A first(?) thread on 2008: McCain,Giuliani & the Republicans

The biggest barrier to rolling up our sleeves and preparing for a better future is our own apathy, fear or immobility. We have been living in a zero-sum political environment where all heads have been lowered to avert being lopped off by angry, noisy extremists. I am convinced that Barack Obama is the one presidential candidate today who can encourage ordinary Americans to stand straight again; he is a man who can salve our national wounds and both inspire and pursue genuine bipartisan cooperation. Just as important, Obama can assure the world and Americans that this great nation's impulses are still free, open, fair and broad-minded.

No measures to avert the serious, looming consequences can be taken without this sense of renewal. Uncommon political courage will be required. Yet this courage can be summoned only if something profoundly different transpires. Putting America first -- ahead of our own selfish interests -- must be our national priority if we are to retain our capacity to lead.

The last time the United States had an open election was 1952. My grandfather was pursued by both political parties and eventually became the Republican nominee. Despite being a charismatic war hero, he did not have an easy ride to the nomination. He went on to win the presidency -- with the indispensable help of a "Democrats for Eisenhower" movement. These crossover voters were attracted by his pledge to bring change to Washington and by the prospect that he would unify the nation.

It is in this great tradition of crossover voters that I support Barack Obama's candidacy for president. If the Democratic Party chooses Obama as its candidate, this lifelong Republican will work to get him elected and encourage him to seek strategic solutions to meet America's greatest challenges. To be successful, our president will need bipartisan help.

Foxfyre wrote:

blatham wrote:

Quote:

The thing is though, I have asked you to give me/us an example of an extremist position I hold or any of us hold, and you can't seem to come up with one. I think to suggest one you would likely have to intentionally distort what our position is. That is unless you consider anything right of far left to be extreme.

A truly purposeless endeavor it would be. If you hold a position, it will not be extreme, in your view.

As I said earlier, the only solution here is to simply watch as the realignment continues and as the majority of Americans continue to reject the extremism you don't perceive.

Since you won't state the 'extremism (I) don't perceive', it's pretty difficult to take you seriously.

You've dedicated a lot of time here and you deserve at least this much of an answer.

Consider the oft-quoted line (you've probably quoted it yourself) from Bill Kristol's dad Irving, "A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality." (We'll ignore as irrelevant to this discussion that he wrote this just about the time when the CIA was providing the funding to start up Commentary magazine).

One can make a reasonable case that many who occupied the leftist community in the 60's and 70's held an extremist positions. They, of course, would not have perceived things that way. That is your dilemma now.

If you guys here on the the right - yourself, okie, foxfyre, cjhsa etc begin to gain some perspective on how extremist your movement has become, that would be a wonderful thing. I don't expect it to happen because your partisan and personal investment looks certain to continue to trump all else. Consider, because it is accurate, that I'm forwarding the words of people like Coulter and the rest below, for the benefit of others.

Coulter on Cavuto. This is worth watching through to the end.

Messianic type phenomena

Coulter's audience will be drastically adversely affected by this latest lunacy. She was tolerable before, but I don't expect her audience will square with the logic of asserting Hillary is preferable to McCain. Shot herself in the foot, she did.

Here's a better link for blatham's Coulter/Cavuto clip (his crapped out after a couple minutes when I watched it):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VFiBF9o5vs

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So what did you find in that Pew poll that clearly shows extremist trends among conservatives?

And if you cannot find that, would it be worth considering that the extreme ones are the ones now attempting to reject conservatism?

actually ican you are viewed as extreme because you are extreme but you continue to express the view (as does okie and foxfyre that you represent moderate middle america which, of course is bullshit to the same extent that I would demonstrate middle america. I am an extremist and i know that but you are extremist and don't know that which makes you stupid.

dyslexia wrote:

actually ican you are viewed as extreme because you are extreme but you continue to express the view (as does okie and foxfyre that you represent moderate middle america which, of course is bullshit to the same extent that I would demonstrate middle america. I am an extremist and i know that but you are extremist and don't know that which makes you stupid.

If you could name just one issue where I am extreme, then you would have an ounce of credibility, but since you have never been able to, I would have to say you are full of it, as usual. I am not in favor of higher taxes, open borders, lax terrorist policies, or more socialistic government programs, what else? Man I am whacked out, I suppose because I don't like killing unborn children, or growing the government, or ......you tell us, dyslexia what makes us so extreme. I think you are half nuts, is that what makes me extreme? Or a wingnut that you and your buddies like to call people? A wingnut is what I buy at the hardware store to build projects in my garage, maybe that makes me extreme, I mind my own business, pay taxes, go to work, maybe to be normal in your book I should break the law and go marching in the streets? No thanks, I favor my own normalcy.

The real Reagan

GOP candidates genuflect to his legacy. Trouble is, he didn't do what they say.
By Michael Kinsley
February 1, 2008
In the last few weeks, the Democratic Party has turned on Bill Clinton with the ferocity of 16 years of pent-up resentments. He will not be cut any more slack, and neither will his wife. Meanwhile, the Republican primaries have turned into a Ronald Reagan adoration contest. Neither ex-president deserves what he is getting. Clinton is a victim of long memories; Reagan is a beneficiary of short ones.

In the GOP debate at the Reagan Library on Wednesday, Sen. John McCain repeated his story about how he and other prisoners of war used to discuss this exciting new governor of California, using tap codes through the walls of a North Vietnamese prison. Like many of the great man's own treasured anecdotes, it might be true. Unlike Reagan, McCain is a genuine war hero, so if he has over-polished this story a bit (it is almost word for word each time), he is honoring the great man by imitation if nothing else. In the debate, McCain repeatedly called himself a "foot soldier in the Reagan revolution." He declared that Republicans have "betrayed Ronald Reagan's principles about tax cuts and restraint of spending."

Mitt Romney, meanwhile, kept repeating, inanely, "We're in the house that Reagan built." Reagan "would say lower taxes"; "Reagan would say lower spending"; Reagan "would say no way" to amnesty for illegal immigrants; Reagan would never "walk out of Iraq." And, by the way, McCain's accusation that Romney harbors a secret timetable for withdrawal from Iraq is "the kind of dirty tricks that I think Ronald Reagan would have found to be reprehensible."

A problem: Reagan actually signed the law that authorized the last amnesty, back in 1986. Romney deals with this small difficulty by declaring: "Reagan saw it. It didn't work." He offers no evidence that Reagan had a change of heart about amnesty, and learning from experience was not something Reagan was known for. The proper cliche is McCain's: "Ronald Reagan came with an unshakable set of principles." And -- pointedly -- "he would not approve of someone who changes their positions depending on what the year is."

All of this is what Democrats these days would refer to as a fairy tale. There is no evidence that Reagan was bothered by the rough and tumble of political campaigns. Mischaracterization of an opponent didn't even qualify as a "dirty trick" to Reagan, because of his fantastic ability to believe anything helpful. Compare Romney's whining about how McCain didn't give him enough time to respond to the Iraq timetable accusation with Reagan's masterful "There you go again" against Jimmy Carter in 1980.

Would Reagan "walk out of" Iraq? Far from clear. He scurried out of Lebanon in 1984 after things got hot there. During the Reagan years, the United States was pro-Iraq in its war against Iran, although we also sold weapons to Iran to raise money for a terrorist war we were secretly financing in Nicaragua, while denouncing terrorism. It's hard to find any "unshakable set of principles" in this mess.

McCain declared in Wednesday's debate that he would appoint Supreme Court justices like John Roberts and Samuel Alito -- that is, reliable conservatives. Romney characteristically upped the ante: "I would approve justices ... like Roberts and Alito, Scalia and Thomas." Roberts and Alito were appointed by George W. Bush, and Clarence Thomas was appointed by his father. Reagan did appoint Antonin Scalia, but he also appointed Sandra Day O'Connor, an unbending pragmatist who postponed the conservative revolution in constitutional law for a generation.

But the biggest fairy tale about Reagan is the most central one: about taxes and spending. It is one thing to sit in a North Vietnamese prison in the early 1970s, dreaming of a California governor who one day will balance the federal budget. It is another to imagine that it actually happened.

When Reagan took office in 1981, federal receipts (taxes) were $517 billion and outlays (spending) were $591 billion, for a deficit of $74 billion. When he left office in 1989, taxes were $999 billion and spending was $1.14 trillion, for a deficit of $141 billion. As a share of the economy, Reagan did cut taxes, from 19.6% to 18.4%, and he cut spending from 22.2% to 21.2%, increasing the deficit from 2.6% to 2.8%. The deficit went as high as an incredible 5% of GDP during his term. As a result, the national debt soared by almost two-thirds. You can fiddle with these numbers -- assuming it takes a year or two for a president's policies to take effect, or taking defense costs out -- and the basic result is the same or worse. Whatever, these numbers hardly constitute a "revolution."

McCain's stagy self-flagellation, on behalf of all Republicans, for betraying the Reagan revolution when they controlled Congress and the White House is entirely misplaced. George W. Bush and the GOP Congress did precisely what Reagan did: They cut taxes, mainly on the well-to-do, but they barely touched spending.

If the GOP is looking around for an icon to worship, it might consider Bill Clinton. He cut spending from 21.4% of GDP to 18.5% -- three times as much as Reagan. True, he raised taxes from 17.6% to 19.8%, but that's still a smaller chunk than when Reagan left office. And he left us with an annual surplus that threatened to eliminate the national debt. What's more, I think he's available.

The Constitution of the United States of America
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Article I
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Section 8. The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/unabridged?va=uniform&x=18&y=7
Main Entry: 1uni·form
Pronunciation Guide
Pronunciation: yünfrm
Function: adjective
Inflected Form(s): sometimes -er/-est
Etymology: Middle French uniforme, from Latin uniformis, from uni- + -formis -form
1 : marked by lack of variation, diversity, change in form, manner, worth, or degree : showing a single form, degree, or character in all occurrences or manifestations <the> <Great>
2 : marked by complete conformity to a rule or pattern or by similarity in salient detail or practice : CONSONANT, ALIKE <how>
3 : marked by unvaried and changeless appearance (as of surface, color, or pattern) <so>
4 : consistent in conduct, character, or effect : lacking in variation, deviation, or unequal or dissimilar operation <the>
synonym see LIKE, STEADY

http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/unabridged?va=impost&x=24&y=10
Main Entry: 1im·post
Pronunciation Guide
Pronunciation: impst
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle French, from Medieval Latin impositum, from neuter of Latin impositus, past participle of imponere to put upon, impose -- more at IMPOSE
1 : something imposed or levied : TAX, TRIBUTE, DUTY
2 : the weight carried by a horse in a handicap race