Posted on 02/16/2010 8:10:38 AM PST by rabscuttle385
During her speech to the first ever National Tea Party Convention in Nashville on Saturday, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin discouraged the very idea of a national organization, urging the movement to stay leaderless and decentralized. This was the most important and valuable part of Palin’s speech.
As for the rest of it–Sarah sounded pretty much like the same old Republican Party.
Despite the many independents that make up the movement, the tea parties in large part represent a long overdue reexamination of conservative principles. A big-spending Democratic president seems to have awakened grassroots conservatives enough to finally lament the big spending of the last Republican president, and plenty of incumbents from both parties face voter backlash in 2010 and possibly beyond, particularly if they supported bailouts, stimulus, national healthcare, or other massive debt-incurring legislation.
The tea partiers are right to acknowledge and denounce Bush’s big-government growth of Medicare, the implementation of No Child Left Behind, and Dubya’s other expansions of the domestic state. But what they still seem to forget is what made conservatives so tolerant of big government during that time—an almost religious preoccupation with supporting the Iraq War.
Today, defense spending remains the largest part of the federal budget, dwarfing the bailouts, stimulus, healthcare, and other government programs that offend tea partiers most, and President Obama is still expanding that budget and escalating our wars. One would think cost-conscious voters would at least question Obama’s wisdom in continuing Bush’s exorbitant foreign policy. Yet few tea partiers are asking such questions, and according to Palin, Obama’s primary weakness is that he’s not enough like George W. Bush.
Following up her tea party speech on “Fox News Sunday,” Palin said of Obama, “If he decided to toughen up and do all that he can to secure our nation and our allies, I think people would perhaps shift their thinking a little bit and decide, Well, maybe he’s tougher than …he is today, and there wouldn’t be as much passion to make sure that he doesn’t serve another four years.”
What is Palin trying to say? That tea party anger towards Obama would lessen if the president was to “toughen up,” becoming even more intent on waging war? Does Palin believe that the massive domestic spending conservatives don’t like would be tolerated so long as Obama increases the massive foreign spending conservatives do like? Isn’t this exactly what happened under Bush?
At a time when a more radicalized, grassroots conservative base could feasibly be persuaded to question government spending as a whole; Palin seems intent on leading the populist Right back into the same old, big government, pro-war, any-war mindset. Conservatives as thoughtful as columnist George Will and as bombastic as radio host Michael Savage have asked recently if American dollars and lives are worth spending in Afghanistan. But for Palin, still, there is no question.
The necessity of endless war and the gargantuan government needed to sustain it is also not in question for the neoconservatives. When uber-neocon Daniel Pipes wrote an article for National Review Online last week called “How to Save the Obama Presidency: Bomb Iran,” the alleged purpose of the piece was to give the commander in chief some pointers on how to keep his command in 2012. But make no mistake—Pipes’s main concern is that somebody bombs Iran, regardless of which president or party. Pat Buchanan responded to Pipes in his syndicated column, asking if Obama would indeed play what the Buchanan calls “the war card,” something presidents have done in the past to boost their popularity. The difference is, traditional conservative Buchanan was clearly chastising what the neoconservative Pipes was advocating—the U.S. waging war simply to boost a politician’s poll numbers.
But Palin didn’t make the distinction, telling Fox News, “Say [Obama] played, and I got this from Buchanan, reading one of his columns the other day. Say he played the war card. Say he decided to declare war on Iran… things would dramatically change if he decided to toughen up and do all that he can to secure our nation…”
If the tea parties are supposed to represent a break from the big spending of both parties, Palin’s foreign policy views alone negate the entire tea party message. If the largest part of the U.S. budget—defense—is to be expanded indefinitely in the name of “toughness,” how can grassroots conservatives argue against bailouts, stimulus, and national healthcare, each of which costs much less? Real “toughness” might include not just using the same old Bush jargon, but a serious cost/benefit analysis of the U.S.’s habit of putting soldiers in harm’s way halfway around the globe for no discernible reason—while just mindlessly assuming our government has America’s best interests at heart.
Above all, real conservative “toughness” might require a real questioning of government at all levels. Unfortunately, conservatives whose attachment to the warfare state remains every bit as passionate as liberals’ attachment to the welfare state, continue to prove they have no serious intention of dismantling big government–only making noise about it. Just like Sarah Palin.
Oklahoma passed strict immigration laws a few years ago and many illegals left the state voluntarily knowing their fate if they remained.Many left, and many went to other states.The federal government will not have to physically remove millions of illegals as they to will leave the country of their own accord if the federal government strictly enforced federal laws.
If all states (and the feds) enforced current laws we would see a massive change in the amount of illegal insurgent criminal invading aliens here.
It's one thing to screw up and miss one of the many laws in our overly litigious society, a natural byproduct of Big Government and its attempt to micro-manage everything.
It's another thing to advocate that the U.S. government simply give up on enforcing valid law en masse.
Trying to stretch my position to the extreme in an attempt to make me appear as a kook...now that's sad, but not totally unexpected from the Squatter Support Squad.
No. You’re just a plain old garden variety RINO.
“Yes, we must immediately imprison 11 million illegals in camps, then drive them on a Bataan march across the Rio.”
Why not?
They marched their asses over here, they can march back.
It was good enough for my ancestors (and they didn’t break in illegally!), it’s good enough for them. Except with the squatter law breakers, we send them on planes with food!
Where is Andrew Jackson when we need him!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2401786/posts?page=12#12
So Defense is just over half of the 1/3 that is considered "discretionary". They also lump in money needed to maintain our embassys around the world as defense.
There is nothing disingenuous about making a distinction between an amnesty that puts people who entered the country illegal onto a track toward citizenship, thereby rewarding their contempt for law, and an amnesty that regularizes their status by ‘grandfathering’ them into a guest-worker program as part of a reform of immigration policy that simultaneously secures the borders and addresses the reliance of some industries on economic migrants.
I have long been absolutely opposed to the former, which is what everyone from G.W. Bush left seem to mean (in Orwellian fashion) by “comprehensive immigration reform” and supportive of the latter, which is what the phrase should mean. It sounds to me like Palin is spot on on the issue.
She did make anti amnesty comments back in Nov. and Dec. I'm surprised you don't know about them being how " so objective about Palin" you seem to be.
Obama and the Democrat Congress are decimating our defense companies all the while we fight two wars against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and what was Al Qaeda in Iraq.
As an up close and personal observation, I can tell you our best engineers are leaving (or being laid off from) our defense companies.
Yet you're "so concerned" about defense spending. Very sad, really.
Ergo, anyone who exceeds the speed limit while driving has no respect for the law and will violate other laws as they do the traffic laws.
I am in fact a strong proponent of increased enforcement of the immigration laws. I am also smart enough to know that the laws were not written with any intent to enforce them, so collectively they are not enforceable. A single minded devotion to enforcing the existing laws will result in a massive waste of resources and only limited progress in creating immigration control.
It is, however, posssible to modify the laws to identify qualified individual who would be a benefit to the country, value the opportunity presented to them and are willing to make an enforceable commitment to be law abiding, tax paying, English speaking residents of the United States. Isn't that really the end goal?
They should rename it the southern national convention.
A movement for liberty should not be a centralized movement, but rather one that advocates each individual people’s of the united States desire for more liberty.
That means in liberal pro-drug states they should be nullying drug laws. In Conservative pro-gun and pro-life states they should be nulling gun laws and nullying the Federal Roe v. wade. And everything in between!
The Very idea of Liberty is not a uniform homogeneous consent, it is different to each of us, and it speaks in the very simple language of decentralized power.
We need not agree on how to uses that power, indeed that is the whole point! we don’t and will never fully agree on that.
We should not even try, for trying is to compromise where we do not need to compromise!
In truth only “compromise” we need make is to leave each other alone so that we can each best pursue our own happiness. That should be our one and only Federal policy, as any other policy forces us to compromise more then necessary.
To this same end we need not a signal political party, but rather we should utilizes BOTH political party’s where they are willing to help us. We are a movement of people pursue our own happiness, not a political party.
Liberty is not something that has an identical image for every man,woman and child. Indeed the very nature of liberty defy that cookie cutter image because the very nature of individuals are different form each other.
Liberty is that which WE define and choose for ourselves, and our own communities. We should not and need not agree on theses things because we are not all the same person!
Ergo we shouldn't charge anyone who commits murder since laws addressing murder weren't really written to prevent such a crime
I based my statements on your exact words. Now please provide where I indicated either of the above concepts. You can't because they could not be farther from the truth. You have assigned those positions to me without any basis.
Why bother modifying laws that aren't meant to be enforced in the first place as you claim? Just ignore them.
I would think that answer is rather self evident. To establish a set of laws that are coherent one to the next; that have specific intent and enforceable outcomes. Apparently you have never taken a close look at the existing laws. If you apprehend an illegal alien and establish, without violating their civil rights, that they are in fact illegal, what can be done? Deport them. So, they simply reenter the country. You catch them again and what can you do. Deport them. So they simply reenter the country... Get the picture? It costs more to apprehend, investigate and deport them than it does for them to get back in. The laws are not coherent. Among other things, the consequences do not adequately escalate with recidivism. At any given point, the laws might be clear on the actions to be taken at that time. However, those actions are not part of a comprehensive package to incentivise correct behavior and dis-incentivise bad behavior.
Why do you post this crap?
Maybe because he is an antiwar Paultard nutbar himself?
“What exactly about Rabs post was a lie? If Palin wants to come out against ANY kind of amnesty than she has every opportunity to do so with all her speeches, interviews and Fox News gig. But she doesn’t. She waffles, obfuscates, misdirects and in effect refuses to answer the question she’s asked.”
Palin has had 6 major interviews, where she was asked about amnesty, from Hannity to Lars Larson, and every time she “waffled, obfuscated, and misdirected”. To me, she is as phony as a 6 dollar bill. Her campaigning for McCain against Hayworth sealed it for me.
Those terms seem to always go together don't they?
One thing about the TEA party that can not be understated is that it must be open to all, including the “crasys”. because, at some basic level theses people too desire liberty. their reasons for that desiring of liberty are not important anymore then our own reasons.
Also their other believes beyond that desire of liberty are not important, we need not agree on them things, we need only agree on the need to leave each other alone to pursue our own happiness.
Whatever else you might believe is not my concern, as it nether breaks my leg nor picks my pocket, so long as you agree to leave me alone.
It REALLY doesn’t matter in the context of the TEA party movement if your a truther or whatever else!
“She did make anti amnesty comments back in Nov. and Dec. I’m surprised you don’t know about them being how “ so objective about Palin” you seem to be. “
Post it!
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