IntenseDebate - freesmith

10 years ago @ Commentary Magazine - Tea Party v. Establish... · 0 replies · +10 points

Mr. Wehner'

Tea party conservatives itched for a fight and rallied to Cruz because 1) they were still smarting over the 2012 Romney defeat, and 2) they doubted the sincerity of the GOP leadership and Beltway consulting class. One followed the other: Romney was painfully inauthentic and lost; the Beltway elite didn't deliver and feathered their own nests with campaign money. In such an environment the true believer like Cruz is irresistibly attractive.

When I, a middle-class conservative, heard about the meeting where Obama offered the Congress' leaders the subsidy for their own and their staffs' healthcare, I didn't react with the Vitter Amendment - I wondered why the GOP had not stormed out of the meeting en masse, shrieking "Hypocrisy!" and "Self-dealing!" to the heavens. How could I feel confident in the cautious advice of the GOP elite after that?

10 years ago @ Commentary Magazine - Can a Deadbeat America... · 0 replies · +3 points

The just-ended battle was a failure, but it only happened because of a vacuum at the top of the GOP leadership. It is up to them and to folks like Mr. Boot to conceive and implement a legislative and political strategy that can deliver the success that will defuse grass roots anger.

Leading from behind and hoping things will simply fall the GOP's way will not suffice.

10 years ago @ Commentary Magazine - Can a Deadbeat America... · 0 replies · +3 points

Mr. Boot:

What is the point of another column by a think tank Republican that lambasts the Tea Party? It is as useful as another 3-hour rant by a talk radio host which lambasts RINOs.

If you want to defuse the frustration and the anger that propelled Ted Cruz and his strategy to the forefront, you'd be better off using your time and your words to craft a way forward to end the unsustainable debt and mindless spending that are the source of the present - and of the coming - crisis.

The fathers of that debt and spending come from both parties; but the Democrats today have not disavowed the debt as most Republicans have. On the contrary, the Democrats favor higher levels of spending and higher taxes to pay for it, regardless of the consequences of laying a heavier burden of taxation on the strapped middle class and on a tentative business class.

10 years ago @ Commentary Magazine - The GOP Chooses Surren... · 0 replies · +2 points

No, Palefaces is much better because no actual paleface will object to the use of the sobriquet.

I think Robert Griffin III and Alfred Morris would be great Palefaces, don't you?

10 years ago @ Commentary Magazine - The GOP Chooses Surren... · 2 replies · +4 points

Example: The "strategy" of the GOP, if you can call it one, has been that Obamacare will collapse on its own as the American people come to see it as it is. But can that "strategy" be characterized as anything other than "leading from behind," which the Wehners and Tobins of the world correctly ridicule Obama for adopting? And isn't it a curiously convenient way for the Republican elite to avoid taking any real action or doing anything risky?

Example: Paul Ryan, the next-in-line, writes an Op-Ed in the WSJ "pointing the way forward" from the present stalemate. The essay does not mention Obamacare.

The Washington Palefaces - there's my suggestion for what to change the Redskins name to - such as Tobin and Wehner, like their congressional contacts, are perfectly comfortable with the ACA and the Big State. They don't want to do away with Obamacare; all it needs are the right people administering it. Smart people. People like them.

If you think that sounds just like what Democrats think, you're starting to figure things out.

10 years ago @ Commentary Magazine - The GOP Chooses Surren... · 0 replies · 0 points

The complaints by the GOP about Obama's lack of leadership are more projection than anything else. What group exhibits fewer qualities of leadership than the GOP elite?

Example: The Republican leaders in Congress had no plan to attack Obamacare, or to use the Continuing Resolution and debt ceiling to extract concessions. How else could a junior senator like Cruz have seized the initiative unless there was a vacuum at the top?

Example: The GOP leadership attended the meeting where the congressional staff subsidy for Obamacare was offered by the administration. There is no record that any tables were overturned in rage or that anyone walked out of that meeting in disgust at the blatant self-dealing that offer represented.

10 years ago @ Commentary Magazine - Cruz’s Grand Gesture... · 0 replies · +9 points

Tobin needs to study the left-wing and mainstream reactions to Wendy Davis and emulate their winning method - no criticism, only praise and hagiography.

That's one reason why the liberal minority continues to hold sway in the US: they know that in unity there is strength and that you never fire on your own when your vanguard is advancing.____

If Tobin is not fulfilled by criticizing Democrats fulltime, I suggest that instead of criticizing conservatives he simply write more columns about the horrible danger that Iran poses to the United States.

10 years ago @ Commentary Magazine - Wanted: A Republican G... · 0 replies · +3 points

I know what to do! Let's legalize 11 million non-citizens living in this country and simultaneously double the number of legal immigrants we admit each year for the foreseeable future.

That'll fix all our problems - unemployment, education, entitlements, healthcare costs and falling economic prospects among the middle and lower classes.

The Democrats, the Chamber of Commerce, Mark Zuckerberg and Rubio-Ryan-McCain all agree.

Don't you?

10 years ago @ Commentary Magazine - Are We Still Underesti... · 0 replies · +8 points

Santorum is - don't laugh - a Churchill-like figure. He glories in sounding the alarm in the night. In 2006 his Senate campaign focused on the Islamic threat even as his numbers were tanking statewide and his voters were moving to the Atlee-like cipher Junior Casey.

Absent an evident failure of the regime Santorum's voice will always seem shrill and scolding, his jeremiads out-of-place. But failure does happen. Many of us on this site often look at the trends in current events and echo Han Solo - "I got a bad feeling about this."

When forecasting three years down the road it is wise not to assume that things will stay as they are. They may, but it is quite possible that the sins of omission and commission of the past 5 years will bear their baleful fruit.

Should that happen - think 2008 - and the powers-that-be suddenly find themselves losing credibility as they simultaneously scramble for rescue by the people, a politician who has been steadfast for the working middle class while also putting the finger of blame on the bi-coastal elites will discover his opportunities abounding.

Imagine Santorum then.

10 years ago @ Commentary Magazine - McConnell’s Bad Week... · 0 replies · +5 points

Correct, blue13326. Voluntarily agreeing to change the demographic make-up of this country in order to curry favor with Big Business is the dealbreaker between conservatives and the Republican Party.

If Obamacare survives, reality will destroy it. If CIR is enacted - with any mass legalization aspect whatsoever - the GOP will have committed suicide.

IntenseDebate Comment System

Connect with freesmith

People I'm following

freesmith