I think sometimes we conservatives get a little too knee jerky like the libs and try to draft "Daft" Leggislation without thinking about the inevitable counter arguments that will probabaly get the damn thing thrown out by a tilted liberal court or get slaughtered in the court of public opinion.
We need to be consistent with out principles of conservative, but we also need to be devious in terms of war gaming this stuff out so that it stands the test of times and activist judges.
Additional Note: Sometimes I think that even the conservatives that draft legislation like this lack a certain degree of situational awareness that causes them to draf poorly worded legislation that end gets picked apart by easy strawman attacks from the left.
Instead we should draft legislation that makes it damned clear WHAT our core values and princicples in an easy to read manner that makes any counter argument seem petty and insane.
I want to force the Left to Admit they don’t give a crap about the Artists they claim to love so much if they get in the way of their petty agenda of increasing government control.
A simpler bill would be to just to state that everyone should be treated the same way a follower of Islam is. The government will do back flips to make sure Muslims are never forced to do anything against their religion, thus we just want to be treated the same way a Muslim is. It is in the vein of Howie Carr who always says if he gets jammed up, he just wants to be treated like an illegal alien.
I am always on the soap box on that specific point here.
Endless preaching to just the choir has predictable results when the others vote, which is the POTUS election years.
My favorite example of a so-con argument big winner is that ‘Little Sisters of the Poor’ ad. That is dynamite.
The other extreme is Todd Akin.
My opinion is that the besetting sin of Republicans in general and GOPe in particular is its tendency to shy away from a principled fight - thereby abandoning the high ground and getting slaughtered in retreat. A classic example was GWB's statement that the British intelligence had learned that Saddam was trying to buy uranium from Africa. That may not have resulted in an Iraqi stockpile of uranium. But it was what we thought we knew, and what we acted on.It wasn't just GWB who believed it, either - the Democrats demanded the opportunity to go on record with a second vote so they could get on board before the invasion. And yet, when the expected cache of uranium didn't materialize there was no stand up defense of an obviously strong logical position. Only a kind of "modified limited hangout" as Nixon's people might have put it.
Same sort of thing when Valerie Plame was "outted" - she hadn't been covert for over five years, and even if she was outted, it wasn't illegal. And yet we were treated to the spectacle of a Special Prosecutor nomination!!!
That bears on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act as follows:
The Constitution mentions Jesus Christ. That is, at the end it says,done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independance of the United States of America the Twelfth In witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our NamesThat would have been offensive to a country which was proud of being anything else but Christian. Even Jews wouldn't have said that.Therefore, Christians should stand on their hind legs and run right at the anti Christian biggots who dare to say that Christians can be forced to violate their principles in a way that Muslims cannot. But what do they - what do you - do but try to find some way to evade the fight!!
NO SALE!