Category Archives: Republicans

The Unbearable Lightness Of Being Republican

Barack Obama, Ethics, Government, Law, Morality, Politics, Republicans

The Joe Sestak “scandal” is nothing but garden-variety politics routinely practiced by both parties. Yet as Rome burns, such quid pro quo is what is consuming the Republican Party’s bobbleheads. The signal dishonor of which Obama operatives stand accused, via Sam Stein, is offering a job to “Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Penn) in exchange for him not entering the Pennsylvania Senate primary.” The act has “seasoned political observers, historians, and lawyers responding with veritable yawns”:

American presidential history is littered with quid pro quos, implicit and explicit secret job offers, and backroom deals, so much so that the Sestak offer may be more the norm than the exception to it.
“It is completely unexceptional,” said Dr. Russell Riley, associate professor and chair of the Miller Center’s Presidential Oral History Program at the University of Virginia. “I read some place today that this is evidently illegal, which was shocking news to me. I don’t know what the statutes are that would bear on this… it just doesn’t seem to me to particularly rise to the level of being newsworthy in the first place and the fact that it’s spun out into a scandal has been surprising.”
George Edwards, a Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Jordan Chair in Presidential Studies at Texas A&M University, says: “There is no question whatsoever that presidents have often offered people positions to encourage them not to do something or make it awkward for them to do it. Presidents have also offered people back-ups if they ran for an office and lost. All this is old news historically.”

The complete column is HERE.

Note, this is not to say the shenanigans of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and President Bill Clinton were legal. They could very well be illegal. They are certainly morally dubious. But politicians are by definition immoral. By blowing the scandal du jour out of proportion, an unspeakably crooked class is made to sweat the small stuff only.

I guess Republicans have a stake in perpetuating this state-of-affairs.

Update II: The Palin Premise

Ann Coulter, Crime, GUNS, Hollywood, Political Philosophy, Reason, Republicans, Sarah Palin

WHAT STRIKES ME again and again about what goes for conservatism these days is the feeble arguments used to make a case—they’re so, well, liberal in their illogic.

Via the Charlotte Observer: “Sarah Palin headlined the NRA convention in uptown Charlotte Friday afternoon, speaking to a crowd of 9,000 gun rights supports at Time Warner Cable Arena.”

MSNBC TV has just reported (falsely, I hope) that Palin went on to call on Hollywood to clean up its violence-glorifying, crime-impacting ways before demanding that law-abiding citizens give up their guns.

First, implicit in this stupid exhortation is the unfounded notion that graphic visuals cause violence. How like Tipper! In their censuring attempts, conservatives like Palin remind me of Democrat Tipper Gore and her comical attempt in the 1980s to censor rock lyrics.

Also following from the Palin premise is that, should Hollywood clean up its act, so to speak, we gun owners will indeed consider giving up the right to protect sacred life and property.

Can’t this woman ask my girl, Michelle Bachmann, to help her formulate a logical thought!

Update I (May 15): Thanks to Jack Slater (Letter of the Week) for putting things into perspective as to Palin. I ask Myron to repeat some of his classic observations about the woman. No one is listening; you have to repeat ad nauseam.

(Incidentally, the only individual on the NRA Invited Speakers list who deserves accolades for his efforts on behalf of liberty is … the Democrat (once Reagan appointee), Jim Webb.)

With few exceptions, no amount of analysis I’ve provided on this blog has moved the Republicans who read it (and yes, that was a pejorative) any closer to the truth. Coulter, Palin; Limbaugh, Hannity—they can rest assured. Their futures and fortunes are guaranteed by a blind following as ignorant as it is loyal. All you puppies want is to wag your tails for your masters or mistresses, and forget their hypocrisy and intellectual corruption over the years. I won’t even advise that you read my Palin archives (avoid it) on the main site and on the blog; I know you are more comfortable with feeling warm and fuzzy than following the facts and the principles.

Palin is wrong on almost everything except on energy. On energy and environmental issues she is indeed an ace. That’s all.

Coulter recently appeared on CNN together with some actress, Aisha Tyler, an avowed Obamaite (Tavis Smiley was excellent compared to… Anderson Cooper). The lefty was better than the conservative Queen Bee who could muster only a few silly, spiteful quips in support of freedom.

If you believe these characters are the republic’s last hope, then you deserve their brand of freedom (although Iraqis don’t). They and the wars they’ve whored for are, by and large, what got us into this financial morass.

Update II (April 16): McCain supports Gov. Brewer. Palin is worse than useless on immigration. Anyone who cares about what Peter Brimelow calls the “National Question” will apprise himself of Palin’s hollow, “we-are-a-nation-of-immigrants” positions. She motivates her support for protecting the border with reference, mainly, to national security—not crime, sovereignty, the transformation of the country’s character.

The other characters for whom everyone goes to bat aim to bring the country back to Bush and Laura’s party (Laura approves of BHO’s Kagan appointment). It’s curious that readers would see this as serving to awaken Boobus Americanus.

“The Democratic and Republican parties each operates as a necessary counterweight in a partnership designed to keep the pendulum of power swinging in perpetuity from the one set of colluding quislings to the other, and back.”

And their supporters play musical chairs along with them.

Update II: Boycott The Republican Party (Buy Arizona)

Federalism, IMMIGRATION, Private Property, Republicans, States' Rights

When your city is buckling under the weight of mandated diversity—crime, illiteracy, crumbling and crowded schools, closing hospitals—what do you do? Launch a boycott against a state, Arizona, that is attempting to ward off the same fate.

“The Los Angeles City Council passed a resolution Wednesday that cuts some of its business ties to Arizona.”

Most repugnant is that the party that “needs not a bigger tent, but a giant tin-foil hat” HAS “unanimously recommended Tampa as the site of the 2012 Republican National Convention,” when Phoenix was a contender.

Slimer Steele, the attention seeking RNC Chairman, assured the WaPo it “was a business decision.”

That’s the extent to which the GOP is attuned to the passions and interests of its base.

Boycott the Republican Party.

Boycotts are the prerogative of private property owners; as their patronage, or lack thereof, affects only those within their economic sphere. LA City pols should go back to doing what they were hired to do: pick up trash, give permits for Gay Pride parades, etc.

The GOP ought to have quietly given a nod to its base and the plank they claim to support—law and order, the right to repel invaders, self-defense—and plonked their pampered behinds in Phoenix. I am sure there are plenty stripper clubs that meet Steele’s exacting standards in that city.

Update I: DICKING AROUND. Is Dick Morris for real? The guy makes Steele look like a man of integrity. His site: there is nothing worth reading there, except for numbers, stats and other probabilities which can be had at Gallop. But Republicans buy his books in the millions.

Update II (May 13): Back to LA-Council clowns. A city that is bankrupt boycotting a state that isn’t—how rich is that? And how well they are serving their constituents!?

If I haven’t yet issued this cri de coeur: Buy Arizona. And write in to tell us what products to look out for.

Updated: Palin’s Fiorina Frivoloty

Conservatism, Elections, John McCain, Military, Republicans, Sarah Palin

Perhaps Palin could not abide the fact that Chuck DeVore tempers his pro-military position with skepticism about intervention around the world. Perhaps, as a raving feminist, Palin feels obliged to support a woman over a man. And perhaps her endorsement of Carly Florina “in the GOP contest for the California Senate nomination” is just a bit of the same polite politics she played when campaigning for McMussolini:
 Palin knows Fiorina, “a top surrogate to Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) presidential campaign.”

Politico says “Fiorina recently warned against the ‘racist’ tone that has taken over the debate of Arizona’s new immigration law.” That’s the kind of Republican she is.

Whatever Palin is playing at, it is clear she goes with some mysterious flow—menstrual maybe?

DeVore has been called a “Tea Party darling” and a “most reliably Reaganesque representative.”

Update (May 10): The allusion to hormonal fluctuations was humor; meant not to be taken literally, but as a metaphor for Palin’s unreliable nature when it comes to liberty.