Reflection: Election Day 2006

First of all, Bush came out of a fog and was pushed on us by those that "know better". I agreed with most he had to say but his "Compassionate Conservative" crap has turned my head to barf more than once. There ARE NO COMPASSIONATE CONSERVATIVES! Conservatives are compassionate without an extra label. That name was all for the show.

Bush and the neoconservatives turned this country over to the democrats. That might not seem so bad for some. "We'll get it back later" is the mantra I'm hearing today. But......for all those moderate democrats that voted against the current administration.... they will be rough-shod and taken over by the liberal-democrats who hold the leadership positions. Liberal Democrats are nothing more than Socialists. Socialists are a step away from Communists. The difference between a Communist and a Liberal Democrat is a Communist will cut your throat immediately and get rid of you but a Liberal Democrat will slowly bleed you until there isn't anything left to give.

There was nothing wrong with Bush's policy in Iraq. The problem lays with the conventional commanders in the military. This is not a war of tanks and APCs and bombers......this is a touchy-feely war that takes the ilk of those skilled in unconventional warfare. Marines, Air Force nor Navy...even though the may carry some label of "Special Operations" can't get it done. They aren't trained to do so and have been a failure when given the mission alone. Knocking down a nation includes all the above...but they must move aside and let those that know how to massage and rebuild a nation take charge. Too many conventional ideas have screwed the pooch in the Mid-East and South-West Asia. Get the Shitstinkie clones out of the way and let the work continue to a successful conclusion...

To do less will bring the War on Terror to our shores. Start going to Conceal/Carry classes and buy a gun. You'll need it in the future....

Fundamentally we allowed the Dems to frame the debate.
Namely that there were no WMD and that we went into Iraq under false pretenses. Couple that with the lie of the civil war and the drip drip drip of dead soldiers.

I never saw Reps denying a civil war.
I never saw Reps point out that more innocents died in DC on a given day than in Iraq.
I never saw them defend the WMD charges wortha spit.

We allowed them to paint a picture of misery were there was great hope.
I believe the war in Iraq was justified under agreements which Saddam broke, effectivly leaving us in a state of war from an unconcluded Gulf war 1.

The Furthering agenda in the decision to reopen the war is nobel in cause and does strike at the WOT by dividing the ME with relative democracy and by isolating and squeezing Iran between a free Afghanistan and a free Iraq as well as squeezing syria between an free Iraq and what appeared to be a stable (cedar revolution) Lebanon and Israel.

Lord knows the past 80 years of ME policy have been a failure.

This work doesnt come fast but we have made tremedous gains in a short amount of time.
Its a shame that in our world of instant gratification the voters dont recognize our sucsess to date.

I dont blame this all on the republicans. I blame it on a selfcentered, queasy, we want it now American public

I understand your sentiments, but there is one part of what you said that I would like to address:

I dont blame this all on the republicans. I blame it on a selfcentered, queasy, we want it now American public

This is precisely the sentiment I would caution against. Granted, it's perfectly fine to vent and be a little frustrated with the American people. It would be a mistake, however, to allow such sentiments to define our long term view, for it contradicts what I believe to be the very essence of conservatism.

America is not the government, or what our government does. That has always been the liberal approach. Instead, America IS the People, along with their Institutions.

We cannot very well love the United States of America but hate the American people. Such ultimately is a defeatist approach and will get us nowhere. It is easy to forget that we do not support conservative policies in and of themselves, but rather we support these policies because we believe they will bring the greatest amount of good to the greatest amount of American people.

And in this country, our people get to make choices regarding which policies they have governing them. That is what makes the United States of America the greatest nation on the face of the earth - it isn't our policies that make us great, but rather our freedom to accept and reject the policies that govern our society.

People have a choice. Our Democratic Republican system of government is much like Political Capitalism - every American citizen has a single piece of currency that they cash every two years to buy the governing policy they want.

When a salesman fails to make a sale, it's futile and pointless for him to complain about how the customer was just too stupid and self-centered to see how the product was exactly what he needed. That isn't going to change the fact that the customer didn't buy the product, and if the salesman doesn't change his attitude quick, he may very well convince the customer never to buy his product again.

Instead, the wise salesman takes a step back and examines how he might have screwed up selling the damn thing. He knows his product is good - that's beyond doubt. Furthermore, he knows his potential customers are good - after all, that is part of why he wants them to benefit from the product he's selling. So he examines his sales pitch, and examines how well he explained his product in the first place.

The American people have spoken. They did not want what they thought we were selling. We can blame the American people for just not "getting it", or we can take the rational approach of introspection and figure out where we went wrong pitching it to them in the first place.

The first approach will lead to a long string of defeats. The second approach will make this loss of power temporary and will enable us to move forward with greater vigor.

I've thought about your question a little bit more this morning.

I stand strongly behind what I said in post #26. Republicans as a whole have a responsibility to sell our message. We can blame our "leaders", I suppose, but don't the led choose those that lead them? Scapegoating the Republican Leadership or the American People (as some have chosen to do) prevents us from turning the finger on ourselves to examine what we could have done better in selling our view.

The American people have made their choice. We can't change that. We have to deal with it for at least the next two years. Now we have several options to work with. The knee jerk reaction would be to lash out negatively and spend our efforts second guessing the American people and the choice the American people have made. After all, that's what the Democrats do when they lose elections, and it seems to work fine for them.

The only thing is... I take pride in the fact that I'm not a Democrat, and that as Republicans we don't play that way. We're a party of reason and common sense approaches. Some of our biggest mistakes over the past several years may very well have been insofar as we've played ball according to the Democrat game plan. Republicans became Democrats with little (R)s next to our names, we acted in ways and supported policies reflective of what a Democratic Administration would have done in certain instances, and the Democrats said, "Hey, this is our approach, we can do this better." Did they say HOW they could do it better? Of course not. But the Republican Party of the past five or so years has NOT been Reaganesque, and that falls on all of our shoulders.

After all, I like to recall the 11th Commandment: "Thou shalt not attack thy fellow Republican" - how many Republicans and well-wishers of the Republican Party have we chased off from this forum alone for not being conservative in an "orthodox" sense? How many honest lines of questioning have we shut down and dismissed as "pre-9/11 thinking"? As far as we have acted in this manner, how have we been different from the hyper-orthodoxy of the left, with standardized answers and slogans where we once prided ourselves on rational response? Such is the very essence of Conservatism.

We have to stop playing the game in the manner of the Democrats. We have to refuse to be hateful like they are. We have to refuse sloganeering and catch phrases - that might work for the Democrats, but it doesn't work for us and we were winning before we adopted their methods. Above all, we must be careful to avoid reactionary "Blame Americans Because They Don't Know What's Good For Them" thinking. If something awful happens over the course of the next two years (and I pray to God that it doesn't), instead of shouting "We told you so!" and blaming the American people for making a poor election decision, we take the traditional Conservative approach of calmly and rationally explaining how we would have handled it a bit differently and better. The strength of the Republican Party has always been in its ability to act, think, and formulate policy in a rational, positive manner that is fundamentally respectful of the choices made by the American people.

We have a good product. Conservative principle works whenever it is applied. Let's figure out how to get our message out in a more effective manner.

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