Defeat at Any Price (Why Petraeus's testimony was a nightmare for the Democrats)

Weekly Standard ^ | 9/24/2007 (9 days from today?) | David Gelernter

[Mr_Moonlight]

To prepare for General David Petraeus's long-awaited testimony on Iraq to Congress last week, the liberal pressure group MoveOn.org wrote itself into the history books with an anti-Petraeus ad so repulsive ...

~~ SNIP ~~

America's political spectrum a decade or more in the future will be defined by two parties both born of today's GOP after a natural and painless mitosis. There's at least as much distance between a Rudy Giuliani and a Mike Huckabee as there ever was between JFK and Nixon, or even Adlai Stevenson and Dwight Eisenhower. Americans traditionally like their two opposing parties to differ on domestic affairs but agree on basic foreign policy--not because things are nicer that way; rather because foreign-policy arguments are good for our enemies, bad for our friends, and hugely dangerous to ourselves

[Grimmy]

I agree with you on all except on what’s holding the good guys back.

Conservates tend toward the more emotional stable end of the spectrum.

I’m an exception in that I’m a rage junky. It is good that the calm ones hold back too. If it was up to my kind, we’d have begun the blooding the day the tards started playing “up staging games” over the anthrax hit at the congressional offices.

For me, the writing was writ large on the wall that very day. I’ve been marking time waiting for the rest of y’all to catch up.

[roses of sharon]

Bookmark.

[Mr_Moonlight]

I’m an exception in that I’m a rage junky

Oh my ... that was YOU who tossed me the 'bird' on I-76 the other day ??? /laughs

[centurion316]

The problem is that the right has no leader

You are right about this, in fact it is the crux of the problem. Our political leaders are too busy stuffing money in their pockets to be concerned about what is best for the country. Anyone who lives or works inside the Beltway are consumed with their personal wealth and their position relative to their friends, neighbors, and colleagues. They care not about the nation and our future. They will sell us out in a hearbeat, and we should not forget it.

[Grimmy]

Two things on the battle for our national identity issue:

There’s still more of a probability that it will get settled in the realm of words than in an actual fight. As more folk start giving vent to their real feelers on this problem, the less trendy and safe treason will seem to become. It’s a social game for most of the tards.

The biggest loser so far is the rule of law. There are laws forbidding many of the acts and actions of the betrayers but no one is stepping up to enforce them.

The other possibility is that if it does get ugly, either in harsher verbal spats or in actual fighting, it will likely spread almost immediately to most of the Anglo-sphere. This might end up being a first, as in a truly trans-national civil war.

Of course, I’m no jeenious and I’ve been fighting a bout of insomnia for the last few days, so all this might be as much bizarro world mind fart type fantasy as that purple zebra standing at the other side of the room and trying to talk to me probably is.

[neverdem]

thanks, bfl

[Gritty]

This is a great article which deserves to be read in it's entirety.

If you are reading these words and have not yet read the entire article, do yourself a favor right now and do so!

[Mr_Moonlight]

Our political leaders are too busy stuffing money in their pockets to be concerned about what is best for the country.

I've often thought about this m'self .. that polits, as a rule, are only concerned for their own monetary well being and political power, that "Mr Smith Goes To Washington" is nothing more than a fantasy for the naive.

However, I *do* have some faith in the human spirit, and that faith isn't relegated to simply politics for politics sake.

Politics is a dirty game, always was, always will be ... its simply human nature, something that can't be changed ... the US Constitution took radical steps to make sure that politicians would be held in check by their fellow citizens, a system which has worked quite well for over two centuries.

The danger now is that an entire major political party has determined that they can flout the law and the Constitution on a regular basis, and go unchecked. This is what the Democrat party has become circa 2007 (and for about 3 decades now). It's a scary scenario, that one major party is willingly wrecking the Constitution, while the other major party isn't doing diddly-squat to counter it.

I fear for the future of our Republic

[Alas Babylon!]

“We need to bring the troops home so they can fight the real enemy—the Republican Party,” said a poll respondent from Washington, D.C. “It was the Bush Administration that dynamited the twin towers. Al-Qaeda is just a scapegoat.”

Fight the real enemy!? It's you!!! I can see the puzzlement in this dweeb's eyes as a patriot squeezes the life force out of his pencil neck. It's obvious he hasn't a clue about the military. If he did he'd know that the military is proud of and happy to do its mission fighting Islamic fascists, even if these girly men are too afraid to do so. However, to think that the troops share their Bush Derangement Syndrome is preposterous. The Left has treated the American fighting man like crap. After 4 years of constant Leftist put downs, slander and treason it may well come to a head.

I've talked to a number of active duty and retired persons this week, and they are outraged over the treatment Pretreaus got, and are awakening to the fact that a Fifth Column exists in this country, with names like Moveon.org, A.N.S.W.E.R. and now the democratic party.

If the troops come home, perhaps they'll want to clean up the filth like this idiot from DC.

[Master of Orion]

Much like the Copperheads of the Civil war. Here's one of their pamphlets from 1864. Haven't we seen some smear tactics that resemble this lately?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copperheads

[Grimmy]

Yep. What was old is new again.

[Names Ash Housewares]

“Of course the rankest abuse came from the copperheads, among whom none was more inventive in his vituperation than a Wisconsin editor, Marcus M. Pomeroy. Lincoln, he wrote, was “but the fungus from the corrupt womb of bigotry and fanaticism”—indeed a “worse tyrant and more inhuman butcher than has existed since the days of Nero.” As the election of 1864 approached, Pomeroy editorialized: “The man who votes for Lincoln now is a traitor and murderer.... And if he is elected to misgovern for another four years, we trust some bold hand will pierce his heart with dagger point for the public good.”

[Master of Orion]

To quote the legendary moonbat Karl Marx, history happens twice: "the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce." Tragedy was narrowly avoided when Copperhead Democrats failed to cause the Union to lose the Civil War. The farce is the gang of treasonous boobs who make up the Democrat Party today.

As Mackubin Thomas Owens notes in a review of Jennifer Weber's Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln's Opponents in the North:

It is certain that the Union soldiers tired of hearing from the Copperheads that the Rebels could not be defeated. They surely tired of being described by the Copperheads as instruments of a tyrannical administration trampling the legitimate rights of the Southern states. The soldiers seemed to understand fairly quickly that the Copperheads preferred Lincoln's failure to the country's success. They also recognized that the Copperheads offered no viable alternative to Lincoln's policy except to stop the war. Does any of this sound familiar?

[G8 Diplomat]

Good news from Iraq, i.e. any news of US progress and al-Qaida deaths, is bad for the Dems. They can’t surrender and the public will see that their push for defeat was a failure and they’ll be screwed in 08.

Petraeus may have single-handedly fried the Democratic party before the election has even begun.

[Darnright]

“Liberals are loyal to philosophical abstractions—and seek harmony with the French and Germans. Conservatives are loyal to their own nation, and seek harmony with its Founders and heroes and guiding principles.”

Mr Gelernter is a wise man indeed.

[uncbob]

If it boils over quess which side the military will be on

[uncbob]

Back during the Depression Hoover tried to get legislation in the form of programs similar to those FDR implemented

The democrat congress voted them down because they wanted the depression to last at least long enough to get a democrat president

Of course the voters back then were just as dumb as those today as to how government at the Federal level is set up and Hoover got all the blame

[donmeaker]

The late War of the Rebellion was not strictly along geographical lines either. Over 50 regiments were raised for the Union from southern states. Northern traitors/Democrats nearly won the election of 1864, and would have, but for Sherman’s capture of Atlanta, and Grant’s liberal leave policy that permitted soldiers to return home to vote.

[dirtboy]

Excellent article. Which raises the question, why do the libs persist in such a viewpoint after its abject failure in the 1930s?

[Rush4U]

They will sell us out in a hearbeat, and we should not forget it.

There is no "will sell us out" about it. Look at the southern border and what they tried to do with the ports deal. We ARE being sold out.