Comments Posted By Jimmie
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"Calling her a potentially “beastly Congressman” but pointing out the obvious - that she would have been a reliable vote on procedural, party line matters which make up about 70% of the votes in the House - can hardly be construed as my offering her support. I doubt there will be many, if any, candidates worse than Scozzafava but there will be plenty that the rabid right will call RINO’s simply because they don’t line up 100% with their views."
Again, you close with a strawman. No one of any repute -- not a blogger, not a talk radio host, not a conservative politician -- is asking for (or demanding) complete conservative ideological purity. It is not happening. Give me an example where a RINO is being drummed out for lack of purity as opposed to specific objections to a specific substantial position that runs far afield from basic conservatism.
What they are demanding is that GOP candidates at least fall in the mainstream of the Republican Party on bedrock conservative issues. They are also asking that if there's a choice, the party back the person who holds more of those positions thank anyone else (like, say in the FL Senate race). That is hardly unreasonable. Indeed it requires a distortion of what they are saying to name it so.
But, to the beginning of your comment, from whence comes your confidence that she'd be a reliable party-line vote? I'm not talking about the routine votes where caucus doesn't matter. For those votes, it really doesn't much matter what party she's with, does it? I'm talking about those votes where there is something real at stake, caucus unity is necessary to win, and every vote matters. Do you have any confidence, given her record, that Scozzafava would have been a reliable Republican vote? I'd say that her immediate defection to the Democrats proves that she wouldn't have been.
Now if she is acceptable to the Republican Party, who would be considered unacceptable? What the grassroots have done in NY-23 is put a very firm, and long-overdue, line in the sand. We are demanding, not complete ideological purity, but faithfulness to the core tenets of conservatism: limited government, low taxes, capitalism, and personal freedom and responsibility. Is that truly unacceptable to you?
I simply don't understand that. It looks to me that you are being every bit as extreme and reactionary in your moderate ideology as you accuse the conservative grassroots of being in theirs.
Comment Posted By Jimmie On 2.11.2009 @ 23:08
Rick, you could not be more wrong, coming and going. You, like so many others whose rantings on this same subject I've read the past three days, have built your argument on a strawman -- that Scozzafava was anything close to the mainstream of the Republican Party. That could not be farther from the truth and, as someone who claiims the mantle of Super Reason Man, I'd expect you to get that one at least half correct.
Once you blew that, the rest of your analysis just doesn't fly. You imagine barbarians charging the gate, but if you rub your eyes and look again, all you'll see are fed-up ordinary citizens who are exercising their Constitutional rights to own their own government.
They are not demanding litmus tests any more rigorous than you'd expect from a plain-vanilla Republican: don't work hand in hand with ACORN, don't back humongous and intrusive government and tax increases the likes of which we've not seen (in the form of the Stimulus Bill), don't be such an activist for on-demand abortions that you get an award named after Margaret Sanger, don't fight to take away secret ballots in the workplace, and so on.
These are radical, extreme ideological positions? I can't believe you honestly think so. I do think you've been overtaken with emotion and have decided to be as radical in your moderate ideology as you accuse the grassroots of being with their ideology. You are certainly not applying as much reason to the situation as you claim.
As for Newt, the grassroots have had ought to say about him since he decided to find common cause with Nancy Pelosi and Al Sharpton to push the fiction of AGW. At this point, Gingrich is a party pragmatist and not a conservative leader. How do I know that? Because he's decided to dig in his heels on positions that have not been conservative but have been in keeping with the message issued by the GOP leadership. We can argue about whether that is a good thing or not, but I doubt seriously that you can make a case that it's conservative. I'm also not terribly inclined to entertain the notion that conservatives should simply sit down and shut up, as you seem to recommend, because their betters in the GOP have spoken.
I wish you'd reconsider this essay, Rick. I believe it's deeply harmful and doesn't do credit to the intelligence and reason I know you possess in spades.
How often do I have to point out that conservatives were right to support Hoffman and ditch the liberal Dede? I couldn't have made that more clear either in my PJM article or this post. My point is not that conservatives should have accepted Dede but that the post-Dede outcry to go after "moderates" and RINO's" is idiotic and that the idea that the same tactics used in NY23 could be grafted elsewhere is loony.
Calling her a potentially "beastly Congressman" but pointing out the obvious - that she would have been a reliable vote on procedural, party line matters which make up about 70% of the votes in the House - can hardly be construed as my offering her support. I doubt there will be many, if any, candidates worse than Scozzafava but there will be plenty that the rabid right will call RINO's simply because they don't line up 100% with their views.ed.
Comment Posted By Jimmie On 2.11.2009 @ 16:57
ENOUGH WITH ALL OF THIS "OBAMA IS A MOOSLIM" CRAP
Rick, there is an angle that is worth some thought, I think. If the perception is that Obama was a Muslim, even for a little while as a child, and he left that faith to join another one, that may very well make him an apostate in the eyes of quite a few Muslims, some of whom are world leaders he is going to have to deal with. I don't think that's a right opinion to have, but it is certainly a popular one in Islam.
I wonder if he'll have real trouble even getting in the door in those countries, much less having any sort of diplomatic conversation with them.
Comment Posted By Jimmie On 25.02.2008 @ 09:20
