“Ned Lamont” Republicans?
Written by Mike on October 25th, 2006Stanley Kurtz, writing for NRO has written a thoughtful article on what is wrong with Republicans not voting for their own come Nov. 7th. He seems pretty fired up about the idea that the Democrats might win the House and/or Senate and blames conservatives who can’t see the big picture.
I’m talking about the Ned Lamont-style party pure-o-crats of the Right: the folks who hope to punish insufficiently conservative Republicans by handing over Congress to the Democrats. At least Ned Lamont supporters once believed they could win the general election. Pure-o-cratic Ned Lamont Republicans, on the other hand, openly hope to lose; they are destroying their insufficiently pure party with eyes wide open, seriously intending to hand Nancy Pelosi the speakership, actually expecting to see the president’s hands tied by a dovish Democratic congress, perfectly willing to sweep away the last remaining barriers to unrestricted immigration, and doing it all in the belief that we’ll sail through all these calamities no worse for the wear.
Well now, all that and a bag of potato chips! Hell of a deal he lays out there. I must protest however the insinuation that this is all my fault. I am a mere citizen and in the grand scheme of things I have very little power. The greatest power I have is in my single vote that I can cast (or not) once every two years. If I choose to not excercise that power then surely I must be doing it for a very good reason. After a politician is elected they no longer have to listen to me, they have gained the power of incumbency. This power means that all a Republican has to do is toss out a few buzzwords like “illegal immigration” or “taxcuts” to the uneducated voting public who will then vote for whichever fellow has the (R) after their name and doesn’t sound like a total moron.
To put it mildly, I have been badly abused by the GOP. They promised much and by doing so gained my vote in 2000, 2002, and 2004. It has become apparent to me however that they have no intentions of following through on their promises. The fact that the alternative to the GOP is equally (if not more) corrupt, clearly incompetant and honeycombed with traitors is depressing to be sure, but I can think of no better way to wake up this country than shove a hot poker up its rectum.
So when all of the horrible things that Speak Pelosi is going to bring finally happen, don’t blame me or other conservatives who refused to participate in a clearly immoral venture. Blame the GOP for not doing enough to earn our votes.
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Except that he refuted everything you just said in his column.
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I would ask you to reread what I wrote. Stanley Kurtz and I are talking about two different things. He is talking about the political consequences to me and others not voting Republican. I am talking about influencing this country the only way I know how: with my vote. In doing so I am well aware of all the horrible things that will happen and I welcome them as a wake up call to my fellow citizens. If they refuse to wake up, this nation will fall. So be it, every nation eventually collapses right?
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No, this nation isn’t going to fall. The Republican congress will fall, and be replaced by a Democratic majority that cuts and runs from Iraq and emboldens our enemies, enacts “equal time” legislation to make sure they have a liberal presence on talk radio, allows the Bush tax cuts to expire and gives us less capital to continue to grow our economy, launches investigations into alleged misleading going into the war in Iraq, and forces unlimited embryonic stem cell research onto on this country. If you’ve been paying attention to Missouri, you’d know the Democrats have even recently become fans of human cloning.
But don’t take my word for it. Listen to what the Democrats have been saying.
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Yeah, that piece is spectacularly amazing. Here’s four more paragraphs:
“But hey, no worries. We can restore deterrence in the face of North Korean ICBMs with that huge anti-missile system Speaker Pelosi will surely agree to pay for. Illegal immigrants? No problem. We can depend on a Democratic Congress to put a first-class border security operation in place, with a fine new fence, and a substantial force of crack immigration agents. And besides, even if things don’t work out that way, we’ll all have fun getting really, really angry at that nasty old Speaker Pelosi. And, of course, that will guarantee the election of a wonderfully conservative president and Congress in 2008. Right?
Yeah. for sure. Go conservatives! Except for the tiny little fact that this is not the way the 2008 election is going to play out. No, our polite little JPod/K-Lo ribbing society is merely the cuddly warm-up version of the super-sized Republican slugfest we’re going to see in 2008. How exactly do “real” conservatives intend to put a true-blue (I mean true-red) NRO/NRODT-reading contender into power in 2008? Do those Republicans planning to stay home in 2006 see John McCain and Rudy Giuliani as the answer to their conservative dreams? I don’t think so. But take JPod’s advice and look at those polls. You’re never going to bump Giuliani or McCain in favor of Romney (or some other more conservative candidate) without a long, bruising, and divisive primary campaign. That’s going to split the party along ideological lines, and risks leaving any strongly conservative nominee who emerges from the battle seeming too far right for the country as a whole.
I’m not saying I favor McCain or Giuliani. Actually, I’m hoping for a more conservative nominee than either of them. But the reality is that the centrist candidates for the 2008 Republican nomination start with a huge lead in name recognition and popularity. That means a less well-known, but more conservative candidate will probably have to go negative to win. Ronald Reagan’s “eleventh commandment” (Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican) is going to be violated repeatedly in 2008. Just look at what’s happening now! If Reagan were alive, he’d say: “I haven’t seen this much commandment violation since the golden calf. And I ought to know. I was there.”
And I haven’t heard so many fairy tales since my parents gave me bedtime readings from Mother Goose. The latest yarn from conservatives goes like this: We gently punish the Republicans in 2006, then come roaring back in with a genuinely conservative Congress and president in 2008. Hooray!
Funny, I thought conservatives understood things like “unintended consequences.” Conservatives who believe a little rough medicine in 2006 guarantees a Reagan-like president and a Gingrich-like Congress in 2008 are indulging in the worst sort of utopian fantasy. (Hey, maybe there’s something to all those warnings about self-reinforcing Internet ghettos after all.)”
“Self-reinforcing Internet ghettoes,” what’s he talking about?
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We are not the ones who have gone cap in hand surrendering to the liberals and begging them for mercy, that was the establishment hacktocracy that has run the GOP since the Gingrich faction sent the Numenoreans into exile after their failed coup. I understand that’s a history lesson that is difficult for a lot of people to handle.
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Nice Tolkien analogy Andrew, Alex has a huge smile on his face as he is reading this I am sure.
I reiterate, my vote must earned. If I am forced by the insane actions of the Democrats to vote against my conscience for the GOP then doesn’t that mean I have no real choice in this election? If I have no choice I live in a tyranny. I can’t abide that.
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“But all this ‘Conservatives should punish the GOP by staying home’ stuff is crap.”
I won’t be staying home, there will be a few Republicans I will be voting for and quite a few Libertarians I will be voting for.
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Have you guys ever thought about protesting by writing the people you’re mad at? Pat Toomey’s going to hear from me on not backing Santorum…
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“Have you guys ever thought about protesting by writing the people you’re mad at?”
Because that would make them change their minds? This isn’t middle school anymore where I write the president a letter letting him know that aid to Africa is a really, really super duper important issue to me. These guys don’t give a damn what I think.
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I let Rick Santorum know exactly what I felt about his campaigning for Arlen Specter, trust me. And trust me when I say he doesn’t give a damn.
Joe, what the hell are you talking about? Pat has endorsed Rick Santorum. Are you mad that the Club hasn’t put money into the race? They’re probably just taking a page from Arlen and Rick’s playbook: “Club for Growth candidates are too conservative to win in PA.”