Pastorius has added another comment to my Thanksgiving post:
| And, one more thing, if you think you are going to turn “The Gates of Vienna” into a metaphor meaning the defense of conservatism itself, then once again, you are amusing yourselves. | |
| We can not afford the luxury of metaphor in time of war. | |
| I am very surprised and disappointed in the people who are commenting here. That I am the only dissenting voice shows what the problem is with Bush’s second term. | |
| For God’s sake. |
The problem with the current batch of Congressional Republicans is that their appalling behavior is a threat to our national security.
Our defense against the Great Jihad is ill-served by the likes of Bill Frist. Republican leaders need to hear our outrage, and be motivated by it to change their behavior — which, if they are the opportunists that I think they are, they surely will. Otherwise we need to throw them out and elect people who will truly defend our country, even if the New York Times does not like it.
But I propose to do this without losing the Republican majority by strategic targeting in the Republican primaries — see my previous post. A few notable upsets in the primaries will send a message loud and clear to the rest of the pork-loving spineless bunch.
The profligate spending by Congress (without a single veto by the President, mind you) does great damage to our national security by sucking resources away from vital operations. When defense authorization bills come up, they get resisted more than they would otherwise, because the money has already been directed to the pals of Congress. When the time comes to make a strategic decision — to mount an operation against a state sponsor of terrorists, say — the President may have to think twice about taking action if knows he faces resistance in Congress to funding it.
This is scandalous and it has to stop, the sooner the better. Ten years from now, when Iran has nukes and Europe has collapsed, it will be too late.
The time to take action is now. Our only hope is to put the fear of God (and the voters) into the people we elected. A grassroots effort to take out the most egregious Republicans in the 2006 primaries is our best bet.
Update: Pastorius has responded: Our House Is Being Shelled -- Quick, Balance The Checkbook.
Pastorius, I’m honored to debate you. Open and frank discussion is essential to our mission.
8 comments:
I understand your problem with Bill Frist. It wouldn't be a bad idea to get rid of guys like him.
Perhaps, the problem is that the attacks on the wayward Republican agenda are too often made with a shotgun, which then sprays Bush with pellets as well.
That has to stop.
Take out democrats NOT republicans. Do you know what the effect will be??? With a democrat majority???
By the way, to be fair to me, Baron, the comment and it's ire was directed at anti-Fraud, who suggested we form a third party.
Baron,
Your strategy of targeting Republicans in the primaries carries with it, it's own set of issues. Whether we like it or not, the majority of Americans are "moderate" in their politics. They are always attempting to avoid what they perceive as extremes. We will have gained nothing and lost much if we present them with unpalatable candidates from the right. As angry as the present make-up of the Republican Party in Congress makes us at times, we have to understand why it is that they have been elected. If we replace them with candidates that suit a more conservative taste we will increase the danger of over-reaching and find our efforts counter-productive in the long run, by handing over the majority to a Democratic Party that must not be allowed to govern at any cost, in its current state. By targeting Republican moderates we consigning our majority to a roll of the dice. That prospect is unthinkable to me.
moderationist --
You're not listening. I'm talking about exchanging one Republican for another in the primary.
Throw out a RINO and put in a Republican conservative. Do you really object to that? Or do you think the Republican voters will only vote for spineless pork-lovers?
Highlander, I don't agree that it's a roll of the dice. I'm not talking about trying to elect people who are as extreme as I am -- that would not be prudent.
But the majority of the American people do not support the scaredy-cat behavior of the Republican Senators. Given a real choice, they will support candidates who remain committed to strategic goals of the war against the Jihad, and fiscal prudence.
That's actually a moderate position. It's just that the MSM has skewed the debate so far to the surrender-monkey socialist left that it seems extreme.
If the politicians listened to the voters instead of the New York Times and the talking heads on TV, they'd get re-elected and we'd all be better off.
Two questions:
1) How do you put up a conservative against a RINO, and not have it result in the Democrat winning?
2) Do you really think that if Bush vetoed these various pork bills, that it would result in more cooperation from Congressional Dems with regards to the War on Terror?
Pastorius:
We have a conservative congressman for our district. Every election the Dems put up one of their moderates and he/she loses. They took the last loss especially hard since the guy the Dems put up was ex-military and had a veneer of middle-of-the-road. Our rep is not a RINO, and though I disagree with him on his vote for that prescription package, on most areas he is fiscally and philosophically conservative. He says he voted the rx bill to prevent a worse one
further down the road.
Centrist conservatives who run a coherent campaign can win. Toomey would have won against Specter IN THE PRIMARY had not Bush stepped in and supported Specter. It was not only an act without integrity for Bush, who declared himself a "compassionate conservative," it also has cost him in the Senate...Specter is a disgrace and has stabbed Bush in the back repreatedly.
Second, Bush should veto these pork bills because he ran as a conservative. Again, it is a matter of integrity. If I vote for someone because I believe he will attempt to rein in domestic spending and he ends up out-spending the last Democratic administration by a large margin, then my trust in other areas begins to erode also.
Anyway, it's moot: no matter what or how he signs, Bush will never, ever, no time, no how, no way, receive any credit from a Democrat. Never. They will lose this war and place us in danger just to defeat Bush or any other conservative because they believe viscerally that a conservative government in America is a worse case scenario than Hussein in power in Iraq. They're doing their mightiest to vietnamize this war.
Fianlly, and most worringly, the administration's behavior with the Saudis is, at best, questionable. With no warning nor explanation they pulled the State Dept witness from the Senate Judiciary hearing on "Saudi Arabia: Friend or Foe in the WoT" that was held Novemeber 8th. In fact, I think State has done much to complicate matters and confuse the world on our stance re terror. I thought Rice would be an improvement but she's not.
It's all window-dressing. The Bush Doctrine has fallen by the wayside. The fact that the Iraqis have seen the writing on the wall and begun to plan for their own survival is good, but it's not what was needed.
It is Bush's surprising and disappointing lack of leadership vis-a-vis the Senate leadership on both foregin and domestic matters that is the most depressing part of this whole thing. Those jokers should have been reined in a long time ago. In his first term, Bush spent a whole lot of time out talking to the country...we see less of that, even tough it's even more important now than it was then.
Sometimes I just wonder if he's not tired. Dead tired. I cannot find a more difficult period in which to be President. Even Lincoln had it easier...
I also think we may be facing a civil war of sorts. It may not be healed in this generation since its antecedents go all the way back to the 19th century and are only now, finally, coming to a real head in the present version of the foe: the islamofascists. They are merely a re-incarnation of the socialist/utopian/kill-for- our-credo that has been around since the anarachists helped catalyze WWI.
Western Europe in its millenia-old Judeo-Christian form is dying, replaced by a feeble socialist utopian daydream that is being eroded by the Muslims.
(Eastern Europe is another case, and it will prove interesting when that clash breaks out again...)
Much depends on what the terrorists aleady among us decide to do: to let things run their course and just step in when we fall of our own weight, or to speed things up by intervening directly...
...e.g., the Farrakhan Muslims breaking up liquor stores.
There are too many unpredictables in the situation to be able to say. All we can do is try to field decent candidates IN THE PRIMARIES to defeat what we currently have in Congress. And then try to find a palatable presidnetial candidate in 2008...but I won't go there for the moment. Right now it's the 2006 PRIMARIES which are crucial...
And if I ever thought the domestic could be separated from foreign policy, Bush has made me change my mind...they are so intertwined they can only be taken apart to analyze, not to live with.
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