What They Stand For

I was just thinking this morning as I was perusing my favorite blog haunts...what could make someone want to support the Democrats? Near as I can tell, they stand for corruption, undermining our soldiers and surrendering in Iraq, compromising our national security by cutting and running, and more recently making sure there is no protection for people who report suspicious activity, inhibiting our free speech rights by muzzling those with whom they disagree, and let's not forget psychotic, frothing, babbling hatred of the President. For links to that, see the Huffington Post, DailyKos, or Democratic Underground at any time. You'll find it.

I really hope the Republicans make it a point to ensure that the people in this country understand what they're getting when they vote Democrat. I fervently hope that last November was an anomaly, and will be corrected in 2008.

JASmius adds: Mr. Newt isn't counting on it:

He said conservatives are facing "a crisis of performance." The government has demonstrated, at multiple levels, that it just doesn't work... "After many years of Republicans controlling Congress, and six years of a Republican presidency, having the government not work is a liability." He said that having seen Republican management of government fail in recent years, the American people are turning to "the party of government... there is the largest appetite for big government out there since Jimmy Carter. It's perverse, but having seen government not work, the American people are saying they want more of it."

If only the GOP had used their time in power to shrink government, and persuaded the American people that doing so was the right thing to do precisely because government does not work and cannot work as libs have always advertised, instead of trying to "make it work better".

The former Speaker's words seem like a conundrum at first glance, just as it was flummoxing how the American people could turn to the party of defeat and treason in the middle of a war for national survival. But upon reflection there is a perverse logic to it. Congressional Republicans ran as conservatives, won as conservatives, but governed in many ways as Donk Lite. President Bush led us boldly after 9/11 into counterattack in the War Against Islamic Fundamentalism, liberated two enemy nations, and then....stopped, and allowed the remaining enemies (Iran and Syria) to bog us down in a Vietnamized guerrilla conflict in Iraq.

Having seen for the past twelve years that Big Government doesn't work no matter which party is running it, the public still thinks that Big Government can work because the party of constitutional government never told them otherwise. Having seen the irreconcilable implacability of our enemies on that sunny Tuesday morning six years ago, and the concommitant, inescapable necessity of destroying those enemies and their state sponsors to the last man lest they deal us crippling blows from which we will not recover, the public has forgotten all of that and has turned against a war that nobody is telling them we're winning.

The GOP had to, as I said after the 2004 election, make hay while the sun shines, because who knew when we'd ever get such an opportunity again? Well, we didn't, and it's gone, and we're in a bleepload of trouble.

Gingrich says if our eventual nominee "de-Bushes" the party (meaning "re-Reaganizing" it, I assume), we can still retain the White House, at the very least.

Maybe. But remember all that had to happen - runaway inflation, recession, the Iran hostage crisis, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan - before people were willing to give the Gipper a try. I think it's going to take a lot more than just Fred Thompson or Mitt Romney breaking with Dubya to cause the American political pendulum to reverse its calamitous course.