2 Comments Posted on Republicans

this doesn’t surprise me

apparently the national republican congressional committee (NRCC) is out of money, and they have asked me to help them out with an emergency contribution. even the NRCC is spending more money than they have. at least they are consistent with the republicans they support.

i may yet send them a response to their request, but i certainly won’t send them any money. the flawed nature of their candidates caused them to spend more money than they wanted to spend. that is not my fault. the republican party has not listened to its base on spending, illegal immigration, and several other issues. they have not given us enough credit for paying attention to what they have been doing and calling them on it. all this contributed to the downfall of the republicans on november 7th, in addition to the iraq war. when you lose your base, you don’t win elections very often.

the republicans are slow learners. they still don’t get it. what we needed was a change of direction in the republican party. they know what we want and how we feel, but they don’t seem to care, as long as the old guard wins. that’s why they are not getting my money, and why they barely got my vote.

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2 Comments Posted on Editorials

no concessions

the american people didn’t believe that the president’s current plan for iraq was good enough, and they wanted to force him to try a different approach. that’s part of what happened on november 7th. we obviously need to find a workable strategy for iraq. the ideal plan should be a plan to stabilize iraq, not a plan to surrender control of iraq to its enemies. unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be what the iraq study group has in mind. asking for the help of iran and syria with iraq is a questionable proposition at best. at worst, it destroys the possibility that iraq will end up supporting the united states rather than islamic fundamentalist states like iran. if we make the wrong move here, this will end up costing us more than iraq. it will look like surrender to the terrorists we are fighting. it will make us look weak to rogue nations pursuing nuclear programs. if our allies know that they cannot trust us to keep our promises, they will be less likely to stick their necks out to help us with north korea and iran. these are the stakes. this is why iraq is so important.

the proposal goes something like this: iran gives up its nuclear program, stops supporting terrorists, and stops interfering with iraq. we provide some economic incentives and threaten sanctions if iran doesn’t play by the rules. i seriously hope that this kind of deal won’t even see daylight. what are the odds that this could ever work? if you take iran’s president at his word, then i don’t see any possibility that iran will give up its nuclear program. it doesn’t matter what incentives are offered. as far as sanctions are concerned, that didn’t work so well with iraq. there will always be enablers like china, russia, and france, as well as others at the UN, who are perfectly happy to let iran say and do whatever it wants to do.

iran is watching us and it sees the current political situation here in the united states, and our negative attitude toward the iraq project. it would be easy to them to conclude that if they wait long enough, they will get everything they want. that’s the image we are projecting right now. do we really want to depend on the UN to keep iran on the straight and narrow? apparently the IAEA (international atomic energy agency) has found unexplained traces of plutonium and highly enriched uranium traces in a nuclear waste facility in iran. i’m pretty sure the explanation doesn’t involve a delorean and a flux capacitor. it should alarm the international community that the IAEA is depending on iran’s co-operation to determine their intentions.

so where do we go from here? i don’t know, but offering concessions to countries we cannot trust is never the best solution.

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3 Comments Posted on Conservatives, Republicans

no dead skunks

dick armey:

Moving forward, my advice to Republicans is simple: Don’t go back and check on a dead skunk. The question Republicans now need to answer is: How do we once again convince the public that we are in fact the party many Democrats successfully pretended to be in this election? To do so, Republicans will need to shed their dominant insecurities that the public just won’t understand a positive, national vision that is defined by economic opportunity, limited government and individual responsibility.

We need to remember Ronald Reagan’s legacy and again stand for positive, big ideas that get power and money out of politics and government bureaucracy and back into the hands of individuals. We also need again to demonstrate an ability to be good stewards of the taxpayers’ hard-earned money. If Republicans do these things, they will also restore the public’s faith in our standards of personal conduct. Personal responsibility in public life follows naturally if your goal is good public policy.

Besides the obvious impact on the House and Senate, Tuesday’s elections will no doubt redefine the Republican field going into early presidential primary states like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. It will be up to grassroots activists in those battlegrounds to establish a constituency of expectations that anyone aspiring to be the next president of the United States must satisfy. To voters I say: Demand substance and you will get it. To Republican candidates for office I say: Offer good policy and you will create a winning constituency for lower taxes, less government and more freedom.

republicans didn’t just lose. they surrendered. they were willing to compromise rather than fight for the issues that conservatives considered important. conservatives looked at the republicans’ record and simply said “that’s not good enough for us”. that’s the lesson they need to take from this election. support from democrats and independents is never guaranteed, but losing your base in addition to those two groups is never a great formula for winning elections.

we can do better as republicans. we can learn from this defeat, and maybe even return to the small-government idealistic vision that reagan gave us. that’s the best way to win elections. in the meantime, we need to get our credibility back…one small step at a time.

there’s just one main thing that concerns me about the democrats controlling congress. president bush hasn’t been able to stop congressional republicans on the spending, and he has supported the senate immigration proposal. he is no fiscal conservative and doesn’t see any problems with the minimum wage. what makes anyone think that he will stop the democrats from implementing most of their agenda?

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2 Comments Posted on Conservatives, Editorials, Republicans

many unhappy returns

short and sweet recap at this point in the game: democrats win the house, senate still undecided, shepard smith is yelling at somebody for some reason.

this was a defeat for republicans, not for conservatism. the american people didn’t give the democrats a mandate for higher taxes, possible impeachment hearings, more moderate judges, amnesty for illegals, or a policy closer to surrender in the war in iraq. they simply believed that the republicans had not met their expectations, so they decided to give the democrats an opportunity to do a better job governing. i just hope that we won’t be sorry that this choice was made.

philip klein:

We will hear a lot of reasons for why Republicans lost this year. We will hear that they lost because of an unpopular war, an unpopular president, a culture of corruption, a traditional anti-incumbent six-year itch and a dispirited base. But one thing is for sure. Republicans did not lose on a platform of limiting the size and scope of government.

Just as this election wasn’t a defeat for conservatism, it wasn’t a victory for liberalism. Democrats intentionally avoided a publicized “Contract With America”-style platform advancing a progressive agenda in favor of making the campaign a referendum on President Bush. The closest thing they had to a platform, “A New Direction for America,” was not a sweeping ideological document, but a laundry list of initiatives such as making college tuition tax-deductible, raising the minimum wage, and negotiating drug prices. Though a Democratic majority will likely roll back President Bush’s tax cuts, they didn’t advertise that in the “fiscal discipline” section of their platform. (It is a testament to how enamored Republicans became with big government that they enabled Democrats to run as the party of fiscal discipline.)

it is what it is. the democrats now control congress. the republicans need to learn that they don’t ever have a blank check from their base to abuse the trust they were given on issues that we care deeply about. i voted for republicans this time, because i thought that the bigger picture (terrorism, iraq) was more important than our concerns about spending and illegal immigration. (i also wasn’t convinced that the democrats would be an improvement in these areas.)

we can’t go to canada. there are few conservative havens in the world. so we need to stay engaged…now more than ever. we can’t give up fighting for what we believe, because the stakes are too high. keep calling. keep writing and emailing your representatives, no matter what their party affliation is. keep your eyes open.

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Posted on Democracy, Random Musings

don’t vote

don’t vote (or vote for a democrat) if:

  • you want charlie rangel putting more of your money into the government’s pockets.
  • you believe that the whole country should be punished for perceived republican sins.
  • you actually believe that democrats would cut spending while ADDING more new government programs.
  • you want president bush’s judicial appointment picks to be D.O.A. (no alito or roberts types allowed if the dems are in charge)
  • you want to see less progress made on illegal immigration. (what we have isn’t perfect, but it’s more than we would get under the democrats, who totally agree with bush on this one issue.)
  • you are convinced that the democrats have a better way to protect us from future terrorist attacks, which is so much more “tough” and “smart” than what we are doing now.
  • you think that the civil rights of terrorists are more important than the lives of american citizens.
  • you consider ideological purity the most important quality in your candidate, and don’t care where he or she stands on any other issue you care about. just remember what happened to lieberman in the primary in connecticut. is that the outcome you want for this election?
  • you are determined to let the polls and the punditocracy determine the outcome of this election.

if none of this describes the way you feel, you know what to do. it is always better to get most of what you want, instead of getting NONE of what you want. vote your conscience, but keep the big picture in mind.

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Posted on Iraq

justice for saddam

saddam is no longer president of iraq. that’s a good thing. he will die for his crimes. that’s also good. it’s a positive development for iraq, for its people, and for iraq’s continued evolution toward a more democratic and free society. what the iraqis also need to move forward is a strong political leader they can rally around, and they need to have confidence that the government will be fair to all the religious groups in iraq. we can send in the heavy machinery and our awesome military to police everything, but that won’t be enough to sustain iraq long-term.there are diplomatic and political obstacles to that stablization, and one of those is probably prime minister maliki himself. the iraqis need to have a strong political leader who is credible not only with the international community, but also with the majority of iraqis. i’m not sure maliki’s that guy. he still has a little time to prove himself. the important thing is whether the iraqis trust him to capably run the country.

a few roadblocks to the stablization of iraq are still to be cleared. training the iraqi police is an important part of the process, but it’s not the only goal we need to accomplish before leaving iraq. access to basic services (food, water, and electricity) is still a problem in iraq. that’s one thing that fuels discontent, and the insurgents know this as well as their opposition does. we need to find a way to reduce support for the insurgency by the average iraqi, or there will never be a resolution to this conflict.

i know the left in this country is tired of hearing that their “principled opposition” to the war in iraq is having a determental impact on events in iraq. it’s becoming harder and harder to declare that statement a absurd exaggeration by the republicans or neo-cons, or whoever the designated “iraq apologist” is this week. the military can take care of its own morale. they will be professional and do their jobs as well as they would have without criticism from the anti-war left. our concern should be that the iraqi people will lose faith that america will see this through, and in fact, that’s already beginning to happen. as a result of all this war waffling, we are seeing that iraqis are unsure whether they can trust us. that is, i believe, another reason why some iraqis would rather trust insurgents than the united states or their own government. there is recent history that would cause them to question our resolve in iraq, but the stakes are too high to pull out right now.

there are serious consequences we will have to face if we do not succeed in stablizing iraq, so i hope that we can find a better plan to do that than the one we have.

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Posted on Democrats, Liberals

still not funny

john kerry is even less credible as a comedian than he was as a presidential candidate…and by the way, his ’08 campaign should now officially be over. watch the tears from republicans all across america at this turn of events. or not.

the alleged actual joke(from ace of spades):

It’s great to be here with college students. I can’t overstress the importance of a great education. Do you know where you end up if you don’t study, if you aren’t smart, if you’re intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush.

well…that’s much better, isn’t it? that certainly wouldn’t be offensive to anyone. still not funny. call jon stewart. get some better material, senator. thanks so much.

even when kerry apologizes, he still ends up sounding condescending and arrogant. he thinks the american people are stupid also. he thinks we have short memories. how else could he in good conscience produce an apology like this?

from johnkerry.com:

As a combat veteran, I want to make it clear to anyone in uniform and to their loved ones: my poorly stated joke at a rally was not about, and never intended to refer to any troop.

I sincerely regret that my words were misinterpreted to wrongly imply anything negative about those in uniform, and I personally apologize to any service member, family member, or American who was offended.

It is clear the Republican Party would rather talk about anything but their failed security policy. I don’t want my verbal slip to be a diversion from the real issues. I will continue to fight for a change of course to provide real security for our country, and a winning strategy for our troops.

poor misunderstood john kerry. he is merely a victim of “those right-wing nuts” and all those people who weren’t smart enough to understand what he meant by that statement. his problem is that not only do we understand what he meant, we passionately disagree with it. we remember his past statements, and discredit his explanations, because THIS IS what john kerry believes about our military.

then there’s this from hugh hewitt at townhall: john kerry had two different positions on a volunteer army. he was for it before he was against it. when he opposed it, he claimed that it would be “dominated by the underprivileged, be less accountable and be more prone to ‘the perpetuation of war crimes”. i suppose that was a botched joke too, senator? maybe we just misunderstood him again.

john kerry’s primary mistake is simply telling us what he really thinks. this is the guy who could have been our president. his record isn’t a creation of the vast right wing conspiracy. he believes what he said, and he’s apologizing because he got caught being honest (and because the democrats made him do it).

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1 Comment Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals

kerry says something stupid

You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. And if you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.

john kerry

this isn’t the first time john kerry has been accused of saying something negative about our military. that’s why he’s not getting the benefit of the doubt here. there are some democrats who buy the explanation that he was attempting to insult the president instead of our military men and women serving in iraq. john kerry says that it was a “botched joke”. if that’s the case, his speechwriters should know better. john kerry is incapable of being funny. he is also politically clueless. whether he was talking about the president or about the military, it’s still a reckless thing to say, especially when nothing is guaranteed for democrats this november.

this isn’t 2004. kerry missed his opportunity to defend himself, and he can’t get it back by trying to justify what he said. it’s not just “right-wing nut jobs” condemning what kerry said, unless you count john mccain, harold ford jr. and HILLARY CLINTON in that group. hillary only said that kerry’s remarks were “inappropriate”, but that’s strong enough language for her, i guess. kerry made a mistake. he should admit it and apologize.

if he still thinks he can be the ’08 democratic nominee, he is deluding himself. move on, senator kerry. do us a favor. do the democrats a favor. go on a nice long vacation.

related:

What Did John Kerry Do?— Hugh Hewitt
Kerry, Kerry Quite Contrary–Jonah Goldberg
Why Kerry’s crack matters— Michael Medved

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Posted on Baseball, Random Musings

congratulations

well done st. louis cardinals.  you proved everybody wrong, including me. i still wish the NLCS had gone differently, but the cardinals are worthy world series champs, because they made the plays and got the timely hits to get the job done. congratulations to them and to their fans.  they played a great series, and completely deserved to win it.

the tigers had a great season, and they are a team to look out for next year.  i hope they can rebound from this and have another successful year in ’07.  same goes for my mets.  there’s always next year…well, unless you’re a cubs fan.

tags: world series, detroit tigers, st louis cardinals