Bush Supporters' Aftermath Thread III

Lola: Stop hammering on the opposition. You know you love us. Where would you be without us?

Cloud nine?

Lola wrote:

McGentrix wrote:

Could the liberals on A2K please not pollute this thread into an anti-Bush thread? I'd prefer not having to weed through the garbage to read a post in a thread topic I am interested in.

This is a BUSH SUPPORTER thread. If you do not support Bush, please feel free not to read or post here.

If the non-Bush supporters stopped posting on this thread you guys wouldn't have anything to write about.

Why don't we try it and see?

Because it is not within your power, you silly man. I just thought I'd come along and do my little part.

Voters did not reject core Republican principles of lower taxes, smaller government and family values when they put the Democrats in charge of Congress, Republican officials across the country said last week in their post-mortems on the midterm elections.

Bush's approval now down to 31... http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/11/AR2006111100689.html

Bush's approval now down to 31... http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/11/AR2006111100689.html

the Republican leadership in the House [has] failed the people of this country [..] This election was also a referendum on the so-called `neoconservatives' -- the big-government Republicans who took us into a nation-building war while they busted the budget and enriched big business and its K Street lobbyists.

We have watched Republicans elected by promising the highest standards in terms of integrity come to Washington to do good and stay to do well for themselves, their families and their friends, and demean the offices to which they were elected in the process [..]

We have stood by as Republicans have flaunted, twisted and ignored rules to achieve their own partisan, rather than principled, ends; leaders who have used earmarks to seduce reluctant members to vote for legislation they knew was wrong and kept votes open for hours while they and their White House allies bludgeoned their colleagues into line in support of such legislation.

Nonetheless, the difference between taking one house versus both -- and thus between normal six-year incumbent party losses and a major earthquake that shakes the presidency -- was razor thin in this election. A switch of just 1,424 votes in Montana would have kept the Senate Republican. [..]

[T]he great Democratic wave of 2006 is nothing remotely like the great structural change some are trumpeting.

Moreover, ballot initiatives make the claim of a major anti-conservative swing quite problematic. In Michigan, liberal Democrats swept the gubernatorial and senatorial races, yet a ballot initiative to abolish affirmative action passed 58-42. Seven out of eight anti-gay marriage amendments to state constitutions passed. And nine states passed referendums asserting individual property rights against the government's power of eminent domain.

The fact that the Democrats crossed midfield does not make this election a great anti-conservative swing. Republican losses included a massacre of moderate Republicans in the Northeast and Midwest. And Democratic gains included the addition of many conservative Democrats, brilliantly recruited by Rep. Rahm Emanuel with classic Clintonian triangulation. Hence Heath Shuler of North Carolina, anti-abortion, pro-gun, anti-tax -- and now a Democratic congressman.

On Thursday, the New York Times' David Brooks wrote [..] that in Tuesday's elections "voters kicked out Republicans but did not swing to the left. For the most part they exchanged moderate Republicans for conservative Democrats."

He's not the only one to make a similar argument -- indeed, the meme that by delivering the Democrats the majority in both houses of Congress for the first time in 12 years voters somehow were trying to elect conservatives has been bouncing all over the media [..].

The National Review's Lawrence Kudlow was already [..] arguing before the final results were even in that "the changeover in the House may well be a conservative victory, not a liberal one."

And today a reporter for England's Guardian newspaper wrote, "The conservative Democrats, or new Democrats as they are sometimes called, were disproportionately represented in the most highly contested races against Republicans [..]."

There's just one problem with all this: It's not true. [W]hen actually broken down quantitatively, the number of liberal and conservative freshmen Democrats elected on Tuesday puts the lie to this running theme.

Media Matters for America, the liberal press watchdog, has already documented the political proclivities of 27 of the new Democrats in Congress; MMA restricted its analysis to those who defeated incumbent Republicans or took over open seats previously held by Republicans. It found: "All 27 candidates support raising the minimum wage. All 27 candidates advocate changing course in Iraq. All 27 candidates oppose efforts to privatize Social Security. Only two of the 27 candidates do not support embryonic stem cell research. Only five of the 27 candidates describe themselves as 'pro-life.'" [..]

In the Senate, Ohio's Sherrod Brown is a devoted liberal, as is Maryland's Ben Cardin [..].

In all of these arguments one name pops up continuously: Heath Shuler, the former NFL quarterback who ran, and won, as a social conservative. That's because, other than Shuler, there are very few others to whom the proponents of this theory can point. And yet this meme shows no signs of dying: It continues to be pushed by reporters and pundits who, like Brooks, have a vested interest in proving to their readers and employers that their views are shared by America at large. [..]

Moderates Say GOP's Conservative Agenda Doomed Party

For the past two years, Republican moderates in the House have grumbled as their party took up a right-leaning agenda, with votes to ban gay marriage, to make felons of illegal immigrants, and to prevent a brain-damaged Florida woman from being removed from a feeding tube, among other conservative causes.

Meanwhile, the moderates' agenda ?- chiefly a minimum wage increase and expanded federal funding for embryonic stem cell research ?- was ignored or given short shrift.

On Tuesday, Republicans paid the price, their moderate wing says. Voters gave control of the House to Democrats for the first time since 1994 and provided cliffhanger gains in the Senate. [..]

"The majority of the American people are centrists ?- and our party lost many seats because the party was not in touch with what the American people care about," said Rep. Michael N. Castle of Delaware, a prominent GOP centrist who easily won re-election.

[..] Sarah Chamberlain Resnick, the executive director of the Republican Main Street Partnership, a caucus of moderates [..] blast[ed] the Club for Growth, a conservative group that backed Walberg and Chafee's Republican primary opponent, Steve Laffey: "The Club spent hundreds of thousands of dollars working to convince Rhode Island voters that Lincoln Chafee shouldn't be representing them in Washington. Sadly their smear campaign worked and helped elect a Democrat."

Steven C. Clemons, a senior fellow at the centrist New America Foundation [..] tied the moderates' election losses to the House GOP leadership elections in February. After then-Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas resigned, moderate Rules Chairman David Dreier of California briefly appeared in line to claim the job. But the GOP caucus instead elected John A. Boehner of Ohio, who embraced the causes of conservatives who had supported him.

"Had David Dreier moved into Boehner's seat, I think the picture would have been different," Clemons said. "Before the election, you would have seen more work to position Republicans closer to the center than they did."

Instead, Boehner scheduled votes on issues dear to conservatives, such as a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage (H J Res 88), a bill (HR 5429) to authorize oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and legislation (HR 2389) that would prevent most federal courts from hearing cases challenging the constitutionality of the Pledge of Allegiance.

Meanwhile, the House voted to sustain President Bush's veto of a bill (HR 810) to expand federally sponsored research into medical uses of embryonic stem cells. After pressure from moderates, Boehner allowed a vote on a minimum wage increase ?- but only as part of a package that included a reduction of the estate tax, yet another conservative priority. The bill (HR 5970) was blocked in the Senate.

"We didn't have anything to run on," Resnick said. [..]

Postmortems from some (erstwhile) Bush supporters:

"Veteran conservative strategist Richard A. Viguerie":

Quote:

the Republican leadership in the House [has] failed the people of this country [..] This election was also a referendum on the so-called `neoconservatives' -- the big-government Republicans who took us into a nation-building war while they busted the budget and enriched big business and its K Street lobbyists.

From The Miami Herald

If any of us would have used these above words just a week ago, you Bush supporters here would have insulted us or laughed in our faces. And yet here we are.

I only wish that these above-quoted conservatives and others like them, here or 'outside', would have had the gumption to actually speak up when it still mattered, when they still had something to lose. I'm glad they see the light now, but what cowardice.

For Conservatives, It's Back to Basics

THE morning after the Republican drubbing in the midterm elections, Ken Mehlman, chairman of the party, headed to the weekly coalition meeting where limited government conservatives, Christian traditionalists and gun-rights groups gathered to plot strategy. He brought a message they were only too eager to hear.

The election, he told the crowd at the headquarters of Americans for Tax Reform, was not a repudiation of conservatism. It was a mandate to "recommit ourselves to being reform conservatives," he said, telling them that the president would not flinch from arguing for ideas like privatizing Social Security...

"What is being rejected is not conservatism," said David A. Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union. "It's something far different. The problem is we're identified with it. If the wagon goes off the cliff, you're likely to go with it."

Liberals are writing the movement's obituary. John Podesta, founder of the Center for American Progress and former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, called the midterms "the end of the grand conservative experiment."

The pillars of the movement, Mr. Podesta said, had collapsed under the weight of conservative rule: "stewardship of the Iraq war" had undercut conservatives' credibility on national security; budget deficits and stagnant wages had discredited tax cuts; and Congressional scandals had given the lie to the movement's moral values. As a result, he said, the Reagan Democrats were returning.

Conservatives, though, say the midterm election was less about ideology than the result of the war in Iraq, which many now disavow as an un-conservative idea, wrongly associated with their movement by a faction of the right known as neoconservatives.

The intellectual heirs to a group of Democrats whose opposition to Communism pulled them to the right during the cold war, the neoconservatives believe that the United States should be willing to apply military force to fight terrorism and to promote democracy abroad. American conservatives have traditionally favored the use of force only for self-defense, broadly interpreted to include containing Communism during the cold war.

"There were no conservative grass-roots group saying, ?'Invade Iraq,' " Mr. Norquist said. "If Bush changed the policy, you'd have four neocons whine and the rest of the movement would be fine."

Neoconservatives, in response, say others on the right were happy to support the war when it helped rally voters in 2002 and 2004. Gary J. Schmitt, a neoconservative foreign policy adviser in the Reagan administration, said some were "jumping ship when the going gets tough."

And if they back away from the rationale for the war, said William Kristol, editor of the neoconservative magazine Weekly Standard, conservatives may give up their status as the forceful party on national defense, jeopardizing their long-term prospects for a governing majority. "As a political matter, conservatives should try to help Bush succeed because they are not going to get very far distancing themselves from him," Mr. Kristol said....

ASSESSING the election, William F. Buckley Jr., who founded the National Review magazine and helped define the movement, said he was not optimistic about the immediate future. "The conservative movement is in a sense inanimate, compared to 20 or 30 years ago," he said.

As for the spending habits of the Republican Congress, "there is a kind of ideological slovenliness which affects the morale," Mr. Buckley said. "It is as if the American Civil Liberties Union were every couple of days to favor proscribing a particular book or a particular performance or something, causing people to look at the A.C.L.U. and wonder if it had a credible mission."

He was not sure what might revive the movement, especially since the current combination of low taxes, high government spending and moderate inflation tends to create a sense of economic prosperity ?- at least in the short term.

"It will perhaps take something like a depreciation of the dollar, something electric," he said. If countries "stop subsidizing our debt it will be terrible shock to a lot of people, and then I think conservative reservoirs of thought would be consulted."

Amid new mayhem and political turmoil in Iraq, President Bush meets a key panel of advisers today to find a way out of the crisis, with his aides saying everything is on the table - including an overture to Iran.

Marine Corps Rules for Gun Fighting

The Marine Corps Birthday makes me nostalgic for the good ol'…well, maybe good is too strong a word. In fact, I can't say that I miss being on active duty; but I do miss being with my fellow Marines.

Thinking about my friends who are getting shot at by ungrateful Iraqis reminded me of this list, an old Corps favorite, on how to act in a gun fight:

1. Bring a gun. Preferably, bring at least two guns. Bring all of your friends who have guns.

2. Anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice. Ammo is cheap. Life is expensive.

3. Only hits count. The only thing worse than a miss is a slow miss.

4. If your shooting stance is good, you're probably not moving fast enough nor using cover correctly.

5. Move away from your attacker. Distance is your friend. (Lateral and diagonal movement are preferred.)

6. If you can choose what to bring to a gunfight, bring a long gun and a friend with a long gun.

7. In ten years nobody will remember the details of caliber, stance, or tactics. They will only remember who lived.

8. If you are not shooting, you should be communicating, reloading, and running.

9. Accuracy is relative: most combat shooting standards will be more dependent on "pucker factor" than the inherent accuracy of the gun.

10. Someday someone may kill you with your own gun, but they should have to beat you to death with it because it is empty.

11. Always cheat; always win. The only unfair fight is the one you lose.

12. Have a plan.

13. Have a back-up plan, because the first one won't work.

14. Use cover or concealment as much as possible.

15. Flank your adversary when possible. Protect yours.

16. Don't drop your guard.

17. Always tactical load and threat scan 360 degrees.

18. Watch their hands. Hands kill. In God we trust. Everyone else, keep your hands where I can see them.

19. Decide to be aggressive ENOUGH, quickly ENOUGH.

20. The faster you finish the fight, the less shot you will get.

21. Be polite. Be professional. But, have a plan to kill everyone you meet.

22. Be courteous to everyone, friendly to no one.

23. Your number one option for personal security is a lifelong commitment to avoidance, deterrence, and de-escalation.

24. Do not attend a gunfight with a handgun, the caliber of which does not start with a "4."


Navy Rules for Gun fighting:

1. Go to Sea

2. Send the Marines

3. Drink Coffee