Posts with the tag 'Joe Lieberman'
Via NRO’s The Corner:
You know, when I’m asked which of the current group of Democratic candidates I prefer to run against, I always say it really doesn’t matter…These days all those candidates, all the Democratic leaders, are one and the same. They’re all NEA-MoveOn.org-ACLU-Michael Moore Democrats. They’ve allowed these radicals to take control of their party and dictate their course.
So this election is important not just to enact our conservative principles. This election is important to salvage a once-great political party from the grip of extremism and shake it back to its senses. It’s time to give not just Republicans but independents, and, yes, good Democrats a chance to call a halt to the leftward lurch of the once-proud party of working people.
So in seeking the nomination of my own party, I want to say something a little unusual. I am asking my fellow Republicans to vote for me not only for what I have to say to them, but for what I have to say to the members of the other party—the millions of Democrats who haven’t left the Democratic party so much as their party’s national leadership has left them.
Good stuff - and, as noted at NRO, very Reaganesque in style and tone. While I haven’t settled on a candidate for the primaries, this is the sort of attitude I’m looking for - its the sort of attitude which long ago made me determine that Joe Lieberman would be the ideal VP candidate for whomever the GOP nominates next year. There is, indeed, a very deep divide in the American electorate - but we won’t eliminate it by shaking hands with those who stand against everything America stands for. In Thompson’s words, the “NEA-MoveOn.org-ACLU-Michael Moore Democrats” simply don’t want an America which is recognizable to most Americans - but they are in control of one of the two major political parties of the United States, and only by crushing them politically will be able to restore reasonableness to our political system.
A political coalition which would include such people as atheist/socialist Christopher Hitchens and Christian conservative James Dobson is not a coalition which will have a long lifespan - but if the Hitchens’ and Dobsons of this world want to have the civilization they love 20 years from now, they’d better darn well band together. We are under internal and external attack - the Islamists want us to convert to Islamo-fascism; the liberal/left wants us to become like Sweden. Do we want to remain America? Then we’d better fight for it - and bury the hatchet amongst all men and women of good will.
Tags: Fred Thompson, Iowa Caucuses, Joe Lieberman
December 30th, 2007
That’s the interesting question I heard yesterday from a nondescript liberal-leaning fill-in host on a rerun of an October talk radio show. The host, who admitted that the democrat party has lost its once prominent base of white male voters, acknowledged that the democrat party wrote off the voting bloc 30 years ago, and hasn’t courted it since.
A quick google search suggests that the concept is not lost on many a democrat mind; some saying that the white male vote is a bloc forever lost in the democrat vest pocket; a prodigal son never to return to the fold. Others say that the white male voter is still a yet-untapped bloc of voters that if accessed, would assure a democrat juggernaut for years, if not decades to come.
The radio host went on to observe that all is not well in republican-land; that white male voters were becoming disaffected with the Republican party; and went on to cite the war in Iraq as the major factor in white male disaffection within the GOP.
I would submit that there may indeed be a growing disaffection with the GOP among white males, but the war in Iraq would be the least, if not nearly the least of the reasons. If anything, the disaffection of the white male voting bloc with the Republican party is due to the fact that the Republican Party, rather than governing under the principles that swept it into a decade-long majority, actually forgot who it was that brought them to the dance; and instead started acting like the two-bit tart that flirts with all the other guys while her frustrated date looks on.
The white male voting bloc signed on first with Ronald Reagan, then with Newt Gingrich’s Contract With America; and not for democrat lite. President Bush received a hefty majority vote among the white male voting bloc, not because we were ecstatic over his expansion of Medicare into prescription drugs for seniors; not because of his endorsement of No Child Left Behind; but rather because between him and Jean Francois Kerrie, he was the only one that could be trusted to be a stalwart against the terrorists, and the one who actually gave a damn about protecting this nation.
So, back to the original question, what would it take for me, a white, middle class male, to be able to vote for a democrat as President of the United States?
Here is a non-inclusive, though important list of the top four traits that would make it so:
- 1. First and foremost: The democrat must put America first, not blame America first.
If your rhetoric panders to the European intelligentsia, go and run for German Chancellor or President of France.
If you put the "rights" of terrorists above the safety of the United States, its citizens, and its defenders in harm’s way, just so you can beat your chest atop your soapbox and claim that you’re a morally-superior, caring, sensitive, feeling metrosexual, forget about leading the U.S.
Go and apply as a houseboy for OBL, sing kumbaya with Kalid Sheikh Muhammed; but get the hell out of my face and leave the leading of the Free World to the big boys, okay?
You want to know a secret? If the presidential race were between Ron Paul on the Republican side, and Joe Lieberman on the Democrat side, I’d vote for Joe Lieberman in a heartbeat, based on the above principle alone.
- 2. National security is serious business. Quit screwing with it.
The notion of National Security embodies the very fight for our survival as a nation and as a people. It is not a political-point vending machine placed there for your convenience.
When you go and treat Iraq as a political football game to be won, rather than what should and must be a critical strategic victory over a deadly geopolitical enemy; going so far as to actually lay obstacles in the way of our victory, and putting those who put their lives on the line in additional and unnecessary risk as a result, that tells me you don’t give a rat’s posterior about the security of our nation, and that as such you have no business leading it.
There really are people and even nations out there who mean to do us harm.
9/11 should have given you a clue.
- 3. The democrat must quit showing contempt for America and that for which it stands!
Trust me on this. You may get a pat on the back from your fellow limousine liberals over at the Yacht club, but you won’t score a single vote among the "Joe Sixpack" crowd if you refuse to wear a flag on your lapel because you have contempt for the nation for which you are asking for the privilege and honor of leading.
It’s OK to say you love America, that it is the greatest nation on earth, and that Americans have spilled more blood and have given more treasure to help the downtrodden than any nation in the history of the planet.
It’s OK. Really, it is.
- 4. Don’t tell us what our problems are. We know what they are.
Running a grocery-styled bitchlist of everything that’s wrong, and portraying everyone under the sun as a victim isn’t going to make any white guy run through a wall to get you elected.
Here’s a novel idea: Present a vision of what is right about America, and an accompanying vision of how to work with what’s right so as to become an even greater nation (and–this is important– believe in it!).
Ronald Reagan’s Shining City on the Hill vision eventually garnered him two landslide terms as President. Jimmy Carter’s "malaise" speech, along with his inability to proffer a positive vision of America’s future is arguably what lost him his second term, and what sealed his fate as one of the most ineffectual presidents in history.
Again, this list is far from inclusive as to what it would take for me to vote for a democrat as President, but it’s a start. I offer this in the knowledge that the suggestions put forth in this screed will be summarily dismissed as hogwash, and also in the knowledge that some leftwinger will no doubt leave some "clever" comments about how wrong I am. But it was a democrat that asked the question, and since I am the world’s leading authority on what I think and feel, I answered it to the best of my ability.
Fire away.
(Cross-posted at The Ice Palace)
Tags: Democratic Majority, Democratic Nomination, Iraq, Joe Lieberman, Liberal hypocrisy, liberal talk radio, NIE, President Bush, Ron Paul
December 23rd, 2007
What a sweet bunch of people…
…Lieberman sabotaged Gore in the 2000 election - why was this slime selected as his running mate anyway?…
… Lieberman is a liar and a punk and he doesn’t play on any team except the Lieberman Team…
..These two old NeoCon loons banding together on a lunatic pro-war platform in the face of their respective parties disapproval …
…He’s a Republican Rat any way you read him…
…My friend got mad at me when I said if I saw Joementum on the street I’d be tempted to take a swing - and yet the violence he advocates against Muslims on a daily basis is somehow ok?! (expletive deleted) Joe Lieberman…
…Is it too late to tar and feather Leiberman and ride him ou on a rail? …
…Lieberman and McCain are joined by a common commitment to put the security interests of Israel above those of the United States…
…All Lieberman cares about is Israel…
…Lieberman is a Likud Jew. They are the hated ones from Germany…
Insults and anti-Semitism; a few threats of violence…just another day in the life of Daily Kos.
Tags: GOP Nomination, Joe Lieberman, John McCain
December 18th, 2007
According to FOX News contributor Bill Kristol, Senator Joe Lieberman is set to endorse John McCain for President.
Assuming this is true, there’s a lot to be said about this.
First, considering Joe Lieberman was once the Democratic nominee for Vice President, and also ran for president as a Democrat, this endorsement speaks volumes about not only the current slate of Democratic candidates for president, but also the Democratic Party.
No one can say that Lieberman is just getting back at the Democratic Party for not sticking behind him when he ran for reelection to the Senate, because he has still be caucusing with the Democrats in the Senate. So, despite the enormous insult he received from the Democratic Party, he still remains somewhat loyal to them. But clearly, this endorsement is a rejection of the Democratic Party being increasingly beholden to the radical anti-war MoveOn.org wing of the party.
But, clearly this isn’t just an endorsement of a Republican candidate, this is a rejection of the Democratic Party’s candidates and their defeatist views on the war on terror. If Lieberman thought any of the current Democratic nominees were capable of effectively leading the war on terror then he would endorse one of them.
This also brings up a the possibility that Lieberman could be willing to join the ticket of the Republican nominee, whether the nominee is McCain or not. That would be an interesting situation, and easily help the ticket appeal to independent voters and moderate Democrats.
Will it help McCain? I would say it helps him less in the primaries than it would in the general election, but it certainly doesn’t hurt him. It certainly makes him appear to be the candidate that can win over more independents and moderate voters, and if that is something important to primary voters it can certainly give him a boost.
It’s just too bad that if Lieberman is endorsing a Republican that he hasn’t made the switch to caucus with Republicans in the Senate. Most importantly, our troops would be getting the funds they need.
Tags: Joe Lieberman, John McCain, War on Terror
December 16th, 2007
…of people who think that Joe Lieberman should be the GOP Vice Presidential candidate in 2008:
Peter Weher at NRO’s The Corner, following on Bill Kristol at the Weekly Standard.
Unless someone can find someone saying this prior to mid-2005, I think I was the first person to suggest that Lieberman is the ideal candidate for Vice President on the Republican ticket in 2008 - though it might have to go through a name change on the party ID. In 1864, it was GOP Lincoln and Democrat Johnson, and I believe they called it a “Union” ticket.
The thing needed, right now, is national unity. The divisions in our nation only help our enemies, and we must show the world that the anti-war left is a marginal political ideology. Having a GOP/Democrat national unity ticket in 2008 is the best means of demonstrating that as far as the war goes, America is united in its quest for victory.
Tags: Joe Lieberman, Kook Left
November 9th, 2007
Yep:
In the weeks and months after September 11, Democrats and Republicans put aside our partisan divisions and stood united as Americans. As late as October 2002, a Democratic-controlled Senate voted by a wide bipartisan margin to authorize President Bush to use military force against Saddam Hussein.As the Iraq war became bogged down in a long and costly insurgency, however, and as President Bush’s approval ratings slipped, Democrats moved in a very different direction—first in the presidential campaign of 2004, where antiwar forces played a decisive role in the Democratic primaries. As you may recall, they also prevailed in Connecticut’s Democratic U.S. Senate primary last year.
Since retaking Congress in November 2006, the top foreign policy priority of the Democratic Party has not been to expand the size of our military for the war on terror or to strengthen our democracy promotion efforts in the Middle East or to prevail in Afghanistan. It has been to pull our troops out of Iraq, to abandon the democratically-elected government there, and to hand a defeat to President Bush.
Iraq has become the singular litmus test for Democratic candidates. No Democratic presidential primary candidate today speaks of America’s moral or strategic responsibility to stand with the Iraqi people against the totalitarian forces of radical Islam, or of the consequences of handing a victory in Iraq to al Qaeda and Iran. And if they did, their campaign would be as unsuccessful as mine was in 2006. Even as evidence has mounted that General Petraeus’new counterinsurgency strategy is succeeding, Democrats have remained emotionally invested in a narrative of defeat and retreat in Iraq, reluctant to acknowledge the progress we are now achieving, or even that that progress has enabled us to begin drawing down our troops there.
Part of the explanation for this, I think, comes back to ideology. For all of our efforts in the 1990s to rehabilitate a strong Democratic foreign policy tradition, anti-war sentiment remains the dominant galvanizing force among a significant segment of the Democratic base.But another reason for the Democratic flip-flop on foreign policy over the past few years is less substantive. For many Democrats, the guiding conviction in foreign policy isn’t pacifism or isolationism—it is distrust and disdain of Republicans in general, and President Bush in particular.
Really, that is all there is - no rationality, no convincing alternative policy…just a hatred of a party in general and a man in particular. So ingrained is this hatred that there was actually a proposal to impeach Vice President Cheney this week…which, if you are a lunatic Bush-hater, would be the first step on the path to impeaching President Bush, ’cause you don’t want to remove Bush and get stuck with the even more evil Cheney, right?
As Senator Lieberman points out elsewhere in his speech, President Bush’s overall war policy is decidedly liberal - in the sense that our goal is to bring liberty to a benighted area of the world. President Bush was able to adopt this policy because he is not a conservative - not in the sense that, say, William F. Buckley is a conservative. While a man of conservative instincts (especially on life issues and matters of taxation), President Bush is really just a center/right American politician…akin, in a lot of ways, to the center/right governing ideas of an Eisenhower or, to a lesser extent, the center/left ideas of a Truman. In other words, President Bush is just a regular American - not of the left, but not too right, either. And yet he is hated with a white-hot passion on the left. Why should this be?
Quite honestly, it is Florida, 2000. First and foremost, the people of the left have not forgiven President Bush for winning the 2000 election. To this day they will mindlessly repeat the laughable falsehood that the Supreme Court handed the Presidency to Bush; that Gore would have won a recount in Florida, if he had only been allowed to try. There is a great deal of mercilessness in American life these days - an unwillingness to forgive, a definitive desire to see everyone paid out to the last penny for what they have done. In my view, this is the result of a rise in paganism and barbarism in the American body politic - elements very strong in the left, but not unknown on the right.
Joe Lieberman hopes his Democrats will recapture their past glories and become, once again, defenders of American ideals. I fear that he will be disappointed - but we do need to change the dynamic of our political debate; we need to figure out how to get the poison out of our system, lest it destroy us eventually.
Tags: Dick Cheney, Joe Lieberman, partisan, waterboarding
November 8th, 2007
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