Aftermath of Sotomayor confirmation
So, did it turn out well for Republicans or not? After all, the nomination of a Hispanic judge was widely speculated as a bait by Pres. Obama.
Well, I guess it depends on whom you talk to. Conservatives seem to think it went as well as it could have:
Sonia Sotomayor won confirmation yesterday on a 68-31 vote, but the Republicans got what they wanted out of the fight. Jeff Sessions talks about the dangers of the “empathy standard,” the measure by which Barack Obama explicitly stated he would select nominees to the federal bench — and the standard which Sotomayor herself rejected in her confirmation hearings.
But the message seems to be lost on the Hispanic voting bloc or the liberals:
Republicans were already lagging badly with Latinos, yet somehow, they managed to lose a net 24 favorability points over the course of three months. And for what? To keep the dying 1950s Pat Buchanan-wing of the party happy? Great call, there.
On the balance, I don't think it could have turned out any better. Sen. Sessions' message is a good, important message: the law should be blind—to the persons' color, age, sex, income, etc. If we are going to let judges rule on empathy, making them both the lawmaker and judge, then that increase of power must be accompanied by a check: we need to get rid of their life term and make their positions to subject to a national referendum. I happen to think what we have now is a much better system: a court that strictly applies the law but is willing and able to make unpopular but correct decisions. And this message could not have been heard if the Republican senators didn't ask the tough questions and supported Sotomayor without qualification, just because they feared a backlash from their Hispanic constituents. There is a reason a senator's term is 6 years, not 2.
As for the Hispanic voting bloc, well, who cares? A good representative of the people should not be worrying about this voting bloc and that voting bloc. A voting bloc, like the African American one or Hispanic one (note that there isn't a "rich people" voting bloc; plenty of billionaires are Democrats), represents special interest groups—and the demise of our republic, if it ever comes, will come from these special interest groups and factions. Paying more attention to these blocs can only hasten the weakening of our republic.
A representative, like a judge but on a different level, should listen to the people as a whole, regardless of whether he is listening to a white constituent, black constituent, or Asian constituent. Perhaps he should pay attention to whether the person is of the working class, small business owners, academics, etc. as something that informs his decision or choice as a result of that particular encounter. But if a "post-racial" society is truly our goal, then the race of a person should never factor into anything (but given the insistence and stubbornness of the liberals to keep talking about race, perhaps the only way to achieve this is through interracial marriages—and this will take quite some time).
P.S. BTW, us conservatives got a really good deal given how battered Sotomayor was on the "empathy" issue, and especially considering whom Sotomayor's replacing: the reliable liberal vote Souter.
If a Democrat won’t vote for socialized medicine, why should a Republican?
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Democrats do not have the votes to pass healthcare reform without Republican support, a key Democrat said on Sunday, but White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said he is confident a bill will pass by year's end.
Democrat Kent Conrad, a key player in bipartisan Senate Finance Committee negotiations on healthcare, refused to predict whether the panel will be able to produce a bill before the Senate breaks for a month long recess on August 7.
"There are not the votes for Democrats to do this just on our side of the aisle. It is not possible and perhaps not desirable either," Conrad said on ABC's "This Week."
These statements are absurd to anyone who hasn't been living in a cave for last few months, as illustrated by the same article:
Democratic leaders in the 100-member Senate, where the party has a commanding majority of 60 votes, acknowledge they cannot meet Obama's deadline to pass an initial version of the measure before the summer break. The deadline appears in serious danger in the House as well.
So, more than 10 Democrats already don't want anything to do with this mess. Why should a Republican commit a political suicide?
I guess Obama is really the new FDR. Remember that FDR's downfall in his court-packing bill wasn't the Republican opposition. It was the revolt from his own party that was disgusted with his Constitution-defying proposition.
LA Times article on Gov. Palin
This is an article to skim, that is to skim for names. Names of liars and the "political class" who want the power in the capitol in the hands of those to whom the power belongs: lobbyists and lawyers.
Here's the list:
- Todd Harris, supposedly a Republican strategist
- Stuart K. Spencer, a political advisor
- Mike Murphy, an "ad man"
There were names of Republican representatives as well, but taking their quotes on its face, without the implied insinuation by LA Times, sounded like it was neutral enough: after all, a candidate for House of Representatives should focus on issues that cater to his local constituents, and bringing in a nationally renown political figure doesn't help do that.
Given how ... undistinguished this list is, I believe the following leading sentence clearly betrays LA Times' affiliation: damned liberal statist out to destroy anyone who advocates for a smaller government
Since announcing her resignation, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has been pummeled by critics who have called her incoherent, a quitter, a joke and a "political train wreck."
And those were fellow Republicans talking.
Loyal opposition, or more fodder for liberal professors?
While I'm glad to see Republicans standing up to Democrats, I wonder if this opposition, if successful, will be used by liberal professors and academics to argue that it was GOP's fault, after all, that Obama's New Deal didn't work. You know, the way FDR's New Deal was foiled by him becoming fiscally conservative, at least according to TIME magazine, yet another liberal bastion in the media (yes, I am canceling my subscription. TIME, stop sending me your crappy magazines. I haven't replied to your "renewal notice", which you have been sending since end of last year (i.e. since end of the election in which you made the bias of your contributors and editors abundantly clear); I'm fairly sure my old subscription long expired and don't care to see your highly biased articles).
Sometimes you wish that you could just let these liberal statists run everything the way they want, so that they will have no one to blame and it will be quite clear to any thinking person that their economic theory doesn't work. But then, I guess that works only in novels like Atlas Shrugged, not in real life.
Ice age for Republicans? No. Ice age for RINOs? Yes.
Mr. Paper-counter can argue with the numbers all he wants, but when his premise is wrong, numbers don't just lie—numbers actively mislead.
Somehow, Mr. Obama-fan presumes that the last election represented core Republican values pitted against core Democratic values and hence the results can be used to predict the outcome of future elections and contests. But no, that's not the case at all. Last election was rigged—by the liberal media who pushed their "favorite" RINO onto the Republican ticket. Sen. McCain offered nothing substantially different (except for perhaps the tax holiday he proposed for gasoline in the midst of petroleum crisis that evaporated away) from Obama as far as fundamentals go—and he wasn't very, shall we say, endearing to social conservatives, as someone who cheated on his wife, divorced her, and re-married. In the next election, with any hope, we will put a real Republican, a true conservative—in the fiscal sense, at the very least—on the ballot. Then we will see how the Latino demographic, which indeed will become a very influential "minority" group, votes.
So, in this time of tribulation for conservatives, it's a good thing that RINOs like Specter are jumping the ship, thinking that it's sinking. Once we shed all this dead weight, we will be stronger for it. After all, the tea parties in April proves that conservatism is alive and kicking. And although that event was strictly nonpartisan, when it comes down to it, the Republican party is (and should be), the best platform for conservative agenda.
Bush's worst mistake …
... apparently wasn't the Iraq war.
It was not having Cheney go on a speaking tour of the country to bolster the base of his support (and not, well, following the core conservative values and principles of small government with small spending that Cheney preached and practiced).
Cheney's as usual, right. Republican party does need to expand—we need something to check the power of Democratic monsters—but it cannot do that by becoming a monster like the Democratic party. It needs to keep to its fundamentals and values, and well, if General Powell wants to follow those values, he's welcome to the party. But if he wants to make Republican party more "moderate", well, perhaps he should stick to the party with whom he apparently agrees better.
We already ran the most moderate candidate we will ever run in a long time.
RNC shocker: Steele delivers good speech
It is a good speech.
And he does point out the one thing we can learn from Obama: how to campaign. Be classy. America is past muckraking—the muckraking turned out to be one of the points on which the McCain campaign failed—and the one point where Gov. Palin was justifiably criticized (although I would still like to deflect the blame to McCain's advisors who probably advised Gov. Palin to make such speeches).
Obama may not know about basic economics or care much about fundamental liberties. But he has shown that he knows how to campaign. If we want to take our government back (so that we can make it small again), we should learn that from him.
We are better off with Rush Limbaugh than Colin Powell
via HotAir.com:
Who knew? Cheney's best years (in public service) are still ahead of him! I would've thought after all those attacks from left-wing media he would've retreated into retirement like Bush, but now that the burden of governing is off of him, he can offer his insight to the public freely.
I'm probably crazy, but a ticket with Palin and Cheney might be imaginable (although probably improbable).
Colin Powell may have been a distinguished general, but he's no Republican and he's no conservative. He showed his true colors when he publicly endorsed Obama: a racist backstabbing Jew Judas Teller. The honorable thing to do would have been to stay quiet. Or, if he had to speak up, support Obama right from the start (after all, Lieberman supported McCain right from the start while still caucusing with Democrats; I see no contradiction in that). What Mr. Powell did was to wait until the very end when it was clear that Obama would win (so he has nothing to lose), and deliver the blow that he has been waiting for ever since we invaded Iraq.
Whatever reputation Powell may have had, he lost it all in that single move (and, I suppose for some people, that and what he did in support of Iraq invasion).
A need for … mutual respect
Interestingly, and somewhat amusing, Ron Paul gets named as one of the most bipartisan members of the GOP. I suspect a better description would be non-partisan, or perhaps just crank.
Republicans who bash Ron Paul do so to their own detriment—by alienating those who are new to the Republican party (which one could easily argue that Republican party does sorely need—especially among young people), those who have their firm place in the big tent of freedom and small government.
There is no such thing as "RINO from libertarian party". The only reason we need a libertarian party at all is because the Republican party lost its way: if Republican party didn't get taken over by neo-cons and kept to its principle of small government and free enterprise, libertarian party may have existed but would only have attracted fringe groups—why join a smaller, extremist group (which can be taken over easily by someone whose ideals you do not share), when a large, stable group advocates positions consistent with your belief?
And as far as the one position on which Ron Paul disagrees with mainstream Republicans go, well, a policy of non-intervention (or, given that we don't live in the ideal world, minimal intervention) is the only policy sustainable over long term. Empires never last (where is Rome now?); Republics that do not meddle in others' affair, however, do, as we can see in the fact that Britain survived the "fall" of British empire (although one should admit that there aren't enough data points here ...).
The way I understand it, Ron Paul's position isn't that we shouldn't intervene in others' affairs because we are wimps. It's because we have to conserve our strength for really big things, and it's because a government that constantly needs an external enemy is one that will eventually turn on her own (as you can see in recent abuses of PATRIOT act and so on).
Besides, as for Founding Fathers not being non-interventionists, well, they weren't perfect. When they strayed from the principle of "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none" (such as when U.S. got into the British-French war with war of 1812) is when they got the nation into needless, bloody war that America almost lost on her own soil.
Regardless of whether one agrees with his advocacy of non-intervention, it is no basis for illogical ridiculing. Ron Paul and real Republicans agree on the fundamentals: freedom and small government. We can work out these ... details later. We can't lose forest for the trees and let statists run rampant while we exhaust ourselves in infighting.
Poll: 67% of Catholics approve of the job Obama’s doing
Even Catholics who consider themselves “conservative” politically are more likely to approve than disapprove of Obama’s job performance [49/40]…
In fact, 53% of Catholics voted for Obama for president in November, almost identical to the 52.9% of the popular vote Obama won in the 2008 election. Catholics’ 67% approval of Obama in his first 100 days is slightly higher than his overall 63% average approval rating for the same period. Thus, relative to the population, Catholics have become a bit more supportive of Obama as president than they were in the election.
Well, what else do you expect from social conservatives? Every single RINO that needs to be cast out of the party are social conservatives that would enlarge the government so the others would live as they wish.
For that matter, I think the religious right (although this is mostly protestants and evangelicals, who are, well, more puritanical than Catholics) harmed the conservative cause more than helped. Conservative social policies can never win, except in the blaze of a revolution (which, despite the advice of a Founding Father about what the tree of liberty needs, I think should be avoided when possible). Conservative fiscal policies always win. The religious right trades the latter for former.
I don't mean to bash them unjustly. After all, it was a youth pastor who told me what the Republicans stand for, i.e. small government and private enterprise, without all the distortion I get from the liberals in the media and school (the so-called "teachers"), and I owe him a great deal for that. But in this time when the Republican party needs a revival, we need to straighten out our priorities. Conservative fiscal and economic policies first (for those who support these are the true Republicans who will never defect even in times of trouble), and, if we have some political capital to burn, maybe then a penny or two into the well of conservative social policies.