Liberals

Posted on Democrats, Liberals, Tony Blair

lessons for democrats from tony blair’s labour party

one would assume that british PM tony blair’s policies and his values are reflected by his own labour party. that’s usually how it works here, where a political party usually mirrors the ideology of its leader. not this time. labour has traditionally been a party with a deep socialistic, even marxist belief system. they were at one time the only party representing the working classes and the trade unions. labour was seen as the party caring about the little guy.

labour’s popular support evaporated when their main supporters joined the ownership class. once this happened, suddenly sharing possessions for the common good became less desirable. this socialist idea was ingrained in old labour ideology, such as clause 4. it was not a popular ideology, however, and labour was forced to disguise the roots of this ideology to win elections. it obviously worked.

how did the labour party respond to the shift in public perception of them? they tried appealing to the kook fringe element of their membership. this fell flat. (are you listening, democrats?) as they say, you could look it up.

while you could probably argue that labour still has some elements of the old guard involved in government, they didn’t win until they moved to the center (or centre, if you prefer). it has been suggested that former president clinton’s successful campaign moving him to the center was the inspiration for blair’s centrist campaign for the 1997 election –that, and the american-style spin doctors employed by labour.

there’s evidence to support this claim. labour decided that to gain their support back, they had to change their stripes and appeal to the majority of british voters by shaking up the perception of labour’s ideological base. that’s what the democrats have to do– find a way to appeal to the mainstream by advancing policies that people agree with. this could be hard to do, as the natural bent of the party is to promote unpopular policies and beliefs. so the next logical step is to hire their best spin doctors, because it will take one heck of a sales job to convince the american people that they can identify with democrats on issues important to the voters.

the fight democrats will have to have is with the two warring factions in their party. one side is represented by cindy sheehan, michael moore, moveon, and kos. the other side is represented by those who prefer to be seen as more moderate in their views, hillary for example. pandering to the first group will not win them any elections, and continuing to do it will doom them in ’06.

i’ll be honest. i really don’t want the democrats to figure this out, because it’s much more fun to watch the division and sniping happening with them right now. i am concerned that the republicans don’t seem to have any sense of urgency in getting their conservative base back on their side. they must not become complacent and forget why we sent them to d.c., because that base is the only thing keeping them in office in ’06.

friday’s fun links– coming sometime late afternoon. look for ’em.

Technorati : , ,

Posted on Liberals, Moonbats

liberals and fringe groups

responding to a comment i received to my previous post:

it’s not debatable that liberals attract fringe groups in general, and also to the anti-war cause. if you have any doubt about that, just look at the list of groups that supported cindy sheehan’s d.c. protest. i wasn’t really making this point in my previous post because it’s obvious. at no point in this post did i say that liberals are a fringe group. i find their ideas of dependence on government provision and the welfare state abhorrent, but it’s a mainstream liberal position and they are entitled to it.

as far as the argument that children hand out anti-abortion literature and Christian/Jewish literature and it’s no different from what these kids were doing…i absolutely disagree. promoting the concept that life is valuable and worth saving is a good thing. trying to sell socialism or the radical agenda of these fringe groups is not. i will concede the point that both liberals and conservatives use children in their fundraising pitch letters, and i’m not too crazy about that. but this is not what i was talking about.

what i am opposed to is the corruption of the school system by special interest groups pushing their own agendas. i also think the liberals, mostly democrats, are hurt by their associations with groups like codepink, A.N.S.W.E.R. and moveon.org. it destroys their credibility when discussing iraq and the appropriate strategy to follow there.

the majority of americans do love our military. they exist to protect american interests around the world, and for the most part, they do an outstanding job. we believe that their existence is necessary and important to our security. keeping them home would not serve this purpose.

Technorati : , ,

Posted on Liberals, Moonbats

save the children from the liberals!

while viewing the pictures from the various anti-war rallies, i was struck by the pictures of kids passing flyers out and promoting various fringe propaganda groups. i don’t blame them for this, because it probably wasn’t their own idea. at least they are not armed with bombs like the kids in palestine. it’s just shameful that kids are used as pawns in this increasingly abrasive war of ideologies in this country. the adults are bad enough in allowing the fringe special interest groups to be associated with their cause. it only destroys any shred of credibility they have left after cindy sheehan joined the party.

it’s even more wrong when kids are taught this junk in school as a part of “tolerance”, “diversity”, or any other trendy word for teaching kids to hate america and our military. the temptation is to compare this indoctrination process to former campaigns that have taken place throughout history. i’m not going to go there. i will say that special interest groups of all kinds are negatively influencing the education system and pushing their own agendas at the expense of basic knowledge.

i don’t claim to know what the solution is to fixing the system, outside of more accountability for teachers and school choice for parents. i do believe kids were better off before sex ed, before the involvement of planned parenthood and the aclu, and before God was taken out of school. the problem in the schools is not the pledge of allegiance. there are more obvious problems than kids saying the pledge. the most glaring of them is allowing all these special interest groups and the nea to control the system. because of this, needed reforms are virtually D.O.A. once upon a time, kids grew up to be productive, useful citizens without knowing all this new junk. who knew this was possible???

just stop using kids to promote this nonsense. that’s one thing they should have learned from world history. it was wrong then. it’s still wrong today.

Technorati : , ,

Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals

john kerry- potential hillary challenger in ’08?

if anyone thinks that john kerry is still electable, this past election should have proved otherwise. president bush was in a very vulnerable position, and yet kerry failed to capture the country on democratic core issues like jobs, healthcare, and the economy. my uneducated view of this is that kerry’s campaign staff totally butchered his campaign. it was a brutal thing to watch. i could have run kerry’s campaign better than his people did.

the riff about vietnam was a very distracting one. getting war cred is one thing. democrats have always had the burden of proof when discussing strength and conviction in the area of foreign policy. so it’s understandable that kerry would want to use his vietnam service as proof that he had related work experience. where his campaign fell off of the tracks was when john kerry allowed vietnam to define it. vietnam is some kind of ideological struggle for people that doesn’t translate into votes for its war veterans.

the main problem kerry had is that he was never going to win enough of the “average joe” vote. he couldn’t relate to us very well at all. at the end of the day, he reeked of champagne and caviar rather than hot dogs, hamburgers and beer. he tried so hard to be a regular guy and he failed miserably because we saw through the crafted image.

throughout the whole campaign, he couldn’t even inspire his own party, which had been hijacked by hard-leftists like howard dean, michael moore, and moveon.org. the democrats were reluctant to throw their support behind kerry. i doubt there has been anything kerry has done since the election that would convince them that he’s the guy in ’08. if your own party doesn’t support you, that’s a big challenge to overcome when running for president.

john kerry shouldn’t run again. it takes away from valuable vacation time. it forces him to try to be someone he’s not. more importantly for the democrats, they have a better shot at the white house with hillary.

coming up in organized chaos, more on hillary and the expanding number of oppressed minority groups in this country.

Technorati : , , ,

Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals

more ’08 candidates I would like to see

it’s obvious that the media has already decided for us which republicans are going to oppose hillary in ’08. how nice of them to do this. we certainly wouldn’t want the responsibility of picking someone ourselves. however, they are assuming hillary won’t face any serious challenges. that’s a big if, especially if the far-left is still running the party 3 years from now. if they are, i can think of several far-left candidates the democrats should consider for maximum ideological fanaticism and entertainment value. on an “unrelated note”, i really do miss ross perot.

here’s my first ticket and reasons for/against them.

rachel maddow/kent jones
(slogan — we’ll save air america!)

why rachel?

  • she is very smart and argues the liberal side with conviction
  • she ties conservatives in knots with her arguments
  • doesn’t attract special interest money from rich corporations
  • she works with kent jones
  • she opposes the new york yankees, as any good american should

why not?

see above. ms. maddow belongs on the radio as an intelligent liberal counterpoint to the rest of the country.

why kent jones?

  • having a comedian as VP might be fun
  • imagine the press conferences!

why not?

  • both rachel and kent shouldn’t take valuable time from TRMS to run for office where they would actually do less damage.

also receiving votes — the jerry springer/ al franken ticket. think that springer wouldn’t come up with a few reasons to tune in to his media blitz? the testimonials alone would be priceless. i mean, look how many people he’s lifted out of the gutter. you could get a few ads out of that for sure.

Technorati : , ,

Posted on Conservatives, Democrats, Liberals, Republicans

wanted: republican rock stars?

the republicans have an image problem. they are perceived as intolerant and shockingly enough, even uncool. we are trying to achieve coolness by hanging around the popular kids (loosely applied term) Giuliani and Governor Arnold. as we all know from our high school days, this hardly ever works. this is almost as ridiculous (but not quite) as Snoop Dogg and Iacocca playing golf together in that Chrysler commercial. should we as republicans reach out to everybody? to a certain extent, yes. but when a party ends up losing their core values by following the crowd, its soul is lost.

i think that republicans (with very few exceptions) care too much about public opinion to stand up for what they believe, especially those running for office. at least the democrats with their wild-eyed maniacal screamer-in-chief howard dean, say what they think and don’t apologize for it. if something is worth fighting for, fight for it. why are we as republicans ashamed of who we are and what we believe? our values are shared by quite a few people in this country. who cares if the Hollywood left or the mainstream media agree with us? why should Barbra Streisand be taken seriously on politics when she knows next to nothing about it? (more on this in a future post)

so to the republican leadership, i suggest this: quit trying to be cool. this isn’t high school. it’s a battle for the hearts and minds of the american electorate. we will win not because of our friendship with rock stars or Hollywood glitterati but because we have ideas that work for the people of this country. we might not end up at the prom with a cheerleader or a football player, but we will still be better off in the long run.

Technorati : , ,

Posted on Liberals

air america’s bumper sticker contest and the naral ad against john roberts

i support air america’s right to exist. the marketplace of ideas should be open to every point of view, whether you agree with it or not. but air america has the inconvenient problem of promoting generally unpopular ideas on their radio network. this doesn’t help ad sales or ratings very much. if you don’t have either of these, like hannity and rush do, it’s hard to make a profit in radio. if a liberal radio network can be financially self-supporting like the conservatives mentioned above, we should welcome them to the debate. now serious questions have been raised about air america’s finances and these should be investigated just like any other company would be.

for those of us who disagree ideologically with air america, here’s a blog with some rather interesting proposals for air america’s bumper sticker contest.

Here’s my favorite.

ok. that’s rather cruel. i’m sure they are more popular than that tagline would suggest. i admit to listening to the rachel maddow show via podcast. but they need more listeners than they have, obviously.

on to another topic of the day somewhat related to my previous point about air america. should we, as conservatives, apply pressure to the networks not to show the naral ad against supreme court nominee john roberts? it accuses judge roberts of supporting abortion clinic bombers and excusing their behavior. it is totally inaccurate, based on his comments regarding that case. it is a dishonest ad. it reeks of poor taste and desperation by naral and other bush opponents.

even keeping that in mind, i still say let the people decide. let them see the ad. conservatives can put up their ads, liberals can put up theirs, and we’ll have the brawl everybody expected. the american people are smart enough to see through the lies once they have all the facts. you don’t legitimately win an argument by gagging the opposition, no matter who it is. until we have a “good taste” clause in network ad contracts, there’s no legitimate way to block this ad.

Technorati : , ,