Donnell.
49. Weary G
Right you are, the Repub leadership might just have enough savvy to spot the change coming and tell the RINos et al to play along with the Tea Party people just enough to get re-elected, thinking that they can go back to Business As Usual when the dust settles. For far too long they have gotten away with being Socialism-In-Slow-Motion (as opposed the the Dems who are Communism at any speed, as long as it is uber-fast). The Party needs to rediscover it’s principles and return to it’s roots. This message needs to be driven home often and loudly at all levels from Party meetings to national elections. If they won’t listen, dump them and get someone that will. Better an honest enemy than an unreliable friend.
Sarah Rolph @ 35: “I do think there’s a pretty good chance that big changes in the national security picture will influence the 2012 election.”
Very perceptive! And probably correct. There are connections between US internal politics and the actions of other players on the international scene — connections which will be easier to recognize AFTER the event.
We are seeing an evolution in the on-going Civil Cold War. The dividing lines are now a bit sharper and we see those who used to be part of us now part ways. This is to be expected. I have seen it put many ways but I see the line of divide between the producers and the consumers.
For the first time, I went to our local TEA Party meeting last night. It was a bit painful to watch, no orginization, no agenda, no mission statment. Just trying to set up an event with no idea on how to do it. However, there is a lot of anger and both parties were not liked. They (and myself) know that the time to act is now. What to do is the problem. Making speaches to the converted just doesn’t seem like the right thing to do.
Amadeus48: “I’ll say the same thing about O’Donnell I have said about Obama–I wouldn’t let her run a candy stand.”
But I don’t want conservatives senators to run anything. I want them to dismantle big government and let the states run their own business.
Presidents are executives, so they run the government. But that government should be tightly constrained regarding what it demands and requires of citizens.
The Democrats have been sending dubious characters to Congress for years, and now some of them are getting censured and even jailed. Hooray. But O’Donnell is unfit to run for office?
If Delaware sends a flawed character to the Senate, but her aim is to dismantle government, that sounds like a character I can tolerate and even admire. And vote out next time if need be.
49. Weary G
One (solid) step at a time. But the great unwashed had been awaken, and We The People will not let up.
That was also the message I got from Restoring Honor Rally in DC. You look at such a humongous task and think it is too much for any individual. But there are brothers and sisters in spirit everywhere, if Palin or Beck (or any other Heroes) fail or falter, there will be others coming forward. You Betcha! (can’t resist.)
Sindarian 54: “They (and myself) know that the time to act is now. What to do is the problem.”
The Tea Party movement must culminate in a Constitutional amendment which would represent “Winning the Battle of the Republic.” As things now stand the American Marxists (call them Socialists if you prefer) are “Winning the Battle of Democracy” because they (The Marxist Pigs of Animal Farm) are buying the vote of the lazy, tax-eating American Proletariat Class with property stolen from the laboring, tax-paying American Middle Class.
“The proletariat (non-disabled poor) will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital (property) from the bourgeoisie (middle class), to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state (Marxist Government)… Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property. You must, therefore, confess that by “individual” you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible… We have seen above that the first step in the revolution by the (non) working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.” Karl Marx
http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html
cfbleachers (#40):
I think you’ve nailed it.
Jamie Irons
“…the Tea Party movement may change the Republican Party, but it will not slow Obama’s change of the country, quite the contrary. Hope I’m wrong.”
Fear not, you are wrong.
In 2009 the Democrats won a very rare trifecta to control two branches of government. Even so, Obama only got his way on health care by demanding that Democrat legislators make an immense leap of faith in voting for a program that the electorate didn’t want. That was the legislative high water mark for Obama and a very rare and unusual occurrence in national politics.
The lesson learned by Democrat legislators, that the President didn’t know what the heck he was doing, will have a lasting effect on Democrats when they are asked to support legislation in the future.
What is happening is somewhat equivalent to the gramscian “long march through the institutions,” except its coming from the other direction. And instead of focusing on academia, the media, and the arts the current march is directed straight at the citadel of power.
#8:
“Are there any Tea Party candidates running in the democrat primaries?”
Hopefully, the displaced RINOs will return to their true home, the Democratic party. After all, the true benefit of the Tea Party is the displacement (not elimination) of progressive politicians.
I would say that the fact that she is polling at 35% in the general election is indicative that her ideas are in the minority by definition. Granted her ideas are in the majority of the republicans, but that does not mean the rest of the state has any interest in her becoming a senator. Besides that fact just because she might be small government does not mean she is not also crazy. The things she has said on record make her sound completely nutty, and the MAJORITY of people agree with that statement. You are in the minority.
The powers to be at the GOP just reversed their childish statement from last night.
They are now supporting O’Donnell and have reported they have sent a check for the max allowed to her campaign…
Amazing what a little grass roots pressure can do isn’t it.
61. MSO
“…RINOs will return to their true home, the Democratic party”
And hopefully they will the Arlen Specter treatment there, nobody likes a turncoat, not even politicians.
Like I said earlier; better an honest enemy than an unreliable friend. Not that I am an ideological purist, but we cannot afford to be putting time and money behind people that betray principles when it comes to crunch time. The Conservatives need to espouse a short list of core principles and stick to them come Hell or high water.
Some call them litmus tests; I call them values (a word hated by Leftists, to them everything is relative). You either have them or you don’t.
Small Governemnt.
Strong defense.
Lower and simpler taxes.
Less interference in the life of the individual.
Reverence for the Constitution.
No more Nanny-State.
Stick with those, don’t quibble about the rest, and we all would be fine.
Village, come take your idiot back. Rove is a joke (throw in Dick Morris, Mary Matalin, etc.) These political operators are largely unprincipled, unimaginative and loyal to nothing but their next K Street check. Hannity’s such a shill for GOP central headquarters talking points, he can’t take Rove to task. “This is the only point I might disagree with you, Karl” He should have called him the tone deaf political whore he is. Hannity brought up Arlen Sphincter and let Rove skate right by that one. Rove is the architect all right; the architect of the Obama/Reid/ Pelosi government.
O’Donnell’s victory is a resounding “Hell no” to the political pimps, thieves, demagogues and empty suits who are destroying our nation. Win or lose in November, this can’t go on!
The Economist ran an article comparing the Democrat and Republican candidates for President Obama’s old Senate seat.
My reply to them:
“As a registered Illinois voter, I intend to vote for Mark Kirk (R) in the upcoming election. Your article completely misses a vital point; regardless of the relative qualifications of the two candidates, the overwhelming issue is restoring the checks and balances to the Federal Government. If we fail to do that, America may be consigned to the dustbin of History. The best we can hope for is gridlock, but the alternative is too terrible to contemplate.”
Ya’ know what?
The Delaware primary was not so much about O’Donnell vs whatzisname.
It was not about Republicans vs Democrats (in a PRIMARY it isn’t supposed to be!).
It was not about conservatives vs marxists.
It was not about the tea party movement (I insist that is correctly spelled with all lower case letters) vs anybody.
It was not about a number of other things that have been mentioned.
It WAS about We, The People vs the three “E”‘s — Empowered Establishment Elites (or Effetes if you prefer).
I think we need crazy people in Congress. Lots of them. The U.S. Constitution was also a crazy idea from some crazy people.
The conventional wisdom is looking like a straight shot from the ditch to the cliff. What is the incentive to stick with conventional candidates whose entire repertoire consists of more conventional statist solutions?
Almost by definition you would have to be crazy to willingly subject yourself to the certain character assassination barrage aimed at every Tea Party friendly candidate. Only a person with some higher ideal that being accepted into the inner circle by the elites would take that burden on.
Losing with an O’Donnell is a more positive result than winning with a Castle.
62. Brian N
That’s OK with the DE Republican voters – the result showed we have taken that into consideration, and this is what we want.
Besides she would fit right in. You can’t deny nobody is nuttier when you have Biden as the DE standard.
The $140,000 in small donations that has flowed into O’Donnell’s campaign coffers in the last twelve hours is a clear message to the RINOs in Washington, that oh, maybe you aren’t so necessary after all. You don’t really have many votes and surprise you aren’t the only ones with control of campaign funds. The people can contribute directly to those they want to support. By the way how has your campaign donations been doing this year?
As I watched the Delaware Republican Senate primary results come in I couldn’t help thinking if Linsey Graham, has $21 million in campaign funds and if he could some how get that guy Alvin Greene to run against him in 2014?
@ 52 anton
“The Party needs to rediscover it’s [sic] principles and return to it’s [sic] roots.”
“It’s” is a contraction for “it is” just as “that’s” is for “that is” or “what’s” is for “what is.”
Don’t get all pissed off now. Just get it right, okay?
LONG – TIME reader, first time poster, This morning at the gym we, (a fellow BC reader and I) were discussing this very topic, It seems to me that we as conservatives must not let the MSM or the Rockerfeller republican types control the narrative of this woman or other Tea Party/conservative candidates, it was a MAJOR mistake to let these groups pressure the rest of us into removing Newt Gingrich – The left feared and hated Gingrich because he defended (like Reagan)conservatism and he defended it well, he was a man of ideas, and more often than not he defeated the left in the arena of ideas. The MSM controlled the narrative of all stories about him and he lost favor because of it. Learn this lesson – for me I will not allow thoes bastards to use this tactic aginst us anymore – THEY do not get to decide that one set of standards is o-k for their candidate, while another exists for mine. This goes for the elites in the GOP as well. Yeah, thanks alot Karl for your brillance in helping to support Arlen Spector for so long… how did that work out? Jackass.
66. Peter
I agree with you. I’ve always voted for gridlock, for fear of a dramatic shift in either direction, but it solves nothing. I generally don’t put much faith in the politicos. The credit card act of 09 mandated simpler language in cc statements and t’s and c’s (although it gave card companies plenty of time to cover their posteriors) Washington should be forced to swallow it’s own regulatory medecine. Leave no place to hide. simplify the language in bills,flatten tax code, impose term limits etc. It would take a true maverick to make that happen, and they wouldn’t have to be all that smart.
then we might not have quite so many issues as we do now, and influence might not be so easily peddled. That’s the kind of change I can believe in. But thena again, gridlock is all I can hope for.
cfb/40; Why are Chris Christie and Mitch Daniels popular. Why is Paul Ryan popular?
–how about: to a marked degree, none of the threee habitually ‘take a position’ in their communications with the citizens. Rather, they have a few basics in mind, and whatever question they might encounter, they just wing it from where they stand on those few big things.
Astonishingly uplifting to witness, and astonishing more that it’s so astonishing.
I haven’t checked O’Donnell’s background, so I don’t know if the conservative critique that she has multiple flaws is right or wrong, or that those flaws make her unelectable.
But Wretchard’s observation that the electorate is divided not just into a Republican/Democratic divide but also into an insider/outsider divide is a good one. The Repubs needed to get a wake-up call, and O’Donnell’s win does just that. Castle wasn’t a bad Repub pol, just complacent that insider institutional support would carry him. Wrong. Ironically, he appears to have walked the walk, but didn’t talk the talk. You gotta do both to solidify your base.
Expect O’Donnell’s primary win to scare the bejeebers out of complacent Dems and Repubs both. Both will tack more conservative in their rhetoric to shore up their election this year. Hopefully that will carry over into their voting record before 2012. That’s a very good thing.
Right now, polls put O’Donnell at 35% of the vote against the Dem. If that number starts to creep up, it’ll be an indication that all heck is going to break loose in November across this country.
Sweet.
Sept 7, Rasmussen Poll
Coons leads conservative activist Christine O’Donnell, who is challenging Castle for the GOP Senate nomination in a primary next Tuesday, by a 47% to 36% margin.
All the doom and gloom prognostications about O’Donnell in the general elections are based on nothing. There is no polling information for O’Donnell vs. Coons with Castle out of the picture.
Peter Boston @ 68 said:
“Losing with an O’Donnell is a more positive result than winning with a Castle.”
That’s the concept that I’m wrestling with. This euphoria over O’Donnell reminds me of the initial euphoria surrounding Ross Perot. In the end, all Ross Perot really achieved was splitting the conservative vote and allowing Bill Clinton to be elected.
If O’Donnell could win the general election and the Republicans regain control of the Senate then I would say the TEA party was a “good thing”.
Here are some hard truths: Obama is President of the United States and Nancy Pelosi is Speaker of the House. Obama is arguably the most incompetent man to serve as President since Warren G. Harding. Pelosi is arguably the most dangerous and cynical socialist to ever serve as Speaker of the House. It is a national catastrophe that Obama and Pelosi are running the country while we’re in an economic depression.
Obama and Pelosi have made people sufficiently afraid that the rise of the TEA party was possible. This might(?) be a good thing. Will the rise of the TEA party bring about the removal of Obama and Pelosi from power or will it merely fragment the conservative base as did Ross Perot and thus enable the socialists to remain in power?
W@17:
“Comments are place for your opinions on the subject. Compliments extended to the post author, however well meant, are probably not appropriate.”
I think they’re pardonable, given that it’s the only public place we have available to articulate your wonderfulness.
Regarding others’ feelings about Rove, I agree that his hissy fit about the DE contest is pretty awful. However, whatever else one has to say or think about the man, let me remind you of the incalculable service he did for his country. Imagine the words: “President Kerry”.
Nuff said.
72 and 52, the reason so many screw that up is the possession case rule is to attach ['s] to the noun that has the possession. BUT there is one exception, and that’s [its] –cuz the [it is] contraction [it's] has stolen the ['s] for its own selfish ends, forcing the possession case of [it] to ride off as naked as Lady Godiva. And there’s your device: in the story the townfolk respected her protest and did her the courtesy of not staring as she rode by. Well just do the same with that apostrophe –that is, the opposite of what you feel like doing.
I don’t know nuthin’ ’bout no delawares, and I know little about Castle and less (if that’s possible) about O’Donnell, but the Tea Party gains credibility here as being willing to kick out the stops, which is what is needed more than any other single qualification or conviction right now.
One of the problems with modern politics is a slave owner mentality creeping into the thought processes of the ruling class or “elite”.
It is wrong to refer to a person as an “asset” or an “investment”. This is how slaves were referred to in antebellum America. It is sad how the language of slavery is increasingly permeating business, politics, and academe.
In a free society, a man is an “asset” only to himself. He owns himself, is owned by nobody else, and owns nobody else. This is precisely what divides free people from slave owners and wannabe slave owners. It is those of the ruling class who talk of “assets”, “investments”, and “human resources” rather than “fellow citizens” or “people”.
Perhaps one of the reasons why the ruling class is so reluctant to fully prosecute our war against the wannabe slave owners of al-Qaeda is because they may somehow feel more common ground with our slave dealing enemies than with their fellow citizens.
This isn’t an issue of left or right. It’s a matter of right and wrong.
Aardvark said (@55): I don’t want conservative senators to run anything. I want them to dismantle big government and let the states run their own business.
It’s time to examine how this idea, central to the Tea Party’s goals, could possibly work in practice.
It’s just a fact that reducing the size of government would cause a lot of chaos and pain. Elected representatives changing anything causes a lot of chaos and pain, because they aren’t very good at it. Successive Democrat and Republican politicians, though, have been making changes for decades regardless of all the chaos and pain they caused. They never even blinked, as program after program produced results that made a mockery of all the promises they were sold with.
It’s not until those who want a smaller government are equally determined as voters that the size of government must be reduced despite the great deal of chaos and pain necessary to make it happen that we will finally get smaller government. So, yes, it’s going to be difficult. We just have to be as unswervingly determined as the other guys were, who took us in the opposite direction for so long.
Is the Tea Party movement tough enough for this? Not yet clear. The biggest test may come when we eventually experience another economic upswing, and we find out whether most of the electorate wants to go back to voting themselves benefits handed out by the government. I’d like to be optimistic, but it’s worth remembering that Californians appeared to be voting for spending and taxing restraint when they elected Arnie. This turned out though to reflect only a momentary panic; as soon as he implemented some temporary financial improvements and proposed some real budgetary reforms a majority of the state’s voters abandoned him where he is today, twisting in the wind.
Regarding the tea party becoming the Tea Party, all I can say is that I’m an independent, and will remain one for the rest of my life. I’ll never be a member of ANY political party again. Sure, this election cycle my sympathies lie with the tea party candidates in general and I currently see them as the ones most likely to finally begin to reverse the insane government spending of the last 30 or 40 years.
But what happens when these people get into office and find out exactly what kind of perks the current officeholders have voted themselves? It’s going to take character on a level with George Washington walking away from the Presidency after two terms to walk away from the obscene junkets, limos, and God knows what else.
Even worse, what if a couple of the tea party candidates turn out not to be at all what they campaigned on once they get into office? Something like that would cause lots and lots of former supporters to fall away, and that eventuality could even deal a mortal blow to the whole movement in its cradle.
No, I’ve decided that party politics is not the way I want to make my decisions. That way lies madness…or in the case of my own state the election of Al Franken by Dems who saw the (D) and voted on it.
No, I listen to what each candidate has to say (or read their flier or whatever) and make a decision based on that. I haven’t had to spend much time on that lately, though. Usually it takes less than 5 minutes of hearing the Dem talk to decide to vote for someone else.
Agoraphobic Plumber @ 79 said:
“I think they’re pardonable, given that it’s the only public place we have available to articulate your wonderfulness.”
I agree. Wretchard walks on water.
Agoraphobic Plumber also said:
“Imagine the words: “President Kerry”.”
Please NO! I would rather not! Rove has made some blunders but also given incalculable service to his country.
#78
If conservatives do not vote and act on principle than what do we have?
Peter Boston @ 86 asked
“If conservatives do not vote and act on principle than what do we have?”
Dare I say: “Obama as President and Pelosi as Speaker of the House”
Alexis 82: “Perhaps one of the reasons why the ruling class is so reluctant to fully prosecute our war against the wannabe slave owners of al-Qaeda is because they may somehow feel more common ground with our slave dealing enemies than with their fellow citizens… This isn’t an issue of left or right. It’s a matter of right and wrong.”
Nicely stated. We should always focus on the moral underpinning of all public issues and all of our laws; for America that means compliance with our Declaration of Independence. George Orwell explained how it is that a ruling class (those on top of the pyramid) has more in common with foreign ruling classes (even when they are at war) than with their own citizens.
“Everywhere there is the same pyramidal structure; the same worship of a semi-Divine leader; the same economy existing by and for continuous warfare. It follows that the three super-states not only cannot conquer one another, but would gain no advantage by doing so. On the contrary, so long as they remain in conflict they prop one another up like three sheaves of corn… The war therefore… is merely an imposture… For though it is unreal it is not meaningless; it eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs. War it will be seen is now a purely internal affair… In our own day we are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects; and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact.” George Orwell – 1984
It was refreshing to finally see the last vestiges of the conservative cloak fall off Rove – and his donning the cloak of RINO. Birds of a feather etc… and Bush was/is a RINO on too many issues. Amnesty? Spending? Medicare prescriptions? Harriet Meyers? A long list to be sure.
For his savaging of McDonnell on Hannity last night he lost whatever credibility he had with me – and it wasn’t all that much to begin with.
Thats right Karl – the balance of power is changing – glacially slow as it is – it is shifting – slowly – but it is coming round to us of a more conservative bent than yourself.It’s slip-sliding away – your power-brokering king/queen making days are numbered. I doubt you can turn things around for yourself after last night’s rant on McDonnell – it’s there for all to see in 720P and surround sound.
I was appalled that you would attack a republican in such a manner but I’m glad you did – your stock just dropped by 40%.
As far as i can tell, the beef on O’Donnell is that as a younger person she walked on some debts. This indicates poor character, sez her critics. Strikes me as a shallow analysis, in that people do change as they mature, and in her case, having been thru the hard knocks school on debt, she may be fine-tuned for what will be her main job as senator: working off debt.
SpendIcans are Refudiated.
Speaking of jobs, I would like to know whether anybody will now hire Derek Fenton. He lost his job at New Jersey Transit due to his Koran burning at Ground Zero, and it looks as though he will get blacklisted from most other jobs.
Thanks Proofreader, I was clear as a bell until buddy got hold of me; now its/it’s/itz not clear at all!!!
I will simply spell everything out in full from now on if its/it’s/itz OK with everybody.
90. buddy larsen
re: >As far as i can tell, the beef on O’Donnell is that as a younger person she walked on some debts.
Except that it’s not true. She did run into some financial difficulties and took a long time to pay off some debts, but she never walked or skipped on any debts.
Now if you want to see some real walking on debts just watch the federal government in the coming days and years… /g
85. Eggplants
re:>“Imagine the words: “President Kerry”.”
What saved us from President Kerry was not Karl Rove. It was John O’Neil and the Swiftboat Vets For Truth. Rove’s 2004 campaign was abysmally incompetent.
I have reached the point that I am not going to be manipulated in this and similar elections by the mention of mere numbers. “Oh no! A Democrat is more likely to win! Horrors!” Yes, it is awful that a democrat will win any senate seat, but, looking back, I can see that every time the Republicans have won a slight majority in congress (even here in California) they end up being shot down by some bitter Rino who loves getting accolades from the libs by publically thwarting his own party. It is such a repeating theme that I have come to the conclusion that we need to clean up the party first. I would rather have 41 senators who would boldly stick together with a filibuster of a liberal supreme court judge than 51 senators who can not get a majority to vote conservatively on *anything*. We need to refine our message and present it boldly.
Besides, I don’t accept the premise that we will lose all of these elections with conservatives. With the growth of alternative media and grassroots movements, we can finally take on the monolithic MSM and their awful, lying narrative, and present our case directly to the populace. Blog! Engage your friends and relatives! The biggest thing hindering the mostly conservative-leaning populace in this country is the belief (brought about my Hollywood, the schools and the traditional news outlets) is that they are alone in their beliefs. Now we can fight this, after over 30 years of indoctrination we can really counter this garbage. Now we have to clean out these career politicians who will sell out their party and our principles at any time it forwards their perpetual government position. Kick ‘em out!
So, congratulations O’Donnell! Go kick some butts! Yeah!
tharkun @ 95 said:
“What saved us from President Kerry was not Karl Rove. It was John O’Neil and the Swiftboat Vets For Truth. Rove’s 2004 campaign was abysmally incompetent.”
I’m proud to say that I contributed money to the Swiftboat Vets For Truth. Early in that election, it was clear the Swiftboat Vets were going to take Kerry down. It still makes me smile when a moonbat complains about being “swiftboated”.
I disagree that Rove’s 2004 campaign was abysmally incompetent. I would argue the opposite. Also it would not surprise me at all if Rove was an influence behind the Swiftboat Vets, e.g. large sums of money were transferred at a critical moment and knowledgeable people were quietly introduced to each other.
p.s. I use both handles “Eggplant” and “Eggplants”. I keep repeating the same typo. Maybe it’s Freudian…
#90 buddy larsen
Its all part of the double standard Buddy. Bill Ayers is now a pillar of the community. You can’t hold youthful indiscretions like trying to kill people against him. It just isn’t right. How mean spirited can you be?
But now, walking away from debts? That’s the kind of conduct that shows you’re a scumbag forever. There’s no growing out of that.
—yeah—right.
I have heard from several pundits now that Castle, who could not win the primary, was guaranteed to win the general, but O’Donnell, who won the primary, has no chance of winning the general.
This assumption is being bandied about as Truth.
Am I missing something?
re. #57. Storm-Rider
“Communist manifesto” consist of 2 parts: analysis and synthesis. While analyzing correctly then current economy, he spectacularly failed at projecting his solution. I think he extrapolated linearly just in time when system was bifurcating from old trajectory.
re. #59. Stephen
“The lesson learned … will have a lasting effect on Democrats when they are asked to support legislation in the future.” For a couple of election cycles at best. Than they will return to the same road. The socialism meme existed for centuries while self-reliance, responsibility and adherence to 10 commandments doesn’t constitute a crowd-pleasing meme and belongs to each individual.
Re, #60. Tcobb
“And instead of focusing on academia, the media, and the arts the current march is directed straight at the citadel of power.” But of course, the first 3 are already theirs and do a splendid job of dumbing down the populace while instilling dependence mentality.
Re. #63. tommyd
“The powers to be at the GOP just reversed their childish statement from last night.
They are now supporting O’Donnell and have reported they have sent a check for the max allowed to her campaign…
Amazing what a little grass roots pressure can do isn’t it.”
Sure, they might have figured they are in rip-tode, so they swim laterally. But as soon as the pull subside they will return to the old ways.
#95 tharkun & #97 Eggplant,http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2010/09/14/anybody-but/
What planet are you guys on!?! EVERYBODY KNOWS that the Swiftboating of John F. Kerry was a vile dirty trick set up by the evil genius Karl Goebbels-Rove. The Swiftboaters didn’t steal the presidency for Bushitler DESPITE Rove, they WERE Rove!
Rove set up the Swiftboaters just after he (illegally) outed Valerie Plame.
Does the O’Donnell win in the primary signify a “division” in the GOP? Probably. Does her win signify a reduction in opposition to the administration? Probably not. If anything, it signals an unexpected intensity in the dissatisfaction with the administration’s (and the status quo policies).
The argument against splitting the GOP is that since it is the only viable political vehicle to challenge the Democrats, anything which damages it will strengthen the administration. However, the Republican Party, like most other political parties, is a coalition of interests and ideas. One way to view recent events is to imagine one section of the coalition strengthening with respect to the other. It was always divided anyway, except in the past the RINOs were the senior partners. Now the grassroots people are making a bid to take over the senior position.
Like every other politician RINOs want to be elected and may find it easier to make peace with insurgents in their own ranks than risk the fate of soon to be ex-Senator Arlen Specter. Politicians are opportunists. They hitch their wagon to a rising star and not to a setting sun. This is what Specter believed he was doing, but believed wrong. The grassroots revolt against Washington is a ticket to ride, not one to be refused. The Administration, by touting the strength of the Tea Party tide is unintentionally advertising for its enemy among the opportunists.
What matters is whether the Republican coalition emerges a more formidable machine through this development. I think the RINOs will accept a reduced status provided they know they are on the winning side. Although I do not mean to make any comparisons to events or personalities in 1945, this principle was illustrated near the end of the war in Europe.
Hitler at first believed Roosevelt’s death signaled a breakup in the Anglo American alliance. However, this ignored the fact that the Ango American alliance was on on the winning side. Nobody was going to leave the winners to join the losers. Thus Hitler’s hopes were dashed. I think the same dynamic applies here. The administration should understand that the bottom line message of the O’Donnell victory is that the tide of opinion is against them. The squabbles within the Republican Party are one thing, but this basic fact is another.
The main tide was against the Axis. Squabbles among those coming to pick its bones was secondary to the fact that it was on the losing side. If I were a Democrat operative I would advise them to run to the center rather than cling to the hope that the lions heading for them would fall out among themselves before they pounced.
Re. #78. Eggplant
“That’s the concept that I’m wrestling with. This euphoria over O’Donnell reminds me of the initial euphoria surrounding Ross Perot. In the end, all Ross Perot really achieved was splitting the conservative vote and allowing Bill Clinton to be elected.”
After I voted for Perot I used to think the same way and felt guilty during first Clinton term. Then it occur to me that there would have been no diff. if old Bush got a 2-d term. we would have had the same policies as Clinton’s and it might have been even worth: there would be no Gingrich rebellion and no sitcom in the Oval office.
Re. # 101. T.S.
“What planet are you guys on!?! EVERYBODY KNOWS that the Swiftboating of John F. Kerry was a vile dirty trick set up by the evil genius Karl Goebbels-Rove. The Swiftboaters didn’t steal the presidency for Bushitler DESPITE Rove, they WERE Rove!
Rove set up the Swiftboaters just after he (illegally) outed Valerie Plame.”
Huh???
Listen, why don’t you go back and read what your own New York Times, Huffington Post, etc. printed at the time.
I understand that you do not like what is going on here, so please leave for greener pastures. may be you will bump there into Kerry, alGore, Moore, etc. and enjoy their company.
#104- I think #101 was being sarcastic.(hope so anyways)
Classics of Condescension:
September 10, 2010
“Should the Dream Ever Sour”
Posted by George Packer, New Yorker writer, on his blog
“Nine years later [since President Clinton?], the main fact of our lives is the overwhelming force of unreason. Evidence, knowledge, argument, proportionality, nuance, complexity, and the other indispensable tools of the liberal mind don’t stand a chance these days against the actual image of a mob burning an effigy, or the imagined image of a man burning a mound of books. Reason tries in its patient, level-headed way to explain, to question, to weigh competing claims, but it can hardly make itself heard and soon gives up.”
I guess I’ll pass over for now the question of what the heck Packer means by “actual image” and “imagined image.” And “sour dreams” is a kind of mixed metaphor. But Mr. Packer is an intellectual, and writes about the Red Sox. And I’m an unreason-able yahoo.
Obama said early on that he could do what he wanted because “he won.” He decided he can take booty from those who have something, just as Agamemnon took a prize from Achilles, or David from Uriah, because he could.
The intelligentia is now saddened and even frightened by all of this unreasonableness among the common people. The common folks are going crazy!
To read more from your betters:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker/2010/09/should-the-dream-ever-sour.html#ixzz0zcd3R6p1
trangbang68 @ 105:
“#104- I think #101 was being sarcastic.(hope so anyways)”
I also interpreted it as sarcasm (admittedly, it’s hard to tell with moonbats). The use of a smiley
is helpful when doing sarcasm.
I give the Tea Parties a lot of credit and contributed to four different candidates, but I don’t think elites vs. the people works for all those claiming the Tea Party mantle. Carl Paladino, who blew out Rick Lazio for the GOP nomination for governor is not an outsider. He’s a billionaire real estate developer who’s wired Albany a dozen different ways to make his fortune — not that the defeated Rick Lazio was any prize.
I’ve similar reservations over Rick Scott, a corrupt/billionaire health care magnate who ran against the GOP money men (Haley Barbour), but embraced them as soon as he won the nomination. The Tea Parties are fired up, and a force force for fierce reform, but they’re still amorphous and elite interests can claim their mantle if we’re not careful.
There is parliamentary control of the Senate and then there is practical control of the Senate. Tea Party candidates and conservative candidates in general have done much better in primaries than even the most optimistic member might have predicted earlier.
The other 66 seats in the Senate will be up for election in the next four years. RINOs and dems from purple states are certainly going to take notice that supporting the Obama agenda is not a career enhancing move.
A good showing by the Tea Party candidates in the general election may not give control of the Senate to the repubs. But it will be as deadly to the Obama agenda as a double-tap between the eyes.
22. Amadeus48 — Here in Colorado, the national Republican governor’s association (whatever it is called) is refusing to fund the Republican tea party candidate, Dan Maes. It turns out Dan Maes has been caught in lies about his past and his business success and dealings. Still, the Republican party in Colorado is supporting him, if in minimal ways, because that’s part of the deal of being in the Republican party leadership, and I don’t begrudge it. I heard rumors they tried to force Maes out, but failed. I am beginning to imagine that the character of Maes is that of an opportunist and deeply dishonest person looking for some actual success to match the ego he possesses. The tea party movement was his opportunity to pay his bills and feed his ego. That characterization could be wrong, but it’s the narrative I’m coming up with. I won’t vote for Maes since Tom Tancredo is in the race as a third party candidate (and is currently outpolling Maes). Anyway, the thought occurred to me that perhaps there is more scandal on Christine O’Donnell that will be revealed. There is flawed, and then there is something you will not support.
For the record, I opposed Mike Castle when I learned of his actual positions and was glad to hear O’Donnell beat him.
104. grrr & Eggplant
re: ># 101. T.S.
I believe he forgot to add a sarcasm tag… /g
However, I would add that I don’t believe Eggplant’s/s’ (okay buddy?) surmise that Rove helped the Swiftboat Vets is correct at all. Their finances were subjected to intense scrutiny, and the only “large sums” they received were from a couple of the initial investors, and their connection was veteran-based, not party-based. Many of the Swiftvets were Dems, including John O’Neil. After that, the records show that the Swiftvets’ money came from grassroots small donations. Rove didn’t help create them, and he didn’t help them.
As to whether Rove managed a good campaign in 2004, just ask yourself if the Swiftvets hadn’t appeared, would Bush have won. I don’t think so.
Opportunists jump on the bandwagon when a side is on a roll. It amazing how many members of the French resistance there turned out to be when 2nd French Armored showed up. My parents told me that the arrival of First Cavalry in Manila multipled the guerilla ranks like rabbits. For my own part, I nearly laughed myself to death watching everybody and his brother proclaim himself a long-time oppositionist to Marcos — after he had fallen. There is no shortage of those who claimed “I fought in Vietnam” now that it is nostalgically beneficial to claim it. Fakes are everywhere. So it should be no surprise that somewhat dubious characters will seek to climb aboard the Tea Party Express. I’m not naming anybody in particular, just saying it is bound to happen.
This is good and bad news. Bad because these opportunists give the rising tide the smell of jetsam. Good because it means you are winning. As long as more good guys jump aboard than bad guys, it’s a net win. But at some point there will be a cleanout, when people say, “wait a minute”. But until then, opportunism is the part of the human condition.
106. Aardvark
The intelligentsia is now saddened and even frightened by all of this unreasonableness among the common people. The common folks are going crazy!
“The peasants are revolting!” — “You’re darn right. They stink on ice!”
anton/93, it’s a shame i didn’t describe its rule better. But i understand –by writer’s block is ‘opportunity’ which ever single time without spellchecker is “oppurtunity”. O hell, did i switcheroo that? i refuse to check. this is getting ridikoolus!
tcobb/98, touche (too shay?)!
@73 Macsooner: Welcome. Your name suggests a Scotsman from Oklahoma. Anyway, I do have to respectfully disagree with one of your statements: “it was a MAJOR mistake to let these groups pressure the rest of us into removing Newt Gingrich”
I think you are WAY over-rating Gingrich. Though a fairly bright guy, Gingrich let Clinton eat his lunch by being too clever by half. His disposition is far from sunny — and sunny is needed on the part of conservatives who are going to introduce the country to fewer goodies.
Regarding the general discussion of whether it is better to support a RINO or to make it more likely for a Democrat to win, I say it all depends on the circumstances. Coalitions are frequently necessary to advance a cause. But standing firm and clear in your principles is also frequently necessary. 2010 is a year in which every possible declaration of “NO” is needed. NO to statism, NO to weakening America, NO to coddling terrorists, NO to micromanagement of the lives of citizens, and so forth. Therefore this is a time in which it is better to defeat all RINOs in primaries and to send the message to the current RINOs that they are next if they support the things we are saying NO to. At other times there might be occasions for coalitions and compromises. We wouldn’t have had a Constitution without compromise — and one of those compromises eventually led to the Civil War.
The more tea party types are nominated and the more they are elected in November, the better. I, for one, would be willing to sacrifice one seat in Delaware for the benefits of forcing everyone else to take notice that the old business as usual is unacceptable.
Besides, the best strategic result may be control of the House and a 50/50 split in the Senate. That way there will be enough votes to stop bad legislation but not enough votes to exempt the Democrats from responsibility for what they have done. And it would also reduce the show trial investigations that, for all the thrill they offer, generally make the inquisitors look worse.
With 22 Democrat held Senate seats up in 2012 vs. only 11 Republican seats, it is most likely that the 2012 Senate will be Republican. Now, if we could only find a decent candidate to run for President. (So far my favorites — Christie, Daniels, and Ryan — are too far below the radar and I fear we will miss a golden opportunity if we nominate a mediocrity.)
Two Pence.
Promising Omen
Last night I attended a book party for Young Guns. While there, I heard an interesting tidbit from a couple people I trust. Apparently the House Judiciary Committee’s majority staff approached the minority staff with a seemingly gracious offer: Why don’t we refurbish the digs for the minority staff? They look a bit rundown.
This was welcome news since the minority staff (i.e., the Republicans) has been asking for a spruce-up for four years but got nothing from the Dems. But now, suddenly, the Democrats are very concerned about the quality of the digs they will have to use if they lose the majority. I’m sure that’s just a coincidence and it was all out of the goodness of their hearts.
One person I talked to said that they heard something about another committee where a similar offer was made, but I couldn’t confirm it.
- Jonah Goldberg
Tharkun @ 110:
As I earlier mentioned, I contributed money to the Swiftvets. Afterwards my name ended up on a Republican party sucker’s list and I got all sorts of junk mail from the Republican party asking for money.
I donated to the Swiftvets because I believed (and still believe) that they’re honest-to-god patriots and would have real impact against John Kerry.
My teeth were on the floor last night watching Karl Rogue’s rant. And I have been a big fan of the Architect lo these many years, but last night was just too much. Sean seemed to be looking around for the hook to pull Karl off camera! Think what you will, Karl, but don’t trash your party’s candidate even if “your” guy went down in flames…. Will be interesting to see how long it is before Sean has Karl on his show again… I’m betting it will be a while.
Of course the CW now is that the GOP has lost DE and NV because of the candidates. What happens if they win? I’d love to see the reaction then.
batman @ 114 said:
“We wouldn’t have had a Constitution without compromise — and one of those compromises eventually led to the Civil War.”
There is the dilemma nicely stated. The Founding Fathers knew that slavery was immoral and a ticking time bomb but they wrote it into the Constitution anyway because they had no choice. That’s the problem with politics: To be effective, one is required to make compromises.
Since we’re all piling on Richard (in a good way), I noticed the other day that Wiki editors voted overwhelmingly in favor of retaining the entry on the Belmont Club.
If there is one thing and one thing only that will alienate other American voters from tea party candidates it is their social conservatism. Personal freedom must be extended to all Americans, even if their personal choices are offensive to social conservatives. Small government, freedom and responsibility are birds of a feather.
Wretchard: If I were a Democrat operative I would advise them to run to the center rather than cling to the hope that the lions heading for them would fall out among themselves before they pounced.
@ September 15, 2010 – 12:41 pm
But weren’t those predictions before his SOTU last year after Scott Brown won “Teddy’s seat” in MA?
You see the Democrat politicians breaking rank already, it is a question for Pelosi/Reid(?) and the President. Obama and Co. won’t have any choice but to turn more right to the center.
And in part, that is why the tea party made their stand, even if they lose the Bident seat.
To Batman #114. You said it. Especially since the Dems’ 2012 presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, is already so well-known…..
Wretchard,
O’Donnell finally convinced Howard Fineman that the voters really are coming with torches and pitch forlks for the powers that be — AKA Democrats.
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/09/15/o-donell-win-shows-voters-are-in-a-mood-to-wreak-vengeance.print.html
Democrats are busy trying to convince themselves that the GOP is hopelessly divided. I didn’t see that in Newark, Dela. Many of the O’Donnell voters were women, interestingly, and cared about party unity. I didn’t find a single Castle voter who said he or she would vote for Democrat Chris Coons if O’Donnell won.
This theme is probably wishful thinking on the part of the Dems. The GOP will be united around a few simple ideas: tax cuts, budget cuts, spending cuts, and rolling back Obama’s health-care and environmental agenda. That message seems likely to power the GOP to big gains, maybe even to control of Congress.
and
But an attack unanswered is an attack accepted, and the White House has let the GOP frame these issues. I wrote in NEWSWEEK last week that the health-care law was a loser. Well, it’s the president’s job to prove me wrong—and I think it can be done.
A classroom speech is not an answer. If Obama can’t do better, he may soon be dealing with Sen. O’Donnell from Delaware.
“Although it may not be always advisable to say all that is true,” wrote St. Francis de Sales in 1609, “yet it is never allowable to speak against the truth.” George Herbert warned against following the truth “too near the heels, lest it dash out thy teeth.” The truth is dangerous, and some have been crucified in its cause. Danger also exists when the truth is used maliciously. The Devil ensnares saints by quoting scripture. William Blake poetized, “A truth that’s told with bad intent / Beats all the lies you can invent.” Of course, this idea isn’t easily credited by an age that has grown so indifferent to truth. “Nobody dies nowadays of a fatal truth,” wrote Nietzsche. “There are too many antidotes to them.”
Aristotle said, “The high-minded man must care more for the truth than for what people think.” Confucius explained that the “aim of the superior man is truth.” In a letter to Anthony Collins, John Locke wrote, “To love truth for truth’s sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-pot of all other virtues.” We may assume, therefore, that lying is the seed-pot of all vice. “If we would only stop lying,” wrote Tolstoy, “if we would only testify to the truth as we see it, it would turn out at once that there are hundreds, thousands, even millions of men just as we are, who see the truth as we do, are afraid as we are of seeming to be singular by confessing it, and are only waiting, again as we are, for someone to proclaim it.”
***
((From the 12/18/2009 Nyquist column The Truth
…AKA, the tea party’s secret weapon, and the thing the tea party must not lose. No ‘taking positions’ –that is become a language-based emetic now –just talk as you would talk as an adult, to your mom & dad.
***
eggplant/119; That’s the problem with politics: To be effective, one is required to make compromises.
…and also, to make compromises, one is required to be effective. And it goes for both sides of the compromise. This is the toughest nut of all for cultural conservatives to crack.
Unless mistaken, there is an assumption that no Democrats are as disgruntled with the status quo as Republicans or tea partiers. One can hope that the Democrat party buys into this.
Despite my having sent him several letters telling him I channel my donations through Jim DeMint and Tea Parties, and that he can FOAD, Michael Steele still thinks we are friends.
He sent me the following about an hour ago, and it’s so pathetic I had to share. Honestly, I started laughing out loud:
Dear ——-,
Congratulations to Christine O’Donnell and all of our Republican nominees in Delaware on their primary victories last night.
The people of Delaware have spoken. And just like voters across America, they are demanding commonsense conservative candidates who will focus on the issues that matter most to them: creating jobs, turning the economy around and protecting our most cherished freedoms.
Christine O’Donnell is exactly that type of candidate and the RNC is proud to support her and our entire slate of Republican candidates in Delaware. But with only 48 days until Election Day, time is running out for Republican grassroots leaders like you to help the RNC provide Christine and all our candidates with the campaign resources and direct financial assistance they need to win.
Please make an urgent contribution of $100, $150 or $200 to RNC Victory today to help fully fund the Victory Centers in Delaware and across the nation that are the key to winning the 39 seats in the House we need to Fire Nancy Pelosi and the ten we must capture in the Senate to Retire Harry Reid.
——-, the RNC is the only Party committee dedicated to supporting ALL of our Republican candidates — from the county courthouse to Congress. And we are the only national GOP organization with the ability to rush resources and direct financial support to our candidates who need it most.
Your 2010 election contribution today is critical to ensuring Christine O’Donnell and every Republican candidate receives the get-out-the-vote and campaign support they need to fight back and win an historic victory for our Party and our country on November 2nd. Please give as generously as you can.
Sincerely,
Steele Signature
Michael Steele
Chairman, Republican National Committee
P.S. —-, the RNC is investing in commonsense, conservative candidates like Christine O’Donnell in Delaware and across the nation who will fight to return the American government to the American people. Please do your part right now to help elect candidates who will end the Obama Democrats’ left-wing assault on our prosperity, security and freedoms by making a 2010 campaign contribution of $100, $150 or $200 to RNC Victory. Thank you.
Sorry I can’t put in the link here, but I just read a short piece at NRO about Christine O’Donnell – apparently she is associated with ISI (Intercollegiate Studies Institute) and was on some kind of panel discussion on Cspan recently regarding female characters in Tolkien’s books.
re: quadrants and not “of DC” (I’m going to avoid using Washington in the name because it does a disservice to the man who acknowleged the authority to govern came from the people, and he returned it to them over accepting the crown).
Are there any true Conservatives (Liberals before the Left corrupted the term) in D.C.? Is it possible that the relative rankings people discuss are just that, relative? We need a scale, a benchmark that is better than just a stack-ranking.
re: Delaware. Call it the first decisive battle for conservative control of the Republican Party. The reaction implies the old power structure is waking up, and is beginning to see a future where D.C. means less to a citizen wrt anything domestic (from law to benefits) than, say, the City Council and Mayor of Wasilla.
I had a discussion ages ago with a top-ranked GOP apparatchik (Ed (not Nick) Gillespie) about the need for groups like the Club For Growth. He agreed that the party is no less or more than the sum of the incumbents, and it (or any party where the power resides with the elected officials) is incapable of supporting a challenger against a member, and we shouldn’t (ever) expect different behavior. Which was why (without term limits) there’d be little hope of change in our lifetimes.
My sense is we’re only going to get to do this once (before even those elected now lose their commitment and are corrupted by DC). And in the process of removing the central-government statists hands from our throats, a lot of nice “get-along types” – like Mr. Rove (who can’t imagine a D.C. less powerful than the average county) are going to find themselves having to work for a living.
I’m waiting for a major candidate to pledge and offer a plan to get D.C. out of all things domestic – perhaps something named in honor of George Washington who handed back the crown to the people, its owners.
This disestablishment of the center is what happened in corporate American in the 70-80s when headquarters staff (Sloan/Carnegie-command-and-control industrial-age organization) was made redundant by computers, networks, and information becoming cheap (and Boards paid the executives to do it by splitting with them the amount of money in salaries saved – unlikely they would have unwound their kingdom given all these institutions have the same “public choice theory” behaviors). Same can happen at roughly the counTy level – they can do everything (domestic) the federal government can do, better, faster, cheaper (nothing like Moore’s law and inexpensive, if not free software), and be locally responsible. Disciplined not only by local interests and the ballot box, but by competition between these local government units for the citizen and their enterprise. Voting with our feet will return as a feasible option (and “change” will be closely and quickly associated with consequence, both good and bad). It won’t be the libertarian ideal but it will be a lot closer than what we have today – near-sovereign political jurisdictions of ~300,000 people. Call it effectively a thousand “new states.” And given that the European states have U.N. presence with smaller police forces, a thousand new general assembly members to shake up that organization as well…
Well, I can dream.
Buddy Larsen 124,
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously (the truth and the lie), and accepting both of them… with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth… Those who have the best knowledge of what is happening are also those who are furthest from seeing the world as it is; in general the greater the understanding the greater the delusion; the more intelligent the less sane… If human equality is to be forever averted; if the “high,” as we have called them, are to keep their places permanently; then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity (Doublethink).” George Orwell – 1984
Lies are absolutely essential for totalitarian government to control their subjects. Orwell’s 1984 character, Julia; an enemy of Big Brother’s Totalitarian government, “did not feel the abyss opening beneath her feet at the thought of lies becoming truth;” where “the heresy of heresies was common sense.” How do Dictatorships lie to intelligent people and get away with it? In the early stages of totalitarianism the use of Orwellian Newspeak is preferred to blatant in your face lies because Newspeak is the clever use of words used in such a way as to mean one thing to the speaker and it’s opposite to the listener. One way to accept a government lie is by exercising the insanity of Orwellian Doublethink. Doublethink in response to government Newspeak is controlled insanity. Newspeak lies are cleverly disguised in rhetoric – and the lies can therefore be received by otherwise intelligent people in a psychologically acceptable way through the use of Doublethink; on the other hand, Newspeak government lies are generally ignored by the less intelligent – the lies go over their heads.
Insanity is the mental state where reality (the truth) cannot be separated from falsehood (the lie). Since totalitarian government lies to their people using Newspeak, and since such government requires their intelligent subjects to accept the lie and the truth simultaneously (with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth); totalitarian government is in the business of “controlled insanity.” George Orwell understood that, not only were Newspeak lies required on the part of totalitarian government; millions of people had to somehow be made to accept the lies. Intelligent people will naturally see the truth and comprehend when government lies to them – and so that’s the rub – how does totalitarian government deal with intelligent people when they must be lied to? Orwell provides the answer – intelligent people must be conditioned to reject sanity – reject self-evident truth – accept the lie and the truth in their minds simultaneously – “with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.” Taken together – the Newspeak lies of totalitarian government – and Doublethink insanity within the minds of millions – government renders rejection of truth within human minds on a colossal scale – what Orwell referred to as “Controlled Insanity.”
One way free people can remain free is to think – to recognize truth – to reject the labyrinthine Orwellian world of Doublethink – to exercise the sanity of common sense. Common sense means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously (the truth and the lie), and accepting only the truth… with the truth always one leap ahead of the lie.
“And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Jesus Christ
The Economist published an interesting survey on the Tea Party today.
Surprisingly —- 20% of Hispanics consider themselves to be part of the tea party movement.
That is very close to the percentage of whites who say they are part of the movement.
The tea party may be a little more diverse than many thought and claimed originally–picking up more of the Hispanic vote could make a big difference in November.
http://www.economist.com/node/17035460
Sindarian 54: “They (and myself) know that the time to act is now. What to do is the problem.”
The Tea Party movement must culminate in a Constitutional amendment which would represent “Winning the Battle of the Republic.” As things now stand, and as noted above, the American Marxists are “Winning the Battle of Democracy.” Try as we might to win the battle of democracy the lower parts of human nature will inevitably produce a lazy proletariat class willing to sit in the barn eating the corn provided by the Pigs of Animal Farm (Marxist Government) who steal the corn from those who are actually doing the labor (the middle class). The Proletariat class will vote for the Marxists. As time goes by more and more of those laboring in the fields become demoralized and exhausted; many finally end up in the barn themselves. In the end a majority of people are in the barn and the Marxist-Proletariat coalition wins “the battle of democracy;” they are in a position to win all elections. When there are finally too few people laboring to support the entire population hunger and anarchy ensue. At that point a “dictatorship of the proletariat” (code for dictatorship of the Marxist ruling class) “comes to the rescue.” At that point the barn-riding Proletariat class (now the vast majority living in serfdom) is ordered at gunpoint back into the fields. I believe Karl Marx was an evil genius; he figured out a way to defeat a democracy – Marxism will finally “win the battle of democracy.” We are not a democracy, and we must prove this to ourselves and to the World by amending our Constitution with anti-Marxist poison – anti-Marxist law.
Amendment XXVIII
Section 1. The Declaration of Independence is the supreme un-amendable moral law of the United States of America
Section 2. Term limits for Congress (shorter) and the Supreme Court (longer)
Section 3. Federal taxation under Amendment XVI shall not exceed 10% for any individual, nor shall Federal taxation under Amendment XVI exceed 10% of the nation’s GDP
Section 4. Federal income shall only consist of 10% domestic taxation as per Section 3 regarding Amendment XVI, plus foreign tariffs, plus the sale of domestically purchased bonds by U.S. Citizens
Section 5. Federal spending shall not exceed federal income. Federal income shall not occur through borrowing or self-creation of money.
Section 6. Amendment XVII is hereby revoked
Section 7. Supreme Court decisions shall be revoked by Congress with 2/3 or greater vote in both houses.
Section 8. Article I, Section 8 shall be changed to: “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States, and provisions for general welfare shall be uniform throughout the United States and innumerated herein this Constitution; To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and to regulate disputes of commerce among the several states…”
When Federal government is placed back into its smaller non-God-like box – when Federal government gets only 10% – the States (empowered and limited by their own 10% taxation) would find themselves positioned to take over (or share with private charities) all social programs now un-Constitutionally administered by Federal government: Social Security, Healthcare, Education, etc., etc. Limiting Federal taxation to 10% would have the effect of resurrecting the 10th amendment – resurrecting State government – resurrecting the Bill of Rights – resurrecting the Constitution. With such an amendment “We the People” will finally become “masters of both Congress and the Courts” – masters of our own destiny.
“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.” Abraham Lincoln
# 104 grr, #105 trangbang68, #107 Eggplants
Comment # 101 was just a rehash of media narratives and conventional wisdom from the middle of the last decade regarding the purportedly evil genius nature of Karl Rove. Rove was widely believed to have “created” the Swiftboat Vets (who were said to be vicious liars), just as he was widely believed to have “outed” Valerie Plame, even though many in the Govt. & media knew that Richard Armitage had actually done the “outing” (hence, Mr. Valerie Plame–Joe Wilson’s publicly stated desire to see Rove “frog marched” off to prison).
Those memes stand as canon for most who would self-describe as “educated,” “liberal” and “informed,” as they’ve never been exposed to their refutations.
uh Alexis # 7
“During the Algeria War, brave members of the officer corps who defected to the OAS would sometimes hide in a room and stay away from everybody else. These men were experts at counterinsurgency, so they knew their opposition, yet they lacked the raw nerve necessary for intelligence warfare.”
well De Gaulle had them all at his service, and the OAS french officers renegats had become the enemis of France.
some complements if you’re interested
http://www.bir-hacheim.com/le-renseignement-dans-la-guerre-dalgerie-par-maurice-faivre,2009,09,26
http://www.dedefensa.org/article.php?art_id=3877
http://www.algeria-watch.org/fr/article/hist/1954-1962/degaulle_usa.htm
http://rha.revues.org/index1863.html
131
Tea Party principles are amorphous but I’m fairly certain that identity politics is not one of them. Why would anybody be surprised that Americans who happen to be of Hispanic heritage would have any different concerns about the future of their children and grandchildren?
If there is anything about the Left that deserves the classic application of hate it would be their racial politics.
“Anyway, the thought occurred to me that perhaps there is more scandal on Christine O’Donnell that will be revealed.”
Same approximate odds on that as the sun rising in the East tomorrow. Going to be lots of mud slinging this election. Maybe I should say ‘lots MORE’.
The Dems have nothing but lies ( It’s ALL Bush’s fault) and lame excuse (It’s ALL Bush’s fault) to campaign with so they will get down and dirty early and often. I suspect it will backfire. After all, how many times can you accuse a Republican Female of pole dancing before it becomes a big yawn?
On a positive note, the next time M. Steele’s aides get caught in a titty bar they can claim they were recruiting candidates.
132. Storm-Rider:
One more “amendment:”
The definition of “commerce” in the Commerce Clause must be refined to mean explicitly what the founders intended: it referred to interstate trade, not business or commercial activity in general, just trade. The misinterpretations starting over a century ago have wreaked havoc on the American system.
I love the idea of enshrining the Declaration within the Constitution. It’s hindsight to be sure, but I think the most grevious error the founders made was to not do that in the original drafting or during the runup to the Bill of Rights. I understand why they didn’t, since this was another thing they considered “self-evident.” We need to be explicit this time.
The “Hispanic” Tea Party supporters are without doubt legal immigrants and their offspring born here—they played by the rules, wishing that others would do the same!
ie they are Americans First– who support the policy of E Pluribus Unum— as opposed to identity politics– is my hypothesis.
The other side desperately tries to frame the Tea Party as racist Hill Billies.
The Economist survey reveals that as a lie and a fraud based upon — evidence — not rhetoric
Victor, every vote counts. The Hispanic vote counts no more or less then the black vote, the Cowboy vote or the soccer mom vote. Block voting is an old left-over from the Post civil war to the Sputnik era. For about a century the block voting of machine politics ruled, Vietnam brought and end to that. Block voting was replaced by Media voting. Media voting is also called mass market voting and is currently on the way out to be replaced by internet, or WWW voting. No hard and fast dates on when the changes happened.
Print gave way to radio, which gave way to TV which is giving way to the internet. All of these are the tools used to manipulate public opinion.
The Tea Party phenomenon is either something new or an outlier. With the other tools, there was some self proclaimed elite sitting behind the curtain, manipulating thingies. The tea party doesn’t appear to have any Emperor behind the curtain. Of course, they could be fooling me. It has happened before. Fancy Nancy thinks that there is someone behind the tea party curtain. She has been in politics as a certified Socialist long enough (stapled her first political poster to the side of Noah’s Ark as she was trying to organize the animals into threes) to see the voters as sheep and incapable of organizing themselves.
That is why the Political elites are having problems getting their heads around the tea party. It’s as if your pet goldfish starting acting like a shark, jumping out of the tank and chewing on your leg.
A caller to Rush this morning in the last half hour claimed to be from Delaware and said Rove had been working for Castle for months. He claimed Rove made several unsuccessful attempts to broker a deal to get O’Donnell to drop out of the race. Perhaps his reaction is insider pique.
While the DE race will be interesting, I think the most fun race for senate may be in CT, with McMahon against Blumenthal – WWE vs a typical democrat well-connected lawyer. Bring popcorn.
Been too bogged with work to read all the comments, so forgive if any of this repeats. Some O’Donnell stuff, randomly.
* She hit her $500,000 fund raising goal in ONE DAY. That is awesome.
* Of course she’s a flawed candidate. Possibly because she hasn’t spent her entire life on the government paycheck perfecting her image. And I find it less important if she wins the general election, as nice as that would be. Slaying the RINO’s is more important right now.
* I think it was the HufPo that noted Castle was the only Republican up for Senate who wasn’t a “global warming denier.” Which means he’s a global warming dupe. Good riddance.
* So at 70 whatever years old and after 9 terms in Congress, Castle still didn’t have enough? No more lifers, thanks.
* My single favorite O’Donnell item was posted on National Review. From 2003:
Christine O’Donnell, communications director at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, led a discussion on the depiction of women in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. The discussion focused on Bradley Birzer’s book, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth, published by ISI Books. According to Birzer’s analysis, the religious spirituality informing Tolkien’s books was specifically Roman Catholic. In addition, he suggests that the female characters Galadriel and Elbereth were designed to exemplify traits of the Virgin Mary. Jenna Murry joined Ms. O’Donnell in deconstructing the symbolic roles of the women of Tolkien’s Middle Earth.
She’s got the Delaware geek and nerd vote nailed down!
…just off the wire:
Cartoonist Molly Norris in hiding after terrorist threats
It would be nice during our ruminations over this election/holiday season that, despite our government’s denial, Islam is at war with the West – as Molly will attest. (And, yes, it is obvious from their behavior that not everyone in Allahland got the memo, but we have people working it.)
Update. O’Donnell’s new fundraising goal is $750,000. She is currently at 92%.
You can hear the gnashing of RINO teeth all the way from the salons of DC.
It never pays to make compromises with the devil. Compromises should be reserved for the honorable. Otherwise you’re just setting yourself up for a fatal stab in the back. It is far better to let a seat go to a liberal Democrat than it is to let it go to a RINO who can be bought off for forty pieces of silver when push comes to shove. The results will be the same in terms of legislation. Exactly the same. But at least it clears the path for the next election cycle where there is no RINO who calls upon the loyalty and money of the party to support him and who has political favors and/or debts to call in.
The current Ruling Class has put us on the road to economic ruin. It must be stopped, and they must be swept away. They have been gobbling LSD for far too many years and they seem to be incapable of ever coming down from their high and coming to grips with reality.
And compromise is simply no longer an option. For some things for an honest man no compromise is possible. If someone offers you money to let them have sex with your child you don’t negotiate with them for the highest price you just say “hell no” and punch them in the face. But that is an attitude that I fear most of our ruling class would consider to be alien.
Pimping out the American people for profit and status is something the ruling class simply feels they are entitled to do. Its time to sweep them away. Take no prisoners, show no mercy, and accept nothing else than unconditional surrender.
And yeah–we might have to have war crimes tribunals after that’s accomplished.
cfb # 40 and Buddy #75,
I have been trying to formulate the same thought for a while. I put it like this: Cristie and Ryan, et al, know how to talk to people. Sure they’re politicians and as such subject to BS fits now and then but, amazingly, or as Buddy says, astonishingly, they can actually talk to people; their speech is not encoded in subtext speech as is about 95% of all political speech in America today.
Example: when Michelle Obama speaks to the NAACP and says “we’re not there yet, we have made great strides but we still have a long way to go,” everyone knows this is political codespeak for ‘affirmative action will continue forever and teachers unions will receive heaps more money for the foreseeable future.’
Pretty much everything Obama says is codespeak – he may have lost the abitlity to just talk to people if he ever had it. Remember when he tried to give those great clarifying speeches about the benefits of health care? You simply could not understand what the man was talking about. When he talks about cap ‘n trade or millions of green jobs he is talking about taxing the productive sectors of the economy. When he talks about stimulous he is talking about Chicago-style butter spreading via a million grants of 50 or 100 K to various trade unions and politically-affiliated support groups around.
So yes, it is pretty astonishing to hear a politician talk in a straightforward clever direct way. Viva Christie!
There’s a hard slog ahead, but tonight I laugh. The following exchange took place as NPR’s Linda Wertheimer interviewed Jonathan Rauch and another guy about the Tea Party.
Mr. RAUCH: … But remember, the[Tea Partiers'] goal in their mind is not fundamentally about taking power. It’s about changing the way Americans think about politics.
WERTHEIMER: I still am having difficulty with the idea that you could do that without a leader.
Then I remembered Stephen Ambrose’s thesis for the salient trait that made the WWII American soldier the best — individual initiative. Or, as an SF friend of mine called it, the LIPOPOP strategy — “Little Isolated Pockets of Pissed Off Paratroopers.”
So many good, thoughtful comments here. There were many points I wanted to make, but found the commenters had beaten me to them. Bravo!
To those who fear that O’Donnell cannot win as Karl Rove maintains, I say, have a little faith. Electability is the moderate Republican meme. It is not only the Far-Left who lies and manipulates, but also the Near-Left (to coin a phrase meaning big-government Republicans).
ts/133 & others; –a side note to the Valerie Plame show-trial: few know this even now, i think, that the point man in DC on the plan and civvie staffing and supplying cover for the Surge was –yep –Scooter Libby. When he had to step away to fight the bogus set-up political attack, the Surge was postponed and off-footed, likely resulting in a tougher fight, and greater losses. But Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame, what a nice couple….
I’m getting here late and I haven’t read all the comments, but a thought occurred to me earlier today. Apologies if it’s already been suggested.
What if all the attacks from the Republican establishment end up making her more attractive to moderate Democrat voters?
The people I have in mind are not left-wing ideologues, but ordinary Joes and Janes who strongly identify with the Democrat “brand”. The sort of people who aren’t very political, but know they hate Republicans, or at least their image of Republicans. They send each other chain e-mails with anti-Republican jokes.
They just might think that if the Rethuglican leadership is so apoplectic over O’Donnell, then she may be worth a look…
salt lick @127, for Steele and Cornyn
You got a lotta nerve
To say you are my friend
When I was down
You just stood there grinning
You got a lotta nerve
To say you got a helping hand to lend
You just want to be on
The side that’s winning
You say I let you down
You know it’s not like that
If you’re so hurt
Why then don’t you show it
You say you lost your faith
But that’s not where it’s at
You had no faith to lose
And you know it
I know the reason
That you talk behind my back
I used to be among the crowd
You’re in with
Do you take me for such a fool
To think I’d make contact
With the one who tries to hide
What he don’t know to begin with
You see me on the street
You always act surprised
You say, “How are you?” “Good luck”
But you don’t mean it
When you know as well as me
You’d rather see me paralyzed
Why don’t you just come out once
And scream it
No, I do not feel that good
When I see the heartbreaks you embrace
If I was a master thief
Perhaps I’d rob them
And now I know you’re dissatisfied
With your position and your place
Don’t you understand
It’s not my problem
I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
And just for that one moment
I could be you
Yes, I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
You’d know what a drag it is
To see you
a couple more linx you may find edifying:
re blocs themselves breaking up that bloc voting (the only way it’ll happen, other than just outbidding the oppo and thereby falling right back into the honey pit), this Boghie Wheel link here days ago, if you missed it then, here’s another chance –you won’t regret it –click on “Runaway Slave”.
…and Nyquist’s bookend to The Truth, the 02/20/2009 Why Not the Truth?
(excerpt)
“When words lose their meaning,” warned Confucius, “people will lose their liberty.” Watch the fanatic waving the “truth” like a tattered rag in everyone’s face. He is tomorrow’s Hitler spouting an ideology of hate. His day is coming. Look around and ask yourself who will stop the rise of the evil fanatic when the country goes off the rails. Will you be brave enough to speak out? Will you oppose the bloody revolution that is being prepared?”
…(ellipses mine)
“The truth has always been connected with suffering … When Christ was interrogated before his execution, he told the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate of Judaea that he came into the world to bear witness to the truth. The Roman dismissively asked, “What is truth?” … The truth is seldom found during election campaigns, where slogans and catch-phrases reign supreme. Under democracy, majority opinion takes the place of truth. This leaves the field to pollsters and social science statisticians. Instead of Pontius Pilate cynically asking what truth could possibly be, polling firms tell us what everyone thinks it is. Here the pollster has put the word “average” and “think” into the same formula. Here an equal sign is placed between knowledge and ignorance, resulting in a statistic. As British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli once noted, “There are … lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
And then there is the point of last resort: the truth. We are destined to arrive there some day.”
(end excerpt)
Our nation is in crisis. The Ruling elite in all their forms, have lied, deceived, corrupted, cheated, robbed, and manipulated those assets entrusted to them on an almost unimaginable scale. They have violated their oaths and done great harm to our constitutional form of government.
Thus, the coming elections for years to come will not be normal; they will determine whether the American experiment will continue and flourish or will it be subverted and corrupted into a new oppressive Stalinism. The normally sensible idea of voting for big tent Republicanism which tolerated frequent betrayers in order to grow the tent, therfore no longer is appropriate.
It’s now simply “us” versus” them.” It makes no sense to vote for a watered down “Ruling elite” “them” wrapped in Republican clothing. They’re still a ‘them”. The Ruling Elite do not want change, and no matter what sweet promises they make, they will always fight any change that reduces the preferences and privileges of themselves and their friends. In the end they will fight against the return to free markets, low taxes, reasonable regulation, equal protection and reasonably strict enforcement of all of the Constitution. So why vote for a person who will fight against the change we need?
Bob’s lyrics are almost uncannily suitable for many occasions.
O’Donnell on Hannity right now. Also, re Dylan quote, here he’s quoted on the ‘issue’: “The world owes you nothing. Not one damn thing.”
Man, that’s revolutionary !!!
Wow, buddy, that was a hell of a link. Thanks!
Agoraphobic Plumber, #84: But what happens when these people get into office and find out exactly what kind of perks the current officeholders have voted themselves? It’s going to take character on a level with George Washington walking away from the Presidency after two terms to walk away from the obscene junkets, limos, and God knows what else.
Even worse, what if a couple of the tea party candidates turn out not to be at all what they campaigned on once they get into office? Something like that would cause lots and lots of former supporters to fall away, and that eventuality could even deal a mortal blow to the whole movement in its cradle.
Another potential tea-party fail scenario: What if, upon reaching office, they discover just how difficult it is to carry out the voters’ will within the context of the noxious political culture that is Washington (see also Reagan’s abortive attempts to roll back entitlements), and after banging their heads against the Capitol walls for months on end with nothing to show for it, finally throw up their hands and embrace business as usual, with all that that entails?
That’s the scenario that worries me the most, because not only would it mean that the tea party’s first generation had crashed and burned, it would also send a loud and clear message to anyone considering taking up their mantle not to bother, that any attempt to change the culture of Washington is not unlike trying to de-assimilate the entire Borg collective instead of the other way around. That resistance is, indeed, futile.
Like most of the folks here I think that the Democrats have been insufferably arrogant and am happy to see them shaking in their boots. Ditto the establishment Republicans. But imho this country has enormous fiscal problems that cannot be solved without a lot of time and pain, and although the elite establishment is at fault, the great majority of the people in this country each own at least a small piece of the responsibility.
A lot of Americans have been spending more than they made for a long time, and voting in politicians to bring home the bacon no matter how much of a hash they made of the polity and no matter how far down the road they kicked the can. Sending a motley crew of outsiders and amateurs (and some certifiable wackos) to Washington will accomplish little to change the price tag for the national self indulgence. I say that in spite of the fact that I like O’Donnell enormously and think she might make a solid public servant.
Shrinking the government or restoring a more federalist distribution of power back to the states will not change the fact that the nation is virtually bankrupt and sooner or later the people of the world will refuse to accept the fiat currency that Bernanke is pumping out like the mother of all oil spills. Then unhappy days will be here again.
Please understand, I am a fervent and faithful Belmont Clubber, and have great sympathy for most of the posts above. But I don’t see how we can avoid paying the piper. If you do, for Heaven’s sake enlighten me.
Best,
Richard
148
There was a history between Libby, Fitzgerald and the Marc Rich case–Fitz wanted to get Libby very much indeed–
“As it happens, Messrs. Fitzgerald and Libby had crossed legal paths before. Before he joined the Bush Administration, Mr. Libby had, for a number of years in the 1980s and 1990s, been a lawyer for Marc Rich. Mr. Rich is the oil trader and financier who fled to Switzerland in 1983, just ahead of his indictment for tax-evasion by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Bill Clinton pardoned Mr. Rich in 2001, and so the feds never did get their man. The pardon so infuriated Justice lawyers who had worked on the case that the Southern District promptly launched an investigation into whether the pardon had been “proper.” One former prosecutor we spoke to described the Rich case as “the single most rancorous case in the history of the Southern District.”
Two of the prosecutors who worked on the Rich case over the years were none other than Mr. Fitzgerald and James Comey, who while Deputy Attorney General appointed Mr. Fitzgerald to investigate the Plame leak. Mr. Fitzgerald worked in the Southern District for five years starting in 1988, at the same time that Mr. Libby was developing a legal theory of Mr. Rich’s innocence in a bid to get the charges dropped.” WSJ
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116925916151482349.html
155. Joshua
Then that’s where the 2nd kicks in. I hope it doesn’t come to that.
155. Joshua
That’s the scenario that worries me the most
Then the country crashes and burns.
This is the attempt at reform without violence. If Washington is unchangeable, then every state (person) for themselves.
Well I just watched a few video interviews with her. There’s a bunch on YouTube. There seems to be nothing wrong with her. Granted, she’s not a spectaculor orator, but she’s perfectly articulate, especially in the face of today’s debased standards.
Needless to say, the Left is already out in full force pushing their standard meme — “she’s an idiot” — from the playbook that goes back who knows how long. It will work — it already has worked — with the usual suspects, and the Left is already making hay over the fact that she used the word “unfactual.” Oh perish the thought. The darker corners of the Left are briming over with smutty, sexual commentary about her — they have SUCH a problem with attractive Conservative women! Dr. Freud, please call your office.
I don’t know about some of her quirkier so called ideas or her so called “lies” — and I suspect they are as much myth as truth — but I do know that she says “Constitution” an awful lot, and talks about out-of-touch entrenched elites an awful lot, and that makes her my girl.
At the same time, I know the long knives are only just being unleashed. She was mostly under the radar until now. The attack machine has already kicked off with Rachel Madow — jealous much, Rachel? — and I expect it will be deafening in short order. Saturday Night Live no doubt is already looking for the new Tina Fey that will play her and paint her as a hopeless rube. Catty Couric is no doubt already planning to film twelve hours of tape to cut ten minutes for the public. It’s just all so predictable, but they do it because it still works. Almost simultaneously with her rising to prominence they have managed to make her an Untouchable among hip sophisticates. I hope she declines all MSM interview requests unless they are live. And even then, I wouldn’t risk it.
Meanwhile, her opponent is yet another Ivy “educated,” doctrinaire, right down the line “progressive” on every issue you can think of. There is nothing about Coons you won’t know after five minutes of checking out his “issues” section on his web site. Not an original thought in his head.
In some ways, the “she can’t win” dynamic might work in her favor, since it could de-motivate the Democratic voters. Her base I think is already quite motivated.
Oh lordy, it’s going to be so, so delicious to see the Left’s collective heads explode with rage if yet another beautiful, dynamic Conservative woman rises to prominence.
O’Donnell may have the Catholic Tolkienist vote, but it’s interesting that her statist religiosity has ticked off so many libertarians. Here’s Michael C. Moynihan over at Reason magazine:
http://reason.com/blog/2010/09/14/delawares-odonnell-disaster
“The race was once considered an easy layup for Delaware Republicans, but with the rise of O’Donnell, a crackpot of the first order, it looks increasingly likely that Democrat Chris Coons will be packing the U-Haul for D.C. in November. As stats wizard Nate Silver points out, if O’Donnell wins today’s primary, the Republicans lose the seat in November: “Whereas Mr. Castle is nearly a 95 percent favorite against the Democratic nominee, Chris Coons, according to last week’s FiveThirtyEight forecasting model, Ms. O’Donnell would have just a 17 percent chance of winning a race against Mr. Coons.”
And the intellectual case against O’Donnell is overwhelming. A précis for those who have avoided the Delaware drama: O’Donnell lied about attending a Master’s degree program at Princeton University; claimed that her political enemies are creeping in the bushes outside her house; is opposed to the sinister habit of masturbation; is a supporter of the “ex-gay” movement, despite the inconvenient revelation that her former staffer Wade Richards “returned” to homosexuality and denounced those peddling “cures” for his sexuality; filed a $6 million lawsuit against the conservative group ISI for “gender discrimination”; was denounced by her former campaign manager as a “fraud” who uses campaign donations to pay rent and utility bills; and has implied that her Republican opponent is gay. Not that there is anything wrong with that.
As the former head of the clumsily named Savior’s Alliance for Lifting the Truth (SALT), O’Donnell was the Tipper Gore of the 1990s, attending lewd and lascivious rock concerts just to tell stoned, Satanist teenagers that they were going to hell.”
Can I toot my own horn just a little?
I was one of only about 15-20 people who showed up for the very first Tea Party in my city on Feb. 27, 2009. And I got the pix to prove I was there.
Okay, done.
************
Re: Chris Christie, one of the things I like best about him is that he challenges the questions themselves. He doesn’t let the little s***ts in the media or union spokesmen frame the debate. He doesn’t cede assumptions to the other side. He smacks their faces with ‘em. It’s both refreshing and wildly entertaining … kind of the grown-up version of watching Bugs Bunny outsmart Elmer Fudd sixty-four ways from Sunday.
************
Re: getting Wretchard a post at the Hoover Institute, why do I get the feeling that W, like Groucho, would never belong to any club that would have him as a member? (I don’t know how that explains Belmont, but you get my drift)
*************
You can spell it
it’s
if you also spell it
hi’s
her’s
our’s
their’s
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Dave @ 4 – Antonio Lopez de Santa Victoria? Funniest line I’ve read all day.
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Walt rocks.
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Richard @ 156 –
We won’t avoid paying the piper. But the price will be a lot less gruesome if we can accelerate economic growth. And THAT requires unshackling the economy from being strip-mined by the regulators and rent-seekers. Unleash the creative energy of the American people. Unleash liberty and watch us soar.
“But how will you succeed without leaders?”
Just a small anecdote. About two months ago we held a party for a co-worker who, with her spouse, was adopting not one, not two, but THREE boys, all brothers, ages 7-12. These are not rich people. But their hearts are as big as Texas. The invitations to the party got lost for the better part of 48 hours, with one result being that there was no time to organize a sign-up list of who was bringing which foods to the pot luck lunch. So it had to be “winged.” Guess what? Even though nobody organized it, even though there was no formal plan, every conceivable food group still got brought to the feast, and brought in abundance. A spontaneous army of cooking Davids managed to pull off something as good or better than a list could produce, all without a list. How the heck did that happen? I don’t know. I only know that it did.
***************
“Take us to your leader,” they said. (While up their sleeve they chortled, “So we can slay ‘em.”)
“We have no leader,” we replied.
“No leader? How can you do anything without a leader?”
“Watch us.”
The Tea Party will have to make a clear decision– do they want to be right– or do they want to be effective?
Emphasizing fiscal prudence and the pruning of a metastasized, wasteful Federal government will work.
Emphasizing a conservative social agenda will not.
It is a trade off– all decisions involve trade offs.
The energy for the independents is around fiscal prudence.
America is 20% left wing, 40% Conservative and 40% in the middle.
As in most things– the will to Win is everything.
The other side will try to create a Perot like split. In which case we loose.
peterike,
I think the “she’s an idiot” is a losing play for the chattering monkeys of the Left, who have become caricatures, even to themselves. You can only call others “idiots” for so long while circling down the drain before “We, the people” start checking your premises much closer.
That “giant sucking sound” Ross Perot said was jobs going south, turned out to be Bill Clinton educating America’s children
Ahh Galaco, nice try. Those folks at Reason… they do a lot of good work in certain areas, esp around stupid government programs. But they are very anti-religious. They seem to think it gives them a certain intellectual heft to sneer at religion. Whatever. I take them for what they’re worth, and in this instance they are worth nothing.
Then you rattle on about the “overwhelming” intellectual case against O’Donnell, and you list a series of petty incidents, allegations, religious smears and such. Not one bit of which comes anywhere close to the heinous perfidy of Mister Castle being ready and willing to lift his multi-million dollar hand (on a Congressman’s salary? how do they all do that?) to vote for cap & trade. He is either stupid enough to believe it, or despicable enough to want to make graft from it. Either way, you can have him, and good riddance to the worst sort of political rubbish.
Peterike, you completely missed the quotation marks. I quoted from Michael Moynihan and his libertarian disdain for O’Donnell. None of what you attributed to me are my words.
I don’t live in Delaware and am agnostic on O’Donnell. Her record seems dodge-y to me, but I share your dislike of Castle (he made his money off the DuPonts and banking interests if you really want to know) and am glad I didn’t have to choose there. I am intrigued though that so many parts of the conservative establishment have it in for O’Donnell. She’s seems a bit daft to me, but I don’t quite get the reaction. The Weekly Standard thinks she’s poison and even Kibbe and Dick Armey from Freedom Works refused to support her. Was it because of all the Delaware banking interests that backed Castle?
Members:
It’s going to be all about turnout in November. I read the polls at http://www.RealClearPolitics.com daily. Pretty good coverage although they average in the grain with the chaff. Bottom line though: there are a lot of races that are within ten points: that only takes a 5% shift to make it dead even. The only poll that matters in the end is on election day and the electorate self-selects. Who’s got the fire in the belly this time around?
Still, never underestimate the ability of the Republican Party to seize defeat from the jaws of victory. Which is why there is hope for the Tea Party: they are not the usual suspects.
Peterike, you completely missed the quotation marks.
I did! My apologies. Been looking at a computer screen for 12 hours today already. So what I said at that Moynihan guy, and not you!
The Weekly Standard thinks she’s poison
Ehh, the Weekly Standard. They do some good stuff — they were excellent on the Iraq war — but it’s a very establishment, neo-con magazine. I expect they see the Tea Parties as a threat, not a breath of fresh air.
Interesting that Castle has banking interests on his side. He’s history now and I really don’t need to learn more, but that makes a lot of sense.
161. Galaco Fibich
Re Hoover/Wretchard
– in respect of RFs request– I am not going to push it anymore—-on his blog—–but he will have a strong audience in Silicon Valley, Hoover/Stanford and beyond– it is not all that long a flight from Australia.
Check out what they are up to—
http://www.hoover.org/
Greta Von Susteren, the low key genius Fox talent that is so good she hides how good she is, said tonight, while interviewee Rove was bulletpointing the O’Donnell misdeed list, said (paraphrase) “You know what, Karl? If I were her I’d look the American people right in the eye and say, ‘you know what? It’s true –I’ve had some hard times in the private sector and I’ve had to scramble to stay above water –just like YOU. If you send me to Washington, you’ll be sending someone who knows what it’s like out there.’”
If there is one thing and one thing only that will alienate other American voters from tea party candidates it is their social conservatism. Personal freedom must be extended to all Americans, even if their personal choices are offensive to social conservatives.
I don’t know whether you intended this as codespeak, sgi, but it sure reads like it.
Since you are so in favor of people living with being offended, how about defending the “personal freedom” to (1) call homosexuality a sin, (2) refuse to rent one’s private property to an unmarried couple, (3) refuse to perform abortions, even if those personal choices are offensive to gays, fornicators and those seeking to eliminate their offspring?
Besides, how is that freedom “personal” when one invokes the power of the government to bludgeon the other side into approving, subsidizing, and having their children indoctrinated about it? Sorry, but the minute you run to the government to effect a so-called solution, which by definition will involve coercion of those opposed to your agenda, your personal ceases to be personal and becomes social. I missed the clause about “social liberty” in our founding documents.
BTW, I am on record here at Belmont Club stating that I would rather do a state-by-state popular vote on the issue of same-sex marriage than to handle the issue the way it is currently being handled, by judicial fiat. “Marriage,” whatever it is, is NOT a purely individual act, nor even an act just between the marrying parties. It is also very much a social act, with long-term social consequences. Why does society get no say in defining and bounding it, then?
Let the people decide. Let them take another vote on it in 20 years if popular attitudes shift. And 20 years again after that. But let the people decide, for pete’s sake. And each state decides for itself. Period. And the chronically peeved litigants with their lawsuits and lawyers who will want to drag this back into the courts? An alcohol bath for the lot of them after being gnawed by rats, I say.
The Tea Party will have to make a clear decision– do they want to be right– or do they want to be effective?
Emphasizing fiscal prudence and the pruning of a metastasized, wasteful Federal government will work.
Emphasizing a conservative social agenda will not.
Victor, where is this “conservative social agenda” of the Tea Party that you speak of?
There is no decision to be made. Tea Partiers are not out there en masse with “Bring Back the Bible” and “B00bs Belong on Women, Not on TV” signs. Last time I checked (and I’ve been to four Tea Parties since last year), the signs are almost all about (1) stopping the insane spending by government, (2) returning government to its proper Constitutional boundaries, (3) no to socialism, Obamacare, bailouts, porkulus, etc., and (4) pro-liberty and pro-Founding principles.
The “social conservatives are a drag on the GOP, they must be dumped” line has been around for about as long as I can remember (which would be back to Reagan). The line was mostly parroted by the likes of writers in the WaPo and NYT, so you decide for yourself if it was incumbent upon Republicans to take the advice. But at the very least, the characterization of a socially conservative agenda having a lot of influence within the GOP had some merit.
To see this old line trotted out again, as a so-called friendly warning to the Tea Party, which does NOT have a socially conservative agenda — not primary, not secondary, not even tertiary — is pretty funny.
Can’t you guys find a non-dead horse to flog or non-strawman argument to yak about?
“You know what, Karl? If I were her I’d look the American people right in the eye and say, ‘you know what? It’s true –I’ve had some hard times in the private sector and I’ve had to scramble to stay above water –just like YOU. If you send me to Washington, you’ll be sending someone who knows what it’s like out there.’”
Well, the problem with this argument is that Alvin Greene could say the same thing.
160. peterike
Ms. O’Donnell has a huge mountain to climb. Comparing to Chris Coons (the Dem candidate), she may be slightly handicapped. Her opponent in the race is very articulate (debate champion two times at college) and able to champion the Democrat Causes, which play well in the left leaning Delaware. [I refuse to say we are deep blue, as Scott Brown in MA shown even so-called deep blue states are able to conform.]
We are not starry-eyed follower of Ms. O’Donnell. We just don’t think Rep. Castle represents us and our ideas in the next Congress. The goal is to stop Obama agenda during the next two years, and we really don’t need to control both houses to achieve that, esp. it looks like the House is going to flip under Republican control.
Already the ripple effect could be felt from yesterday’s election results (not just the DE primary, including NY Republican Governer’s race, which nobody talked about). A line has been drawn in the sand, and this is to force people (both left and right) to make up their minds about very important issues urgently.
This is totally off topic, but since it will probably never be ON topic, I have to just jump in. My son just sent me this video of a guy working on a radio tower. Which is to say climbing it. All 1,768 feet of it.
I can’t even watch it straight through without stopping, I get too dizzy. Not good with heights, me. I’m sure this will appeal to the many engineer types out there. Really, it’s riveting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXuzrIN_x2M
@172. bogie wheel
We support the Conservative social agenda– elections are elections–lead with the main thing— that people agree on–fiscal prudence–IMHO– go from the pocket book to the heart and soul in that order.
Unfortunately the 40% in the middle focus upon mammon before God.
Pace and lead to succeed by first understanding voters concerns.
175. peterike
OMG. Why does the camera keep looking down? STOP that!
Yes there is, but you don’t want that.
Contract From America:
1. Protect the Constitution
2. Reject Cap & Trade
3. Demand a Balanced Budget
4. Enact Fundamental Tax Reform
5. Restore Fiscal Responsibility & Constitutionally Limited Government
6. End Runaway Government Spending
7. Defund, Repeal, & Replace Government-run Health Care
8. Pass an ‘All-of-the-Above” Energy Policy
9. Stop the Pork
10. Stop the Tax Hikes
Victor @ 176:
I think you are projecting your own agenda onto the Tea Party. YOU might want to advance a socially conservative agenda, after the fiscally conservative one, but who says that most Tea Partiers do?
Note the Contract From America. There is not a single social item on the list of 10. Zilch. Zero.
This isn’t to say that there aren’t social conservatives among Tea Partiers. I happen to be both. But I am not out there rallying for socially conservative issues. Government at all levels is too large and too expensive and has grossly overstepped its proper Constitutional boundaries. This applies to the federal government 10x. The violation of Constitutional roles is destroying this country. I want these violations to stop. I want a return to adherence to the plain language of our founding documents. THAT is why I am out there.
So what “decision” is there to be made by the Tea Party between socially conservative issues and fiscally conservative issues when socially conservative issues are not being touted by the Tea Party?
Please provide some evidence other than your own preferences that there’s a socially conserative agenda at work in the Tea Party. Let’s see the photos of all the signs advocating social issues at Tea Party rallies. Let’s see the action lists and “contracts” from Tea Party groups demanding socially conservative legislation from states and Congress.
You can’t claim the Tea Party needs to make a decision between X and Y if Y isn’t even on the radar.
146. Salt Lick
Have your read the Jonathan Rauch posting on the Tea Party. I think it is very insightful.
How Tea Party Organizes Without Leaders
bogie wheel:
I like Alvin Greene. If he were in my state, I would be inclined to actively support him for Senate! I actually hope Alvin Greene wins the fall election. I don’t expect it to happen, but the prospect of Alvin Greene in Washington would cause headaches for Washington insiders!
I think the Democratic Party establishment is deathly scared of what would happen if Alvin Greene or someone like him were to into the U.S. Senate. They don’t control him. He owes them nothing. And that’s what I like about him.
I sometimes daydream that the Tea Party in South Carolina pushes Alvin Greene as their man to oppose Senator DeMint – and wins. After all, if it’s a matter of overthrowing the elites, Alvin Greene’s your man. Sure, his economic platform may be diametrically opposed to the Tea Party’s platform, but with Alvin Greene you know what you’re getting.
By the standards of the Democratic Party, Alvin Greene is a breath of fresh air.
Peterike, That video made me seasick
@178. bogie wheel
Good and valid point– in my education in debating– I was trained to be able to to argue the other side as persuasively as my own position — a legacy from the Oxbridge tradition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxbridge#Meaning—
Which caused some major drama on this blog recently.
The issue for us is—
How will the other side try to frame the issues?
The common ground for our side is the fiscal argument.
The other side will try the racist meme– which the Economist survey refutes– the danger is to get intoxicated with success.
As all people who play golf know, on any shot, you have to put the last shot out of your mind and focus on this shot, while keeping the end in mind.
The Conservative movement is a large tent, but one of our canonical tenets is — fiscal prudence.
Keeping the end in mind is Winning– IMHO
Salt Lick at 146 — what I’ve read about D-Day was that the chaos of the landings had so completely disrupted the order of battle that most of the assaults on objectives were being organized and lead by non-coms. They knew the general plan, and knew the general capabilities and training and weapons of the soldiers that were around them. And they could see that it was death to stay on the beach awaiting officers to lead them, who might already be dead and drifting in the breakers, or scattered among the blasted Higgins boats.
The officer corps’ confidence in the self-reliance of the non-coms and enlisted soldiers seems to have been critical in a number of actions, where the Germans by contrast were constrained from independent action in the absence of specific orders from above…
We’re going to need a lot of that. We have a Thug-in-Chief whose minions in the last week have visited a 17-year-old British teen to tell him he will never in his life be allowed to set foot in the US because he sent an e-mail to the white house calling Our Courageous, Wise, and Noble pResident a “pr*ck.”
I can imagine Hugo Chavez shaking his head at the pathetic loserosity of this gesture. My mind’s eye pictures Russian strong-man Putin adding this to his book of desperate measures to avoid using so as to avoid looking like a sniveling diaper-soiling hoser when his own career is circling the drain.
Same administration that has obstructed every effort to check the incoming tide of frenzied Jihadist bombers and murderers. Bring’em on! We embrace the authentic third-world anger and resentment of our oppressed wacko brothers from the religion of Peace…
Also this week, fearless leader had his Cabinet member Ms. Sibulous [sic] threaten to crush any Health Insurance company that conveyed to its policy-holders the information already made public by the administration’s own flacks — i.e., that Obamacare is expected to cause policy premiums and health care costs to rise.
I still have relatives who absolutely refuse to acknowledge the blatant unalloyed criminality of the present administration. The traitors in the Mainstream Media don’t even have to lift a finger any more.
They’ve done a great job of stapling the blinders to the temples of the sheep.
The majority of military historians agree that the Germans/Austrians in WW2 had better weapons and a better decision architecture — with delegation to NCOs and units at the tactical level.
We won because we had more weapons and more troops and a better strategy–after the war we learned the value of delegation.
@178. bogie wheel
To summarize our view of the social issues–
1/Our side supports the culture of Life
2/The other side promotes the culture of Death— !
8. marysaidno
Are there any Tea Party candidates running in the democrat primaries? If not, why not? It seems that even though they will probably lose, we would have an idea about the level of dissatisfaction in that party.
Democrat Tea Party Supporters
The left feared and hated Gingrich because he defended (like Reagan)conservatism and he defended it well
Progressives brought us alcohol prohibition AND the Drug War. And Gingrich is a shill for the Drug War. May he rot in hell.
DRUG WAR = BIG GOVERNMENT
#150 gokart-mozart. #152 rickl, #153 buddy — Great to see more Dylan fans here. Yes, if you think you own the meaning in his songs, wait a few years. They are for the ages. Or to paraphrase Neil Young, that’s evidence of Dylan’s genius – genius in that the songs are coming from some spiritual source outside Bobby.
At the risk of boring our fellow BCers, let me post a passage from “My Back Pages.” Has it not become painfully obvious that “Liberty” and “Equality” are not the same at all?
A self-ordained professor’s tongue
Too serious to fool
Spouted out that liberty
Is just equality in school
“Equality,” I spoke the word
As if a wedding vow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now
Cheers,
querty #179 — Thanks! I’d not read that.
155. Joshua
Yes, some of the ‘new hires’ will be corrupted. They will take their 40 pieces of silver and run for the exit. So? We ( the voters) will just hire new ones.
A week or so ago I posted that the real effort will be in 2012 and 2014. It is easy to work up enthusiasm and excitement for this cycle because even the blind can read the writing on the wall and see that something’s going down. So body much smarter then I once said eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. That applies to elected officials as well as external enemies. Maybe even more so. Most people want to be part of anything new and exciting. That is why mobs form.
The hard part will be maintaining that effort over the 3 elections it takes to teach a politician something.
Richard, left to it’s own devices, the US economy is a marval. All that needs to be done is for the yoke to be removed. Cut taxes, deregulate but most of all cut spending. An across the board spending cut of 25% would be a good place to start. Shoot for that and accept 12.5% and the markets will take off and the rich will start using their wealth to create more wealth (aka jobs). It will take a year or so, but if there is a payroll tax holiday then the average Jill & Joe will see immediate gains and feel better about almost everything. A lot of it is attitude. Get most people thinking positive about the economy and the economy will get better. It’s that mob thingie again.
The progressives/statists are in full denial. The establishment GOP are whistling past the grave yard. We have entered a 4th turning in history. Much like what walt commented happened in antebellum America. This is the beginning of a titanic shift in the country. Don’t expect the political elites to go gently into the night,
though. It is entertaining to watch their bewilderment.
Good post as usual Richard
God Bless the USA
I think what terrifies the Left the most about O’Donnell is not just a Scott brown style upste but the prospect of having the whole “Hope and Change” scam do a 180 and run over them.
To them it must be like that Steve Martin movie where he is a big tent, big show, fake faith healer. Then he meets a real faith healer and it scares him so much he takes the first bus out of town.
Which brings up a story I head in the early 70′s. A Soviet destroyer was doing the usual snoop around bit with one of our carrier battle groups. The carrier was heading through a channel with large sandbars on each side and a narrow deep water section in between. The Soviet ship sped up ahead, turned broadside in the channel and signaled its engines had failed. Everyone wondered what would happen next; to try to turn would certainly run the carrier aground. With no further signaling, black smoke started pouring out of the carrier’s stacks and it started to pick up speed. If it hit the Soviet ship it was going to do a good job of it. The destroyer got out of the way.
Victor @ 184. WRONG! It is the very delegation of decision/action to NCO levels that make US Forces incrediable.
Michael Hoskins, CDR USNR, Retired.
Bogie: “Please provide some evidence other than your own preferences that there’s a socially conserative agenda at work in the Tea Party.”
You’re correct, in my opinion. There’s a lot of religion in the tea party and at events such as Beck’s gathering in D.C. But social conservatives have done a lot of thinking about giving to Caesar what is Caesar’s. And they seem to be in agreement that Caesar must reserve to God what is God’s, e.g., freedom of religion and freedom from hard and soft persecution. That gives room for religion to grow and flourish.
Pro-life groups focus increasingly on education. Science is on their side. And one “Juno” is worth ever so much more than a protest or act of violence.
First Rasmussen poll taken after the primary shows O’Donnell has gained 6% on Coons.
It’s Coons 54, O’Donnell 42 (up from 36) and Not Sure 4. Not bad for a one day bump. And now she has a war chest to campaign with.
Other parts of the poll favor O’Donnell as well. The same people were asked “how do you feel about repeal of the healthcare bill?”
41% Strongly favor
12% Somewhat favor
8% Somewhat oppose
35% Strongly oppose
4% Not sure
That’s a lot of opposition. Of course we have the ever present 35% of committed Leftists, slightly higher than the usual 25-30%, but then it’s Delaware.
The poll also asked, what about an Arizona like immigration law for your state?
52% Favor
36% Oppose
12% Not sure
The same 36%.
Basically, Coons has 35% locked (but how many will bother to vote?) and O’Donnell can potentially capture 50-60%. This race is up for grabs folks.
There are other interesting questions as well. You can see the entire poll here:
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections/election_2010/election_2010_senate_elections/delaware/toplines/toplines_delaware_senate_september_15_2010
@193
That is correct these days–and progressively since Vietnam.
My point was that in WW2 that was not the case.
So, character DOESN’T matter now among conservatives. Gee, there’s a surprise.
Dems take down Angle, Miller and O’Donnell. Sorry, kids, but you’re just too crazy and disingenuous for your own good.
I copied this from another sites comments. I think its very interesting on the spin if this is all true.
O.k. fab back up …let me answer your BS assertions (did you copy/paste them from RINO Castle’s slam site?) one at a time. I personally know Christine. One of my good friends helped run her campaign in 08 and I know the truth on EVERY one of those allegations.
1. Re: ISI. She worked for a religious organization and was demoted not because of her job performance but because the supervisors in this ultra religious organization misinterpret their Bible’s and the book of Ephesians where it says that women should submit to men. And she was demoted to have a MAN put in charge of her. The demotion was illegal and she was completely right to call them out on it. She dismissed the lawsuit about 3yrs ago, NOT because it didn’t have merit but she was prepping to run against Biden and didn’t have the time/finances to pursue it. Bottom line was, she was wronged. She had every right to sue them and ISI is lucky that she decided it was not in her best interest to seek a judgment against them.
2. Re: her college career. She DID graduate from Farleigh Dickinson University. She took the courses and walked at graduation. She did not receive the OFFICIAL diploma due to outstanding tuition. It took nearly a decade for her to pay off her college loans and by that time, they made her retake a class to update her degree. (The same thing happened to me. It is very common now a days for colleges to say certain credits have expired, even though technically you got the degree and have worked in the field for years). Unlike others in this country who defaulted on their student loans–she DID pay them herself.
3. As to pursuing a Master’s at Princeton. You are referring to a quote from her deposition in the original ISI lawsuit. She WAS looking into pursuing her masters degree and the question from the legal council was regarding her current work/education. That was her plans after the demotion, then subsequent firing when she brought forth the lawsuit. She did not, however, go forward with it.
4. Re: her home foreclosure. That is a GROSS lie. She SOLD the house in question to help pay for her 08 campaign. She received a letter with a lien against the house more than a year later when it was owned by someone else. It was verified as a computer error and Christine put the letter on her website weeks ago to counter that misrepresentation. As to the IRS, Christine, her family and at least one of her campaign staffers from her 08 bid were audited by the IRS after she ran against Biden. Let’s talk about the statistical improbability for all of those people to be suddenly audited if it hadn’t been that they were all involved in trying to defeat Biden. The IRS found through the audit that she should have owed more in 2004 (?–might have been 05) and I have heard from MANY people that if the IRS audits you, they will ALWAYS find something/somewhere where you should have paid them more. She paid that judgment and posted the IRS clearance letter on her site.
5. Re: the Tea party paying her rent. Again you are distorting facts. Please take the libtard cotton out of your ears and listen up. Christine is NOT rich. She is a single, every day working woman who sold her house in the last campaign and has used every penny she could muster to fight in Delaware politics. She now lives in a small townhouse and because she couldn’t afford an official campaign headquarters–it was run out of rooms from her house. Because of staffers taking up half her living residence, it was determined she could use part of the tea party money as “rent” to her for space in her home for the headquarters. MANY people across this country use part of their house as a business office. (I work as a cardiac consultant from my home and I write off my home office space on my taxes) It is perfectly legal and was the best use of campaign dollars as opposed to her paying a fortune to rent space (which as the campaign has now grown, she will have to do)
Fab, you do nothing but regurgitate the same libtard/RINO bogus allegations that have already been proven false. Your pursuit of sounding intelligent and superior is one big epic fail.
My quick scan of the nightly talks shows indicate that Rove is doubling down on his attacks on O’Donnell. The Delaware Republican website still shows Castle as the candidate, and there are still links to O’Donnell put downs.
This all looks similar to Palin vs. (R) Establishment in Alaska.
I suspect the fracture in the Republican Party looks like a gift to the DNC but it is really the worst of all possible worlds for them too. The next wave of Congress Critters with (R) after their names will arrive with no loyalty to a senior party apparatus, and no incentive to play nice for the sake of appearances.
Ever wonder why nobody with an (R) was getting up on the floor and pulling apart these 2,000 page bills to read the names of the beneficiaries of Democrat largess? Maybe now we know.
It’s still early in the game and the focus is on November, but when we start to see more “crazy” candidates for governors and states attorney generals that will be a good sign that maybe the Republic has a chance.
It’s hopeless.
Sheri, thank you so much. I will be using your info on other places to counter the lie machine.
114. buddy larsen
I got all distracted by the Lady Godiva thing, nekkid ladies on horses popping into my head while attempting to employ the correct syntax and structure, it is more than my simple mind can handle.
Whew!
More on O’Donell from those who know here best:
“On Election Day, another ex-aide, Kristin Murray, a campaign manager for her in 2008, said in a recorded phone call to state voters, “As O’Donnell’s manager, I found out she was living on campaign donations — using them for rent and personal expenses.”
Ms. O’Donnell responded to that call — sponsored by the Delaware Republican Party — by denying many of the charges and saying she had fired Ms. Murray.
Yet, she told a reporter for The News Journal of Wilmington last March that her campaign had paid half the rent on her town house there because it doubled as her headquarters, one of several financial oddities enumerated in an article in that paper.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/us/politics/16odonnell.html?hp
Ooops! She’s nutty alright and clearly got caught fibbing about her rent situation.
Tharkun and Eggplant,
I, too, connected with the Swiftees in August 2000, both contributing cash, and also participating in their forum. To this day my best friends are individuals I met there. What I remember was that the official Bush campaign gave us absolutely no encouragement, but on the contrary tried to shun and us at every turn. After the victory, there was never even the slightest acknowledgement of the Swiftees, let alone any thanks. More than a few of the Swiftee supporters were discouraged, while others of us tried to rationalize it away as political necessity. The rationalization did not work and only added to our cynicism. But in addition to sparing us a Ketchup Presidency, the Swiftee movement planted other, equally important seeds. It marked, even caused, the reawakening of the Viet Nam Generation and our re-entry into political life as a self-conscious entity.
The ties then forged re-emerged in March 2007 after Code Pink and International ANSWER had announced plans to march from the Viet Nam Wall to the Pentagon, days after the Navy Lone Sailor Monument had been desecrated. In response, veterans rallied in a counter-demonstration to defend the Wall. Ultimately we outnumbered the Leftists by about three to one, and persuading Jane Fonda and Cindy Sheehan to duck out. There were similar counter demonstrations in Oakland, led by veterans of the Battle of the Wall.
Invigorated, the Right has not gone back or yielded the streets since. This inspired the individuals who held the first April Fifteenth rallies a couple years ago, rallies which have grown into the Tea Parties. Thus t0oday’s Tea Party Movement can claim a lineage and battle honors stretching back directly to the Swiftees.
I think all the early vote counters are overlooking something. Remember this?
http://cohort11.americanobserver.net/latoyaegwuekwe/multimediafinal.html
No Democrat will win in a black state. 31 MILLION unemployed, who will have lots of time to get to the polls. They may have to car pool to save gas, but that’s OK.
Berry is selling the Big Lie that it’s Bush’s fault. We will s how well that works. IIRC the ’08 election had about 132 million voters showing up. The ’06 had about 80 million;
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781453.html#axzz0ziUb5VFW
31 million unemployed is a whole lot of voters for a mid term. Almost half. That is why the current administration is working so hard to sell the Lie that it’s Bush’s fault that unemployment rose from 4.7 to 9.6 AFTER the Dems took over Congress.
Those 31 million voters will be the story of the ’10 election. The stoooooopid pundits will prattle on about the tea party and anti-establishment voters and there will be a grain of truth in their words, but the real power behind the wave will be those unemployed.
This isn’t 1934 and the general education level is MUCH higher then it was 70+ years ago. Educated people are not going to be fooled by the garbage being pumped out by the White House.
The “social conservatives are a drag on the GOP, they must be dumped” line has been around for about as long as I can remember
Look at Keyes vs Obama in Illinois and tell me that the socons are not a drag on the party.
I voted for Bush in that election AND Obama. Just to poke a thumb in the eye of the socons. A lot of Rs did the same thing or didn’t vote in that race.
And it was no small thing – something like 20% of the Rs defected and another 20% declined to choose.
http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2009/11/obamakeyes-vs-kerry-bush.html
175. peterike,
I once had to climb a 300 ft tower to do some repairs. I got half way up and couldn’t take it any more. We called in the professionals. Thank the Maker.
#203
I heard that O’Donnell was once late returning a few library books. Oh, horrors!
Full story in NYT tomorrow.
victor #184 Audie Murphy
David Hackworth
John Boyd
Someone mentioned that the Weekly Standard “was” good on Iraq. American youngsters are still fighting and dying there, lest we forget.
Pro-life groups focus increasingly on education.
I met one such group at a Tea Party I attended in Rockford. They got my support and a blog post. A little too Christian for my taste but still. They get that the government can’t change people’s hearts. Good on them.
And funny thing is that some of the members of that group were friends of the family.
Despite the outward facade of there being two different parties the good old boy network of the political class is a single social club that is split into two factions. Its kind of like a domestic dispute. The husband and wife might be involved in a nasty and heated argument but if a third party tries to intervene they will both suspend their conflict and unite to attack the one that attempted to interrupt their fight.
That is what is happening now. Outsiders are inserting themselves into the political process. How dare they? More to the point, it is simply inconceivable to the political class that such people could win, but they are doing so. They are the mighty saber-tooth tigers, and the idea that those shambling little apes that walk on two legs holding long sharpened sticks could ever hurt them is simply not to be believed. The apes are the prey. They will always be the prey.
We’ll see how that turns out.
178. bogie wheel
Note the Contract From America. There is not a single social item on the list of 10. Zilch. Zero.
B W, I agree. The reason there is no mention of social issues, as I understand it and believe personnally to be true, is because social issues should be left to the individual states to decide (covered under#1 and #5 I believe). As Andrew Wilkow says, there are rights and responsibilities; If you assume the right you have to assume the responsibility as well. IOW, you can have all the social welfare programs you want to personally pay for without taking it from more conservative taxpayers. See how that works out for ya’.
IMHO, the following link provides a pretty good analysis about Christine O’Donnell in Delaware:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/09/16/4_things_to_know_about_delaware.html
My own assessment is this event was merely a flash-in-the-plan similar to what we observed with Ross Perot’s presidential campaign in 1992.
I’d like to be wrong about this. Prior to 2006, the Republicans controlled both the Congress and Presidency but frittered their political advantage away through compromise with the socialists and ordinary corruption. Maybe the collapse of the economy and the rise of the TEA party will prevent history from repeating itself. More likely, tearing down the socialist edifice will be a slow process where we pull it down brick-by-brick as the different socialist institutions obviously fail or become clear threats to national security. An important first step will be reconstitution of the MSM and that process has only just begun.
Batman @ 115 – We will have to disagree about Bill Clinton “eating Newt’s Lunch”, I call BS on that – true that Gingrich had to abandon “shutting down the government” – but let’s be honest about the circumstances – Again the narrative – was controlled by the MSM (the ONLY game in town then) – he got his brains beaten in every night with CNN running a cry-your-heart out story about the hotdog vendor at the Washington monument who, because of the evil Gingrich was going to have to take out a third mortgage on his house to pay for his son’s new G.I.Joe action figure. My point is THEY can’t do THAT crap anymore! They only own part of the prism thru which we see the world – That is a game changer. Secondly – I am not a groupie for N G, I just think that the man has good ideas, he makes sense, and would kick BHO’s ass in a debate like Chuck Norris to Urkle. Besides he does’nt have to split the atom, he just has to provide disciplined, effective, conservative leadership – and I am confident he could do that. As for being likable – less worried about that now that we have the internet, Fox News etc. again they cannot control the narrative – Plus, give this community organizer another year of fubar-ing things up, this county would elect ME! – and I am slightly to the right of Gengis Khan, and definatly not warm and fuzzy. Lastly Batman, I really like your posts, you and several others here are bright, bright folks – and I humbly say I appreciate the good company.
batman @ 115 said:
“…the best strategic result may be control of the House and a 50/50 split in the Senate. That way there will be enough votes to stop bad legislation but not enough votes to exempt the Democrats from responsibility for what they have done. And it would also reduce the show trial investigations that, for all the thrill they offer, generally make the inquisitors look worse.”
This is a good analysis. If conservatives held both houses of Congress then the MSM would blame the deteriorating economy upon the Republicans and attempt to shift blame away from Obama. By controlling the House, conservatives would have halted the socialist legislative agenda. Obama would continue with the socialist agenda at the executive level independently of whether or not conservatives held the Senate and also veto any attempt at repeal of Obamacare.
Show trials are generally a bad idea unless it concerns impeachment with a real possibility for conviction in the Senate or a public response to an extreme threat against national security. One could argue that it would be beneficial to drag in key members of the MSM before the Senate and ask them probing questions about their bias towards Obama during the 2008 presidential election. However that’s water under the bridge and we already know they’re liberal stooges.
Just daydreaming here…….a debate between the Resident and Chris Christie with no preordained list of questions or vetted guests.
Sort of like a great white shark vs a minnow.
Re. #205. stoicheion
“This isn’t 1934 and the general education level is MUCH higher then it was 70+ years ago. Educated people are not going to be fooled by the garbage being pumped out by the White House.”
I hope you are correct, although I have my doubts.
Wretchard,
Re: human frailty
The advertisement (ROYOBAMA) at the head of this thread attempts to tie the Democrat candidate for Georgia governor, Mr. Roy Barnes, to Mr. Obama.
Today’s Atlanta Journal Constitution carried a story about the Republican candidate, Mr. Deal. It is quite possible that Mr. Deal soon may have to seek bankruptcy protection. This should be a test of the public’s willingness to overlook an anomalous, political frailty.
Just to be clear, I like neither Mr. Barnes nor Mr. Deal. Sadly, they were the best (sigh) of a sorry lot.
the general education level is MUCH higher then it was 70+ years ago
Education LEVEL is higher. Level of education is lower. Much.
ok, so O’Donnell sounds a little ADHD –the type is vulnerable to attack, as are all mercurial, intense, high-strung personalities. The attack is pretty simple to sustain: just ignore the flip side of every one of those traits. For those of us who understand and are sympathetic toward this type, those flip sides are the explanation as to why the heck we’re even talking about her. OK, so she may need a staffer to stay close and tend to details –now that she’s moving up in the world she’ll have one, and it will be her missing link, and that will be that, end of storius negatorium.
The point is the flip side, that charisma and enthusiasm lighten and brighten the room and properly supported –crucial for the type –she’ll be a fearsome fighter in battlefield DC.
This to me is the way to defend her –that trivial is trivial, and vital is vital, and those who want to stalk the ghosts make the point in the breach that they can’t cope with her stream of tea party consciousness.
Re. # 214. Eggplant
“Prior to 2006, the Republicans controlled both the Congress and Presidency but frittered their political advantage away through compromise with the socialists and ordinary corruption.”
Where you’ve got an idea they are not socialists in different closing? Social redistributive schemes are popular with both parties. Minor diff. doesn’t matter.
M Simon
Re: “Imagine there’s no so-cons, it’s easy if you try…”
Keep dreamin’, the day the GOP drives out Christians and other social conservatives is the day that the GOP no longer exists as a viable political entity. If the choice is between liberal statism and value free libertarianism, I for one am out of here . I believe many other believers would do likewise.
The ground troops of much of conservatism’s gains in recent years have been Christians concerned about the moral slide in the USA. They are out beating the bricks for candidates and examining what candidates stand for.
I became a Christian in time for the 1980 election. I was a leftist prior to my conversion ( worked as a McGovern volunteer). I have never voted for a Democrat since except in a few local elections in Alabama. As a matter of fact the local GOP pols I voted against had the value-free thing down ,selling their souls to developers. They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.
I believe a lot of GOP honchos (Rove,etc.) view Christians the way Democrats view blacks, someone with nowhere else to go. I think both sides might learn the error of the error of their ways before this thing shakes out.
Russell Kirk ,one of the founders of the modern conservative movement stated:
“All culture arises out of religion. When religious faith decays, culture must decline, though often seeming to flourish for a space after the religion which has nourished it has sunk into disbelief.”
Simon, Your citing of Alan Keyes as an example of the perils of social conservatism is lame. He has always been mercurial. He entered the race late after Slick got the other opponents disqualified. The fact that ex-Panther Bobby Rush held the seat didn’t make it much of a GOP opportunity.
All that said, your vote for Obama was still stupid, He was an overrated Mack Daddy then and now.
It is insane for ANYONE to accuse the US of — just for instance — homophobia.
It is NOT the USA in which homosexuals are sentenced by government/religious courts to be hanged by the neck until dead, and then left on display as an example “pour encourager les autres.”
It is in IRAN, where the Mullahs rule, that homosexuals and uppity women are hanged and left to dangle from industrial cranes lining the sidewalks of Tehran, the beautiful capital city.
It is fascinating to see that the Leftward scuttling Marxists are absolutely silent about the vicious brutality shown by ISLAM toward homosexuals and women. In particular, only a SINGLE American Feminist has made any substantial protest against Iran’s treatment of women.
That was feminist author Kate Millet, who actually traveled to Iran in 1979 to promote women’s rights AFTER the revolution. Remarkably, the leaders of the revolution merely deported her…
It would be interesting to hear from other readers who might have knowledge of how other Islamic countries treat their populations. We’ve certainly heard of a number of atrocities perpetrated by, for instance, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia — schoolgirls prevented from escaping a burning school by the religious police, because they weren’t dressed with proper modesty to be allowed in public. Better to let them asphyxiate and burn than shame their families. GOD HELP US. HOW HAS IT COME TO THIS, THAT WE ARE IN ANY WAY BEHOLDEN TO THESE MONSTERS?????
sgi 121: “If there is one thing and one thing only that will alienate other American voters from tea party candidates it is their social conservatism. Personal freedom must be extended to all Americans, even if their personal choices are offensive to social conservatives.”
bogie wheel 172: “I don’t know whether you intended this as codespeak, sgi, but it sure reads like it. Since you are so in favor of people living with being offended, how about defending the “personal freedom” to (1) call homosexuality a sin, (2) refuse to rent one’s private property to an unmarried couple, (3) refuse to perform abortions, even if those personal choices are offensive to gays, fornicators and those seeking to eliminate their offspring?”
Equal rights is the key – but our unalienable equal rights have a priority – the right to life trumps all the others. The God-given unalienable right of individuals – including the unborn child – to their life trumps the right of others to their liberty. No one is free (except in defense of life) to kill someone – that is murder – we all equally possess a natural unalienable right to life. Abortion is unjustified killing unless the life of the mother is threatened by the pregnancy. Should abortion be considered murder legally? I say yes after about 28 weeks of gestation since at that point the unborn child can live – with medical help – outside the mother. Before that date it should be considered a sin but not a crime because the mother is up to that point the baby’s natural and exclusive custodian. Homosexual and unmarried heterosexual couples have no right to limit other people’s speech – except for speech calling for violence against them – because we all equally possess a natural unalienable right to free speech – the cornerstone of liberty. Homosexual and unmarried heterosexual couples have no right to control other people’s private property – we all equally possess a natural unalienable right to control our own labored-for property. Personal freedom must be extended to all Americans, even if their personal choices are offensive to homosexuals, unmarried heterosexual couples, and to women who abort their children.
Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can.” Samuel Adams
“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.” Thomas Jefferson
Mad Fiddler @ 225 said:
“GOD HELP US. HOW HAS IT COME TO THIS, THAT WE ARE IN ANY WAY BEHOLDEN TO THESE MONSTERS?????”
We are beholden because they control most of the world’s energy supply. If there was no petroleum flowing from the Islamic world then we would have simply ignored them. Also I suspect that most of them would have been quite happy continuing to live in their dung piles and be ignored by the west.
Solve the energy problem and the Islamic problem goes away. Truth to tell, the Islamic problem goes away even if we don’t solve the energy problem as explained by Wretchard’s three conjectures.
M. Simon 188: “DRUG WAR = BIG GOVERNMENT”
Marijuana, Narcotics, Cocaine and the others are a threat to the mental and physical health, and the lives of our youth. A mind-altering drug in the bloodstream of physicians, surgeons and airline pilots is a threat to our health and life. Laws against these drugs defend our right to life – and especially the lives of our vulnerable children.
It IS possible that some other feminists have made some feeble protests, but they’ve either been ignored by the traitorous MSM, or suppressed and intimidated into the shadows by the bullying “feminazi’s” or BOTH.
227. Eggplant
Wow the biggest arms sale in US history!
“Barack Obama is to go ahead with plans to sell Saudi Arabia advanced aircraft and other weapons worth up to $60 billion, the biggest arms deal in US history, in a strategy of shoring up Gulf Arab allies to face any military threat.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the administration is also in talks with the Saudis about possible naval and missile-defense upgrades that could be worth tens of billions of dollars more over five to 10 years.–
The Saudis will buy as many as 84 new F-15 fighters,
upgrade 70 more,
and purchase three different types of helicopters –
70 Apaches, 72 Black Hawks and 36 Little Birds, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The administration plans to tout the $60 billion package as a major job creator—supporting at least 75,000 jobs, according to estimates
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704621204575488361149625050.html
If we reverse NAFTA and all similar legislation, build two nuclear power plants for each major American city, and rebuild our factories we won’t need Saudi oil and we won’t find it necessary to sell them weapons. We need to build weapons for our own defense – and that of our liberty-loving allies (Saudi Arabia is not on that list). We need to be building laptops, cell phones, cameras and cars here – here in the United States – here – here – here.
I like Alvin Greene. If he were in my state, I would be inclined to actively support him for Senate! I actually hope Alvin Greene wins the fall election.
Alexis -
There’s a reason the term “loose cannon” came about. It does not automatically follow that a cannon rolling about unsecured on the deck of a ship is better than a cannon controlled by your opponent.
It does not automatically follow that “he owes nothing to anybody” means “he cannot be bought.”
I’m all for shaking up the establishment. But it’s one thing to go in there with a hammer; quite another to go in there with a bazooka and a crate of TNT, fuse lit.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/aug/27/alvin-greene-south-carolina
Is this honestly, honestly someone you think is a “good” candidate for the United States Senate? Or do you just like him cuz he’s the outsider?
Wow. Let it never be said we’re shouting into a vacuum here…
YellowBrickRoad — you sound like you might have lived through a bunch of those twice-annual RIF*s that characterized the 90′s in the San Francisco Bay High-Tech industries.
Animators weren’t subjected to quite so much churning (’cause we were paid a lot less!), but I lived in the cracks between the worlds. Frequently serving as liaison between engineers and cranky artists who rarely understood why they were being told to conform to incomprehensible standards of hierarchy and file nomenclature, I had a lot of EE friends. Many of those who at the TOP of their skills found themselves suddenly put out on the street, replaced by some programmer from Calcutta, or New Delhi, or Karachi, or Singapore, happy to be employed in USA for half the salary of the guys they replaced. Cause it was also LOTS more than they could earn back home.
The Silicon Valley business owners found President Why-bother-constraining-my-Willie to be enthusiastically malleable and ready to increase the numbers for imported Hi-Tech Worker Visas, in return for lots’o’ big fat campaign contributions. There was never any SHORTAGE of brilliant high-tech programmers or engineers; there was only ever an acute shortage of 20-something high-tech workers willing to work for half-wages.
It’s also interesting to note that these same Silicon Valley employers had managed to work things out so that many of their most productive engineers and designers were working under contracts that designated them as “exempt” employees.
That’s a legal term of art in relation to the Fair Labor Standards Act for an employee who NEVER EVER qualifies for overtime, or guaranteed vacations, or comp time.
A lot of ‘em — EE and Artists alike —were stiff-necked independent cusses, less likely to unionize than a Scottish Highland Haggis-eater.
*(RIF = “Reductions in Force” = nother euphemism for LAYOFFS; corporate-speak I’d never heard till I worked in Silicon Valley.)
p.s. I really really really appreciate that people here take the time to read each others’ posts, and formulate a thoughtful reply. This forum has more plain educational value in any month than four years of idle conversation in an Ivy-league dining hall!
bogie wheel:
He’s an outsider, all right. He might be able to shake things up in Washington. Sadly, he might also turn out to be like Carol Moseley Braun.
Okay, I like to stir the pot a little. Alvin Greene has potential, but I don’t think this is the year for him. Any solid candidate needs friends, and also needs a phalanx of trusted advisors who can help staff his office if he gets elected. Alvin Greene doesn’t seem to have friends and advisors to help him in his campaign.
Can he be bought? Oh, probably. Most politicians can be bought, although the better ones don’t like getting bought. The problem Alvin Greene faces is that, like a lot of amateurs, he might not realize that he is getting bought until it’s too late. An experienced corrupt politician is like a prostitute in that he knows his own price. I doubt that Alvin Green knows how easily a politician can be politically bought.
I admire his pluck, though. We need more people with the nerve to get into the arena. Sneering at men like him does our democracy no good, if only because Americans desperately need to expand the pool of talent for higher office.
That the Democrat party can openly get behind a candidate who is outspoken about the fact that he is a Marxist, says all that needs to be said about the Democrat Party. Vote ‘em out in November.
Democratic Heroes of the late 20th and early 21st century:
Ted Kennedy – who driving drunk with a young and beautiful campaign worker after leaving a Martha’s Vineyard party together, drove off the bridge at Chappaquiddick and into the water. He left Mary Jo Kopechne to asphyxiate and drown, walked away and spent a full day working out a story for the police. He was never charged with any serious crime, and was re-elected by his loving constituents for the next 40 years. In his lying testimony about the incident he tried to make himself sound like he’d gone to extraordinary exertions to “save” Ms. Kopechne, but the professional diver who days later recovered her body – an experienced rescue diver, and captain of the local Fire Rescue Unit — testified that she had certainly been alive and able to breathe in the submerged car for a considerable time after the accident, possibly as long as three or four hours. So that if the gutless puke Mr. Kennedy had bothered to call the rescue squad immediately after, instead of squandering his time with other useless friends establishing an alibi, Mary Jo Kopechne might have been saved.
On the other hand, it has been extremely useful in understanding the MONUMENTAL DEPRAVITY of the Democrats to note that they made this twisted Moral Pygmy the GRAND LEADER of their party.
Others we might want to study:
Dem Representative Gerry Studds, who admitted in Congress that he had sexual relations with an underage male page, and after being “censured” (i.e., a very light slap on the wrist) he was allowed to continue serving his term, and was several times re-elected to the noblest legislative body of all history…
Barney Frank, Democrat Representative who took as a companion and sexual partner a man who ran a male prostitution business out of Frank’s apartment. Later Barney F. managed to help get his “spouse” Herb Moses installed as an administrator of FANNIE MAE, which has been shown to have set up a vast looting system by which the executives paid themselves bonuses with taxpayer dollars for accepting huge numbers of worthless mortgages, to be paid off with more taxayer dollars.
I don’t care about these guy’s homosexuality; I care that they are CROOKS who were celebrated and rewarded after (1) seducing a MINOR, and (2) placing their friends in lucrative government positions.
Another words,
It is to laugh when I hear democrats accusing Ms. O’Donnell of somehow falling short of the high standard they have set for an elected member of the United States Congress.
Bigger government is in the interest of insider Republicans, and not just Democrats. That is why the current representatives of both parties cannot be trusted to limit and roll back the size and reach of the federal government.
As for O’Donnell, the MSM will focus on the same questions raised by Karl Rove, in an effort to destroy her. They cannot focus on the political arguments that she raises, because they will loose that argument, and she should point that out whenever the MSM practices the “politics of personal destruction”. The MSM is no longer mainstream, it is the PR arm of the Democrat Party.
“The MSM is no longer mainstream, it is the PR arm of the Democrat Party.”
“Pravda and Izvestia were no longer mainstream, they were PR arms of the Communist Party.”
34. Storm-Rider –
Ah yes, the Europeans. Those models of mercy, sophistication and the humanitarian impulse. Jean-Francois Revel had this to say about those precious Euro-elites:
“It was they, after all, who made the twentieth century the darkest in history; it was they who brought about the two unprecedented cataclysms of two World Wars; and it was they who invented and put into place the two most criminal regimes ever inflicted on the human race – the pinnacles of evil and imbecility achieved in a space of less than thirty years.”
And wasn’t Germany, the ‘land of poets and philosophers’ brought down by its poets and philosophers in the twentieth century? A specte is indeed haunting Europe, and it’s the spectre of Gramsci’s ghost.
trabang,
Keep dreamin’, the day the GOP drives out Christians and other social conservatives is the day that the GOP no longer exists as a viable political entity.
Wouldn’t dream of it. I intend to turn them. Into libertarians. You know that small government thing you hear them prattle about all the time. In other words make them live up to their advertising.
I am no more interested in cultural socialists than I am in economic socialists. I don’t need government improvement. That is my job. In my own way and my own time.
We had a strip club in my town run by an ex-minister. Customers and the girls were always treated with respect. Eventually they ran him out of town. Zoning. More business for the sleazes.
My point – you can never tell where a person might find God. We should let God and vice work in their own way to redeem men (and women). And how did I treat the girls? With respect. One girl sat at my table after her dance. We held hands and talked about our families. And afterwards? I told my mate everything. No secrets.
The same for so many things that socons think they can change at the point of a gun. It only empowers criminals. The old Baptist/bootlegger coalition.
The tide is changing re: Drug Prohibition. It has about five years left to run. If the socons wind up on the wrong side of that they will get buried. Again. I’d hate to see it. My favorite at this time for 2012? Gary Johnson. He is telling the truth about the drug war to Republicans. It costs a lot and is counter productive. It is easier for kids to get illegal drugs than legal beer. Typical government program. Costs a lot – delivers results opposite of those promised. Which is a clue.
Now you want to change the culture without government help? Sign me up.
=======
BTW the groups (lefties, socons) stick so close to their stereotypes that it is easy to predict how they will fail.
Any party that seriously took MYOB to heart could win elections indefinitely. But the will to Power and Control (the heart of all socialisms – cultural or economic) is so inexorable that you can tell in the midst of their very success where their failure will come from.
Which is why I want to see socons become ruthless about smaller government. Libertarian if you will. I don’t expect to see it. On the right as on the left faith stays secure despite myriad examples of failure. It is a mystery. Or human nature. Which I hear tell the right really understands. I don’t buy it.
You can’t reverse NAFTA. Economically. You can do it politically. But economics rule. Besides our problem is not NAFTA or cheap Chinese labor. It is too many government regulations and too many lawyers.
I can’t remember if it was Slash-Dot or Wired but an I-Phone Mfg. said he would relocate from China to America if it weren’t for all the lawyers.
With capital behind them Americans costs less than the Chinese. On a productivity basis. i.e. $labor/product produced. It is government that is killing us.
Too many people blame the result. I prefer to blame the cause.
Marijuana, Narcotics, Cocaine and the others are a threat to the mental and physical health, and the lives of our youth.
Well sure. And it is easier for kids to get illegal drugs than legal beer. In fact that is exactly the argument that prosecutors in Oakland, CA are using to support Prop. 19. Did you notice that I said PROSECUTORS? Read about it here:
http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2010/09/another-defection.html
Prohibited does not mean unavailable. It means distributed by criminals.
But as I said above. No amount of evidence will change a socon mind. So you have directly shown where the next socon failure will come from. Thank you.
I predict that in four to six years the Democrats will be back. They will ride in on a wave of disgust over the Drug War. Unless Rs can get ahead of that parade. I doubt it. Faith in government is too strong. Despite evidence from 70 years (actually more) of failure.
It is ironic that the Right which has no faith in government when it comes to economics has quite a lot of faith in government when it comes to culture. You’d have to be dumb as rocks to be unable to connect the dots. The miracle of faith works wonders in its own mysterious way. I’m always amused. By the left and the right.
I look forward to the day when the right loses its faith in government and returns to faith in the Maker. I don’t expect it in my lifetime. So why do I continue on? For my children.
Every day that I fight the government on all fronts I count as a day well spent.
“Prohibited does not mean unavailable. It means distributed by criminals.”
Permitted means available – more youngsters experimenting with mind-altering drugs – more youngsters experiencing mental and emotional dysfunction – more under-achieving youngsters stoned and strung out – more youngsters failing at school – more youngsters overdosing and dying. It means distributed by free enterprise. Please use some common sense. I’m not against finding additional and better ways to fight the evil of young minds poisoned by mind-altering drugs, but your proposal to legalize them is like expecting squirrels to stop eating good-tasting poisoned acorns – they are going to eat the acorns.
Our Founding Fathers were not against all government – they were not anarchists – they wanted limited Federal Government which was under the control of “We the People” – under control of the majority via Constitutional and Federal law and within moral constraints defined by our Declaration. Since regulating mind-altering drugs is not a power innumerated to the Federal government in our Constitution such power should fall to the states, so that’s where the debates should be – in the State Legislatures. Some states will be more lenient – some more strict – that is how it should be – but I’d wager more would be strict and they would have healthier, sound-minded and higher achieving young people. Federal Government should only be involved in regulating (stopping) foreign import of mind-altering drugs and interruption of these drugs across state lines.
“Every day that I fight the government on all fronts I count as a day well spent.”
I like that, but let’s change it to “Every day that I fight un-Constitutional Federal Government on all fronts, I count as a day well spent.”