The Conservative Comeback - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
The Conservative Comeback
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THINK 2010, NOT 2012
Re: Peter Ferrara’s 2010:

I find very little to quibble with and all of it heartens this gloomy conservative. Especially since, and although I’m thought of as something of a sage in my circles, I called the last two election cycles drastically wrong and, having broken my decades long winning streak, am now a discredited odds-maker of the blood sport. I sit quietly in my favorite cigar hangout while the guys argue politics nowadays not so much in approbation but in shattered self-confidence. My errors then were founded on an empty hope and faith in the basic American character and that the electorate could not possibly fail to see through the Democratic charlatans’ lies and threadbare rhetoric. I sincerely thought, as I put it then, “Americans tend to get the big issues right,” meaning war and national security. I see now my predictions were unrealistically based on the average Joe’s ability to parse political language, ideology and party politics in this modern age of atomized communication, political and historical illiteracy and apathy whereas Mr. Ferrara’s is founded on the real consequences that will have, or begun to have, manifested themselves next year as a direct result of the old hippies’ policies. These consequences will bring home the truth of liberalism in a way political rhetoric alone could never do. And so, thanking Mr. Ferrara, hope springs eternal.

I believe of all the items mentioned in Mr. Ferrara’s list of particulars none will hit every home as hard as the so-called “cap and trade” disaster. The messiah himself calmly predicted it could easily double electricity costs and possibly wipe out the coal industry. He made no mention of what it might do to fuel oil costs come winter time but no American will be spared this drastic taxation on everything he or she touches or eats. It will also mean millions will no longer have a living and it may even directly cost lives. We can live without A/C in Florida if we must but people simply cannot live without heat way up north in the winter. Add a VAT to that and we have the makings of both a real depression and a real tea-party. Add the economy and job killing effects of the latest socialized healthcare proposals and it’s goodnight America as we become not only fatally overtaxed but wards of the state. As of today, the hippies propose to do all three within months without a single Republican vote if need be and for American’s sake it needs to be without a single Republican vote. Thus, if we cannot stop it then the sooner they get on with it the better for it could very well be the long awaited death of contemporary liberalism.

I do have a couple of suggestions that I think Mr. Ferrara would appreciate. We must reinvigorate our language and Ronald Reagan is the stellar example for our cause. First, we must stop using the word “capitalism” solely in our discourse and replace it with “free enterprise” or at the least couple the two. I’m not sure when the transition occurred but I remember Reagan using free enterprise much more. Amongst younger people, schooled in the fever swamps of leftist campuses, capitalism carries a lot of negative connotations whereas free enterprise is a positive, self-contained expression of all that we believe. To have to explain capitalism is to argue technicalities but to say free enterprise is to state a self-evident principle thus free enterprise explains itself: Liberty, initiative, individual effort and reward, all qualities that even reactionary campus lefties expect in their own affairs. It points the way that we want to go rather than sitting as a stumbling block to be overcome. Free to make of oneself what he will is what every American believes so let them argue against it.

Next, we miss the larger opportunity of the mid-term elections if we simply paint this as “Obamanomics.” Hanging this strictly on Obama falls into the personality cult trap that has so clouded our electoral politics, warped our Presidential elections and allowed this demagogue to rise to power. I was astonished last November at how many educated, affluent, smart people bought into the hopeychangey shtick of the Obama personality but seemingly had no clue he adhered to a larger ideology and party and where that would actually lead his policies, his soothing words notwithstanding. All one had to do to know what Obama and the Dems would do this year would have been to review what liberals have said and done for the last 40 years and yet the vast majority of people simply didn’t seem to get that any more. No, in 2010 we must replicate what Reagan did in ’80 and Newt Gingrich did in 1994 and hang the mess around the necks of Congress, Democrats in general and especially Liberalism. Again, we must harness language. The looming crisis should not be called “Obamanomics” but “Liberal Economics” or some such foisted on us by the “Axis of Liberalism,” Obama, Reid and Pelosi. They are working as a team and to defeat one is to weaken the whole. We must follow Reagan’s example and discredit liberalism’s root and branch not just its individuals. And like Reagan and Gingrich we must hammer home that these policies are the core beliefs of liberalism and make it stick so Americans get it once and for all…or for at least a generation. That way, when the next Wizard of Oz comes along, Americans will know to check out the man behind the curtain.
— Mark Shepler
Jupiter, Florida

If Republicans and conservatives would only stop worrying about “who’s going to lead the Republican Party in 2012,” and stop listening to the media — on both sides — worming away endlessly about that question and get down to the 2010 elections for the Senate and the House, we might just break through.

The Republican Party must put every ounce of energy and every dime of money into those two elections.

What in heathen’s name will it do to have fretted about the presidential election in 2012 if we have not taken back the House and at least weakened the Democrats’ majority in the Senate?

Get on it, GOP!
— A. C. Santore

I loved your column today about the Democrat rout in 2010 — devoutly to be wished…

The fly in the ointment: The vote gets Black Panthered or Acorned.

How does that get stopped?
— Peter Sour
Sewickley, Pennsylvania

There are two problems with Mr. Ferrara’s rosy scenario for an “earthquake” in 2010. First, the same ignorant, uninformed, brain-dead electorate that voted for a KNOWN MARXIST in 2008 is going to be marching to the polls in 2010. Is someone going to give them an injection of wisdom between now and then? Second, in order to vote out the scoundrels, a viable alternative must be offered. I see none on the horizon. All that is being offered by the Republicans in most places is Liberal Light.
Chances of an “earthquake” in 2010? Zero.
— Keith Kunzler

You’re all a bunch of right wing nut jobs. Your party screwed up this country so bad over the last 28 years, it’s time for you to sit down, shut up and enjoy the ride. What you think means nothing. Your pieces are strictly opinion and you are no better than Howard Stern & Limbaugh…shock jocks. If you supported the right wing conspiracy at any time in the past your opinion now is moot.  It will take more than 6 months for a person to bring back this country from the brink; which Republicans and their cowboy ways have rought on us all

I sit back and laugh as I watch you all squirm. I’m lovin’ it!! I wish you could, too. Your party is a thing of the past and a joke. Your party single handedly screwed over our image abroad. Stop your whining and crying and support this president just like you wanted us to support the joke I like to refer to as good ol’ boy GW. Who gives a flying*&^% what any of you think. Go out and try to make the world a better place instead of clogging up the system with useless opinions and stories.
— Barb Rogers

THE PEACE TREATY TO BEGIN ALL WARS
Re: Paul Beston’s The Suicide of the West:

Paul Beston points out that the consequences of World War I have been like a virus in history’s immune system. That’s because the peacemaking negotiations in Paris were designed to punish the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire (Turkey). This included war reparations, loss of colonies and, in the case of Hungary, nearly total dismemberment. New nations were established in Europe: Poland, Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Lines redrawn in the Balkans created Yugoslavia. In the Middle East, Iraq was formed from remnants of the Ottoman Empire and the idea of a Jewish state, Israel, was conceived.

In The Economic Consequences of Peace, published in 1920, British economist John Maynard Keynes stated:

The Treaty includes no provision for the economic rehabilitation of Europe-nothing to make the defeated Central Powers into good neighbors, nothing to stabilize the new States of Europe, nothing to reclaim Russia; nor does it promote in any way a compact of economic solidarity amongst the allies themselves; no arrangement was reached at Paris for restoring the disordered finances of France and Italy, or to adjust the systems of the Old World and the New.

World War I bore a tragic misnomer, “The war to end all wars.” By the end of the 1930s the world was on the brink of an even greater conflict due largely to mistakes at the peace conference. Perhaps those mistakes were predictable, given the political and military state of mind in 1918. The armistice was to begin at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. In spite of that general order, shortly before 11:00 A.M. the artillery on the Western Front once again opened fire. Each battery hoped to achieve the distinction of firing the last shot of the Great War. Clearly, being tired of fighting wasn’t synonymous with ready to make peace.
— Stan Welli
Aurora, Illinois

INSPECT THE PRESIDENT
Re: Robert Stacy McCain’s The Little Scandal That Could :

Mr. R.S. McCain, along with others at TAS, continues to hold Obama, The One’s Administration and Congress’s feet to the fire. Such a lonely vigil. The majority of the moronic, mainstream media mob continues to downplay, minimize or outright ignore questionable and unethical behaviors of our elected officials. Bush beat Gore and the media offered up unending and unstoppable coverage on the “controversy.” The risibly unfunny Franken steals one from the incumbent Coleman and nary a peep. AG Gonzales dismissed, as was within his legal purview, nine Justice Department employees. The call for his firing was led by Senator Schumer but the echo of the accusations sounded like a 24-hour cycle hurricane on an endless loop until the press hounded the man into resigning. Even their darling Clintons had their controversies played out in the news. The One seems to be immune. The current IG imbroglio is buried deep beneath the fold or half way through the news telecasts, when it is even mentioned at all.

The Founding Fathers laid down the freedom of the press in the First Amendment. They fully understood that without a press that was willing to inform the people of the doings of government, the government would grow from a servant of the people to the tyrant overlord of the masses. It is a principle, a primary good. If the press continues to ignore the corresponding responsibility of the right of free and unfettered coverage, they will find themselves dangling at the end of the puppet master’s strings. Only a few leftists wish to see our precious press and magnificent media turned into an American version of Pravda, but the media services themselves are forging the very chains from which they may eventually dangle.

And that’s the truth.
— I.M. Kessel

LET’S FIGHT DIRTY
Re: Matthew Vadum’s Trumping the Race Card:

The Republican Party is the early 1960s New York Mets, of whom Casey Stengel remarked in frustration, “Don’t nobody here know how to play this game?” Senator Graham is Marvelous Marv Throneberry — routinely demonstrating a talent for the inept. And we think this cast of characters is going to make a comeback in 2010? Keep dreaming!

Democrats know how to frame debate. Senator Kennedy set the stage for the original “borking” of a judicial nominee, and Democrats have followed the script ever since. Yet, Republicans are unwilling to respond in kind, even with a nominee that is far more leftwing than Bork ever was rightwing. Here’s what I would have liked to hear from Senator Sessions:

“Once again a Democratic President has run as a moderate and selected a loony leftist for an important judicial appointment. The Democratic Party has always been the racist party: supporting slavery, segregation, and now race quotas. Sonia Sotomayor is a quota queen, wedded to the race-mongering of her friends at La Raza, ‘the race.’ Her nutty decisions have been frequently overturned by the Supreme Court, most recently in the Ricci case, where even the liberal dissenters in that decision acknowledged that Sotomayor’s casual dismissal of Constitutional issues was dead wrong. Elections have consequences and I am willing to accept a liberal who accepts the individual protections of our Constitution, and rules based on that Constitution, and not so-called ‘group rights’ and foreign law. Sotomayor finds no ‘fundamental right’ of gun ownership, despite the Second Amendment, and believes that our Constitution must, in her view, be ‘perfected’ by the Supreme Court overruling our laws and our Constitution based on what some less successful foreign state considers to be good policy. Sonia Sotomayor is a mediocre judge with a mission to make law through the judiciary. Let her run for public office under the banner of her racialist, loony left party, but keep her far, far away from our Supreme Court! The Democrats may have the votes to confirm her, but we Republicans need to be clear that such a vote exposes every one of them who votes to confirm her as loony left racialists with no regard for the Constitution of the United States.”

Yeah, I know, not likely to ever happen.

Every time the Democrats as the minority talked about the majority party, they referred to them as “mean-spirited Republicans.” I began to think you couldn’t use the word “Republican” without the modifier of “mean-spirited.” What did the Republican politicians do about this? Either they ignored it, or essentially apologized for it. The modifier has burned its way into the minds of nearly everyone following politics. And what have we done in return? It’s time to not ever mention “Democrat” without the modifier of “loony left.” Not that I expect the praise seeking Republicans to ever do such an obvious thing.

The Democrats and their media allies have now gone “borking” one better with “palining.” I don’t need to retail the disgusting attacks on Sarah and her family. When are Republicans going to step up and play the game as the opposition has defined it? Why don’t we and our media and our interest groups retail every rumor we can invent about prominent Democrats? I’m sure there are plenty of things we can find out about their children, since it is now open season on families. For instance, the Obamamessiah’s daughter was running around Europe with a big peace sign on her tee shirt. I’m sure there’s potentially a lot of humor in her as a throwback to the 60’s, and even some possible blue material for a rightwing David Letterman (if such exists). Let’s bring phony ethics charge after phony ethics charge and cripple every prominent Democratic leader in the nation. Let’s demoralize the other side for a change as they are committed to demoralizing us. Yeah, I know, we are ladies and gentlemen and consider it a point of honor to bring a pocket knife to a gun fight. And when we find ourselves in an unconstitutional society we no longer recognize, we can be glad that we avoided confronting our enemies with some of their own tactics in our quest to be “better than them.” Our intellectuals will take the high road, though they will no longer have access to academy, airwaves, or publications. Our politicians will take the craven road, though they will no longer have access to public office. And Big Brother will be there to run five minute hate sessions against any dissenters who might find a circuitous path to public notice.
— Stephen Zierak
Kansas City, Missouri

DO NOT GO GENTLY INTO TYRANNY
Re: R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.’s Saving Liberty:

Precisely. Why is no one else is willing to say it?

Now, in the summer of our heart’s discontent,
When we haven’t a leader, our plea to present,
And may have to endure a long winter’s cold,
Still, we can stand front and center, and bold.

We don’t have to suffer these fools now on stage,
As they howl at the moon in their cynical rage.
And, where is it written, that we who can see,
Must be blind, when they say, “In a cage, you are free?”

So, dust off the patriot dreams worn and tattered,
And think of the time, when THEY were what mattered.
For if we are cowed, by this maddening crowd
Our hope in the spring will be shattered.
— Mike Showalter

OUT OF THE MONEY
“We’re out of money” — President Obama commenting to a national audience on his inability to help the National League when jokingly asked about a “bail-out” by sports commentator Joe Buck in the latter’s broadcast booth at the 2009 baseball All-Star Game in St. Louis last night. My mind reels, my heart sinks at the shameful and condescending treatment of the American people by the Obama Administration and our elected government servants.  Apart from the President’s acolytes, a slavish Congress, political and street hustlers and other New Carpetbaggers does he think the rest of us are so ignorant of history, guilt-ridden about “race” or “the disadvantaged” or fat, complacent and obsessed with iPods and cell phones that at least some of us cannot see behind the façade of his anti-American acting out? Cannot see the “deconstruction” through lawyerly manipulations of the normal, rational principles underlying the founding of the Republic? Cannot see that an off-hand, un-telepromptered comment portends death and disaster for the nation?  Out of money??

With the fawning, tremulous media peeking out of his pocket we are looking at mass-psychology at work.  Clever wordsmithing and “framing” about “tax cuts”, “conscience”, “values,” “folks,” “health-care,” “the Founders,” “empathy,” “core” this and “core” that and on and on ad nauseam is not going to change the fact that he has consistently misrepresented what he believes and intends to do for the sole purpose of persuading his listeners that their thoughts and desires coincide with his, not the other way around, thus offering the illusion of “empowerment.”

Bravo! to the many TAS writers for having the decency, sense and grip on reality to articulate a pattern of un-Presidential behavior that in anyone not shielded by wealth and power would be considered evidence of a serious underlying psycho-emotional disorder and make that person medically unfit for social leadership.  Instead, American civilization has been handed over to a needy sociopath whose charmed narcissistic career has led to what he thinks is his moment for turning the ship of state on a dime in the ocean of history.

Please, someone should write a piece carefully articulating and exposing in a straightforward way the mass-psychological and emotional bases for what politicians, especially the President are getting away with.  Indulge me for a moment:  the extreme hatred of so many Americans for President George W. Bush represented a huge amount of stirred-up, pent-up emotional energy that was deliberately but unconsciously guided and converted to love for Obama as he, analyst-like told the people “I feel your pain”and  encouraged the “patients” to fantasize about him as their “love-object.”  Running a nation is not like organizing a “community.” There could be terrible consequences to this kind of behavior. The signposts on the road to hell are symbols that activate deeply buried emotions. Dimly or not the Soviets and Nazis knew of this. Modern “cognitive scientists” like George Lakoff have sanitized the earlier Freud-derived concepts but they also know a thing or two about manipulation. I may be an armchair psychologist but it seems to me that if the dynamics of emotion are ever-present and the Republic was by design erected on a foundation (the Constitution) to minimize a fatal national political plague then the recent campaign and election results are like a “general alarm” on the nation’s ship. The icebergs have not melted, they are directly ahead and the stupid band (Congress) is still playing.

It really is all about behavior. TAS writers do their best to explain this in specific terms and contexts and I appreciate it. Legalism and philosophy aside, what is the Constitution if not a manual for how the “national family” members are to relate to each other? I think that the Founders, with a Biblical/life-wisdom cast of mind, nearly two thousand years of secular and scientific inquiry behind them and an awareness of how serious and rare the achievment of independence from an authoritarian monarch really was, for all their individual shortcomings knew that they had to carefully consider and achieve a Constitution “for the ages” that incorporated their collective understanding of “the world” and human emotions. To paraphrase and add to old King Solomon, “there is nothing new under the Sun,” just new ways of pretending that this is not so.  Who will step up to the plate to persuasively say this?
MF

MY KIND OF GUY

I’ll take the flyboy from Texas.
The one with the determined gait.
His syntax may fall,
But hand him a ball
And he’ll drill it over home plate.
Mimi Evans Winship

SEGREGATING BIGOTRY
Re: Jeffrey Lord’s Two Presidents and the Court: When Bigotry Takes the Bench:

This was one of the most interesting articles I’ve read on your website.
— Robert Nowall
Cape Coral, Florida

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