Forty Ways I Told Republicans To Drop Dead

I frequently get calls from telemarketers seeking money. Recently I started getting calls from people representing the National Republican Congressional Campaign Committee. Since I detest the direction the Democrats are taking the country, the story the fundraisers tell is compelling to me.

There's the narrative the Republicans in DC say to us provincials. And there's the things they do. It's always wise to compare/contrast the things politicians SAY and what they DO.

So, Mr. Obama named some Congressman in upstate New York to some government job. The Congressman happened to be a Republican. This has created a vacancy and an election is being held to fill it. The Democrats have a candidate. And the Republicans decided to nominate someone who gives every appearance of being a RINO. Now, you'd think that the me-too wing of the party would take a delivery from the clue train. Did none of the party bosses in DC look out the window on 9/12 and see the Tea Partiers? What might that mean? Could it possibly be that the public is of a mind to support those who advocate smaller government?

It appears that one Mr. Doug Hoffman thought as much. He is running as the Conservative Party candidate in the New York 24th Congressional District. As a result, support for the RINO has collapsed to Mr. Hoffman's benefit. Now we have a 3-way race pretty much equally divided.

Movement Conservatives nationwide have stepped in to support Mr. Hoffman with their endorsements. On the other hand the party bosses in DC have dropped hundreds of thousands of dollars on the RINO. In response groups like the Club for Growth have proceeded to buy ads for Mr. Hoffman.

A lot of Conservatives like myself are sick and tired of RINOs like John McCain co-opting the Republican party. When I heard that the people who'd been on the phone just last week begging money from me were giving it to another RINO, I was not amused.

So, Mr. John Boehner and Mr. Pete Sessions of the NRCCC, I thought you'd like to know that the money that I did not send you went instead to Mr. Doug Hoffman.

The Republican Dogs That Didn't Bark

Republicans don't care when racists perpetrate lynchings. Just so long as the guys doing the lynching are liberals.

So, where is Mike Huckabee, Or Mitt Romney, Or even Sarah Palin? Do any of those Republican "leaders" have anything to say on the subject? Do any of those "leaders" have any inclination to practice LEADERSHIP?

Rush Limbaugh has just been subjected to a media lynching. The likes of which we haven't seen since it was done to Sarah Palin last fall. He was libeled by CNN and various members of the sports press who attributes racist quotes to him that they knew were false. And when they were called on it, they repeated the quotes and said he denied them.

They just made stuff up. And he should sue just to make it harder to libel the next conservative they decide to target.

You'd think that perhaps someone in the Republican Party might NOTICE. Or you think that someone who might want Mr. Limbaugh's support WHEN THE SAME THING IS DONE TO THEM NEXT ELECTION CYCLE, would say something in Rush's defense. Some Republican might express at disapproval of the obvious double standard in play when proven liars and race-hustlers make baseless accusations of racism.

That's where Rush differs from Glen Beck. He's still loyal to the Republican party. He's still in the party and instigating to get it to move to the right. Glen Beck is denouncing Washington Corruption in both the Republican and the Democrat sides of the aisle. Rush goes easy on the Establishment Republicans inside the Beltway. And this is how he's repaid.

The only McCain in Washington likely to condemn Rush's lynching is named Stacy (despite being distracted by Megan McCain's decolletage).

More Stupid Republicans, Please

You can tell the difference between a Republican who's going to lose a political contest from one who's going to win by one simple criterion: How stupid is he?

We all know that Ronald Reagan was an amiable dunce who somehow managed to win two presidential elections by landslides and win the Cold War, then hand the presidency to his Veep (who demonstrated how much smarter he was when he called Reagan's domestic policies "voodoo economics"), George H W Bush.

Eight years after that mental colossus was defeated, his doltish son, an alcoholic frat boy or something, George W Bush, ran for president. This man was so stupid he ended up controlling both houses of Congress and the White House.

That's some kind of stupid, huh?

Now, younger Bush might have been called "stupid" by the press, but that doesn't mean he was a Conservative or a Reaganite. And his statist propensities persuaded the Libertarian bloc of the Reagan coalition to look elsewhere. Nevertheless, Bush was a lame duck and there was no need for him to be stupid any longer.

(One delightful irony is to read Jonah Goldberg's book "Liberal Fascism" and see him squirm at the question of whether Bush was a fascist. When you hear "Big Government Conservatism" just think fascism and it be clear. No, this isn't what the lefties saying, "Bushitler," had in mind.)

Then the Republicans figured that disloyalty and craven media pandering was exactly what the party needed to reward and they nominated the smartest guy in the room (just ask him) John McCain. (This was the point where I quit calling myself a Republican.)

Somehow the boffins running the McCain campaign screwed up. They thought, "if the Democrats have an affirmative-action presidential nominee, we'll counter with an affirmative-action vice-presidential nominee. Little did they know, that Sarah Palin was not going to be a hick non-entity that politely (and quietly) provided eye-candy while McLame lost the election.

Mrs. Palin did what she was hired to do. She got guys like me to pull the R lever on election day. Don't blame me, I voted for Sarah and what's his name.

She also drove the lefties, the Democrats, and the media elites nuts. Which is a blessing really. I used to take National Review and the Trojan-Horse Conservative commentators they publish seriously. I know better than to heed them now, thank you, Sarah.

You see, Sarah Palin, is stupid.

If she were only as smart as I am, she'd have done what I expected her to do: Demonstrate she can run Alaska for the next two years then move on to something bigger. Instead, she quit the governorship, citing spurious ethics complaints and slanders. Just a fortnight later, when someone said she was divorcing her husband, private-citizen Palin could sue the fellow for slander. And after the fellow's remarkable implosion, slanderers have to be more circumspect. Haven't heard anything about ethics complaints, either.

And Sarah Palin is stupid because she used two words, "Death Panels."

This was a horrible thing to say. Republicans could call Obama socialist, and point how much ObamaCare was like national socialism, but doing so runs afoul of Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies. Instead, she said, "Death Panels," and everyone felt the words like blood red painted fingernails on chalkboard.

The lefties caught the vapors. Some fainted and the rest said, "that Palin has gone too far." The Trojan-Horse Conservative commentariate nodded in agreement, knowing how embarrassed they'd be at the next Beltway cocktail party. "There are no Death Panels in this bill... There are?.. Uh, let me get back with you on that."

It even gave pause to union thugs busting heads of Tea Partiers at town-hall meetings.

Death Panels. The AARP is a key front group for the Democrat party. Their leadership had been bought off along with everyone else. BUT the words "death panels" wonderfully concentrated the mind of anyone aged and infirm. When you're stupid like Sarah Palin, you realize a sick geezer will cost ObamaCare money, but a dead one won't.

Death Panels forced the AARP to listen to their members. They could either go along with their Obama, or they could lose their credibility as an advocate for the aged. And geezers vote. Sorry, Barry.

Thus Death Panels have been struck from ObamaCare. (I wonder what else is in this bill my Congressman & Senators have not read.) Who'd of thought that old folks were the exact point where political pressure could be most effectively applied?

Sarah Palin sure is stupid, isn't she? I wish more Republicans were stupid like that.

The Republican Branding Problem

I just read on Ace of Spaces that Mr. Charles Krauthammer proposes in a cover article a new tax on gasoline.

We have to seriously question the "branding" of talking heads. The crowd we have are not conservatives. There seems to be something in the water at the National Review and Weekly Standard.

This incident makes me doubt that Mr. Krauthammer would echo Mr. Reagan's sentiment that government is not the solution, but government is the problem. When talking heads start talking about raising taxes in anything but disparaging terms we have to think seriously about what exactly conservatism means.

If the Reagan Revolution is dead, I know one set of fingerprints on the knife in its back. It's not like I'm picking on Mr. Krauthammer (who I've previously been favorably inclined toward), we've got a systemic problem afflicting pretty much every commentator of note.

We should have known we were screwed when the first Republican said "big government conservatism" with a straight face. Mr. Tom Delay gave us fair warning when he said there was no fat in the federal budget to cut. Mr. Bush and Mr. Krauthammer may say many things we like on many topics, but we can't call them conservatives.

The "branding problem" of the Republican party goes deeper than the corruption of guys like Ted Stevens. It goes to the whole notion of what "conservatism" means. I'm not saying that the Republican party ought to kick out the big-government types, but we can't let such folk go around calling themselves conservatives.

You can be less liberal than Mao Tse Tung without being a conservative. I remember scoffing when some C-Span talking-head reported on what the "conservative blogs" were saying about the Republican Convention and she cited a demented fellow who might be many things, but he's no conservative.

So, I propose that we put every putative conservative on trial for actually being conservative. And if we find no evidence to convict, or significant evidence to the contrary, we quit acknowledging and start challenging any representation of that person as a conservative. This should start with both George Bushes extend to every politician and commentator in Washington and New York. We should say, "you're a very nice man, and a loyal Republican (John McCain excepted), but you're no Conservative (John McCain included).

Democrats Without Chests

The Catholic journal "First Things" has news of recent statements by Democrat activists that give pause. Now, I would not think the remarks so significant had I not been on vacation this last weekend whereupon I had occasion to reread my copy of the C.S. Lewis novel, That Hideous Strength.

Civil discourse requires the interlocutors to put their partisan aims under something larger than themselves. The ancient Greeks of Plato's Dialogs thought that Reason, qua, Reason must be ultimate. Theists in general must put the will of God over their own will to power. Historically, American political conflicts have taken place within the framework of the Constitution. When that framework proved inadequate Civil War took a half-million lives on its battlefields.

We have recently seen low-life's who would have a hard time knowing which end the round comes out of a gun proclaiming their willingness to perpetrate any crime to bring about the "greater good" as they see it. Happily, all of the NRA members are on the other side of this debate. The First Things essay speaks of bloodshed. I don't think we've come to that.

I think that if someone publicly says that he believes the ends justify any means necessary, remember that this includes violating the Constitution, the Bible, the Koran, the laws of the land, and the rules of civil discourse. You should believe his every utterance to be a lie until someone you know to believe in absolutes confirms it and you ought to attach the maximum skepticism to it when you hear it repeated. The "big lie" theory depends upon it being repeated so widely that people lose track of its source.

That Hideous Strength is a story of how men without chests find themselves completely unprepared to handle evil. The antagonists start with things that seem good, but take this same "ends justify the means" approach. The result are a few lies to "cut the red tape" and those lies are doubled and tripled until all correspondence between words and reality is lost. What meaning is communicated grows more and more vague. In the climactic confrontation between N.I.C.E. and Merlin all meaning is lost.

There are no policy goals so valuable that lying about them is justified. There are no policy goals that destroying innocent people is justified. If you think otherwise, I will not trust you and we cannot have a civil discussion.

Hubris is not Triumph

While I was vacationing last week, the junior Senator from Illinois, a fellow with less than two hundred days' worth of experience in that post, went on a tour of some foreign countries. I'm told that a lot of crowds full of people who do not vote in American elections showed enthusiastic support.

This fellow, whose press coverage is generally characterized as messianic, went to Jerusalem and the wailing wall. Though I didn't see any pictures (being on vacation) I suppose his campaign staffers plastered it with campaign posters.

One of Bill & Hillary's press tricks was to stage some phony photo op and then feign outrage. I did hear that the Lord Messiah's prayer left at the wailing wall was pilfered and published. I've every confidence it was as sincere as it was focus-group tested.

I read the New York Times claim of this trip that "even Republicans have described as politically triumphant." Though I missed the pictures of the Lord Obama riding into Jerusalem on the foal of an ass with adoring palm frond waving crowds crying Hosanna, I won't deny the New York Times its Palm Sunday.

Though I once called myself a Republican and have no reason to vote for the senior Senator from Arizona, I would characterize the junior Senator from Illinois' trip as manifesting as much hubris as anything.