This Brought Tears...
Read this caller transcript from Rush's show. The caller's anguish, pride, love, and most of all his anger at the Democrats is palpable. It brought tears to my eyes when he was talking about his daughter. We all need to feel like this guy, and I think a lot more of us do than the MSM will admit.
JASmius adds: This call brought me winces, actually. God knows I share his sentiments, but his was a classic example of emotion overwhelming reason. What the objective numbers show is the Donks nibbling at Republican margins but not regaining the majority in either house of Congress. The momentum of late is moving in their direction (renewed emphasis on the war, falling gas prices, meteoric Dow), meaning perhaps breaking even or even gaining a little bit. But come on, Katherine Harris?
Look, I'm happy to make full disclosure: At one time I was one of her biggest marks. Here was a Republican woman who had won more than one statewide race in Florida as well as a congressional seat that was hers for pretty much as long as she wanted it. She already had name-recognition, as well as the enthusiastic backing of the GOP base for heroic attempts to simply uphold Florida election law during Al Gore's 2000 insurrection. Florida is a substantially, if not overwhelmingly, "red" state. And Bill Nelson, no "moderate" Democrat he, was one of this year's most vulnerable incumbents. Seemed like a natural, even inevitable, GOP pickup, and the Bushies' stubborn opposition to KH therefore almost RINOesque.
But that was over a year ago. Katherine Harris' nascient senate campaign has long since collapsed into absurdity. They're not even polling that "race" much, if at all, and the one poll I have seen reported showed Nelson leading by forty-three points.
Nobody exceeds my frustration at wading through the pessimism of commentators and pundits on our own side of the aisle, to say nothing of others of them who are actively hoping for Republican defeat in order to "teach the party a lesson" about "abandoning conservative principles." If I've said it once, I've said it a zillion times and doubtless will growl it zillions more: You don't win by losing. If life hands you a lemon, you can make lemonade, as the GOP did in 1994 after the 1992 debacle, but that isn't, and can never be, a "strategy." Just ask the Dems, who were just positive that Bush would hand them Congress back in 2002 and was already beaten in 2004, before this little thing called 9/11 came along and "changed everything" - at least for a while.
However, you also don't win by assuming that everybody else thinks the same way you do, or that the inherent justice and righteousness of your cause makes its triumph inevitable. Were that the case none of us would ever have heard of Bill Clinton; because that wasn't the case, we never beat him. And the sober fact is, the longer we go without another major terrorist attack here at home, the more the "neo-September 10th mentality" is going to spread and the stronger it's going to become. Eventually it won't matter how many times the President reminds the nation of the elusive nature of the enemy and of the diffuseness of this particular conflict or how many terrorist attacks occur elsewhere. It's simply human nature: until something happens to you, it's not real. And after it does, once it recedes far enough into the past, that reality fades into an abstraction susceptible to infinite rationalization.
Eventually the Democrats are going to stumble into another winning national candidate, like they did with Bill Clinton, who will capture the imagination of a public that thinks it's "war-weary" ("politics-weary" is a lot closer to the bullseye) with the shining promise of a return to "normalcy" (or whatever catch phrase she comes up with) which will be exampled by....the Clinton '90s. This figure will also have built up a massive warchest of "hawk" capital as a buffer against the return to suicidal pacifism she has in store.
I trust I don't need to actually name who this person will be. We'll get more of her than any of us will be able to stomach soon enough.
It's something Nick from Daytona, Florida needs to get his mind around, for the sake of his emotional health.
JASmius adds: This call brought me winces, actually. God knows I share his sentiments, but his was a classic example of emotion overwhelming reason. What the objective numbers show is the Donks nibbling at Republican margins but not regaining the majority in either house of Congress. The momentum of late is moving in their direction (renewed emphasis on the war, falling gas prices, meteoric Dow), meaning perhaps breaking even or even gaining a little bit. But come on, Katherine Harris?
Look, I'm happy to make full disclosure: At one time I was one of her biggest marks. Here was a Republican woman who had won more than one statewide race in Florida as well as a congressional seat that was hers for pretty much as long as she wanted it. She already had name-recognition, as well as the enthusiastic backing of the GOP base for heroic attempts to simply uphold Florida election law during Al Gore's 2000 insurrection. Florida is a substantially, if not overwhelmingly, "red" state. And Bill Nelson, no "moderate" Democrat he, was one of this year's most vulnerable incumbents. Seemed like a natural, even inevitable, GOP pickup, and the Bushies' stubborn opposition to KH therefore almost RINOesque.
But that was over a year ago. Katherine Harris' nascient senate campaign has long since collapsed into absurdity. They're not even polling that "race" much, if at all, and the one poll I have seen reported showed Nelson leading by forty-three points.
Nobody exceeds my frustration at wading through the pessimism of commentators and pundits on our own side of the aisle, to say nothing of others of them who are actively hoping for Republican defeat in order to "teach the party a lesson" about "abandoning conservative principles." If I've said it once, I've said it a zillion times and doubtless will growl it zillions more: You don't win by losing. If life hands you a lemon, you can make lemonade, as the GOP did in 1994 after the 1992 debacle, but that isn't, and can never be, a "strategy." Just ask the Dems, who were just positive that Bush would hand them Congress back in 2002 and was already beaten in 2004, before this little thing called 9/11 came along and "changed everything" - at least for a while.
However, you also don't win by assuming that everybody else thinks the same way you do, or that the inherent justice and righteousness of your cause makes its triumph inevitable. Were that the case none of us would ever have heard of Bill Clinton; because that wasn't the case, we never beat him. And the sober fact is, the longer we go without another major terrorist attack here at home, the more the "neo-September 10th mentality" is going to spread and the stronger it's going to become. Eventually it won't matter how many times the President reminds the nation of the elusive nature of the enemy and of the diffuseness of this particular conflict or how many terrorist attacks occur elsewhere. It's simply human nature: until something happens to you, it's not real. And after it does, once it recedes far enough into the past, that reality fades into an abstraction susceptible to infinite rationalization.
Eventually the Democrats are going to stumble into another winning national candidate, like they did with Bill Clinton, who will capture the imagination of a public that thinks it's "war-weary" ("politics-weary" is a lot closer to the bullseye) with the shining promise of a return to "normalcy" (or whatever catch phrase she comes up with) which will be exampled by....the Clinton '90s. This figure will also have built up a massive warchest of "hawk" capital as a buffer against the return to suicidal pacifism she has in store.
I trust I don't need to actually name who this person will be. We'll get more of her than any of us will be able to stomach soon enough.
It's something Nick from Daytona, Florida needs to get his mind around, for the sake of his emotional health.
posted by Jennifer at 3:08 AM
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