Bill Kristol asks:

For Republicans and conservatives, the temptation has been to attend to the home front and to focus on resisting Obama’s big government agenda — an agenda worth resisting, in my opinion. But the most successful conservative intervention in the first four months of the Obama presidency has been — counter to predictions by consultants and pundits — that of Dick Cheney on national security policy. He may be the only Republican so far who’s really forced Obama onto the defensive. And most conservatives and Republicans would, I think, agree that the other Republican who’s effectively — if episodically — challenged Obama on foreign and national security policy has been Newt Gingrich.

Both Cheney and Gingrich have the background and stature to address credibly national security issues. Here’s an interesting question: Will any Republican whose career lies mostly ahead of him — or her — step up to confront Obama on the foreign policy and national security front? Is any of them enough of a risk-taker to defy the conventional wisdom that if you’re a mere senator or congressman or governor or aspirer to office, you should focus on domestic issues, that it’s hard (and it is) to take on a president on foreign policy? Will any of them seek to join Cheney and Gingrich in the foreign policy fray?

Kristol goes on to suggest that by standing up to Obama, Gingrich and Cheney might be – intentionally or not – positioning themselves for a bid for the White House in 2012. An outside possibility; though one which will become much more plausible if Obama’s policies cause an American defeat and/or a serious attack upon the United States. But more important than Presidential politics is the need of our nation for an articulate counter to Obama’s warmed-over Carterism.

Unlike our leftwing foes, we are patriots through and through and thus there are things we simply won’t do – most importantly, in our critique of President Obama we won’t offer a handle to any foreign enemy to make anti-American propaganda. We know that it wasn’t President Bush the enemy hated, but the United States of America. Obama and his supporters want to think that now Obama’s in charge, things will be different. There will be a rude awakening from this fairy tale – and when it happens, we have to be prepared both with rational pre-disaster arguments for a different policy as well as a patriotic support to help the President help the nation out of whatever mess he lands us in.

Our job, as conservatives, is to try to keep Obama up on the rails, as it were – we have to help sustain the nation in the face of his foolish policies while at the same time advocating a different course which will mark out our path to victory in 2010 and beyond. But this will take some courage – and I hope that more senior GOPers start showing the guys Gingrich and Cheney have shown.

Remember what we’re fighting for:

We can be confident because freedom is universal. I strongly believe there’s an Almighty, and a gift of that Almighty to every man, woman and child on the face of the Earth is freedom. – George W. Bush

Per Rasmussen:

For nearly four-out-of-five U.S. voters, the problem is not their unwillingness to pay taxes. It’s their elected representatives’ refusal to cut the size of government.

Seventy-seven percent (77%) of voters say the bigger problem in the United States is the unwillingness of politicians to control government spending. Just 14% say the problem is that voters are unwilling to pay enough in taxes, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

Now, to turn this in to electoral victory – that is the tricky part.

Of course, we can keep on with the negotiations, but we also have to spell out our bottom line position. And so, I suggest words to this effect:

“The United States will consider the transmission of nuclear know-how from North Korea to any other party, as well as any North Korean ballistic missile attack on any nation to be an attack upon the United States of America which will result in an immediate resumption of hostilities suspended in 1953.”

This is to let the North Koreans know that our intentions are serious and also to let North Korea’s master, China, know that we’re on to their game of using North Korea as a cat’s paw to distract us. We won’t be distracted, anymore. We won’t war on North Korea immediately because of the danger those lunatics will lob a nuclear device at South Korea, Japan or even the United States, but any attempt by North Korea to use its nuclear capability to threaten in any way, shape or form the United States and its allies won’t be tolerated but will, indeed, lead to immediate war.

That said, we can try to figure out some way to bribe the NK leadership into distancing themselves from China and dismantling their nuclear program under our supervision.

UPDATE: As an aside, a proposed response to the Iranian naval aggression – announce we are sending a destroyer to sink the Iranian vessels. Let them turn tail and run for hom.

Obama may be anxious to bring terrorists into this country, but even members of his own party aren’t jumping to make that happen.

President Barack Obama shouldn’t have assumed his Democratic allies in Congress were willing to pay for the shutdown of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. They weren’t, at least not without a plan.

Two top Obama allies called the approach a mistake. The president’s Republican critics called the rebuke a reason to keep open the detention facility for suspected terrorists. And Obama’s top military adviser called for more details.

What emerged for the White House was a clear choice: If Obama wants to close Guantanamo, he’d better come up with a step-by-step plan. Otherwise, the 240 suspected terrorists stay at the U.S. Navy-run base.

Once against, the leftist campaign promises of Obama meet the realities of the real world and find they just don’t mix.Congr

Really, Barry? Really? According to a White House pool report, posted on Drudge Report:

Subject: Pool report 5/25/09

POTUS is, reportedly, golfing with Marvin Nicholson. No actual glimpses of the presidential golf game. Aides say POTUS paused at 3 p.m. to observe a moment of silence.

The jerk won’t let Memorial Day get in the way of his golf… sounds like Bill Clinton, who passed up the chance to get Osama bin Laden so his golf game wouldn’t get interrupted.

Abraham Lincoln:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Douglas MacArthur:

And what sort of soldiers are those you are to lead? Are they reliable? Are they brave? Are they capable of victory?

Their story is known to all of you. It is the story of the American man at arms. My estimate of him was formed on the battlefields many, many years ago, and has never changed. I regarded him then, as I regard him now, as one of the world’s noblest figures; not only as one of the finest military characters, but also as one of the most stainless.

His name and fame are the birthright of every American citizen. In his youth and strength, his love and loyalty, he gave all that mortality can give. He needs no eulogy from me, or from any other man. He has written his own history and written it in red on his enemy’s breast.

But when I think of his patience under adversity, of his courage under fire, and of his modesty in victory, I am filled with an emotion of admiration I cannot put into words. He belongs to history as furnishing one of the greatest examples of successful patriotism. He belongs to posterity as the instructor of future generations in the principles of liberty and freedom. He belongs to the present, to us, by his virtues and by his achievements.

In twenty campaigns, on a hundred battlefields, around a thousand campfires, I have witnessed that enduring fortitude, that patriotic self-abnegation, and that invincible determination which have carved his statue in the hearts of his people.

From one end of the world to the other, he has drained deep the chalice of courage. As I listened to those songs of the glee club, in memory’s eye I could see those staggering columns of the First World War, bending under soggy packs on many a weary march, from dripping dusk to drizzling dawn, slogging ankle deep through mire of shell-pocked roads; to form grimly for the attack, blue-lipped, covered with sludge and mud, chilled by the wind and rain, driving home to their objective, and for many, to the judgment seat of God.

I do not know the dignity of their birth, but I do know the glory of their death. They died unquestioning, uncomplaining, with faith in their hearts, and on their lips the hope that we would go on to victory. Always for them: Duty, Honor, Country. Always their blood, and sweat, and tears, as they saw the way and the light.

And twenty years after, on the other side of the globe, against the filth of dirty foxholes, the stench of ghostly trenches, the slime of dripping dugouts, those boiling suns of the relentless heat, those torrential rains of devastating storms, the loneliness and utter desolation of jungle trails, the bitterness of long separation of those they loved and cherished, the deadly pestilence of tropic disease, the horror of stricken areas of war.

Their resolute and determined defense, their swift and sure attack, their indomitable purpose, their complete and decisive victory – always victory, always through the bloody haze of their last reverberating shot, the vision of gaunt, ghastly men, reverently following your password of Duty, Honor, Country.

Ronald Reagan:

We’re here to mark that day in history when the Allied armies joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty. For 4 long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen, Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved, and the world prayed for its rescue. Here in Normandy the rescue began. Here the Allies stood and fought against tyranny in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history.

We stand on a lonely, windswept point on the northern shore of France. The air is soft, but 40 years ago at this moment, the air was dense with smoke and the cries of men, and the air was filled with the crack of rifle fire and the roar of cannon. At dawn, on the morning of the 6th of June, 1944, 225 Rangers jumped off the British landing craft and ran to the bottom of these cliffs. Their mission was one of the most difficult and daring of the invasion: to climb these sheer and desolate cliffs and take out the enemy guns. The Allies had been told that some of the mightiest of these guns were here and they would be trained on the beaches to stop the Allied advance.

The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers — the edge of the cliffs shooting down at them with machineguns and throwing grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb. They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again. They climbed, shot back, and held their footing. Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After 2 days of fighting, only 90 could still bear arms.

Behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put them there.

These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.

Gentlemen, I look at you and I think of the words of Stephen Spender’s poem. You are men who in your “lives fought for life . . . and left the vivid air signed with your honor.”

Sorry, but this is rather pathetic:

In the latest round of the increasingly heated intra-GOP feud, former Secretary of State Colin Powell Sunday defended his Republican credentials and fired back at radio host Rush Limbaugh and former Vice President Dick Cheney, saying the party had to expand beyond its conservative base.

“Rush will not get his wish and Mr. Cheney was misinformed – I am still a Republican,” Powell said in a much-anticipated interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation” two weeks after Cheney suggested on the same show that the retired general had left the party by endorsing Barack Obama last fall.

Powell outlined his party bona fides, noting his votes for and services under a string of Republican presidents, and said it was not up to Cheney and Limbaugh – the radio host has kept up a steady drumbeat of criticism since Powell’s cross-party endorsement last year – to determine who belonged in the GOP.

By its fruit is the tree known – and part of Powell’s fruit is President Barack Obama. And nothing wrong with that – Powell is free to endorse whom he will; but if you are to be a member of the Republican party it is expected that you won’t endorse the Democrat. Heck, all Powell would have had to do to keep in good GOP graces is not endorse anyone and then vote however he felt. But an endorsement indicates a support for not just a person – in this case, Barack Obama – but for his platform, and Obama’s platform is in opposition to the Republican platform. This isn’t a dispute about whether or not a pro-choice person can be GOP but whether or not a GOPer should, at the end of the day, be Republican.

Our liberal friends (as it were) wish very much for us to have a debate about whether or not moderates can be Republicans – they want us to have this debate, mark my words, not out of solicitude for our party’s future. No, they just want us clawing at each other – and in this desire, Colin Powell and Arlen Specter have been vastly useful to the Democrats. Arlen had to switch over to have even a ghost of a chance next year, but Powell can save his party-switch to the most opportune moment – ie, whenever the Democrats need such a splash to get subject off their idiocy and back on to anything else (who asked Powell to fire back? Why did he need to? Curious that this comes at a time when Cheney is mopping the floor with Obama on national security and Pelosi teeters on the verge of resignation). Powell can claim he’s a GOPer till the cows come home but that won’t change the fact that since last year, he has been diligently and effectively advancing the cause of the Democrat party.

The real debate for us to have is not “moderate vs conservative” in the GOP, but “people vs powerful” in the United States. Anyone who will join us in fighting the powerful should be welcomed with open arms – right now, Powell is working for the powerful; he’s not on our side, and we shouldn’t allow anyone to say he is.

A word to the wise about Obama’s desire that Israel compromise itself in the name of peace:

Peace won by compromise is usually a short-lived achievement. – Winfield Scott