Open Letter to Rush Re Voting for RINOs

October 17, 2006 | ML/NJ

[ml/nj]

Rush:

Maybe you remember me? I'm "Mike from North Caldwell." I've been a (an accepted) "caller" to the show about 20 times, but I have not tried to call for five years or more now. I still listen when I can, but work makes it difficult for me to call these days.

Today is a day I would have called. I would have called have called after you got that woman, who ostensibly called to chide you for being to tough on Republicans who won't support RINOs, to say she would vote straight Republican because she had no other choice.

I wonder if you have some advice for me. You see, I live in New Jersey and the Republicans want me to vote for Tom Kean, Jr. Now Tom Kean, Jr. didn't just support the smoking ban here in NJ. He's not just a co-sponsor. He's the guy who introduced the bill; and he's proud of it. Because of Tom Kean, Jr.'s bill I have had to join a private club to have a comfortable place to smoke a cigar. (Side note: The club was written up in CA and I'm sure the members would be honored if you would show up at one of the monthly club dinners.) I really don't want this guy in the Senate. Sure, we might lose a vote in the full Senate but Kean, if he wins, would get committee assignments that might go to a real Republican.

And what about my representative, Rodney Frelinghuysen? Have you even heard of him? He is the ultimate get-along-go-along-Republican. He has been elected here six times to the House, and is the fourth Frelinghuysen to represent NJ there. They think it's their own little Duchy. Recently I received a response from him regarding my objection to the circuitous ban on Internet gambling. He didn't care. He was voting for it. Now I have never bet a nickel on poker or sports on any of the internet sites targeted by this bill (and not much more than a few dollars elsewhere) but I would like to think that if I had the time sometime, I could play in an on-line poker tournament. Now RINO Frelinghuysen has helped make that unlikely. Why should I support a guy who thinks my (potential) recreational gambling is his business, or that it is even within the province of the Federal Government?

And what about our President? I give him very high marks and credit for there not having been another successful terrorist attack here in the United States since 9/11. But does his government really have to prevent middle-aged guys like me from carrying my shaving kit onto an airplane, when flying to or from the same airport near my home that I have used for more than 25 years now? I had to get up at 4AM yesterday for a 6:20 flight even though I was staying only five minutes away from the small airport I used to fly home. I was all for the war in Iraq, but I'm hardly for imposing "democracy" on them. (I'd withdraw to garrisons outside the cities, and only come in to "restore order" when it suited our interests.) We used to criticize "nation building." What happened?

Now maybe you'll argue that the Supreme Court is at stake. And you would have a point. But really, except for aggravating me, Supreme Court decisions have much less effect upon my life than not being allowed to take a tube of toothpaste with me when I board an airplane.

So I'm not going to vote for Kean or Frelinghuysen. I cannot vote for Bush again, but I tell you now I won't be voting for McCain if he is the Republican nominee in '08. No, I almost certainly will not be voting for the Democrat either. Instead I'll look for some Conservative, Libertarian, of Constitutional Party candidate in these elections. Almost every one of the votes these parties get is a vote that the Republicans will know they could have had with a true Republican candidate. I'm hoping to encourage them in that direction.

Thanks for reading this.

ML/NJ (aka "Mike from North Caldwell")

[photodawg]

Anyone who reveres the name Reagan shouldn't want Kean taking a committee seat away from a real Republican.

ML/NJ


''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

Better to have melendez take a senate seat away from Kean so after the house votes the articles of impeachment the senate can vote the President out of office. But you'd be happy because Dick Cheney, a real republican, would then be President. Who cares that the dems would control the congress and pelosi would be a heartbeat away behind an older guy with a bad ticker. One man's principles are another man's kool-Aid when principle becomes self-destructive stubborn adherence to petty self-righteousness.

[Badray]

Did you even read my post? Did you take a minute to think about what I said?

The Dems will not be able to impliment anything even if they do win, unless Bush is a rat bastard too who will sign their legislation into law.

Quit being chicken little.

[Badray]

Give it a rest.

Impeachment is just talk to rally the rat base. They don't have the votes to impeach or to convict.

Stop and think.

[A CA Guy]

Any vote for a third party in the main election or any lack of vote is totally enabling the fire breathing communist Democrat.

Makes no sense to me no matter how much a Rino upsets us.

Why enable a cancer when a pimple bothers you?

[A CA Guy]

Another bit of help for Democrats.

[Conservative Goddess]

And the choir said: "AMEN BROTHER!"

[ml/nj]

And the choir said: "AMEN BROTHER!"

Maybe you've noticed that yours has not been a universal reaction?!

ML/NJ

[Conservative Goddess]

"In short, the pragmatic, practical reality is that national politics works to make absolutely totally sure that the citizen has as little actual representation as possible while maintaining the fiction of representative government."

A quote from Alexis De Tocqueville's "Democracy in America," found at: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/ch4_06.htm seems appropriate here. I apologize for the length, but I believe it is well worth the read. It appears to me that this is EXACTLY what is happening, right under our noses, while the majority of the electorate is blissfully unaware and easily distracted by all of the Dem v. Pubbie blather.

The reality is that we're losing control of our country, even under Republican control of all houses. The Dems will drive us off the cliff faster, but the Republicans are leading us down the same road. I can't and won't give them a pass for simply taking us down the path a little more slowly. Back to De Tocqueville.....

"...I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest; his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind. As for the rest of his fellow citizens, he is close to them, but he does not see them; he touches them, but he does not feel them; he exists only in himself and for himself alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his country.


Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. [The nanny-state is quite prevalent, and the Republicans have expanded it.] That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living? [The feds have no business meddling in our medical care, the education of our children, our retirement planning, etc. I find no Constitutional authority for ANY of it, but they do it, "For our own good."]


Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things;it has predisposed men to endure them and often to look on them as benefits.


After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. [The Internal Revenue Code comes to mind as a perfect example of this. This is the primary tool used to shape and mold each member of the community; to provide for their medical care, retirement, and education.] The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.[!!!!!]


I have always thought that servitude of the regular, quiet, and gentle kind which I have just described might be combined more easily than is commonly believed with some of the outward forms of freedom, and that it might even establish itself under the wing of the sovereignty of the people.


Our contemporaries are constantly excited by two conflicting passions: they want to be led, and they wish to remain free. As they cannot destroy either the one or the other of these contrary propensities, they strive to satisfy them both at once. They devise a sole, tutelary, and all-powerful form of government, but elected by the people. They combine the principle of centralization and that of popular sovereignty; this gives them a respite: they console themselves for being in tutelage by the reflection that they have chosen their own guardians. Every man allows himself to be put in leading-strings, because he sees that it is not a person or a class of persons, but the people at large who hold the end of his chain.


By this system the people shake off their state of dependence just long enough to select their master and then relapse into it again. A great many persons at the present day are quite contented with this sort of compromise between administrative despotism and the sovereignty of the people; and they think they have done enough for the protection of individual freedom when they have surrendered it to the power of the nation at large. [How do I make the following sentence RED and BOLD!!!]This does not satisfy me: the nature of him I am to obey signifies less to me than the fact of extorted obedience. I do not deny, however, that a constitution of this kind appears to me to be infinitely preferable to one which, after having concentrated all the powers of government, should vest them in the hands of an irresponsible person or body of persons. Of all the forms that democratic despotism could assume, the latter would assuredly be the worst.


When the sovereign is elective, or narrowly watched by a legislature which is really elective and independent, the oppression that he exercises over individuals is sometimes greater, but it is always less degrading; because every man, when he is oppressed and disarmed, may still imagine that, while he yields obedience, it is to himself he yields it, and that it is to one of his own inclinations that all the rest give way. In like manner, I can understand that when the sovereign represents the nation and is dependent upon the people, the rights and the power of which every citizen is deprived serve not only the head of the state, but the state itself; and that private persons derive some return from the sacrifice of their independence which they have made to the public. To create a representation of the people in every centralized country is, therefore, to diminish the evil that extreme centralization may produce, but not to get rid of it.


I admit that, by this means, room is left for the intervention of individuals in the more important affairs; but it is not the less suppressed in the smaller and more privates ones. It must not be forgotten that it is especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life. For my own part, I should be inclined to think freedom less necessary in great things than in little ones, if it were possible to be secure of the one without possessing the other.


Subjection in minor affairs breaks out every day and is felt by the whole community indiscriminately. It does not drive men to resistance, but it crosses them at every turn, till they are led to surrender the exercise of their own will. Thus their spirit is gradually broken and their character enervated; whereas that obedience which is exacted on a few important but rare occasions only exhibits servitude at certain intervals and throws the burden of it upon a small number of men. It is in vain to summon a people who have been rendered so dependent on the central power to choose from time to time the representatives of that power; this rare and brief exercise of their free choice, however important it may be, will not prevent them from gradually losing the faculties of thinking, feeling, and acting for themselves, and thus gradually falling below the level of humanity.


I add that they will soon become incapable of exercising the great and only privilege which remains to them. The democratic nations that have introduced freedom into their political constitution at the very time when they were augmenting the despotism of their administrative constitution have been led into strange paradoxes. To manage those minor affairs in which good sense is all that is wanted, the people are held to be unequal to the task; but when the government of the country is at stake, the people are invested with immense powers; they are alternately made the play things of their ruler, and his masters, more than kings and less than men.[Think about the way the two parties try to manipulate the voters. Republicans tell you the Dems will eat your young, scare you into voting for them simply because they're not Dems. The Dems promise a handout to every underprivileged group, and yes, for those who are anti-war, promise to "do something." Each party tries to appear bigger than life, and suggest they can do the impossible. Neither party is focused on truly following the Constitution or simply doing what is right for the country. It's all about power and manipulating the electorate.] After having exhausted all the different modes of election without finding one to suit their purpose, they are still amazed and still bent on seeking further; as if the evil they notice did not originate in the constitution of the country far more than in that of the electoral body.


It is indeed difficult to conceive how men who have entirely given up the habit of self-government should succeed in making a proper choice of those by whom they are to be governed; and no one will ever believe that a liberal, wise, and energetic government can spring from the suffrages of a subservient people.2


A constitution republican in its head and ultra-monarchical in all its other parts has always appeared to me to be a short-lived monster. The vices of rulers and the ineptitude of the people would speedily bring about its ruin; and the nation, weary of its representatives and of itself, would create freer institutions or soon return to stretch itself at the feet of a single master."


Again, I apologize for the length, but I really think De Tocqueville's words were prescient and prophetic. We need to step back and take a breath and take a look at the proverbial big picture....and to hold our elected officials to that musty old document that is supposed to constrain all government action: The Constitution.

[Sloth]

People not voting for RINOs or voting for canidates that cant possibly win only helps Dems win.

Whereas voting *for* RINOs creates the Jeffords situation.

[GregH]

' And you would have a point. But really, except for aggravating me, Supreme Court decisions have much less effect upon my life than not being allowed to take a tube of toothpaste with me when I board an airplane. '


What a ridiculous, stupid, idiotic quote. Supreme court decisions affect almost everyone, every taxpayer and a leftist Supreme court can wreck havoc on the constitutional rights of an Americans. Remember the property grab endorsemenet by the Liberal Supreme court?

Hope that the Author is just silly in making such a insane statement, one steeped in political ignorance.

[Conservative Goddess]

Shoulda ping-ed you to this........

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-gop/1721178/posts?page=48#48

[Fury]

Wonder what this letter writer whould of said about a Republican who signed 2 tax INCREASES, doubled the size of the Fed Govt in 8 years, Signed a REAL Illegal Amnesty and ran away from a Muslim Terrorist threat.

Some of that needs to be explained. President Reagan had a Dem House and Republican Senate in 1980. In 1986, the Senate went Dem. Like it or not, that does have a great deal to do with budget decisions.

I believe that's one reason it's important for Repubs to maintain control of both House and Senate. In mentioning a terrorist threat, if you mean Lebanon, that was a sad situation, and it was not handled well. It was in many ways a no-win situation given how US Marines were deployed and their mission.

[photodawg]

Impeachment is just talk to rally the rat base. They don't have the votes to impeach or to convict.

Stop and think.
''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

Just stretching a point to make a point. To spell out the obvious. Rinos are infinitely more preferable to dems where national security and congressional effectiveness are concerned. Would you rather have Rudy or Hillary? He's a rino she's a commie. Who would be the better alternative for chief executive.

Additionally, regarding impeachment. if the dems were to pick up 40 or so seats in house they would have the votes to start impeachment proceedings, and a lot of other absurd dangerous things. Why flirt with disaster by smugly thinking these aren't possibilities. Just like in Iraq, you've got to defeat the enemy. We should be looking to pick up seats by electing as many republicans as we can. Have we forgotten the Ross Perot lesson?

[ml/nj]

What a ridiculous, stupid, idiotic quote.

It's really great for someone like me to be exposed to brilliance such as yours. Thank you.

Meanwhile, as to Kelo (v. New London - I think that the "property grab endorsement" you refer to) I have not been affected nor do I expect to be. Maybe you have some property that some connected developer has his eyes on but I do not. My guess is that there isn't a single Freeper whose property is threatened by a Kelo taking. And my guess also is that I was not the only Freeper to waste an extra hour in an airport on Monday so that we don't offend the people who are trying to kill us.

Thanks for playing.

ML/NJ

[Badray]

Now that would make a great tagline.

Excellent post CG.

[Badray]

I'd like to add to your comments, if I may.

When we lost our Marines in Lebanon, it wasn't obvious to teh world that we were in a world wide and long lasting war against these nut cases. It was more localized and our involvement was minimal compared to today.

Please correct me if my memory isn't exact, but as you note, context is important to understanding why Reagan (or anyone) did what they did at the time. Monday morning quarterbacks always have teh advantage of being right.

[Badray]

Rudy or Hillary?

Neither. I'll use the write in again.

I don't know if you took note of FR's informal and unscientific poll a month or or so back about who will have control of the Congress. According to that poll, 76% of FReepers thought that we'd lose neither.

Why is everyone running around like chicken little now? Foley? I doubt it. Fearmongering by RINO GOP apologists? I'd say so.

Don't get me wrong. There will be some loses, but nothing tells me that we lose either house. But assuming that I am totally wrong (that never happens. I am at least partly right all the time ;-)) they will not have the majority that they want and need.

It's not even a matter of flirting with disaster, it's not even a wink and a smile. The GOP is afraid of losing control, not for what it might mean to the country, but what it means for themselves. What the GOP elite cannot countenance even more than losing to the Dems is losing to conservatives who will not tolerate their shenanigans. The Dems are just as guilty and they can work with each other on the rules. Neither side wants a conservative cleaning crew to come to DC.

I refuse to be bullied into supporting those who haven't earned my vote.

[Badray]

Not bullied by those doing the bullying. I did not mean to imply that you were trying. You are one of the most civil persons here. Thank you for that.

[humblegunner]

I'd vote for Limbaugh to shut the heck up.

That arrogant blowhard talks too much.

[ml/nj]

That arrogant blowhard talks too much.

Three hours a day is about right for me.

ML/NJ