Posted on 02/10/2008 2:42:33 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
I posted a squib on the National Review Web site about a robo call I received from John McCain. (Virginia's primary is Tuesday.) The call stressed that he would, if elected, be a down-the-line limited government conservative who would never raise taxes, would defend life, would enforce immigration laws and would win the war on terror. The candidate is trying, I said, to meet conservatives "more than halfway." The response of readers was, shall we say, emphatic.
One lady wrote that she would never vote for him as "He is the most disloyal, ill-tempered man and he brings out the worse in all of us. ..." Several readers made the point that after decades of suffering abuse at McCain's hands, conservatives are not going to fall into line for him now, no matter what blandishments he offers.
I know how they feel. The problem with McCain is not just that he strays. George Bush has strayed from conservatism, too. So has Fred Thompson. Certainly Mitt Romney has as well. But Sen. McCain has a knack for saying things in just the tones and accents that liberals prefer. In 2000, he condemned the late Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson as "agents of intolerance." In 2004, when Sen. John Kerry was getting his comeuppance from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, vets who had known him during the war and couldn't remain silent as the Democratic nominee distorted his war record, McCain weighed in by calling the Swift Boaters "dishonorable and dishonest." When the Bush Administration was being vilified as a nest of Torquemadas for using waterboarding on three occasions, McCain came forward to condemn waterboarding as torture.
(Excerpt) Read more at heraldnet.com ...
BTTT
So have I!
Has anyone been sworn in yet? NO It’s not too late. Don’t quit on us.
We have just been overrun by liberals in both parties, sort of like the Confederates in 1861!
That was mentioned earlier, and you are right. it might not be a good idea, at all. By the time November rolls around, I’m hoping the choices will be much clearer.
War is not a nice business. If the U.S. had not been willing to violate the Geneva Conventions on some occasions when it proved necessary, we'd likely be speaking German.
Ditto and Amen.
Hey, if you want to vote for Fred Thompson in November, be my guest. Just make sure you find out what the procedures are. By my understanding, in some states it's necessary to pre-register write-in candidates (among other things, to ensure that if "John Alan Smith" wins the election there aren't fifty different people named John Alan Smith all of whom claim victory) but there isn't necessarily any cost to do so.
I saw the interview President Bush had with Cris Wallace this Sunday. President Bush reminded us of problem of party unity that Ronald Reagan had to deal with in 1980. In that day, Reagan had to build a coalition of groups on the extreme right with the more moderate “Reagan Democrats.” His landslide election in 1980 was proof that it is possible to build such a coalition.
It was a mistake in Algeria and it is a mistake in this one.
The war is not going to be won in an interrogation chamber, but out in the field on the one hand, and in the American political process on the other. Since the last is by far the weakest part, if makes no sense whatever to hand AlQ a defeatist dem president because you dislike McCain's stance on torture.
Furthermore, even if you were right about its expediency, it would still be a matter of conscience not a party-line whip vote, and to demand that McCain of all people sign off on such a policy is completely inhuman. If a catholic pol feels he has to dissent on a death penalty vote, we'd make allowances. We can't be charitable about a man who was tortured for five years straight, not being able to support it as a policy?
Anyone who wants to become President should be prepared to personally drive a hot poker into the eyes of a prisoner if it would prevent a nuclear attack on one of our cities - regardless of any ramifications.
They would never be able to SAY it, but I want to have a gut feeling that they would DO it if necessary.
McCain would,
Obama would not,
Hillary would check which city it was first
At this point in the year's nutty proceedings, thus far -- in this whacked-out state -- nothing, but NOTHING elicits even so much as rapid blinking on my part, any longer. ;)
"I consider the government of the United States as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises. This results not only from the provision that no law shall be made respecting the establishment or free exercise of religion, but from that also which reserves to the states the powers not delegated to the United States. Certainly, no power to prescribe any religious exercise or to assume authority in religious discipline has been delegated to the General Government. It must then rest with the states, as far as it can be in any human authority." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Miller, 1808. http://tinyurl.com/nkdu7Conservatives are evidently as detached from the intentions of the Founders concerning state government religious powers as liberals are. After all, the honest interpretations of the Founder's intentions reflected by the Constitution, as evidenced by Jefferson's writings, show that the Constitution reflects conservative values, not liberal values, or the lack thereof.
So sadly, given that conservatives are barking up the wrong tree (federal / state) in the name of reclaiming their freedoms, particularly their religious freedoms, they can be accused of not knowing the Constitution as much as Matthew 22:29 indicates that the Sadducees wasted their time arguing ideas based on their faulty knowledge of the Scriptures.
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