Posted on 09/17/2010 4:18:33 AM PDT by ejdrapes
By Charles Krauthammer Tuesday in Delaware was a bad day not only for Republicans but also for conservatives. Tea Partyer Christine O'Donnell scored a stunning victory over establishment Republican Mike Castle. Stunning but pyrrhic. The very people who have most alerted the country to the perils of President Obama's social democratic agenda may have just made it impossible for Republicans to retake the Senate and definitively stop that agenda Bill Buckley -- no Mike Castle he -- had a rule: Support the most conservative candidate who is electable. A timeless rule of sober politics, and particularly timely now. This is no ordinary time. And this is no ordinary Democratic administration. It is highly ideological and ambitious. It is determined to use whatever historical window it is granted to change the country structurally, irreversibly. It has already done so with Obamacare and has equally lofty ambitions for energy, education, immigration, taxation, industrial policy and the composition of the Supreme Court. That's what makes the eleventh-hour endorsements of O'Donnell by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and Sarah Palin so reckless and irresponsible. Of course Mike Castle is a liberal Republican. What do you expect from Delaware? A DeMint? Castle voted against Obamacare and the stimulus. Yes, he voted for cap-and-trade. That's batting .667. You'd rather have a Democrat who bats .000 and who might give the Democrats the 50th vote to control the Senate? Castle wasn't only electable. He was unbeatable. Why do you think Beau Biden, long groomed to inherit his father's seat, flinched from running? Because Castle, who had already won statewide races a dozen times, scared him off. Democrats had already given up on the race.The Buckley rule
Friday, September 17, 2010
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
You do not know me.
You know nothing about me.
You make no attempt to ask.... just pronounce judgment.
I spoke about Conservatives being "power drunk" and forgetting some very reality-based rules.
Thank you for being the example that so very well proves my point.
HearMe: “Its not enough to filibuster, dont you want to abolish Obama Care, for one example.”
Of course, but I think it’s pretty clear that’s not going to happen with a bunch of moderates. Let’s watch what Mike Castle does from here out. Certainly he’ll put party loyalty first and endorse O’Donnell, right? Do you honestly believe he’s a solid vote for repealing ObamaCare? Laughable!
I gotta tell you. I’m absolutely amazed by the FReepers who turn a blind eye to history. It’s not like we haven’t had this electability before ideology stuff before. We’ve been there. Done that. It DOES NOT WORK.
Would this be said by any true Conservative? No.
Does it, written after the election, give any respect at all to the electability of someone who just beat the "unbeatable?" No.
Does this beating a "live" horse make any sense whatsoever to someone who wants the pubbies/O'Donnell to win in November and possibly have the GOP control the Senate??? Absolutely not.
Charles and Rove have a lot of explaining to do for attacking after the election.
10-1 odds against? BS. I can't guarantee she'll win but if The Liberal Progressive won then we still would not control the Senate. We would just lose another alleged Republican to the democrat party like Arlen Spector.
The Buckley Rule has been replaced by the Palin Principle. I believe she is better in tune then any pollster. This is a person who has been around the Country listening to the people. The conditions are right to Restoring the Reagan Era and Mrs. Palin is doing her part to see that through.
A Conservative Supreme Court is crucial to Conservatism and Spector helped make that happen.
As a Republican, he may have been an irritating prick but on balance, I repeat, he did more good then harm when the alternative would have been another Democrat vote.
I think paulycy sums it up pretty well: “Does this beating a “live” horse make any sense whatsoever to someone who wants the pubbies/O’Donnell to win in November and possibly have the GOP control the Senate??? Absolutely not.”
What’s done is done. So, why do you keep beating a “live” horse? If you aren’t trying to discourage us, what’s your motive? You just keep pounding away (on thread after thread) that we’re a bunch of fools for supporting O’Donnell. Again, what’s your motive?
BTW, I’m not saying your (and Krauthammer’s) argument is completely without merit. I can imagine some isolated cases where the conservative is so radical and the electorate so moderate/leftist that one MIGHT need to vote for a slightly less conservative nominee based on electability. BUT, O’Donnell is NOT unelectable, and Mike Castle is NOT a slightly moderate conservative. He’s a leftist!
Chuck is a genius. He just happens to be wrong on this one. it happens.
You are sooooooo pro-RINO (from Castle to Spector)
Welcome to FR.
The issue for both Krauthammer and myself is not the individuals here. It is the body.
If Castle was a certain win and would make give the Republicans the Senate, a sure thing was preferable to what occurred. It stops Obama which is today the only crucial step to take.
It may play out that this is such a Republican landslide that this seat is not even important. Or Republicans will disapoint and it is not important.
And maybe even, I hope, O’Donnell can pull it off and she turns the Senate
But to celebrate now when the end result could be terrible is plain foolish.
Conservatism shouldn’t mean rigidly that results in suicide. Not in this year and certainly not when going up against Obama in 2012.
“Its not enough to filibuster, dont you want to abolish Obama Care, for one example.”
Please explain to me how we “abolish Obama Care” with 51 votes in the Senate while the Kenyan anti-Christ still usurps the White House.
sitetest
Great response. You’re an intellectual giant.
I’m pro- Castle and Spector?
Maybe I’m just anti Democrat and on any given day will take the worst Republican over Democrat control.
If that makes me a bad guy, so be it.
HearMe: “...when the alternative would have been another Democrat vote.”
Well of course that’s true in most cases, but you’re framing the argument to support your conclusion. You seem to ignore the possibility of a more conservative senator than Specter. Since the party elites worked hard to ensure we never got the opportunity to run a conservative in Specter’s seat, I guess we’ll never know.
Either way, I don’t think most conservatives are going to tolerate your way anymore. We’re tired of getting shafted by the party moderates. I suppose if our moderates were like their moderates, who nearly always vote in lockstep with the party, it might have been different. But “our” moderates always seemed to end up voting like Democrats. Strange, eh?
I prefer a Republican majority, first, above all.
If they set the agenda, they may get support from conservative Democrats- especially if those Democrats see the writing on the wall.
Maybe not roll back Obama Care, but at least possibly starve it to death.
When I write about Spector, I am referring to what was.
Certainly it would have been better if a more Conservative person held the seat, but if it was Spector or a Democrat, are you denying that Spector was the better choice.
Ask Thomas who he would have preferred in that seat during his confirmation hearings.
If Spector helped get Thomas on the bench, one would think there would be an iota of residual good will toward him because for all his idiocy nothing he singularly did on the dark side- at least prior to switching sides- equaled the good he did with Thomas.
You made a statement, an assertion. You stated that being able to filibuster isn't enough, and then asked, don't folks want to repeal Deathcare.
I asked you a question. Can you answer it? It's not too tough a question - please explain to me how we will overturn Deathcare with 51 votes in the Senate.
YOU are the one who put it out there that the difference between having Castle and not having Castle in the Senate is the difference between filibustering and repealing Deathcare.
So, spell it out. How do we get from 51 seats to repeal of Deathcare while the Kenyan is still in the White House?
If you can't spell it out, then I'll assume that you have no idea how to do it, and you're just trying to blow smoke up our asses.
Oh, wait, I see you've already retreated:
“Maybe not roll back Obama Care, but at least possibly starve it to death.”
You don't think that with 50 seats in the Senate, we can't stop whatever legislation we want to stop? And if we win the House (you remember - the other branch of Congress without which you can't actually pass a law), you don't think we can do a good bit of starving from there?
Remember, even WITH 51 seats in the Senate, the most that we can do is create veto-bait. While that has some modest value, I'm not at ALL sure that it's worth having Mike Castle in the Senate. You haven't made any case whatsoever for him.
sitetest
You really should reevaluate that opinion.
I would any day prefer to get shafted by the worst Republicans then be disemboweled by Liberal Democrats.
One would think with an Obama in the White House, with the long term damage he is inflicting on the Nation, that lesson should be obvious. At this moment in time wouldn't you prefer even a moderate Republican in the White House rather then Obama? If your answer is No. We will never have a meeting of the minds and I will never understand your view. If your answer is YES- well that's all I'm saying.
I love Krauthammer. What the hell is amatter with him already?
Isn't Krauthammer also a supporter of gun control? He definitely comes off as a little too "moderate" sometimes...
HearMe: “At this moment in time wouldn’t you prefer even a moderate Republican in the White House rather then Obama?”
I don’t like hypothetical questions. I prefer to deal with what is real.
The reality is, we are worse off today because of moderates in the Republican Party. We don’t have smaller government, we don’t have a more moral society, and we don’t have greater liberty. We’ve had your type of majority, and it FAILED us.
Truth be told, we don’t know if more conservative candidates can win, because the party leaders work to ensure that never happens. They always say we conservatives have to suck it up and sacrifice our ideology (in major ways btw), because moderates are more electable.
What exactly IS the electability argument? Since conservatives are on the right and moderates are in the middle, we are told to assume moderates earn more votes because they can draw from both left and right. Based on that (erroneous) assumption, electability is actually just a ploy to get people to vote for moderate/centrists. You might as well call it the Vote Moderate argument.
Hmmm. You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time. I think that applies here.
That's fools gold: nice and shiny, but not the real thing.
My preference is for a governing conservative majority. That is totally different from a Republican majority.
We've had your preference before - a Republican majority in both the Senate and House, and a Republican president. What happened?
They didn't govern as conservatives. Publicity hounds like Specter, Castle, McCain, Snowe, and Collins fawned in front of the cameras on every controversial issue, claiming to be the "middle ground" and implying good guys like DeMint, Inhofe, and Coburn were too radical to be reasoned with on legislation.
What did we get for it?
- Medicare prescription drug benefit
- More federal bureaucracies
- More debt
- More pork spending
- We came within an eyelash of getting amnesty for illegals
- Republicans lost in 2006
- Republicans lost in 2008
- Barack Hussein Obama
- The American people lost faith in Republicans
- Republicans were rated lower on tax and spending than demonrats in polls!
That is a pyrrhic victory; you won short term, and then lost big long-term because your victories were hollow and meaningless.
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