The Corner on National Review Online: "'If Bush had vetoed a few spending bills, even to be overridden, more conservatives would have been rooting for his team this year.'"
Yeah. Aren't you happy with the results?
Idiots.
Now, we hope the hole we just shot in out own foot heals, instead of festering and killing us.
26 comments:
Oh for Chrisake and who writes the checks? Who passes the legislation? Remember Saint Reagan? He would not fit their bill of the perfect conservative either.
The NRO is getting more and more absurd. They do not represent a majority. When are they going to get that through their heads? Will it take another Perot and another 8 years with the Clintons in the WH before they understand who the opposition is?
Yes NRO is responsible for the Meltdown led by Bush.
Bush is NEVER responsible for anything.
The conservatives excuse is spending and Bush.
I think the conservatives were simply too conservative for the country as a whole.
Bush did his job TOO well by keeping us safe the last five years so independents forgot why they supported him.
Rumsfeld, a brilliant and able man, was sacrificed. There should be some more. Leon Kass is at the top of my list.
doug:
You know why I get pissed at these kind of people? When Bush tried to reform social security all these high and mighty fiscal conservatives just let him hang out there. After all the bitching about entitlement programs they did not have the guts to take on social security reform and Bush used up a lot of time and energy on that issue when it could have been used somewhere else.
Bush is far from perfect, but if he had lost his election in 2004 we would not be blaming Congress, we would be blaming him. So let these guys assume some responsibility for their own losses.
BTW doug are you saying that Bush is responsible for the corruption in the Ohio Republican party? For Foley's habits? For all the other screw ups that lead these guys to be picked off one by one. please.
Olympia Snow and Dick Lugar sailed to victory with huge margins, but Allen went down. Why?
syl:
Yes it has been a long time since 9/11 and people have begun to think the threat was over stated or has been dealt with. I also think they are tired of war.
The NRO is getting more and more absurd. They do not represent a majority. When are they going to get that through their heads?
Well, never, obviously, because that is not their job.
Their job is to b**** and moan. Their job is not to govern. Their job is not to make compromises with a hostile and intractable opposition which fundamnetally hates this country. Their job is not to try to pull along a "base" of purists who believe they can have the whole cake their way even though they clearly only represent a minority.
But, and please don't take offense at this, I could ask the same question of you. When are you going to realize that all these pundits are, in the end, nothing but pundits, and that punditry is all they are ever going to be good for?
meaningless:
No offence taken. And I do get too pissy about this I know. Sorry.
I did not make myself plain. The people at the NRO are just representative of a group.
I was not just talking about he pundits. I was also talking about the Congressmen and women who claim to be fiscal conservatives and do not show any restraint and then blame everyone else.
I am talking about conservative voters who time and again think they represent a far larger number of people in the electorate than they do.
MHA
I do not believe the Democrats fundamentally hate this country. Some of the left do...and, I know, there are a lot of them.
I actually like and admire Pelosi which makes me a minority of 1. I do not agree with her views one iota though I admire her skills.
I do think it's interesting that every faction among the voters and the pundits has their own reasons for the election outcome. I was laughing at Tom Brokaw last night who thinks he knows what Republicans think. The hubris and egotism of someone who projects his own thoughts on half of America--who he doesn't even know--was appalling though not unexpected.
Anyway, we will all be putting forth our opinions as to the reasons we lost Congress and what the future will bring. A few million thoughts will eventually coalesce into only a few.
Then we can get to work.
Bostonian,
The game's not over yet. It's likely to last far beyond our lives. There will naturally be lots of ups and downs. The country is tired and clearly the anti-war half has not been convinced in the least.
In the course of attempting to govern there are naturally going to be some incidents of corruption, failure, sexual peccadillos, and saying stupid things, which, as far as I can tell, constitutes most of the easy fruit the Democrats were able to grab. The question is why the Republicans were unable to pick off similar fruit on the other side. That lack indicates some sort of systematic flaws on the Republican side. I think they are threefold: 1) not able to deliver a coherent message the country could swallow, 2) media almost completely owned by the Democrats, 3) half the country remains completely unconvinced that war is necessary.
We have talked and talked and argued and argued on these blogs for years now about our belief that we are in a war and it can't be avoided, but very few people on the other side have changed their minds. With half the country and most of Europe opposed to fighting the Jihadis, the war is simply unsustainable. What will change people's minds? Because that's what is required in a democracy.
Syl,
I would actually go further and suggest that a large fraction of our population hates life itself. They think it would be wonderful if everybody died. Humanity is a "cancer" on the world. There are a lot of unhappy people out there who have become convinced that government is the solution to all of life's problems, to their own misery. I understand this very well as I used to be one of these people. I have a neighbor who is still one. He is a very unhappy man who looks everyday at our flawed world and is pained by it. He thinks global warming is very real and that everything will be much better if no one drives anymore at all. If you asked him, does he hate the US, he would probably say no, but does he hate the country he actually lives in today in which people are driving everyday and warming the globe without any concern for the Environment, then yes, absolutely. He is a Democrat who really believes all that will be fixed at the next election. As far as I can tell, most of the Democratic strongholds such as California, Western Washington, and Massachusetts are very similar
Doug,
I tend to agree with Terrye here, your viewpoint is clearly held only by a smallish minority. You can hate or attack Bush all you want but at the last election your only choice was between Bush and Kerry. Which do you choose?
Fresh Air,
I'm not so sanguine about the demographic argument, which is brought up frequently. The reason is that Republicans don't really breed Republicans. One's point of view is heavily dependent on the environment in which one is raised, of which the parents have only a small influence.
Yesterday I was strolling along La Jolla amazed at what looks to this prairie boy as rich heaven on earth. It's no wonder that the people living there don't see a need for a spurious war on terror. Life is wonderful and amazing and peaceful--just look around. And probably the vast majority of those people are the descendants of Republicans but they're voting Democratic today. The WoT isn't real for them, and nothing in their environment makes it so.
Bostonian,
I don't really worry about the Jihadis because either they will cease to attack, which is not a problem, or they will attack so vehemently that we will be forced to really stand up and fight a war, whether we like it or not. Then we will win, though lots of people will die. Well, sorry, but people die anyway.
No, my real worry is China. China is not an incoherent band of nincompoops dependent upon the self-hatred of the West to produce weapons for them. China is a serious civilization which sees itself as clearly--clearly--the proper rulers of this globe. They are stirring up the Muslims and selling them arms and advanced technology in order to weaken the US.
Sooner or later they will grab Taiwan, which they view as properly theirs, and we will do....what? Then, they will move up the chain. They're already claiming parts of Japan. Why not Thailand, Cambodia, parts of Central Asia, etc.
And they are smart--very smart--and keeping a very low profile. Biding their time, even if takes centuries.
And we are so arrogant that we don't even see why having a completely alien civilization like this, one which is still very much a military dictatorship, could conceivably be a threat to our democracy, to our concept of human rights.
I fear for our country.
Doug, actually I'm holding you personally responsible. Remember a few months ago when we were talking about how, if the Democrats got their way, it would be dangerous for the US and the whole world?
Well, they did. And dopes like you, who didn't like Bush 'cause he wasn't "conservative" enough, helped do it.
Live with that.
Bostonian,
I have come to think that leftists *define* themselves as the good guys, *define* themselves by contrast with "the bad guys," and are thus constitutionally incapable of accepting any input that tells them otherwise.
Speaking as a former Leftist, I can assure you that is absolutely true. Leftism is really a religion, an untestable belief system which gives meaning to life. It is clearly, clearly, Christianity in another guise. Christians believe it is their moral duty to convert the world to Christianity, and that by virtue of being Christians they are "saved" and the rest of the world is not. That's exacty what Leftists believe. Both want to create "heaven on earth", but the Leftists have simply removed God from the equation.
The essence of Leftism is redemption through action, the action in this case being the creation of "social justice" through governmental means. Leftists very much see themselves as the chosen people, just like Jews and Calvinists. But the arena of action has changed, having shifted to the sanctification of political processes and governmental programs. Salvation through voting as a Democrat.
As the US has become the enemy, because, as in Christianity, Leftism believes strength is prima facie evidence of evil, it is no longer US governmental actions which are sanctified, but those of the UN. The UN is of course a governmental body which is neither democratic nor accountable, but its distance from ordinary life lends it the illusion of holiness.
The NYT won't be going after Kofi Annan any time soon.
Anyway, yes, it's all about my need to feel superior and my need to be redeemed within my one miserable materialistic lifetime.
It's no wonder that the people living there don't see a need for a spurious war on terror.
So, maybe it's like those histories I read in childhood. It seemed like the warlike barbarians from the mountains were always descending on the cities in the plain and overthrowing them. Assyrians, Persians, Turks... no doubt many more. The moral always seemed to be that civilizations went soft. Now, that may have been a remnant from the nineteenth century school of nature, red in tooth and claw, that also found a home in fascism and, indeed, in communism. But unsophisticated as it was, perhaps there was a bit of truth in it.
I wonder if the story of the ant and the grasshopper is still popular?
I'm sorry, but this is all just pissing in the wind, really, and it is not just the election that causes me to say this. I fear that we are Rome, circa... Oh, I don't know, say 200 AD. Living off past glory and long dead hero's.
We have been surrounded on all sides for quite some time, beginning around 1917. Since then, we have been steadily losing the battle of what it means to be an United States Citizen. We have lost our exceptionalism.
And that is a shame. We have been drawn down to the lowest common denominator.
The communist/socialist branch is winning. They infected our society many years ago. Unnoticed, by most, unannounced, but with great malice nonetheless.
If we don't believe in ourselves, which at present, we do not. I see not much hope.
As usual UK, good perspective. Your last sentence, extremely true, and extremely sad.
NHA
Your worry re china:
And they are smart--very smart--and keeping a very low profile. Biding their time, even if takes centuries.
What do you think China will look like centuries from now?
I think the jihadis will take us before the Chinese do only because we're higher on the jihadi list.
If the jihadis were to tackle China I think our worries would be over.
It was an election, folks. There will be others.
What was going on in Rome in 200 B.C.? 200 B.C., Luther. Will Durant dates Stoic Rome from 508 B.C. to 202 B.C.—300 plus years.
And then...
The Second Punic War changed the face of the western Mediterranean. It gave Spain and all its wealth to Rome, providing the funds for the Roman conquest of Greece. It reunited Italy under Rome’s unquestioned mastery and threw open all routes and markets to Roman ships and goods. But it was the most costly of all ancient wars. It ravaged or injured half the farms of Italy, destroyed 400 towns, killed 300,000 men; southern Italy has never quite recovered from it to this day. It weakened democracy by showing that a popular assembly cannot wisely choose generals or direct a war. It began the transformation of Roman life and morals by hurting agriculture and helping trade; by taking men from the countryside and teaching them the violence of battle and the promiscuity of the camp; by bringing the precious metals of Spain to finance new luxuries and imperialistic expansion; and by enabling Italy to live on the extorted wheat of Spain, Sicily and Africa. It was a pivotal event for almost every phase of Roman history.
To Carthage it was the beginning of the end.
It seems to me that our system of governance has, thankfully, thus far kept us stoic.
Resume.
Oh. Fresh Air? Perspective? 4+ and 20+.
What a smile.
Loner,
It strikes me that WWII may have been our Punic War.
The world is open to American goods and we have become corrupt and lost our sense of the value of hard work and of the difficulties that exist in real people's lives who don't live in CA.
Syl,
I imagine that by the end of this century China will be master of the globe. Maybe sometime in the next.
When the time comes, they will crush the jihadis like grapes.
They'll defang us first.
MHA—
I think not.
Toward foreign states, with one exception, he advocated a policy of justice and nonintervention. Despising Greeks, he respected Greece; and when the imperialistic plunderers in the Senate were for waging war upon rich Rhodes, he made a decisive speech in favor of conciliation. The exception, as all the world knows, was Carthage. Sent there on an official mission in 175, he had been shocked by the rapid recovery of the city from the effects of the Hannibalic war, the fruitful orchards and vineyards, the wealth that poured in from revived commerce, the arms that mounted in the arsenals. On his return he held up before the Senate a bundle of fresh figs that he had plucked in Carthage three days before, as an ominous symbol of her prosperity and her nearness to Rome; and he predicted that if Carthage were left unchecked, she would soon be rich and strong enough to renew the struggle for the mastery of the Mediterranean. From that day, with characteristic pertinacity, he ended all his speeches in the Senate, on whatever subject, with his dour conviction: Ceterum censeo delendam esse Carthaginem—"Besides, I think that Carthage must be destroyed." The imperialists in the Senate agreed with him, not so much because they coveted Carthage's trade, as because they saw in the well-irrigated fields of north Africa a new investment for their money, new latifundia to be tilled by new slaves. The awaited eagerly a pretext for the Third Punic War.
No Cato. No slaves. No Third Punic War. And, I might add, no Cannae during or since World War II. In my opinion, naturally.
Seneca,
This dope voted a straight GOP ticket.
That was a dopey comment!
For the Record:
JD Hayworth's opponent won by mimicking JD's stand on immigration!
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