The American Spectator

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Republican Surge

7.28.08 @ 12:01AM

GUTLESS WONDERS
Re: W. James Antle III's Bob Michel Returns:

Has the Republican surge begun yet?

Here in California, the Republicans are inaudible above the evening zephyr, or so I suppose since I've not heard word one from the McCain camp. Perhaps the Republican Party has already written off the California. Perhaps they are incompetent.

In the event of the latter, I hereby take it upon myself to notify all Democrats that the presidential election has been moved to Wednesday, November 5.
-- David Govett
Davis, California

Mr. Antle is exactly correct. Even "actual" Republicans are afraid to call themselves Republicans or vocalize when that means to them. Considering their performance over the last 8-10 years it is understandable. I find myself qualifying my own Republicanism when talking politics because I don't want to be associated with most of them, especially the leadership, if you can really call it that. Far better to say you are conservative and explain that except quite a number of our "Republicans" are trying the same approach now. How else could a guy like Mitt Romney actually be considered a conservative alternative to McCain and some of the others in the primary?
-- Roger Ross
Tomahawk, Wisconsin

James Antle's description of Bob Michel and the events he didn't preside over (and probably wouldn't have varied much from what occurred if he had) gave me a headache . Nostalgia for the bad old days is not a pleasant experience. But at least things got better; we don't have that assurance today. Bob Michel MAY have been a nice guy. I remember him smiling a lot, so did the languid, indolent, and intergallactically incompetent Denny Hastert. The fact of life, constant, immutable, and in full operation today in so many ways, is that good comes from good organization which in turn stems from good leadership. In the case of the Demo-controlled Congress, well, the evidence speaks for itself. In the case of the Republicans, well, res ipsa....

American leadership, certainly at the federal level is at its lowest tide in my 62-year memory. I've said it repeatedly, I'll say it again: Warriors come to fight. There are few, if any conservative warriors. And they seem to have taken an extended breather. It seems to me that a conservative's hope must lie with the 20-30's of today. The military-experienced youth, the conservative college youth, the conservative blue collar youth. All of whom can smell swamp gas and have had a stomach full of the large doses of bovine fecal matter tossed at them by the libs and political weaklings of both parties. Hope I'm alive to see it.
-- J.C. Eaton
Chetek, Wisconsin

The Republicans are seen as gutless, generally. The Democrats as are coming to be seen a treacherous, but the Republicans are so gutless that Americans consider choosing the treacherous. The President, resolute with foreign enemies, is blind to the domestic; has been from the very beginning.
-- Reid Bogie
Waterbury, Connecticut

Keep an eye on that open seat in Peoria this year!

Peoria: home of the first thousand dollar a plate presidential dinner that had to be reduced to five hundred a plate.
-- Joe Marier
Sterling, Virginia

FRIENDLY PERSUASION
Re: Lawrence Henry's Correspondence:

Poor Mr. Henry. There is a very simple, easily explainable, catalyst for your (ex?) friend's letter.

Your article poked a clear hole in his muzzy, chiaroscuro world of make believe in which he decided to live. Through this hole he could see the utter paucity of thought; the abject poverty of his intellectual habitat in which he lives. He saw in a flash, the falsehood he has been living.

The gentleman had an epiphany! One of the most profound kind: it crushed every mendacious brick in the foundation on which his life had been based.

So he had to scurry, like a roach in the light, back into the darkness that is liberalism. Like Joe Pesci in My Cousin Vinny , when the hooting owl woke him up, your friend had to fire a random shot or two at his tormentor.

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