Conservatives

Posted on '08 Election, Conservatives, Republicans

deja vu

senator george allen of virginia could possibly be the republican nominee for president in 2008, beating out guiliani, romney, and mccain. i’m not sure this is the best pick for the republicans. he is charming, and personable, and he says what conservatives want to hear. he did vote against the senate amnesty bill, and that’s a huge point in his favor. he seems to take a hard line on iran, and echoes the president’s views on just about everything. even though he is the former governor of virginia, i don’t see him as the kind of leader that this country needs. we need a person who can be tough with foreign dictators and tyrants, and who can effectively defend his policies to the people and to the press. i just don’t see allen this way.

allen is allowing the other contenders, including newt gingrich, to control the debate on foreign policy issues. this shouldn’t happen if he really wants to be president. his attempts so far haven’t convinced me that he does want that job. he has made the obligatory stops and pressed the right flesh, but that’s not enough to make a person worthy of the presidency.

senator allen has disappointed me. while i will say that the “macaca” comment reaction was overblown, i still don’t like the way he initially handled the situation. i am also concerned about his previous association with the CCC, as mentioned in the Nation. yeah, it’s a liberal rag, but assuming the picture they have is not photoshopped, that’s a serious allegation they are making about him. i don’t think that allen is a racist, but i think his affinity for all things Southern, including Confederate flags, could be a problem for him in ’08.

the biggest concern i have about allen is that he seems to have similar weaknesses to our current president. i don’t think that allen has the gravity of a mitt romney or john mccain, or even rudy guiliani. i don’t know how he would react when confronted with a major crisis like katrina or any kind of escalation in iran or north korea. i’m sure that he was a competent governor, and is equally skilled in the ways of the senate, but i can’t see him as president. maybe that will change.

tags: ,

1 Comment Posted on '08 Election, Conservatives, Democrats, Liberals

pot.kettle.black

guess who said this in a chris matthews interview(comments in bold):

I served with George Allen when he was governor. I don‘t think he belongs in public service, to be honest with you. There are Republicans who are capable and smart, thoughtful people, and he‘s not one of them. So you know, the people in Virginia are going to do what they want to do, but I…

Q. You make him sound like a knucklehead. Is that what you think?

I‘m not going to use those kinds of words.

Q. In other words, you‘re saying he doesn‘t belong in public service, because of why?

Because he‘s always shooting from the hip. He never thinks through what he means, and he caters to the wrong instincts in people. And I think using derogatory terms to people of color is certainly something that a public servant might not do.

this makes sense. our public servants should always think before speaking, cater to the best instincts in people, and always be careful not to use racial slurs. too bad howard dean doesn’t follow his own advice. yes, that’s howard dean, chairman of the DNC, lecturing senator allen on how he should behave. you know what they say about people who live in glass houses. if senator allen, who has apologized for what he said, isn’t fit for public service, then neither is howard dean.

until i heard these comments from howard dean, i was undecided about senator allen’s possible presidential run. if any success for allen annoys howard dean, i’m all in. 🙂 seriously, though, i am not going to make any unofficial or official endorsements this early in the game. the field is wide open for the republicans, and senator allen will have more than enough time to recover politically, and be a major player in ’08.

tags: , ,

4 Comments Posted on Conservatives, Democracy, Democrats, Republicans

you can’t always get what you want

Conservatives should be wary of the idea that when they talk about, say, tax cuts and limited government – about things other than abortion, gay marriage, religion in the public square and similar issues – they are engaging in values-free discourse. And by ratifying the social conservatives’ monopoly of the label “values voters,” the media are furthering the fiction that these voters are somehow more morally awake than others.

george will

social conservatives have values that are shared by many people in this country, but they have to realize two things. first is that they will never get everything they want. legislating moral behavior to the degree that some of them are suggesting is impossible. the second thing they have to keep in mind is that they won’t do any better than they are doing now by voting for the democrats.

there’s nothing wrong with having absolute black and white positions on issues such as gay marriage and abortion. there’s also nothing wrong with saying that a political party would lose support from your group if it does not do what you tell it to do. the flaw in this strategy for groups like this is that they don’t consider the big picture very often. george w. bush may not be their perfect politician, and likewise the republicans may not be 100% hard-core as far as pressing their core issues.

however, there are not many alternatives for groups who see supporting life and opposing gay marriage as their core issues. where would these social conservatives go if they took back their support of the republican party? not to the current group of democrats, that’s for sure. we are talking about the party whose leadership is strongly in support of abortion, of gay marriage, and which also does not have a very comfortable relationship with the Christian community. as well as being out of step with the centrists in his own party, dnc chairman howard dean can’t seem to find much common ground with the rest of the country.

he opposes missouri’s voter id law, which requires voters to have a valid photo ID in order to vote. if he was really concerned about election fraud and people being disenfranchised, you would think that the democratic party would want to support this and other similar laws. this is another one of the many unpopular positions dr. dean has taken while representing the democratic party. even on the war in iraq, the american public doesn’t seem to agree that immediate withdrawal (whatever the current definition of that seems to be) is the right answer to what should be done about iraq.

dean’s attempts to reach out to the 700 club crowd have also fallen flat. that is because he lies about where the democrats are on social issues, and even goes as far as to claim that the democratic platform of 2004 supported the idea of “one man one woman” for marriage. it did not. dear howard, please stop before you hurt yourself. (I guess it’s too late for that warning, isn’t it?) if the centrists don’t like where howard dean is taking their party, then they had better take some serious action now, or they
are headed for another election defeat in ’06.

there is always the option for social conservatives, and for small-government conservatives, to take their ball and go home…that is to stay home on election day, possibly handing the congress over to the democrats. it is a tempting idea, but not because the republican majority hasn’t taken a hard enough line on abortion or the federal marriage amendment. the appeal lies with other areas where republicans haven’t lived up to the expectations we had for them when we elected them. one is spending. as i pointed out previously, these republicans aren’t fond of small government, and have demonstrated that quite well. even those who wish to make the attempt to reduce spending, such as mike pence, are brutally shot down.

the question is then: how do we reform the system? i don’t know if there is a way to significantly impact the process in washington and change the way it currently works. we hold politicians to a higher standard because they represent us, and we should. because i’m a conservative, i believe in personal accountability for everyone, and especially for those in DC representing me. unfortunately, a self-policing system will never provide the level of accountability that is necessary to keep our politicians on the straight and narrow.

that’s why it has become more important to stay engaged and to pay attention to what your representatives and senators are doing, and not just 6 months before an election. even if your congressman or senator is not in your political party, you still have a voice. you still can write letters, make phone calls, and bang on the door (figuratively, of course) until you get an answer.

accountability is not just about elections. it is also about citizens taking an active role and letting their representatives know where they stand on the issues currently being debated. look at what happened with the dubai ports deal. everybody got motivated to call DC and say “hey what the heck are you guys doing up there?” we need to do more of that. i think we are starting to pay more attention to issues, now that illegal immigration is front-and-center. that’s a good thing. i would like to believe that our voices are having some impact in this debate. we shall see what happens with this current immigration legislation in the house and in the senate.

the last word belongs to john hawkins:

Here’s my advice: set your emotions aside and think long and hard about what a Democratically controlled Congress would really mean. Is the satisfaction of, “teaching the Republicans a lesson,” worth the price? Think back to the Clinton years: conservatives certainly stuck it to Old “Read My Lips,” but the price turned out to be eight years of, “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” In my book, that wasn’t such a great trade-off and keep in mind, when you’re talking about congressmen and senators, it could be worse. Incumbent politicians are tougher to get rid of than a cockroach infestation and 40 years from now, do you really want to be sitting around, remembering how you stayed home and helped the next Robert Byrd get into office? Folks, be mad at the GOP if you don’t think they’re doing a good job. Call your senator, call your congressman and give ’em hell if they deserve it. But, when November rolls around, make sure to vote because there’s more on the line than you might think.

Tags: , , ,

4 Comments Posted on Conservatives, Republicans

feeding the beast

The defining premise usually used (in these days of tanking and now near-thirty-percent approval ratings) to disassociate the failures of Bush, the House, the Senate, all their advisors, all their supporters, and the cats they loved as children from so-called true conservatism is primarily that true fiscal/governmental conservatives suppose themselves to value “restrained federal power”, aka small government, which Bush allegedly does not. This, though, is a load of horsehockey. Fiscal and other conservatives may say that they value small government, but it is a fact of the movement that when in a position to actually implement those policies, they do not.

hunter at daily kos

it’s a fair point, i suppose, to dismiss the rhetoric used by politicians to get elected as not having much relationship to what they do after they settle into their nice new offices. it’s a rather common political game that everybody plays. this is not solely the domain of republicans or conservatives.

it is suggested, by some on the left, that the small-government conservatism that we get nostalgic for cannot exist as a permanent fixture in public policy. they see our philosophy on the role of goverment as “unsustainable” and see the current congressional republican failures as flaws of this kind of conservatism. this is an incomplete answer to the question, “what the heck is wrong with the republican party?” the left believes that this failure can be attributed to a lack of willingness by all of the true believers in conservatism to actually follow through with implementing their agenda. it’s not that simple.

here’s the truth of the matter: small government types are an endangered species in congress. not all conservatives, or for that matter, republicans, subscribe to that philosophy. that’s why we have such unchecked federal spending, and in addition to that, not much interest by the controlling party in making any changes in that area. the republicans may have the majority, but that doesn’t mean that conservatives of this stripe are controlling policy.

that’s certainly true of the man presently occupying the oval office. it doesn’t matter how many policy advisors he has that are sympathetic to the cause. there’s no “alleged” about bush 43 and opposition to the idea of shrinking government. george w. bush hasn’t proposed reducing government programs/dependence at any point in his presidential life, and that’s all on him. he has never been a small government guy. EVER. this wasn’t why we elected him. it was about the GWOT and appointing conservative judges to the supreme court, which he has done.

continuing from the kos post:

And that is not a unique phenomenon: it is a traceable pattern of the movement. They shuffle the tasks of government around, yes; they close so called “liberal” governmental tasks such as environmental protections and citizen welfare and safety programs, while hyper-boosting “conservative” governmental tasks such as defense spending and business-based “incentives” and other sops, and they outsource basic government tasks from government to for-profit industry without actually removing those tasks from the mandates (or budgets) of government, but post-Nixon conservatives have been remarkably consistent in their actual actions: increase spending; increase deficits; increase government; increase interference in citizen lives under banners of “religion” and “morality”. At no point in the modern-day movement have conservative adherents actually implemented this notion of small government or fiscal responsibility that they supposedly carry around with them as guiding force. It’s the label on the package, yes: but it’s not in the candy bar.

what most government regulations on business and industry lack is any sense of balance. either the scales are tipped in favor of business (which they generally seems to be right now) or they favor excessive environmental controls on essentials like gasoline. the results of those regulations usually have more of a financial impact on the average consumer than an environmental one.

let’s address this question of the difference in funding priorities between the republicans and the democrats. we consider national defense and military spending more important than saving the spotted owl. call us crazy. we also believe that the current welfare system is keeping people in poverty, not helping them achieve independence and to become successful, productive members of society. that’s why reform is absolutely necessary in this area. it would be a different thing entirely if all these social programs worked, but they don’t.

this is not at all meant to excuse the men and women abusing your tax dollars. if there is any turnover from government control to control by private industry, then it goes without saying that those items should be removed from the federal budget. shame on any member on congress who does not help to ensure that this happens. there is no defense for the reckless spending. there is also no defense for the trend toward increased government regulation or creating more ineffective bureaucracy.

there is no easy answer to fix this problem. if it were just a matter of replacing all those who agree with the status quo of feeding this government beast, then there would be more hope for real change in the system. we can’t just replace the people. we must reform the system that perpetuates big government, or nothing will ever change.

related:

Republicans and the Flight of Opportunity–david frum (cato)
Why Advocates Of Small Government Are Like A Certain Hockey-Mask-Wearing Serial Killer–john hawkins (rwn)

6 Comments Posted on Conservatives, George W. Bush

could be a snow job

to those self-righteous preening political hacks at media matters: shut up. nobody cares what you think of tony snow, and this includes the president of the united states. i’ve seen what you consider shocking information about the future WH press secretary, and i’m still trying to find the incriminating stuff. tony snow has never hidden the fact that he worked for bush 41 or that he occasionally shows up on FNC. so what’s the big deal here?

tony snow is a man of integrity. he is an all-around nice guy, and he keeps the debate civil, even with those who have different views. how many other conservative talk show hosts can claim to have that kind of debate style? not too many, unfortunately. he is also more than qualified to be white house press secretary, and dubya would be a fool not to consider him for this position. it would also give conservatives actual representation in the vicinity of the white house, which they don’t seem to have right now.

i support the idea of tony snow becoming white house press secretary. he could handle the press, even david gregory. there’s no doubt in my mind that he would do an excellent job. i do think that the job he has now would be a hard job to give up. it’s possible that he is doing the administration more good with his radio show than he could possibly do as an official member of the team. i would miss hearing him on the radio every day, but when the white house comes calling, it would be silly not to consider the job offer. so whatever he decides, i wish him the best of luck either way.

there are a few other suggestions for white house press secretary here and here. good stuff. read and enjoy.

tags:

9 Comments Posted on Conservatives, George W. Bush, Republicans

the great communicator and the big spender

George W. Bush is increasingly being compared to Ronald Reagan. Democrats accost him for being like Reagan while Republicans praise him for it. It is a fact that like Bush, Reagan came to Washington with an ambitious plan to cut taxes across the board and increase defense spending while containing federal spending. President Reagan successfully lightened the tax burden on the American people, and oversaw a massive defense spending build-up. Given President Bush’s recent push for more pro-growth tax cuts combined with increased defense spending for the war on terrorism, the analogy is tempting. However, at this stage in his presidency, Mr. Bush’s dismal record on spending when measured against Mr. Reagan’s nullifies this temptation. Better yet, in light of President Bush’s spending it looks like it would be more accurate to compare him to Jimmy Carter than Reagan.

Let’s look at the facts. If we compare the three-year percentage change in real spending during Reagan and Bush’s first terms, President Bush comes out as a profligate spender on his own and as compared to Reagan. Under President Bush, real total outlays are estimated to increase by 13.5 percent as opposed to 6.8 percent under Reagan. More importantly, total real discretionary outlays are set to increase by 19.5 percent under the Bush administration while they increased by only 2.8 percent under Reagan.

it’s a rather cruel cut to imply that dubya is similar to jimmy carter in anything that he does….there’s not much (if anything) jimmy carter did right as president. more numbers and artwork here (from the cato institute) to support this claim. bush 43 just can’t say no to new spending. it’s not just defense spending either, where significant increases in the amount allocated to that part of the budget are to be expected post 9-11. the numbers here represent president bush’s unwillingness to stop his own party from wasting our money. this is not to say that there is no economic benefit to tax cuts, because this can be easily proven. however, we can’t continue on this current spending spree. we must cut up the government credit cards, before our country suffers the economic decline of the majority of european countries.

reagan and bush have a few things in common, but their economic policies were vastly different, in theory and in practice. reagan used the veto on occasion, but bush doesn’t seem to believe in using his. bipartisanship doesn’t always produce good policy. neither does proposing legislation that ted kennedy will support.

we can blame the republicans and the democrats as well as our president. everyone should share the blame and the consequences of their reckless behavior on spending. i hope that the ’06 election will bring some accountability to the “leadership” in DC. big government has returned, and it must be destroyed before it causes further damage.

related:

(pdf)on spending, bush is no reagan — cato institute
Bush vs. the Deficit Hawks — opinionjournal.com
Reagan vs. Bush: Federal Spending and Budget Deficits–real clear politics

Posted on Conservatives, Republicans

a blast from the conservative past

If we look to the answer as to why for so many years we achieved so much, prospered as no other people on earth, it was because here in this land we unleashed the energy and individual genius of man to a greater extent than has ever been done before.

Freedom and the dignity of the individual have been more available and assured here than in any other place on earth. The price for this freedom at times has been high, but we have never been unwilling to pay that price.

It is no coincidence that our present troubles parallel and are proportionate to the intervention and intrusion in our lives that result from unnecessary and excessive growth of Government.

It is time for us to realize that we are too great a nation to limit ourselves to small dreams. We’re not, as some would have us believe, doomed to an inevitable decline. I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.

So with all the creative energy at our command, let us begin an era of national renewal. Let us renew our determination, our courage, and our strength. And let us renew our faith and our hope. We have every right to dream heroic dreams.

–ronald wilson reagan
( excerpt from 1st inaugural address, full text here and audio here.)

january 20th, 2006 was the 25th anniversary of reagan’s inauguration as our 40th president. many posts have been made about reagan’s impact on government and on this country. i will link to some of those at the end of this post. we don’t have to go that far back to see the results of forgetting what reagan said about limiting the growth of government. republicans have forgotten where they came from. they have forgotten about what happened in 1994, when gingrich and his band of merry reformers came to washington with a plan to make positive changes (otherwise known as the contract with america). we can disagree about the impact of the ’94 revolution, but voters seemed to agree with what the contract had to say.

so where are we today? neither party is interested in limiting the US government’s “unnecessary and excessive growth”. the main difference, as i previously wrote here, is that democrats and republicans disagree on what government should waste money on. it’s time that the republicans remembered what reagan said, and what gingrich did, because the american people are starting to understand that government programs are not the cure…they are the disease. this is not to say that we should dismantle every single government program, but we should examine the effectiveness of each to determine whether it is accomplishing the goal for which it was created. i’m not optimistic that this will happen under any collection of elected officials.

the message of positivity about this country that president reagan gave us is something we rarely hear these days. the common wisdom is that america is going in a bad direction and that this will not change any time soon. everything is wrong with america and, what’s more…THE WORLD HATES US! our government has set us on a destructive path, and we can never recover from the leadership of the bush 43 administration. EVER. this is what we are hearing today, and this is a deeply flawed message.

i believe in this country. i believe in its promise. i believe in the people of this country. people of courage, convictions, and strong family values. people whose views are no longer acceptable to the tolerant. people who will never end up on the evening news because they are authors of good stories. this is who we are. we can achieve so much if we all work together. this message has been lost somewhere in all the heated rhetoric and political point-scoring.

the people who represent us should reflect our beliefs and our values. it is now time to question authority. it is now time to ask ourselves whether those elected to serve us are doing the job we sent them to washington to do. if not, we must hold them accountable for their action/inaction and vote them out of office.

related:

a tribute to ronald reagan — cao’s blog
Reagan Revolution Weekend Trackbacks–courtesy of jay at stop the aclu
(this has all the links you will ever need)

somewhat related:
my favorite fictional political speech (from the american president)

Posted on Conservatives, George W. Bush

president bush: hardcore neo-con.

now playing: pyro sets a wildfire/swirling eddies

is president bush a conservative? the answer is: it depends on how that word is defined. there’s a fairly strong case to be made that he is extremely conservative on social issues of importance to groups generally thought to be deeply connected with “the religious right”. two of his three supreme court nominations would suggest this. the fact that the president is a Christian is also a strong indication in this direction. i would say that in this respect, he is conservative. but does he follow the rules of what i would consider to be traditional (small-government) conservatism in policy decisions? the evidence would suggest otherwise.

from the weekly standard (11/14):

“THE PRESIDENCY OF GEORGE W. Bush has three years yet to run, but this season of scandal and disillusionment is an opportune moment for conservatives to start thinking seriously about the post-Bush era–and particularly how to fashion a domestic policy from the wreckage of Bush-style, big-government conservatism. Thanks to the abiding weakness of the Democratic party, Republicans haven’t yet paid a political price for insider-friendly appropriation bills, Medicare boondoggles, or the smog of semi-corruption rising from the party’s cozy relationship with KStreet. But even if the GOP’s majority survives the next election cycle, conservatives shouldn’t kid themselves: President Bush’s domestic policy looks less and less like a visionary twist on traditional conservatism, and more and more like an evolutionary dead end. “

read it here. the authors make some interesting suggestions for needed reforms in the status quo that the republicans would be wise to adopt for their own campaigns in 2006. reagan famously said that government is not the solution to the problem, that in fact government IS the problem…or something similar to that anyway. both liberals and conservatives are wrong when they consider making government the primary curative to what ails the country. the difference here is only in what kind of programs each side considers worthy of government largesse. the president isn’t re-inventing the wheel with his approach to spending and tax cuts. we have seen this act before, by more obvious culprits. president bush deserves much blame for any failures of his fiscal policy. but the democrats, who are so anxious to take the president to task on his foreign policy decisions, remain relatively silent on spending. why is that, do you suppose? the answer is because the democrats, and to some degree, the republicans, are complicit in the bad economic policy. both sides can’t say no to new spending and insist on some fiscal discipline, and somehow this is all the president’s fault.

fred barnes defines what he considers to be A ‘Big Government Conservatism’:

Big government conservatives prefer to be in favor of things because that puts them on the political offensive. Promoting spending cuts/minimalist government doesn’t do that. Mr. Bush has famously defined himself as a compassionate conservative with a positive agenda. Almost by definition, this makes him a big government conservative.

big government conservatism, as defined by barnes, is activist by nature. it may have more noble underlying objectives than the government activism suggested by liberals or moderates (although i suppose that is an open question), but the premise is still flawed. president bush is not as uncomfortable with using the power of the government to advance what he considers to be conservative ideas and values as he should be. using the government to bring about social equity or attempting to level the playing field for all americans in this way is an iffy proposition under any ideological banner.

take a look at the programs and proposals by the president during his first and second terms in office. it is the very essence of logic itself to believe that this president is not from the limited-government wing of the conservatives. he is very much all neo-con, and this has only a peripheral relationship to the war in iraq, although that’s part of it. dare i suggest bush 43 is in fact a slightly more conservative version of bush 41? (the difference of course being that bush 41 raised taxes after promising not to…and there’s that whole leaving saddam in power thing…) finally someone comes up with a logical definition for a neo-con…and apparently it doesn’t just mean republican war hawk.

Anti-Freedom Conservatism–from the future of freedom daily

So there you have it. Big-government conservatism, or its synonym, neoconservatism, stands for a powerful state in pursuit of “conservative ends.” There are problems, to be sure, with the Barnes-Kristol thesis. What are “conservative ends”? An older school of conservatism (which actually consisted of near-libertarians) would have said that chief among those ends was individual freedom achieved by restraining government power. But if that’s so, it makes no sense to talk about using government to achieve those ends. They also understood that a government with interests not bound by geography is in fact an empire, not a constitutionally limited republic. Thus, big-government conservatism is either incoherent or a cynical attempt to appropriate a cozy-sounding label.

What about the moral case for self-ownership and against coercion? We never hear this issue raised by the neocons. They sometimes talk about intrusive government. But your meddling neighbor can also be said to be intrusive. The fundamental issue is the initiation of physical force. “Transfers” are, in Bastiat’s words, “legal plunder.” The advocates of big government either don’t recognize that plunder is at the heart of the state. Or they don’t care.

this sounds more like what i believe and far from bush’s view(except for the part about taxes):

“Fundamentally, compassionate conservatism is a form of political conservatism. In other words, compassionate conservatives believe that government should have a limited role in people’s lives and that competition in the marketplace is the most effective means of producing social and economic progress. Consequently, compassionate conservatives believe in low taxes, limited government regulation, and the vast power of the free enterprise system.”

and:

“Big-government, one-size-fits-all solutions demean struggling individuals by treating them merely as members of aggrieved identity groups, passively awaiting government subsidies and restitution for crippling wounds inflicted by what is perceived to be an inherently unjust society.”

that’s the best argument against neo-conservatism in my view. it creates too many illegitimate victims. we do have a moral and ethical responsibility to help those who can’t help themselves, but i would argue that this category has been massively expanded to include more people that it should. the government has taken on more responsibility for attempting to cure social injustices than it can effectively handle. p.j. o’rourke, the official muse of this here blog once said: “A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them.” he is a smart man. the president should take his advice.

somewhat related:

Can’t last–Jan 8th 2004 | WASHINGTON, DC | From The Economist print edition

Posted on Conservatives, Democracy

all politics is local (attn: SC residents)

“We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”

~JFK~

this is the fight we need to have. i believe that so often most of us, especially conservatives, have gotten frustrated by the political process, and some have even stopped believing that someone who truly represents our values can actually be elected to serve in D.C. i was one of those people once. it’s discouraging what has happened to honest debate over ideas and ideology in this country, and how it often ends up in name-calling and partisan feuding. that’s got to change. conservatives can win the battle of ideas, and we can start one candidate at a time.

fellow conservative readers/bloggers in SC, this is your opportunity to jump into the process and to get actively involved in supporting a candidate that more accurately represents what we believe than those currently in congress. that’s why i’m asking you to support park gillespie, the other republican candidate for SC’s 5th district. he will have a tough battle ahead, but i believe with the support of all of us, he can be the representative that we thought we were electing to the white house. i will be posting further info here once the website officially launches. in the meantime, google is your friend. 🙂

the battle of ideas will be joined in SC’s 5th district. will you be a part of the debate? we cannot sit on the sidelines. it’s time to get involved.

current discussions of the french riots continue below.

by the way… (because i never bury the lead) in case you avoided watching alias, vaughn’s still dead.

previous:

Technorati : , , ,

Posted on Conservatives

bowties and the alleged link to the VRWC

just as some of us would make negative judgments about tongue rings and tattoos, there are those who would go nuts over a simple knotted piece of fabric. what does this craziness come from? i really can’t say. bowties are not a pre-requisite to join the VRWC. kim jong il wears ’em. no one ever accused him of right-wing conservatism. the argument for the other side is quite convincing, however — when you include george will, winston churchill, and the son of chief justice nominee john roberts as representatives of that side.

there’s more to this than dislike for the bowtie in tucker carlson’s case. i believe that both liberals and conservatives are wrong about him. liberals lose their minds when discussing tucker, but i really don’t think they have him figured out. conservatives don’t either, and this annoys them. conservatives generally gravitate toward the predictable…and that’s the last word that would describe tucker’s views on anything.

that’s precisely why I love him. he is irrepressible, unpredictable, and totally contrarian. it also should be noted that he has great hair. i may be the only tucker carlson apologist in the entire blogosphere that doesn’t write creepy fan fic about him. to those people…just stop it.

Technorati : ,