John McCain had many failings as the Republican Party’s nominee for the presidency in 2008. Foremost among them was his attempt to play politics in an honorable and chivalrous manner. His grand old approach to competition allowed his opponents to exploit him ruthlessly and dispatch him quickly on election night.
McCain’s decision to keep his word and accept public financing for the campaign — while Barack Obama broke his own promise to do the same — made the senior senator from Arizona’s defeat a likelihood. Yes, there is great truth in the old cliché that “money is the mother’s milk of politics.” Should one candidate concede a $740.6 million to $84.1 million spending advantage to his foe, then such a loss is inevitable.
Another major error on McCain’s part was his refusal to expose the endemic weaknesses of the political left, specifically the cynical attitude they possess towards their countrymen and their florid contempt for diversity of opinion. Over the years, Democrats have become acutely aware that a pervasive lack of patriotism is a major impediment to electoral achievement. Due to their paladins regarding the United States as being a racist, sexist state — one whose history can be summed up with the single word “oppression” — it is not immediately evident why any of their number would make for a suitable commander in chief.
The Democrats are very fearful that the general population will one day fathom the enduring connection between bad leadership and sanctimonious, alienated guiltists running the country. Thus, they have turned the act of making known their dearth of patriotism into the commission of a hate crime. Senator McCain, always keen to impress a mainstream media that once pretended to admire him, readily played their game. He proclaimed: “Let me be very clear. I am not questioning his patriotism; I am questioning his judgment.” In the vernacular of political correctness, this means: “My hands are on the table and I am assuming the position.”
Yet McCain’s protestations made little difference to his enemies. They rightly took his civility for weakness. They resurrected the issue in the fall as often as they could and applied the label “McCarthyist” to those who tell the truth about the Democrats’ take on America’s past. Here we see, once again, that there is no hope and change behind the mantra of hope and change.
These counterattacks were initiated under the auspices of persuading the rest of us to ignore the giant seven-foot rat — which embodies the political left’s feelings for their country — as he salivates and menaces our public square. Character assassination awaits any conservative who dares to illuminate the malignancy of the pseudo-liberal worldview. This strategy proved worthwhile because most of us on the right are too timid to call a rodent a rodent even as it gnaws off our toes.
The case of Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann was a cautionary tale. Mrs. Bachmann, while speaking to Chris Matthews on his television show Gutterball, stated, “I’m very concerned that he [Obama] may have anti-American views. That’s what the American people are concerned about. That’s why they want to know what his answers are.” Matthews, ever the partisan Democrat and by far the most devout of Barack Obama’s biased media protectors, referred to this banal statement as “an extraordinary claim.”
Well is it? Of course not. Given Obama’s career, his words, the tone of his autobiography, and his associations with ardent America-haters like Father Michael Pfleger, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Frank Marshall Davis, and William Ayers, Bachmann’s words were intuitive and anything but extraordinary. That Obama deems America — in its current configuration — a spurious venture appears to be about as controversial as believing that water is wet.
In the president-elect’s vision, we only will become a great nation if we alter ourselves into becoming another nation, one that precisely matches Obama’s desires and expectations. Regardless, Bachmann faced a reelection donnybrook and was forced to apologize. Recant aside, her expressed opinion was one a sizable plurality of her peers share.
Granted, the pusillanimous nature of the average Republican politician (excluding Bachmann) appalls, but there is no cause for the rest of us to retreat on this issue. In the hopes of clarification, let me state with absolute certainty that the reason we should question the political left’s patriotism is that they are not patriotic.
On a plethora of policies, from immigration to missile defense, the Democratic stance suggests that they do not have a dog in the fight when it comes to America’s national security. Were they not so embarrassed by our history, along with the unfashionable folks who inhabit our non-urban enclaves, they might well think differently.
Moreover, the president-elect’s recent selection of Leon Panetta to become future director of the Central Intelligence Agency underscores this eventuality. It exposes the Achilles heel of the post-sixties Democratic Party. Mr. Panetta has practically no experience of working with the intelligence community in any capacity and neither does our impending director of national intelligence Dennis Blair. Obama argued that Panetta would be “committed to breaking with some of the past practices.”
Which qualifies him for what? Further, what practices need be terminated? Hopefully, the traditional practice of entrusting those who know how to do their jobs with defending the frontiers is not what he had in mind. In all probability, Panetta’s status as a loyal Democrat and one devoted to the Change.gov religion is what necessitated his nomination, but placing him near the apex of our national security apparatus is about as rational as the Detroit Lions hiring me to play cornerback. If Mr. Ford can overlook my not being able to cover receivers and withstand punishment, then he definitely will profit from my never rooting for the other team or leaking information to the Packers.
The ridiculousness of Obama’s choice was even apparent to Senator Dianne Feinstein, who observed, “I was not informed about the selection of Leon Panetta to be the CIA director. My position has consistently been that I believe the agency is best served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time.” One would presuppose that the United States would benefit from having a CIA director who was familiar with both the military and the war on terror, but such an assumption fails to take into account the weltanschauung of our president-elect.
To Obama, the CIA job is merely a patronage position. Panetta is a Washington, DC, version of a “soldier for Stroger.” His is a superfluous appointment. As with all leftists, Obama regards America’s principal enemies as being the politicians in the opposition party. The critics of the progressive movement on these shores — as opposed to Islamo-fascists or the dictators of rogue states — are the real threat. After all, what’s a dirty bomb or a hundred thousand Katyusha rockets in comparison to those who correctly deride Obama’s plans for a twenty-first-century economy as “socialism” — which we all know is really a code word for “black.”
Hillary Clinton as secretary of state highlights Obama’s contempt for national security. He probably decided that there was no better place to relegate a venal rival than in a post that matters not. While she won’t charm the diplomatic protocols off of anyone, she may well try to steal them.
Mrs. Clinton’s approaching confirmation summons up the ghost of Joachim von Ribbentrop. My referencing of that historical and dysfunctional boob is no reductio ad Hitlerum, but rather a product of recalling a conversation that Hermann Goering once had with his fuhrer. Goering questioned Ribbentrop’s worth as a prospective foreign minister. Hitler replied that Ribbentrop knew all sorts of lords and ministers, to which the Reichsmarschall responded: “Yes, but the trouble is, they know Ribbentrop.” Indeed.
Promoting coat-and-tie radicals like Hillary Clinton and Leon Panetta to the heights of power no doubt will intensify Obama’s prestige among foreign leaders. There’s nothing that foreign intelligence services appreciate more than the placement of total patsies as the overseers of America’s autonomy.
They probably did not think their prospects for aggressive action could improve any more than they had on November 4, but now will be pleased that Christmas — or what may soon become known as “Western Incineration Day” — is coming a second time this year. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for the definition of “traitor” to be exchanged with “patriot” in the politically correct dictionaries found on American university campuses.
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