Posted on 02/10/2007 1:39:11 PM PST by TitansAFC
There is no point to electing Pro-Family, Pro-Life, Pro-Free Speech, Pro-Second Amendment candidates anymore. At least, that's what we're essentially being told by the Rudy Giuliani for President crowd. The candidates themselves have no impact on such issues, we're told, and so we shouldn't take that into consideration when choosing whom to elect.
Yes, the Pro-Life, Pro-Family, Pro-Gun, Pro-Free Speech voters should not take their respective issues to the voting booth. They are issues that can be addressed simply by nominating judges. That's all that matters. So we're told.
So this is where the Pro-Life, Pro-Family, Pro-Gun, Pro-Free Speech crowd stands with the modern GOP, eh? This is all that's relevant for the Social Conservatives and Gun Conservatives in 2008, is it? Well, at least that's the perspective of many Pro-Rudy publications, such as National Review, and the clear majority view of GOP columnists nationwide.
Let me sum this up: Those of us who are Pro-Life, Pro-Traditional Marriage, Pro-Family, Pro-Second Amendment, and Pro-Free Speech have been reduced to a three word expression determined by Pro-Rudy pollsters and perhaps some time previous to his candidacy:
"Roberts and Alito" (Also accepted is "Thomas and Scalia.")
That's it. That's all we are to them anymore - that's all it takes. This alone should be enough to placate the base, or at least enough to stem fears of any GOP candidate so long as there exists a Democrat on the ballot. Just three words, whether the candidate has a history deeming this implied promise credible or not. Just three words, that's all.
It's a shame, isn't it?
Never mind Embryonic Stem Cell research; never mind the Mexico City Policy. The President has no effect on life issues.
Never mind a push for Hate Crimes Legislation or Campaign Finance Reform. The President has no effect on Free Speech issues.
Never mind the Assault Weapons ban, or lawsuits against gun manufacturers, or calls for federal laws against guns. The President has no real effect on Second Amendment issues.
Or so we're being told.
"Roberts and Alito!" -- Oh yes! Problem solved; all questions answered! Whatever were we concerned about in the first place?
This is what they want us reduced to. They want our free labor as volunteers, for certain; they want our votes and unending party loyalty, no doubt. But our issues? No. Not anymore; not in 2008.
We're at war, after all! How can anyone take those peripheral issues seriously in a time of war? Abortion? Bah! The Soviet Union might nuke Washington tomorrow! And we're supposed to address abortion?!?!
Oops, sorry. Replace "Soviet Union" with "Islamofascists." Same argument, different decade.
Yes, that's the other thing. We're supposed to table our issues - not that they'd ever table issues like taxes and Free Trade - but we're supposed to table ours until that mythical time in the future when no one on earth means us harm anymore; that day in the future when war is no longer upon us or even imminent.
You see, our issues need to be put aside during a time of war; and we've declared perpetual war. How about that?
It comes to this: we are to be Republicans first, and issues voters last. Or so we're told. Voting is always a choice between the "lesser of two" evils, and Democrats are always, under every circumstance, the greater evil. Why, it would be irresponsible to stay home or vote third party just because our issues are off the table - even all of our issues.
After all (reading from cue card), "Roberts and Alito."
Perhaps most frustrating in all of this is the strange lack of concern the National Review and Pro-Rudy types have about his record. He spoke at NARAL, called for the purging of the Pro-Life platform from the GOP, raised money for Pro-Abortion groups, called for federal laws against guns, sued gun manufacturers, spoke out in favor of tougher Hate Crimes Legislation and Campaign Finance Reform, just to start. He has been an abortion rights activist, a gun control activist, an activist for limitations on Free Speech, and an activist for gay rights.
An activist, yes. He has taken active steps in every case, using all of his influence as mayor to promote said issues. He has stood hand-in-hand with the enemy onthese issues, and often used what powers were availoable to him as Mayor to enforce them.
Does this concern the Rudophiles? No. They are still unabashed Rudy apologists. What concerns the Rudophiles - get this - is that values voters might have a problem with this and hold it against him.
Yes, you heard that right. They are concerned not with his stances, issues, and record - they are concerned with the Social and Gun Conservatives having a big problem with it when the First Tuesday in November, 2008 comes to pass.
Make no mistake about it, if the Social Conservative and Gun Conservative movement is willing to bend this far, the party will not be asking them to bend any less in the future. This will not be the last time the base is given an abortion rights/gun control/ gay rights activist and told he's the "next Reagan." On the contrary, these new stances will be the standard for future "Conservative" candidates, having proven that they can not only fail to address Social and Gun Conservative issues and still win elections, but they they can run candidates who have been activists on the wrong side of every issue and still win.
"Roberts and Alito! And now that I've addressed all of your issues........"
So now, there's no point in fighting for those Pro-Family, Pro-Gun, Pro-Life, Pro-Free Speech candidates anymore. They cannot have any effect, after all, on any of said issues - with perhaps the exception of voting on judges. We can win a lot more of the Moderates and Independents if we takes those issues off of the table, anyway, and simply run as an anti-tax, pro-defense party - stance we know that large majorities can easily agree on. Just say, "Roberts and Alito;" that should be enough. Asking for anything more would be, well, unreasonable.
Or so we're being told.
"..... this country will continue it's downward spiral. It's only going to get worse."
Sadly enough, I agree.... even though we ARE the greatest Christian nation in the world......
I really am writing because I'm trying to figure out your quote after your username....
something like:
"If you don't like rape, don't rape anyone. Don't push your morals on others."
......uhhhhhhhh..... I'm guessing that's a joke right? Sometimes I am really slow with things like that.
And the Second Amendment is part of the Constitution of the United States. If it is tossed aside, by Judges or Legislation, the Constitution itself is tossed aside, and we no longer have a government of laws, but one of men.
I was driving down the road one day and I saw some hag with a bumber sticker that said "If you don't like abortion, don't have one!!". So, I thought about what is the biggest hot-button issue with feminists. It seems to be rape. So I replaced "abortion" with "rape" to annoy feminists and other moral relativists who like to use that ridiculous argument.
OK. I figured it must have been something a bit 'tongue in cheek'. I just had never seen a comment like that and it threw me.
I feel you with the whole aggressive feminist defense of abortion. The fire will be kindled especially hot for those who murder the Lord's little ones.
Perhaps THAT sentence should be put on a bumper sticker....... just make sure it's on a vehicle you don't mind losing and you're packin' some personal protection!
Many of them *were* Democrats, albeit South Democrats, before the Reagan Revolution. Including our current Governor, Rick Perry. He was first elected to the State Board of Education (1978, one year out of the Air Force, where he flew C-130s) and to the Texas Legislature (1982) as a Democrat. He shifted to Republican in 1989, and was elected as Ag commissioner, as a Republican in 1990, unseating Jim Hightower.
We have a multi-party system over here, so voting for a third party is not only a respected choice - it's quite normal norm!
Still, all parties over here suffer from liberal-consensus politics, all the same!
Normal norm?????
I give up on my mental faculties...
:-P
It is, and it isn't.
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
All but a few states have similar provisions in their state constitutions.
For instance the one your state of Washington's constitution reads:
The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself, or the state, shall not be impaired, but nothing in this section shall be construed as authorizing individuals or corporations to organize, maintain or employ an armed body of men.” Article 1, Section 24.
So it's also a matter of the rule of law.
We didn't even have universal public education until after the civil war. Even then it was a matter for the states and localities, none of the federal governments business. As the Constitution has not been changed to make it their business, it still isn't.
So it is with a whole bunch of things, which are not really "commerce" but which have been brought under the Federal Government's purview, most of it since the first world war, less than 100 years ago.
It's not so much that we don't need a state, we do, but we need a federal government that is strictly limited in it's reach, state governments that are somewhat limited, and much more local control of the laws which directly affect the people.
Very well said.
Too bad it will go over so many heads.
The GOP doesn't have the massive propaganda machine, often called the MSM, but it's really more than that, which the DemonRats have. Hillary might end up the last freely elected President of the United. Oh they'll continue to call the head of the government that, even if it should become a hereditary office. Probably not likely that it would become hereditary, although such did happen in North Korea, it did not in other socialist tyrannies such as the Soviet Union, Red China and Vietnam. It looks like it might happen in Cuba, at leas for a time.
Depends on who you mean by "We" (and, to a lesser extent, what one means by "universal")
In New England, we have had universal education since the 17th Century - even girls got some.
America before the Civil War is not something that anyone should want to emulate. An economy built on slavery an conniving expropriations was a nasty thing. Sure, it was relatively better than most of the alternatives of the time, but the point isn't comparative history, is it? When folks like you suggest that the federal government has no place in education, the response is that the federal government HAS to have exerted a powerful and coercive role in education: it was the only way to force states to educate black people with anything like parity. The states didn't want to let go of slavery, and they didn't want to let go of segregation. We should remember that the REASON the federal government had to get so powerful in the first place was that people were so damned determine to hold onto enforced racial inequality that the only way to get around it was to shatter the power of the states with federal power. Had slavery simply been let go, and segregation not been put up in its place, then we wouldn't have the powerful federal government we do.
But that isn't what happened, is it?
The Constitution, as originally framed, did not say that states could eliminate the constitutional rights of blacks. It was UNDERSTOOD that the states could, and they did. And that stank to high heaven. Going back to original intent gets to some very ugly places, because the circumstances of the country at the time of the Founders was ugly and vicious in important respects, and the federal system preserved that for far too long.
This is always the fly in the ointment when folks pine excessively for states rights and the original Constitution. What states' rights MEANT, above all, was the "right" to reduce black people to slavery if the majority damned well felt like it. And that was the fatal flaw in the flawed constitutional structure of the country.
Only federal power could overcome that, and federal power did. The reason we have truly UNIVERSAL public education, which is to say that the reason BLACK people are given public education at all, is because of federal power. That's why the federal government HAS to be involved in education.
So your point is that since Duncan Hunter is a republican, historical reasoning doesn't apply? How, exactly?
Outstanding and dead on accurate
Well said.
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