The GOP Establishment is Full of S*it
Courtesy: Tea Party Nation (http://www.teapartynation.com)
It’s been over a week since Eric Cantor got thumped in the Virginia GOP primary. In the time since, I’ve read pieces from dozens of pundits. They typically run along one of two themes:
- The Tea Party is killing any chance of Republicans returning to national power.
- Conservatism is at war with itself.
This is because the establishment GOP – who have taken to calling themselves “Movement Conservatives” or “Reform Conservatives” (the conservative part of the label is questionable, at the very least) – cannot imagine a political party that exists without the benefit of their favorite cronyist pals; Big Finance, Big Oil and military contractors. And they very much would like to pry away Big Tech from the Democrats. The idea of “their” party – which has been bought and paid for by those interests for two decades now – returning to the coalition built by Goldwater and Reagan and actually putting those ideals into action scares the living snot out of them.
That palpable fear was perfectly expressed by Greg Sargent:
“Almost all the internal preoccupations of the Republican Party — in primary battles, intra-movement arguments, conservative media tropes — have nothing to do with the party’s main external challenges: appealing to young people, to the middle class, to the working class and to rising demographic groups.”
For some reason, this argument is the establishment’s favorite: that a principled, conservative approach to governance can’t attract voters. The idea that those under 30, those in the middle class (or aspiring to the middle class) and legal immigrants can’t find common ground with a party that actually works towards reducing the size and scope of an overreaching government, or a party that actively works to strengthen national security is absurd on the face of it.
Don’t let anyone fool you. The GOP establishment, or movement wing, or reform wing, or whatever other hair-brained name they decide to call themselves, is not conservative. Oh, they all talk a great game about reducing the size of government, getting our debt and deficit under control, blah, blah, blah. But let’s not forget it was the Republican Party of GWB that shredded the Constitution by passing the Patriot Act, that exploded the size of the federal government by creating the Department of Homeland Security, that passed No Child Left Behind, that first proposed TARP. It was establishment figures like John McCain, Lindsay Graham and John Boehner (and yes, Eric Cantor) who first proposed legislation that would legalize criminal border crossings, and establishment, “conservative” pundits from Ann Coulter to David Brooks who told us Mitt Romney was just a s conservative as, well, Ronald Reagan. Somehow, the fact that Romney had introduced a socialist medical care system in Massachusetts* didn’t matter. For all of the evils Barack Obama has visited on American liberty, he couldn’t have implemented them as quickly and with as little backlash as he has without the Republican Party of 1993-present first laying the groundwork to make it happen.
But having spent 20 years becoming, essentially, the Democrat Party, the party bigwigs are in a tizzy with a true conservative movement afoot. Yes, you read that right: establishment Republicans are no different from establishment Democrats. The only difference is who signs their paychecks. Dems are signed by Big Labor and Big Tech. Republicans are signed by the groups I mentioned above, along with Big Religion. Neither party actually stands for the groups Sargent outlines. The difference between 2012 and 2000 is simply that the Republicans let themselves be played in the last election. How? By running a candidate that exactly fit the narrative Dems created: that conservatives are nothing more than Big Business hacks out to screw the common man.
Yet, here’s the funny thing: the common man knows he’s getting screwed by the government AND Big Business AND Big Labor. And he’s getting tired of it. Doesn’t matter if he’s 18 or 72, black or white, rich or poor – he wakes up every morning knowing that somebody in “authority” is going to do their best to undermine his best efforts. He knows those forces arrayed against the common man are conspiring to make mere survival almost impossible, much less actually getting ahead. Those are the people that voted to turn Eric Cantor out of office.
And those are the same people that voted the last true conservative into the White House. In 1980, the political class – especially the entrenched Republican interests – thought the Reagan Revolution was suicide for the party. But Reagan captured the votes of the young. He got majorities of traditionally Democrat voting blocs, including Big Labor. He won a majority of the Latino vote, the last Republican Presidential candidate to do so. And he did so by campaigning on a platform of conservative values. Unfortunately for the nation, Reagan made one HUGE mistake in 1980 when he accepted George Herbert Walker Bush as his running mate. The establishment had their backdoor into the seat of power. By 1988, Bush was being touted as a conservative, and the label hasn’t meant what it did for Reagan since then.
This, if anything, is the disconnect that the pundits and professional pols haven’t come to realize. The rise of the Tea Parties in 2009 was less about Republican voters who had decided to become activists. I was about conservative voters who were tired of being lied to and taken for granted becoming activists. Conservatives have found their voice. The genie is out of the bottle – and the phony conservatives populating the Republican Party are unhappy.
That’s a good thing.
*BTW, RomneyCare has turned into such a colossal failure the state has asked the feds to take it over.
Mark Cuban Is Right
For better or worse, race is an explosive topic in our country. A lot of that has to do with the inherent fear we have, as a society, to address the topic head-on. That’s largely because when somebody does address the topic calmly, rationally and in a non-PC way, they stand the very real chance of being slandered, vilified and demonized. Witness Mark Cuban, the often outspoken tech entrepreneur and owner of the NBA Dallas Mavericks:
“I mean, we’re all prejudiced in one way or another. If I see a black kid in a hoodie and it’s late at night, I’m walking to the other side of the street. And if on that side of the street, there’s a guy that has tattoos all over his face — white guy, bald head, tattoos everywhere — I’m walking back to the other side of the street. And the list goes on of stereotypes that we all live up to and are fearful of. So in my businesses, I try not to be hypocritical. I know that I’m not perfect. I know that I live in a glass house, and it’s not appropriate for me to throw stones.”
Cuban made those comments in an interview for Inc. magazine and was immediately slandered, vilified and demonized for them. He was labeled a racist for admitting that he, as with everyone else in the world, has prejudices. It was an over-reaction by people who’ve been conditioned in such a way as to confuse racism with prejudice.
Here’s the difference. A racist is not only someone who has prejudicial views, but refuses to acknowledge those prejudices – and then, by being in a position of power or authority, acts in a way that denigrates or injures the prejudiced. A racist varies from a bigot, in that a bigot allows their prejudices to form their world view but isn’t in any real position to act to perpetuate that view.
So, is Mark Cuban a racist? No. He is, in fact, the embodiment of what Dr. Martin Luther King spoke of when he pleaded with the world to judge men by their character, not their color.
Herein lies the problem with discussing race relations in this country: nobody, other than the PC, are allowed to talk about the topic. Unspoken in Cuban’s words, but certainly implied is that not only whites have prejudices – but other races, as well. And the PC brigades cannot allow for even the slightest possibility that such a truth to be uttered in public.
This is dangerous territory. The forced public misinterpretation of the relationship between prejudice and racism is more than a liberal meme – it is a lynchpin of liberal politics. For decades now, liberals have successfully blurred the distinction, so that blacks and latinos are told they cannot be prejudiced, because that would mean they’re also racists. At the same time, whites in liberal enclaves have been demonized and shamed into refusing to face their own prejudices. We’ve become a society where nobody is looking in the mirror, but everyone is yelling racism at the slightest perceived slight.
Further, by declaring that only white people with prejudicial feelings can be racists, the liberal crowd continues to prey on the “communities of color.” How? By constantly telling these people that their feelings aren’t prejudice, per se, but rather a natural reaction to centuries of being subjugated, they’re delivering a “message of empowerment.” It is, of course, a lot of hooey – and a message that consistently delivers a sizable voting bloc to the liberal cause.
But until everyone faces up to their own prejudices, the same way Mark Cuban has done – the same way very successful leader I’ve ever met has done – we will never get past the issue of race in our country. We’ll continue to be a nation of people with hyphens rather than a nation of Americans.
Getting Bergdahl Was a Waste of Time
h/t Pat Dollard
I’m of the opinion that the US was under no obligation to “rescue” Bowe Bergdahl.
Go ahead, be shocked. Most of my friends are when they first hear me say this. Regardless of the crimes he committed, they share the administration’s assertion that the US has an obligation to bring back every soldier, sailor, airman and Marine sent into combat. Guess what? So do I.
But Bergdahl was no soldier. Oh, he was at one point. But from the moment he abandoned his post in a hot CZ, he abandoned being a soldier – along with the rights and protections that come from wearing the uniform of a US soldier.
How do we know he actually deserted and didn’t simply wander off accidentally? Let’s review:
- There is the email exchange with his parents during the week before he abandoned his post, the one in which he declared “I am ashamed to be an american <sic>. And the title of US soldier is just the lie of fools.”
- He walked away from his post, leaving behind any gear that would have been useful in mounting a self-defense if attacked by enemy forces. According to eyewitness accounts from both the Afghan military and villagers he encountered on his trek, he was actually looking to meet up with the local Taliban.
- An Army review of Bergdahl’s disappearance and subsequent abduction found that he had, in fact, deserted. It also found that Bergdahl made a habit of going AWOL.
- There are the accounts from his platoon mates that characterize Bergdahl as a deserter and a traitor. There are even accounts that suspect Bergdahl of actively cooperating with the Taliban in raids against his former platoon.
To summarize: Bowe Bergdahl was ashamed of his citizenship, chose to walk away from his unit in a combat zone, chose to actively seek out the enemy while unarmed, and announced to his platoon his intention to leave. Further, there is evidence that not only did he seek out the Taliban, but went there with the intention of supplying them with critical intelligence that later helped them decimate the ranks of his former platoon.
These are not the actions of an American soldier. They are the actions of a turncoat. A traitor.
And under no circumstance should the United States ever work to “free” a traitor.
Was Bergdahl Addicted to Heroin? Why is he Being Sequestered? Detox?
An interesting take from an Army MD about Bowe Bergdahl’s current medical and mental state. And, it actually supports Obama’s contention that Bergdahl’s health was declining. But it doesn’t exactly make him a sympathetic figure in my eyes.
While serving at the U.S. military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as an Army Captain, and the ranking U.S. Army Medical Department officer with the Joint Detainee Operations Group, in February 2002, I was aware of a detainee we called “Wild Bill” who came to us from Afghanistan a drug addicted schizophrenic.
It took us a while to figure out what his problems were. We were distracted by his bizarre behavior: eating his flip flops, hanging objects from his genitals, making strange, random sounds, and, like many other detainees, when they got the chance, throwing urine and feces on the guards.
Once it was determined that this detainee was ill, and his story stuck, he was determined to no longer be a threat to the United States, nor of any intelligence value, so he was scheduled for release.
As it turned out, “Wild Bill,” or Abdul Razaq
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The Manchurian President
Followers of this blog are certainly aware that I am neither a fan of the President nor his policies. But I’ve never joined the club of people who think Barack Obama is actively trying to undermine the United States. At least, not in the sense that he fully anticipates the policies he pursues will actually cause the downfall of American society, and that this is his reason for being. I had always assumed he was a just another overeducated liberal without enough common sense to know what the hell he was doing.
No longer. I am saying it as loud, as long and as often as I possibly can. Barack Hussein Obama-Soetero is UNAMERICAN and is actively seeking to DESTROY THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
It isn’t any single Obama action that has led me to this conclusion. Rather, it is the totality of those actions – they way they inextricably link back to one result, a diminishing of the United States as an economic, military and diplomatic power. Over 5+ years in office, every single policy and action undertaken by the Obama administration has succeeded in one thing only, and that’s turning us into a shell of what we were just a few years ago.
He promised to unite us, yet he has driven a politics a of division – along class, racial, income, wealth, age, religious and regional lines, ensuring he leaves office with a nation more divided than any time since Reconstruction. And not unlike that time, it will take a generation or more to patch the chasms he’s torn in the fabric of American spirit.
He swore an oath to defend the Constitution, yet decries that very document’s limitations on his power while announcing his intention to undermine and usurp it whenever he can.
He swore an oath to defend the American people, yet has repeatedly tossed American lives aside as callously as you or I might discard a chewing gum wrapper. From Fast and Furious to Benghazi to veteran’s care, Americans continue to needlessly die on his watch. Often, he undertakes actions that ensure some of us will die – and often, those of us who’ve sworn their lives to protect their nation. He holds those persons – the military, law enforcement, etc – with personal disdain.
His diplomatic actions have left the Middle East in the thrall of the very extremists we are at war with. Whether Al-Queada in Libya, Iraq and Syria, Hamas in Israel, the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, or the Mullahs in Iran, the promise lit by the spark of the Green Revolution was used by Obama to set that region aflame. Hhis other diplomatic “efforts” have resulted in a resurgent Russia threatening the 70 years of European peace and directly led to a new Sino-Russo entente, undoing the efforts of 40 years of American diplomacy. He accomplished this while working to isolate the USA from our traditional allies, while deferring (and on more than one occasion, embracing) to our enemies.
His economic policies have devastated the what was once the world’s preeminent economy, turning us into a basket case of runaway debt, devalued currency, over taxation, over regulation and negative growth. By the end of this year, China will supplant the US as the world’s largest economy, ending a 93 year run.
And just as the US was about to achieve energy independence, a goal of every President of every political stripe since the Nixon administration, this usurper comes along and unilaterally institutes new policies that will simultaneously accelerate our dependence on foreign energy, sap the economy further and aggravate our most important trading partner. If it weren’t aimed squarely at the American people, I would be envious of such a master stroke.
I once thought Obama simply a misguided fool, whose incompetence came shining through when competence is needed most. But no longer. Anyone who can be elected to the Presidency twice is neither fool nor idiot. Rather, they have to be shrewd, cunning and exceptionally intelligent.
Those are also the exact same traits required to pull off a level of treason this extreme.
I do not know why Obama hates the country of his birth to this degree. Perhaps it was upbringing in Indonesia. Maybe some of his parents’ extreme ideology is carried in his DNA. Maybe he spent too many hours listening to the anti-American screeds from Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers. Whatever the roots, it doesn’t really matter. He is doing his utmost to unravel everything our parents and grandparents created. And with the help of radical friends in the media and the democratic party, he is succeeding.
Political Baseballs 