Peggy Noonan: Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

The Wall Street Journal ^ | January 25, 2008 | Peggy Noonan

[Aristotelian]

Declarations: The primary campaign is tearing the Democrats apart. President Bush already did that to the Republicans.

We begin, as one always must now, again, with Bill Clinton. The past week he has traveled South Carolina, leaving discord in his wake. Barack Obama, that "fairytale," is low, sneaky. "He put out a hit job on me." The press is cruelly carrying Mr. Obama's counter-jabs. "You live for it."

(snip)

As for the Republicans, their slow civil war continues. . . . The rage is due to many things. A world is ending, the old world of conservative meaning, and ascendancy. Loss leads to resentment. (See Clinton, Bill.)

(snip)

It will all come down to: Whom do Republicans believe? Mr. Romney in spite of his past and now-disavowed liberal positions? Or Mr. McCain in spite of his forays, the past 10 years, into a kind of establishment mindset that has suggested that The Establishment Knows Best?

Do conservatives take inspiration from Mr. Romney's newness? Or do they take comfort and security from Mr. McCain's rugged ability to endure, and to remind?

It is along those lines the big decision will be made.

[redgolum]

Elect Rinos, then don’t be surprised when they act like one.

[AmericanInTokyo]

Your perspective has fundamental faults.

First, I object to your definition of a "flop". When we quite clearly take into consideration the undue and negative influence of the Mass Media (I watched them closely, believe me, they have great pull and are extremely slanted against true conservatives) as well as certain state GOP parties and their attitude towards exclusionarism and the Debates.

[slowhandluke]

WOULD HAVE CHANGED THIS COUNTRY AS WE HAVE KNOWN IT, FOREVER

A mild Carter-like response to 9/11 (ala Iranian hostage situation) by Al Gore would have provoked a Reagan like shift to the right as the electorate would have been furious.

GWB gave the left cover after 9/11 in a 'we are all in this together' approach, that the left abandoned as soon as possible. The war is as much Bill Clinton's legacy as GWBs, but Billy boy was let off the hook.

[cowdog77]

Gore would have been far worse.”
_______________________________
That’s how I justified my vote as well.
Bush has been a disappointment but he was the lesser of the two non-choices.

[cowdog77]

Somewhere, some time, you have to make a stand and draw a line in the sand and say NO MORE! If you don’t, then the party establishment will keep sending us RINOs.”
_______________________________
That seems to ring true....it’s going to be rough “taking the medicine.”

[cowdog77]

Who will forget our Senators refusing to view the evidence that should have driven Hill & Bill into political exile.”
________________________________
I will never forget.

RE-ELECT NO ONE!

[Tailback]

Do you really want Hillary to appoint the next 3 or 4 Supreme Court Justices?

The Democrats have shown us the playbook. They need 60 Senators to bring a vote on nominees to the floor.

A strong opposition will bring a Hillary presidency into gridlock (which is what we want) and combined with a looming recession and being able to hang illegal aliens around her neck means a good chance for a (conservative) republican resurgance in 2012. I refuse to vote for another RINO. Another RINO presidency will make the GOP go the way of the Whigs. They are already teetering close to the brink.

[Incorrigible]

 

[mimaw]

Fred dithered. He hemmed and hawed and did not vigorously campaign until it was too late. He wrote position papers for the net that only people who live and die politics read. His campaign staff was poorly organized. He read rave reviews on sites like this and thought the whole country knew what he was about. They didn’t and by not getting out there and pressing the flesh he missed a golden opportunity. This you can’t blame on the press.

[nicmarlo]

Given that list of failures....one could honestly wonder if all of that malfeasance was intentional.

[mimaw]

I’m beginning to believe Fred never really wanted it.

[nicmarlo]

I don’t believe he did.

[magellan]

Finally, someone has spoken the truth.

The reason the RadioMafia(tm), (i.e., Rush, Prager, HH) have vilified Huckabee is because they believe Huckabee is another Bush, exactly what Peggy says about Bush, but they are afraid to vilify Bush because they fear they lose their audience.

They long for a Reagan, someone who will talk a good social conservative game without actually being an evangelical themselves. That means supporting Romney or Thompson. But Thompson has the baggage of being a pro-abortion lobbiest and voting for McCain-Feingold.

Rush, Prager, HH and company don't have the courage to say, Bush is a disaster, and we need a business savvy, pragmatic conservative like Romney. So instead, they don't say a bad word against Bush, and they vilify other social conservatives, in hopes Romney just wins.

[wpa_mikeb]

In order to continue to be invited to the Washington cocktail parties, you have to bash Bush. Doesn’t matter if you’re a conservative or liberal. You must be a Bush basher. It’s the trendy thing to do. It’s so easy ‘recalling’ that you railed against Bush eight years ago and claimed those of us supporting Bush are Bush apologists. I supported Bush eight years ago and I still support Bush now. Period. No “buts”.

No President is perfect. Even Ronald Reagan. If it’s perfection you’re after, you’ll never, ever find it in politics.

So now Peggy Noonan will be invited to the Washington cocktail parties, where she will be congratulated for bashing Bush and those who have an attention span of a gnat will praise her for ‘seeing the light’ or some other nonsense.

God help us all if we’re so weak that we think we’re electing the next American Idol instead of a Commander in Chief.

[muawiyah]

Part of our voting problem has to do with the last time a US Senator was elected President ~ think back all the way to the 1960 election.

I'm not counting those who might have served as Senator, just those in the Senate who were elected from there to the Presidency.

That's 47 years ago.

Last guy before him was Warren G. Harding (the Republican party's own Bill Clinton) 39 years earlier.

There has been a national, and Republican, preference for GOVERNORS.

There are 7 who were ever in the Senate who've been elected President. In contrast, since the last member of the Senate became President we've voted 7 times for someone who'd been a governor!

[muawiyah]

The greater issue in the DC gun case is whether or not Congress had the Constitutional authority to delegate its exclusive legislative jurisdiction to the DC City Council.

Once that's decided the gun case is instantly resolved since all the laws passed subsequently by the DC government are null and void.

The USSC will not directly address the gun case ~ just the legal basis of the law underlying it.

The Administration would probably prefer to leave the DC government in place, hence their mealy mouthed Amicus.

[muawiyah]

The primary objection to Harriet wasn't that she was a RINO but that she was a Protestant who may have been a baptised Catholic earlier in her life.

Just review the very first objections raised about her here in FR if you don't think so.

It's still difficult to lay the RINO label on her ~ that's reserved for ELECTED officials.

[muawiyah]

Wasn't always a "wall" ~ sometimes it was this godawful fence, with barbed wire, landmine strips, guardtowers with automatic machineguns, drunken Russians tossing vodka bottles down to blow up mines, and so on.

I was there. I saw it. That's how it was done. Eventually they were convinced to tear down their "wall".

[TheRightGuy]

18 years to be exact.

19, actually.

[muawiyah]

Apparantly none of you guys realize DC is a “special case”. Read through the Constitution and get back to us regarding who has “exclusive legislative jurisdiction” over DC ~ and then ‘splain to me what the DC government’s job is.