Politicians get your attention when they contradict the standard rhetoric of their own party. Joe Lieberman did that tonight on Hannity & Colmes, saying quite clearly that Bush did the right thing in Iraq. He even allowed as how, in retrospect, the standard Democratic meme that Bush did not do enough to engage the help of our allies was probably irrelevant. In the world of Chirac, it would not have made a difference.
How strange to see a politician actually say what he believes to be the truth. I had to listen carefully to make sure I wasn’t hearing things.
Now I used to find Lieberman a kind of pompous Holy Roller, wearing his religiosity too much on his sleeve for my taste. But in this sea of prevarication I am beginning to respect him. And just as I remember the young Kerry (barely – as I indicated in the post below) from my Yale days, I remember the young Joe (better). And I am certain of this – he was far more idealistic and, yes, progressive than the present candidate who later came back from Vietnam a born again peacenik and then some. Back in those days, Joe Lieberman was a campus leader in civil rights – and a legitimate one. I have distinct memories of him at meetings of the Yale Summer Teaching program, a group that sent many of us, including my then wife and me, down South to teach in the black community. Lieberman was an idealist; Kerry was in Skull & Bones. In a very strange way he still is, only the membership rules have changed.
I could easily vote for Lieberman today if he were voting for President. Kerry, of course, is another matter.
Re: Edwards’ speech. Some people think he was great. I thought he looked nervous and not as assured as I had seen him on the stump. But I was pleased to see him take a relatively hard line on the War on Terror. If they are elected, I hope he and Kerry mean it. They’re going have to.
Bully for Joe. I found his rather craven behavior during the last election rather dubious, if not downright despicable. I’m glad to see he’s rediscovered his backbone. There’s hope for the Democrats yet.
And, by the way, why is the world starting to look like all-Yalies all the time?
As Democrats go, Lieberman is one of the saner ones. But I agree that during the last election he readily tossed aside all of his “principles” – making me wonder just how good a guy he really is.
As far as his take on things, it seems to be the same as the new Democrat position, except Lieberman is more honest about it.
We seem to have a race shaping up where Kerry will cling tightly to Bush’s foreign policy to keep Bush from landing a punch.
Whether the party can get away with this rank dishonesty is another question. Certainly if the MSM wasn’t almost completely run for the Democrats, it wouldn’t work.
What a crock!
Lieberman reminds a little too much of McCain for my comfort: a man with a Beltway reputation for honesty and integrity who leaned on the government regulators on behalf of Keating and Arthur Andersen, who called for morality in media and less than a week later promised a roomful of fatcat Hollywood donors that they wouldn’t have to worry about him’n'Al…
Edwards is a lawyer. He says what he thinks will swing the jury; has nothing to do with what he feels or even necessarily with the facts of the case. He can say what he wants but I’ll remember the friend of mine who had to go out of her home state to find an OB-GYN because of him.
Wichita Boy,
You’ve never heard of the Yale Mafia?
Hindsight always being 20/20, I seem to think that while Sen. Lieberman mouthing the Democratic Party Line when he was Al Gore’s running mate….he was probably puking his guts out because that was what he had to do.
While I disagree with most of Joe’s domestic issues, I can certainly agree with what he’s doing with his own party, essentially a voice in the wilderness. I respect him for that alone.
I agree re Lieberman. One of the few decent ones left. Though I didn’t want to have to undergo his war on jelly donuts.
I’m not taken in by Edwards at all. I don’t even see the appeal. And I think Bush relates better with the ‘common man’ than Edwards does. Even the NYTimes couldn’t resist that photo of Bush spontaneously hugging the girl whose mother died on 9/11.
I find this Democrat dishonesty appalling. The majority of delegates don’t agree with the platform but they okay it anyway. ABB. I mean all the crap we’ve heard for over a year and because it’s the convention it will be swept under the rug. The dems have butchered a decent, intelligent, public-servant just for doing his job. Even though there are some policies of Bush I don’t agree with (and fewer than some might think), I don’t think he deserved 10% of the garbage the Dems have thrown at him.
And how much can Kerry do when he doesn’t have his party behind him once he’s in office? Everything he does in his first term will be with a view towards 2008 which is going to leave him ineffective in the war. The Dems are only united behind him now because he isn’t Bush. Once the election is over all bets are off. It’s going to be a nail-biting 4 years if Kerry wins.
Roger:
Joe is the rare example of a Democrat who definetly wants his party in power but knows that the left wing of his party is taking over. He knows that there is a faction of the Dems that will hand over Israel in a heartbeat, and that the WOT is not something we can take a “time out” on to borrow Kaus’s insipid phrase.I give him a pass on the 2000 campaign, a VP has little choice but to follow the big dogs lead. The sad thing for Joe is that he is going to be more and more isolated in the new left Democratic party. Kerry has no spine and will pull a Clinton and test the winds of popular opinion for every foreign policy decision. Foreign policy by polls is always a disaster and that is what we will have in Kerry.The decision to go to war is the most unpopular thing you state take in the democratic party today. He is at least standing by his decision amd he is not trying to weasel out of it like JFK. The ‘I was for the war, but not really, and it wasn’t authorazation, but I voted for the funding before I voted against” stance that Kerry has taken makes Joe’s upright honesty even more refreshing.I predict in ten years Joe will pull a Zell Miller and cross over. I only hope Israel can hold out.
Syl
I agree with the dishonesty. It’s really amazing. It’s like they think they are running a magic show or a shell game. They must be counting on some strong party discipline.
And the ABB candidate is strong simply because of a bit of bad luck (only a few WMDs) and an insanely, rabid frothing ABB press, a group that has lost whatever integrity they ever had, and are nakedly biased.
After all, it’s the gray lady that put Abu Ghraib on its front page around 40 times – all for an objectively minor, under control incident.
This steady drumbeat of “bad news” is what powers the ABB’s. WMDs, insurgents, National Guard phony issues, Abu Ghraib, etc… It’s a death of a thousand cuts. People don’t even remember what it is about Bush that gives them a bad feeling. It’s the big lie technique. You’d think the MSM folks had studied under Goebbels!
Kerry is a pathetic candidate. Hard left voting record. A war record that only works because the very bad flaws (in Vietnam and later) are suppressed by the MSM. A total of 4 bills with his name on them, none significant. Weak character – narcissistic, prone to lies, very opportunistic.
We do not want this man to be president in this war.
There is no Democrat Party. At least not that functions as a cohesive unit, or is committed to a national agenda.
What remains of the party of FDR, Truman, and JFK took a head shot in 1972. By the time 1980 rolled around they had proven incapable of managing domestic or foreign policy. By 1990 Bill Clinton figured he’d better run in 92 despite the urging of his staff for more time to deal with bimbo eruptions and other scandals because if he waited any longer there might not be a party to run for…
I’m not a veteran convention watcher and I do understand that changes in technology and the primary system have taken a lot of the punch out of the event. Even taking into account the lack of potential for floor fights or brokering I have become convinced that a lot of those people don’t really have their hearts in this convention…or their candidate. They aren’t supporting a leader. They are desperately attempting to avoid mistakes and stick to a script. The talking points, smiles, and civility are all a mask that fits too tight.
They have all the spontaneity of a high school play that should have been rehearsed a few more times.
I watched George Mitchell participate in a roundtable this evening. Just a typical pundit possee between speakers. He’s one of the reasons I voted for Ross Perot in 92, though I wasn’t aware of it at the time. In the pre-internet era I depended on newspapers and TV for information. All I heard during the run up to the the election was how bad the recession was (I was laid off, too) and how despicable it was that George Bush LIED and raised taxes. I was already pretty disgusted with him for not taking out Hussein and his duplicity by raising taxes was enough to make me go for Perot as an alternative.
Foley and Mitchell set up Bush beautifully. They sold the tax summit as necessary for the good of the nation, and leaned hard on the duties of a responsible leader. Just raise the gas tax, a few other taxes, and we’ll stand together united for the good of America. Sure, we’ll restrict spending. That was what Grahm/Rudmann was all about, right?
Caeser faced better odds when Brutus invited him to the senate. G.H.W.Bush took the knife in the back like a gentleman; that’s a weakness with too many good men. One thing I really like about President Bush is that he’s been very careful of his back where the Loyal Opposition is concerned. I’m sure he remembers, too.
I never heard about the conditions agreed to in the tax summit. I knew that there had been one, but by the time the impact settled in it was “Bush LIED” all day, every day. CNN and all the best papers said so. And golly, I’d heard him say ‘read my lips’, too.
The recession was over before the election, only you wouldn’t know it for all the media noise about the coming bread lines. Of course, shortly after Clinton was elected it was two chickens in every pot and the homeless were teleported to Aruba for the next eight years.
I’ll spend more time explaining that Perot vote to St. Peter than I will the various violent or salacious episodes in my life. I count it as a blessing that the test for entrance to the Holy Gates is one of grace and not of intelligence. Otherwise, I’d be wearing asbestos BVD’s when they closed the box.
Anyway…I watched Mitchell, the distinguished elder statesman, peering earnestly through his glasses at the rest of the table and making the case for new leadership…and talking points…and it was suddenly just not worth watching any more. This guy knifed a man who served through the defeat of the Soviet Union. Who crafted an international coalition to free a friend…a coalition that saw Saudis and Egyptians fighting on OUR side. He stuck that shiv in deep and twisted it on newscasts and in editorials knowing that Bush served during the greatest economic expansion and improvement in individual living standards in the history of our nation, and that his policies were clearly going to continue in the traditions that were what saved us from the income redistribution and social engineering of the sixties and seventies.
And he got that knife in because George H.W. Bush was an honorable man who believed that principled compromise was an honorable thing. That act was assassination without blood, motivated by the obsession with acquiring power and absent of any objective evidence that his party had any better ideas to offer.
Mitchell and Foley and the NY Times and CNN and the movie stars and the tenured professors cannot point to any objective success of any post-mod liberal agenda…but that doesn’t matter because they know they just haven’t had a real chance to make it work. They mean well, and that’s the important thing.
Here in 2004 we see a party that’s not really a party. Just squabbling interests. The part that is ideological sends birthday cards to Castro, which looks pretty stupid with the Sov’s dead and buried just ten years past. The most powerful group is the one that has the checkbook, and that’s the one that shuffled all the cats in line back in 90. They don’t want Kerry elected so the current exercise is once again how to get past a public display of the party without it offending a fatal part of the national electorate.
Joe Lieberman belongs in this party (even with his shameful stumble as Gore’s running mate) like a sheep belongs with wolves. There’s no place for him or his priniciples.
The day that Hillary Clinton has no more potential to run the string out the phones will stop being answered at DNC headquarters. When the leaseholder on the office shows up for the rent he will find a dirty office, a few phones, and bare spots on the walls where the nicer pictures used to be.
Until that day comes “the buck stops here” and “bear any burden, pay any price” will exist only as cruel reminders of what was once a great party.
John Moore:
It didn’t work in 2002.
Syl:
I’m not taken in by Edwards at all. I don’t even see the appeal.
There is a BIG segment of our society that has bought into Form/Forum Over Substance and its Kissing Cousin – Packaging. If it sounds wonderful and is packaged all pretty, they’ll buy it without much consideration for their need or the value they are receiving.
Unfortunately this is especially pronounced on the Left and is exacerbated by the failure of their ideas – the substance. So even if they had some inclination to care or think about substance they cannot without recognizing they’ve been pushing bad product all these years.
Also unfortunately, and this is even worse, the flip side to the Form/Forum Over Substance coin is…
The dems have butchered a decent, intelligent, public-servant just for doing his job.
To maintain their fantasy they must assume that the opponent’s substance is flawed and must attack and attempt to destroy. Their behavior could be excused if it was a “victimless” self-delusion – but it isn’t. They trash decent people and they wreak havoc doing it.
Even though there are some policies of Bush I don’t agree with (and fewer than some might think), I don’t think he deserved 10% of the garbage the Dems have thrown at him.
This is what has suprised me most about the current administration and, perhaps, myself over the past four years. I didn’t have the feeling that I was “holding my nose” last election but I would have held my nose and case something similar to an ABG vote – I just could not tolerate Gore, he seemed an unstable boor to me.
But what has happened is that I find this administration to be quite bold and, frankly, downright freakin’ interesting. When I stop and think about the “truisms” I held and how I’ve begun reconsidering some of those I am, well, surprised. Just to hold up a couple for example purposes:
- The Powell Doctrine. This was an unshakeable position for me since before it was the Powell Doctrine. Don’t go to war unless you are willing to bring overwhelming force to bear and you have decided what victory “looks like” and are willing pursue it and be done when you get it. I’m no longer convinced that the Powell Doctrine is always necessary and I have even come to suspect that it is untenable under some of the conditions we are faced with today. It was, IMO, this administration that was intelligent and bold enough to move beyond the Powell Doctrine
- Federal drug benefits. I still believe this is a program we would be better off without and is trying to solve a problem by masking symptoms, but the boldness of this administration pursuing this, even when its “base” disagrees has led me to at least rethink. Sometimes the people will get what they want even if it a lot of us think its a bad idea and sometimes politicians have to give the people what they demand (sort of like mom and dad letting Little Susie go make some mistakes to learn from).
- the immigration reform proposal. Here’s one where I’m fed up to my eyeballs with My Fellow Citizens. Way too many of us have climbed into steaming piles of intractable nonsense on this issue. I was, no kidding, happy to see what seemed to me a darned good starting point for a national discussion and, hopefully, some workable reforms. It really didn’t matter to me if the details were screwy, getting past the screaming hissey fits on this subject is the first step to making some progress. In this case, however, both (all – there’s more than two) eviscerated the administration for this. I was very disappointed in the reaction to trial balloon but I find I admire the administration for being willing to try to put some ideas out.
Just examples, but I agree with you that we’ve got a decent man trying to do a good job for us. He didn’t make the world so many are so unhappy about. The barbarians didn’t spring out of the ground like weeds the day he was elected. The mere sight of his face didn’t suddenly turn wonderful Allies into Seething enemies. The UN didn’t just up and say, “Well screw the world if those stupid Americans are going to elect Bush – we’re just gonna show them who’s boss by stealing everything that isn’t nailed down!”
“still hope for the democrats” ????
No there isn’t. The democrat party stands for everything bad about politics. If you could smell corruption, the democrat party would smell like an uncovered landfill. The lack of oxygen would be terminal. The democrat party is in decline. That is the natural order of things. I consider it my duty to help it along. In my mind there is no reason for the democrat party to exist. We may need a second party to keep our republic healthy, but not the democrat party. It has moral cancer. It’s become like the meaning of life for me, to do whatever I can to remove the cancerous entity. And I love this duty. I love the rewards.
I only discovered the political blogs a couple of months ago quite by accident when I was googling for something and ended up on NRO’s The Corner. One thing that has particularly struck me about Roger’s here, and some others like LGF, is how many participants are liberal Democrats (in the positive, honorable sense, to be sure) who are voting for Bush this election because of 9/11 and the war we are fighting against Islamofascism. Some even refer to themselves as 9/11 Democrats.
The MSM seems to be oblivious to the existence of the 9/11 Democrats, and this makes we wonder if their existence is being missed by the polls as well, given that the polling data is weighed by party registration and 2000 voting patterns. And, unless they’re just whistling past the graveyard, a lot of the Democratic pundits out there seem to be utterly convinced that no one who voted for Gore or Nader in 2000 would even consider voting for Bush in 2004. Yet obviously–if this site alone is anything to go by–they are wrong.
The 9/11 Democratics could be the tip of a very interesting iceberg.
Penwil,
Just speculation on my part, but I believe what the MSM and the Democratic Party is trying to do with the ABB move is tap into that portion of the potential voting public who does not want to recognize the existence of Islamofacism and the need for a “WoT”. There are a lot of people who really thought the end of the Cold War rung in a whole new error or “peace” that would allow us to just party through the rest of eternity worring about nothing more that fiscal security and “social justice”. We could stop spending on silly things like defense and militaries and finally get on with making the world one big block party.
What they miss is that the end of the Cold War created a nasty power vacuum while simultaneously “unleashing” the Islamofascists who had previously been under pressure from two “hegemons” and their respective power blocks.
The US didn’t set out to be a the Global Hegemon Hyperpower. What happened was the other 600 lb. gorilla had a heart attack and died leaving us standing there all muscled and suited up with nobody to fight.
The nations who had been aligned with us before the SU took its heart attack then wished the brutish gladiator would go home and pound his swords into plowshares and stop working out and get a hobby. But the formerly “leashed” Islamonfascists saw their chance to fill the power vacuum and started making their move.
We really are in transition from a World Order that no longer exists to Something Else. We can’t afford to let that Something Else become a new Balance of Power where one side is Islamofacists or some hybrid of social-democratic-fascists and Islamofacists.
The MSM and the Democratic Party and the Average Moonbat doesn’t want to face up to this painful transition phase – they just wanted the bad old Cold War conflict to end and nothing arise to replace it. So they insist on pretending that nothing has replaced it. To pull off the pretense they need to convince a whole lot of people that this transitional conflict doesn’t exist and that the only reason there is a conflict is because there is a lunatic-warmonger-neocon-christianfanatic in the White House.
To accomplish this they are targeting two large groups of the self-delusional: the “kill the messenger” crowd who didn’t want their cozy world upset and will gladly accept Bush as scapegoat and the Leftist crowd. The Leftist crowd is composed of 2 subcategories: the true leftist believers and the Old Guard Revolutionaries who still want to fight the same old “liberal” wars that were won long ago.
That’s my story and I’ll stick with it until I come up with something better or get hammered by the finer minds here at Roger’s Place
I like Lieberman.
BTW…
I meant “new era” rather than “new error”. And it wasn’t only the Islamofascists who saw opportunity in the power vacuum created by the collapse of the Old Order.
The Despicable Despots saw their chance to assert themselves and France saw its chance to finally move toward the DeGaullist dream of restoring France to a position of world power. The French needed allies, of course, and the natural pick for them was the Despicable Despots with whom they’d long since developed cozy business relationships.
Enter into all this mess poor Dubya who would have been perfectly content to fight a mild domestic rearguard “compassionate conservatism” action against the advancing legions of internal Moonbats.
But the whole House of Cards so merrily constructed during the Big Block Party of the ’90s went up in flames on 9/11/2001. Fortunately for us we had an administration who was willing to let go of their own little plans and political schemes and direct their attention to fighting the war thrust upon us. Some others want to try and jumpstart the block party and pretend the whole flame up was a just a nasty little shoving match over on the the softball field and we can all just return to our corn on the cob and three bean salad – nothing to see here, move along.
Knucklehead
You hit the nail right on the head.
Pity, that your comments are not heard very often on the never ending talk shows and cspan stuff. It is this forest that all the trees are obscuring. In a way, the demise of the USSR may not have been such a good thing. We had “allies” who were more afraid of them than us.
9/11 was the wake up call. Too many have just hit the snooze button and are back to sleep.
The Democrats gave us slavery, civil war, segregation, mountains of skulls throughout the third world and people who support Bill Clinton. Perhaps our time as a party is done.
Knucklehead, what you are saying correlates with my impressions as well.
As each day passes in this election season I have come to the wry conclusion that the one thing in particular that would most hasten the collapse of the Democratic party is if Kerry were to actually win this November. During the first couple of years alone he will almost certainly face at the minimum a terrorist attack at home that will cost thousands of lives and severely rock, if not outright destroy, the economy, a belligerant Iran that he will have allowed to become armed with nuclear weapons, and a last ditch effort by al Queda and the Shi’ite insurgency in Iraq to prevent a democratically elected government from taking root there. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Kerry and the Dems will botch each of these crises so badly that even the MSM will not be able to hide the ineptitude. The public will become terrified, if not outright rebellious, and they will know who to blame. I would expect to see “Don’t Blame Me I Voted For Bush” bumper stickers within a year, except that the situation will probably seem so dire, no one will feel like joking about it.
The Democrats also gave us Social Security, Medicare, the Civil Rights movement, and initiated the ongoing dialog concerning universal health care.
The fact that none of them have turned out precisely in the manner envisioned is due to the political process and human nature. The programs and ideas were not wrong, per se, they all sought to alleviate want or correct injustice.
I admire Joe Lieberman (and Roger) for the bravery it took to head south in the mid-sixties, there was a very real danger involved and some activists paid with their lives. The anti-semitism espoused by Jesse and Al now is simply evidence of the true perversity of human nature and the fact that it is very rare for a “good deed” to go unpunished. I would note, however, that on balance, the Civil Rights movement has achieved more in terms of rectifying inequality than any movement since abolition.
The Democratic Party has achieved many good things during its existence. It is old now, old in ways that preclude rejuvenation. One might hope that it would fade gracefully rather than become the home of neo-fascists and neo-puritans bent upon imposing a dead vision upon an unwilling populace. If party leadership included even a strong minority of people of the caliber of Joe Lieberman there might yet be hope. The current convention lays bare the evidence that it does not have that caliber of leadership at hand.
Rick Ballard:
You make, as usual, excellent points. I am compelled, however, to point out wrt
I admire Joe Lieberman (and Roger) for the bravery it took to head south in the mid-sixties, there was a very real danger involved and some activists paid with their lives.
That credit for this sort of necessary and brave action is given too freely to the “Democratic Party”. The credit belongs to brave people who fought injustice and also happened, in many (most?) cases, to also be Democrats.
It was, after all, the Democratic Party which was entrenched, universally and absolutely, in the south and spent nearly a century constructing the apartheid Jim Crow system. There warn’t nary a Republican anywhere in that disgusting mess as it was relentlessly created and rigorously defended.
To paraphrase my brother-in-law, a lifelong southerner, “There isn’t a Southern Democrat beyond a certain age who wasn’t either directly involved with extremist racism or didn’t at least pay it proper homage. And there isn’t a Southern politician beyond a certain age who isn’t a Democrat.”
I’ll also point out that the diaspora of blacks fleeing the apartheid south fled to northern cities which were, for many decades, the incontestable political province of the Democratic Party machine which must be held, to a large extent, responsible for the disgusting mess of our inner cities and the deplorable, nearly criminal, condition of the public school system in those places.
Republicans did not control these areas. They can, of course, be faulted for “allowing it to happen” – a “sin of ommission” if you will. But it was clearly the Democrats who had the opportunity to somehow do otherwise and, instead, sat blissfully in the political driver’s seat while this happened. Theirs is the more serious “sin of commission”.
(Apologies for speaking in terms of “sin”, but…)
Somehow the Democrats are given credit for solving a problem of their own creation which they only partially solved and, equally perplexing, the Republicans have been assigned blame for something they did not create. A masterstroke of PR on the part of Democrats, but just another part of The Big Lie.
Syl:
Even though there are some policies of Bush I don’t agree with (and fewer than some might think), I don’t think he deserved 10% of the garbage the Dems have thrown at him.
Spot on. And speaking of Edwards (and his much-touted convention speech), this bit has to be in the running for this year’s chutzpah in politics award:
Knucklehead,
I can’t find any ascription of bravery to the Democratic Party in what I wrote. Your points concerning that attribute being personal are absolutely correct. I did leave out the fact that LBJ’s decision to support the Civl Right’s legislation was undoubtedly one of the most cynical political moves ever made. I would also note that Republicans voted for passage of the act at a much higher percentage than did Democrats and that the act would not, in fact, have passed without that Rebublican support. I would highly reccomend Robert Caro’s biography of Johnson’s presidential years to anyone wanting to understand exactly what happened.
Penwil:
As much as I’ve come to loathe the Democratic party and its machinery, I believe a Kerry presidency is much too high a price to pay to hasten the demise of the party.
The Islamofascist problem has been gathering for a long time. It had established a financial system, a leadership, headquarters, safe havens, training facilities, contacts with various regimes, fanned out and created cells worldwide and so on. Since 10/01 we’ve been tearing that apart piece by tedious piece. The less of those things they have the safer we are. Safety is not an absolute and cannot ever be, but when those who would kill us are free to move and plan and organize with impunity we are less safe.
A Kerry administration would pay lip service to dealing with the Islamofascist network but it the reality is, IMO, that they would be given at least 4 years to reconstruct much of what has been so painstakingly and expensively (900+ precious lives of US service men and women) destroyed.
They will attack us regardless of who wins the election. The real question is do we keep prosecuting the war agressively to keep them from having the luxuries they require to plan bold and extreme attacks and push hard enough to alter the transitional dynamics at work.
One of the favorite “slogans” of the “there is no WoT” crowd is that fighting it just “creates more OBLs”. This is only true in the narrowest sense. Fighting a war against an enemy means, in the early phases, that the enemy will do everything possible to increase the size and power of their forces. By striking back at the Japanese we obviously “created” more Japanese military that we had to fight against. But eventually the tide and terms of the war are altered and the enemy can no longer expand.
We need to fight through this transitional phase we are in until the conditions are altered sufficiently that carrying on the fight is no longer a viable alternative for our enemies. They attacked us ever more boldly over the past decade+ because it cost them little, gave them success to point to, and because they came to believe they could “win”. Make the cost to them as high as possible, leave them the fewest possible successes to point to, and relentlessly crush their conviction that they can win and the dynamics will eventually change and the numbers of their “soldiers” will drop.
We cannot give them rest and time to refit. They are relentless and adaptable and so must we be.
Rick,
I wasn’t suggesting that you, or any individual in particular, gives the Democratic party credit for “bravery” in the Civil Rights movement. My point is that there is a generalized “myth” that the entire Civil Rights movement – including the obvious acts of bravery – is somehow attributable in its entirety to the Democratic Party.
One of the reasons I loathe the Democratic party is that I lay the vast bulk of blame for the tragedy of US southern apartheid/Jim Crown right at their doorstep. I understand that those were very different times and people held very different ideas, but it was the Dems and as things moved to more modern times and ideas, there were the Dems operating their inner city suck ‘em in and keep ‘em down political shopvac.
And then allowing the whole urban edu system to become a political patronage system that delivers little in the way of education to the people who need educational innovation the greatest is reprehensible.
No doubt that if the labels of the parties had been switched the same might well have happened, but the labels weren’t switched and the Dems seem bound and determined to keep their filthy machine running.
Sorry, I get carried away, but the Dems really disgust me and it’s getting worse over time and now they’ve become this digusting high-pressure hate hose. Just downright disgusting but they seem to have no shame.
Knucklehead: “As much as I’ve come to loathe the Democratic party and its machinery, I believe a Kerry presidency is much too high a price to pay to hasten the demise of the party.”
I didn’t mean to imply it was something I was wishing for, only that it seemed increasingly inevitable should Kerry win.
This “but if we do such and such, they will only hate us more” mantra is the one most used by my ABB friends here in the SF Bay Area. Lord love a duck. It’s not as if the Islamofascists are hiding their intentions here. They’ve promised to kill us, they’ve already killed 3000+ of us, and yet we aren’t supposed to fight back because . . . what? They’ll try to kill us?
I’ve written them off. They will die begging on their knees and they still won’t have grasped the concept that the men wielding the sword have always hated them simply for drawing breath.
Sorry about the indefinite antecedent. The “them” I am writing off is my terribly deluded ABB friends.
The Democrats also gave us Social Security, Medicare, the Civil Rights movement, and initiated the ongoing dialog concerning universal health care.
Giving Democrats credit for the civil rights movement is going too far. Republicans were part of that also. Besides, the Democrats have been coasting on that movement ever since, still approaching too many issues with the smug air of moral superiority they initially picked up fighting racism in states completely controlled by Democrats. Furthermore, the Democrats are attacking Bush for spending that was only a very logical extension of Medicare (conservatives don’t like it either, but they are at least consistent).
And note that the mountains of skulls in SE Asia are partly John Kerry’s fault. The discussion of the Soviet monolith falling over neglects the large amount of pushing, all of which was opposed by the Democrats. For example, the Boland amendments were an attempt to keep the US from fighting the Soviets’ second tyranny and subversion base in the US – in Nicaragua. One of John Kerry’s first act as a Senator was to go to Nicaragua to meet with the communists. I guess he enjoyed it so much when he met them prior to his slanderous and lie filled propaganda he spread around the country, that he just had to try it again.
It was a Democrat President who screwed up Vietnam. Kennedy properly got us more deeply involved. Johnson combined an idiotic strategy of attrition with cowardice regarding interdicting supplies. In the process, he used up too much trust, especially among the media, who consequently misreported the Tet ’68 offensive, getting it completely backwards, and demoralizing Johnson to where he decided to resign – this after a crushing defeat of the Viet Cong (reported as a major defeat of the US). [The MSM were a bunch of skunks then also - they never corrected their misreporting]
It was a Democrat Congress that threw away the victory in Vietnam, won at a cost of 58,000 American lives, and easily held with a relatively small amount of money and casualties. They did this on the advice of Kerry, among others. If you listen to the 1971 Senate Foreign Relations Committee of John Kerry, the Democratic Senators are taking his stream of vicious lies at face value, when they had to know better.
I would say that the policy of the Democratic party in the ’80s was to make accomodations with the Soviet tyranny, never recognized as such by Democrats. The view was that the USSR was about to catch us economically (per Clinton’s main foreign policy adviser Strobe Talbot), wasn’t that evil (only silly “John Birchers” thought otherwise), and had to be accomodated anyway because they couldn’t be defeated. Unconscionable was their vicious attacks on Reagan’s efforts to prevent new Soviet subversion bases in the America – Grenada, El Salvador and Nicaragua.
On foreign policy, the Democrats have been confused since Johnson, and Kennedy’s activities weren’t terribly successful, although he appeared to have a more healthy (literally Reaganesque) attitude. Starting in the early ’70s, the Demorats in congress became an active opponent of US attempts to hold back the USSR. Under Carter, communism bloomed throughout the world, while his actions towards Iran brought in Islamofascism. The Democratic party stood for revolution in the world, except in communist countries.
Clinton inherited a world with few threats, except for the growth of Islamofascism. But he managed to fail to apprectiate the threat (even though the 1993 World Trade Center attack should have been enough to recognize that mass killing had replaced small casualty operations by Islamists). A number of other attacks and attempts sent the same message. But instead of confronting the threats, our forces were deployed all over the world in feel-good operations. Even worse, reservists ands guardsmen were used in these operations, a clear violation of the social contract that reservists and guardsmen have.
Given this history, the prospect of John Kerry as president is frightening.
Penwil:
Here’s the way I figure it in my own knuckleheaded fashion. I can’t go join the “shooting war” – too old and fat and broken down. I’d be more hindrance than help.
So I have to fight the battle the best I can at the margins. The diehard ABBs are beyond my influence. Nothing I can say or do will turn them. Here’s what I can attempt to do, however:
- find one “unwitting ABB memebot” and create enough fear, uncertainty and doubt within their ABB circuitry that they decide to sit this one out. That’s one vote that doesn’t go to Kerry
- find one “Otherwise Usefully Intelligent ABBer” and work it until they see the light. That’s one Kerry vote that goes to Bush.
- find one “Potential Bush Nose Holder” work it enough to make sure they get off their arse and at least go hold their nose. That’s one vote that might have been lost but isn’t.
- find one “My Vote Doesn’t Count” dope and work it until he gives up and goes to the polls and, hopefully, figures that even if he wasn’t willing to put in the effort to figure it out then maybe at least I am correct. One potential plus vote.
- find one “I Like Dubya” person who is likely to be “too busy” on election day and escort the sumvitch to the ballot box. That’s a polled plus that wouldn’t have come through.
It ain’t much but its something. That’s how I’m playing out the next three months.
BTW, I have good reason to believe I’ve accomplished the first on my list and experience tells me I’ll have little trouble accomplishing the last. The rest is remarkably tedious and I’ll never know whether I checked them off or not, but I’m an incurable optimist so I’ll keep plugging away.
Knucklehead,
As a 55-year-old woman, I won’t be joining the shooting war either. Although, I do have a very small bit of street cred having served six years in Marine Corps in the ’70s. I was commissioned on August 8, 1974, easy to remember because it was the day Nixon resigned. Our Woman Marine basic class was the first one to undergo training with the men. There was a lot of media hoopla throughout. We did all right, although not as well as the press reported us as doing. For instance we had to run a modified obstacle course or none of us would have passed. We simply did not have the upper body strength.
I actually did try the first suggestion on your list yesterday. My gardener freely admitted that we were at war with “these Muslum fanatics who want to kill us all,” and that Kerry “probably wouldn’t be tough enough,” but then in the next breath she said she could never vote for Bush because he was “too religious.” I pointed out to her that Bush might be religious, but he wasn’t trying to kill her. Don’t know whether it converted her, but it did seem to give her pause.
The Democrats also gave us Social Security, Medicare, the Civil Rights movement, and initiated the ongoing dialog concerning universal health care.
As to the Civil Rights movement, lets not forget that more Republicans than Democrats voted for the Voting Rights Act, and that Jim Crow was a political product of the solid (Democratic) South. Perhaps the greatest piece of modern myth-making is that the Democrats stood on the side of Civil Rights in the ’50s and ’60s, while the Republicans opposed it.
Social Security and Medicare aren’t necessarily anything to be proud of, either. Both are massive transfers of wealth from the poorest segments of society (workers, especially young workers) to the wealthiest (the elderly, who own the vast majority of assets in this country). Medicare has done wonders to distort and drive up the cost of care for everyone. These programs are fiscally unsustainable in the long run – someone is going to have pay a terrible price someday for these Ponzi schemes. Many already are, in terms of both lower paychecks and health care costs driven up by regulatory burdens and cost shifting.
So you were one of those women we heard tell of, were you! You ladies were not, ummm…, universally beloved.
One of the first female marines… that’s quite impressive. I’m honored to blog-comment with y’all, Penwil.
I won’t mention what I was doing on that date because, well, I’m not THAT old and it was not the least bit impressive
The “too religious” and “religious right” stuff is always worth countering. I suggest asking questions about how they judge the degree of the “religiousness”, do they know anyone they judge to be similarly religious, does that person effect their life in any way, is anyone trying to force them to go to church or read a bible or pray… A surprising amount of the time one finds that the person expressing some concern over the “religiousness” is quite religious themselves. I find that odder’n hell. At this point I’ve generally got ‘em ’cause I can then say something like, “Well, you’re infinitely more religious that I am but I don’t find you ‘too religious’, so why does the president seem ‘too religious’ to you?”
We have to get them thinking and recognize that its gonna take some assistance for them to clean out the cobwebs and oil up the fears and get rid of the squeeks and such
As far as I can figure this the entire “Anti-Religious Right” screed is based upon Pat Roberstson and Jerry Falwell and a few fallen televangelists. Who cares? If you don’t watch them and send them money, where’s the rub?
See, Rog? Holy roller types aren’t all bad.
What are your thoughts on discipline and hedonism? I would say that moral clarity is connected discipline, and hedonism is the abnegation of discipline. Leftism and permissive mores go together, and conservatism and disciplined mores go together. When the conservatives get too strict, they’re called fascists, even in a non-political sphere.
Well, so much for Old Joe and his honesty!Clark dismisses Bush as unfit to command
Two of the men Sen. John Kerry defeated for the Democratic presidential nomination, retired Gen. Wesley Clark and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, brought Democrats to their feet Thursday night with ringing calls for America to kick President Bush out of the White House.
I voted for Lieberman in the Oklahoma primary. I would vote for him for president.
I was ashamed of how the press ignored his presidential run. (And because of that lack of publicity, it was impossible for him to raise money)
The press talked all the time about Howard Dean, and were enthusiastic about General Clark. They even gave prime time to Al Sharpton.
Now, try to find an article saying how Lieberman would be the best bet for Democrats.
Try to find an article that says he would be able to span the gap between social conservatives and liberals.
(For example, abortion: As a religious person, he is on record upholding respect for life. But Judism sees the unborn as potential life, and that sometimes social or psychological or medical needs of the mother outweigh the duty to repect life. It is not the flipflop of Kerry, but a finely tuned argument that allows abortion while condemning the “I don’t want to shop at Costco” abortions(See recent NYTIMES articles) .
Even now, the Democrats are ignoring Lieberman.
Wonder why. Anti semitism? Anti Religion? Anti Moderation?
Don’t know. But when liberal California has Arnold, and Massachusetts has Romney, but Oklahoma has a DEMOCRATIC governor, it says something about how the party might go if the left loses this election.