You’ve all heard the “well, I’m socially liberal, BUT fiscally conservative” declaration moderates have made in the past. Another one is “if only the Republican Party weren’t so socially conservative, I could tolerate them.” Well, the time for this bellyaching is over. It’s zero hour, and the debt crisis is looming. No one is ever going to agree with his, or her, party 100% of the time. It’s time to suck it up, and that’s what Jonah Goldberg eloquently wrote today.
He addresses “Bob” as his socially liberal, bust fiscally conservative “friend” saying:
…Bob, you think Republicans are acting crazy-pants on the debt ceiling. You don’t really follow all of the details, but you can just tell that the GOP is being “extreme,” thanks to those wacky tea partiers.
So, Bob, as a “fiscal conservative,” what was so outrageous about trying to cut pork — Fisheries in Alaska! Massive subsidies for Amtrak! — from the Sandy disaster-relief bill? What was so nuts about looking for offsets to pay for it?
Bob, I’m going to be straight with you. I never had much respect for your political acumen before, but you’re a sucker.
You’re still spouting this nonsense about being fiscally conservative while insisting that the GOP is the problem. You buy into the media’s anti-Republican hysteria no matter what the facts are. Heck, you even believe it when Obama suggests he’s like an Eisenhower Republican.
Let’s not forget that Rachel Maddow said she’s “almost [in] total agreement with the Eisenhower-era Republican party platform.” Need I say more? So:
…let’s talk about Eisenhower, your kind of Republican. Did you know that in his famous farewell address he warned about the debt? “We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage,” he said. “We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.”
Bob, we are that insolvent phantom, you feckless, gormless clod. The year Eisenhower delivered that speech, U.S. debt was roughly half our GDP. But that was when we were still paying off WWII (not to mention things like the Marshall Plan), and the defense budget constituted more than half the U.S. budget (today it’s a fifth and falling).
The nation is broke, and Republicans are the only ones that have a plan to balance the budget. The Ryan budget projects that by 2040, our fiscal equilibrium will return. Goldberg ends by pleading with the moderates (aka RINOs) to “stop preening about your fiscal conservatism, particularly as you condemn the GOP for not being fiscal conservatives, even when they are the only fiscal conservatives in town.”
I couldn’t agree more. It’s time to get down to business, and moderates are welcome to join in the conversation about how to fix our nation’s financial woes. However, it’s time for them to drop their “Democrat-lite” dispositions. It’s time to pick sides.
Goldberg completely missed the mark there.
He didn’t talk about Religion even once.
Religion (specifically, evangelical enmity towards homosexuality) is why the “Moderate R”s vote Democrat.
I personally think it’s a VERY shallow reason for them to vote that way, but that’s typically why they do.
Too many people mistake political disagreement with the gay-rights lobby’s agenda of the moment, whatever it may be at any particular moment, with “enmity towards homosexuality.”
The gay-rights lobby has fought for forty years to successfully instill this false equation into the minds of the inattentive and gullible.
Ultimately, it’s not going to matter whether it was “right” or “wrong”, though. All that’s going to matter is that it served its purpose towards securing Domination for the Progressives.
At some point, someone’s going to have to find a way to break through and broker peace between the So-Cons, Libertarians, and “Moderate R”s.
So-Cons probably wouldn’t be too amenable to that, as they feel they’d be turning their back on God and their core religious principles.
And on the other end, Metropolitan “Moderate R”s (and atheist-leaning Libertarians) probably have no desire to “Come to Jesus” on the social issues.
Don’t mistake me for being supportive of ANY greivance lobby, I find it horribly distateful. At the same time, I don’t think all the “God’s turning his back on this country because you’re all rejecting Christianity!” stuff you tend to see in the comments sections on a good number of sites now is going to win the Rs any elections anymore.
It is, I grieve to say, you who is perpetuating such canards, and it is you who is projecting here how people will respond to your false framing of the issues.
Rather than babble about God, Christianity, and “Come to Jesus moments,” and how you “think” those in the groups you imagine “might react,” you might better dedicate your alleged distaste for grievance lobbies towards explicating how political disagreement with a political objective has nothing to do with either religion or “enmity.”
And again, you tend to come off as if you attempt to say I support the Progressive Greivance Pimps; ***holes like Dan Savage or Al Sharpton.
I really could not give even half a damn about any identity group’s agenda (I’m actually opposed to Government-sanctioned Gay Marriage, Government should have no place in Marriage, period, IMO. Also opposed to affirmative action, as all it does is cause undue resentment towards others.), because they’re all counter-productive and go against the idea of liberty and limited government.
Progs are counting on in-fighting like this to make their job lot easier.
Your accusation is an obvious strawman; I’ve not said you “support” anyone. I’ve merely pointed out that you stereotype people with whom you claim to be politically allied in precisely the false and reductionist terms, and according to precisely the bogus criteria, that people on the Left typically use.
Well, K’, a lot depends on how you define “So-Cons, Libertarians, and “Moderate R’s”. For instance, I am adamantly pro-life, believe that the war on drugs is a total waste of time, and believe marriage is none of the government’s business. Am I a So-Con or Libertarian? Do you define Moderate Republicans as “reasonable” or as “pansy a$$ed squishes”, as I do? A little perspective please.
There are fiscal conservatives in the GOP in the house? Wow – where are they?
So far I’ve seen spend, spend, spend & pork, pork, pork.
The GOP caves on every fiscal issue that comes along.
The issue here is that Jonah Goldberg thinks the current GOP is even moderately fiscally conservative.
We will return to fiscal equilibrium in 27 years? 2040? That’s your issue right there. We’ll be broke long before then. Of that the best plan the GOP have forget it. It’s like having a chance to avoid the iceberg and instead of pulling the rudder hard over the captain calls out,
“It’ll be fine chaps, the Carpathia will be along shortly”
I couldn’t agree more! From my perspective far too many establishment Repulicans have become comfortable, complacent and squishy. I’m not getting a sense of urgency from our brothers in Washington or the so called Conservative media. 2040? Give me a break. By then my grandchildren will be long screwed. Establishment Republicans are acting cowardly. Those of us on the ground know that there is no easy way out of this mess. We know true recovery will be painful and that we can no longer afford sacred cows. Let’s suck it up and get it done.
Yeah. Fightin’ words from one of the Nancy Boys at the National Review. These guys suck up donations, finance free annual cruises for themselves and tell the rest of us how tough they are. Not.
Try again, Beltay Betty. Try again.
Was Romney’s plan to make medicare $700 million more expensive fiscally conservative?
Was his plan to make the military take trillion dollars than it even asked for fiscally conservative?
Was his plan to reduce revenues while driving us into debt faster than ever before fiscally conservative?
…
Well unless your definition of fiscally conservative is “make the government crash and burn so that we can starve granny (Social security) and take away her medicine (medicare)” then no, there is nothing conservative about the Republicans’ plans.
So now the plan is “crash the economy permanently by defaulting on our debts – then we can end all social programs” I think this plays to a fantasy of triggering a race war or something. You used to see that pop up in the comment sections here occasionally back before you culled the more florid tea party crowd from the commenters.
Heres where some arguments fail! Some reality! The tea party as a whole including the evangelical social movement only represent at best 20-30% of the GOP registered voters. What that equates to in raw mubers, I really don’t care. The national polling and the intra party polling nearly mirrors in regards to the tea partys acceptance and image. That in and of itself is a loser no matter how they may cloak themselves as fiscal conservaties. Next comes the proof-in-the-pudding. In the states where the tea party was successfull in 2010, they tried to enact nearly 1,100 social reform bills that certainly had nothing to dow with fiscal conservatism. The tea party has run candidates who were grossly inept and others whose social issue utterances so inflamed the nation, democrat and republicans alike. Much of the tea party following represents a radicalized and in so many cases a vile behavior towards others that no matter what they say they stand for, they will repulse and turn people away.
I am owned by no party or any faction of a party and exercise my individual right to think and act independently as considering voting. I will, until something changes in the party, vote for those I know have NO tea party affiliations and pass on by those who do. I am in a camp with pretty good numbers! But for Romeny securing the primary win, the voter turnout would have been dismal for 2012 — I’m guessing around 54-55M rather than the 59M. The tea party numbers are nowhere near what they perceive themselve to be and their image is even less!