Conservative Donnybrook

Ron Paul won the CPAC straw poll. You heard me. I know it doesn’t mean anything. Except that it means even the C-packers are sick of the neocon crap.

A long-time reader forwarded the following email this evening and one hopes that this is a sign that the Republicans finally get it (emphasis below is mine).

Republican and Conservative Leaders and Activists:

At its Winter Meeting last week, the Republican National Committee adopted an important and historic resolution “concerning party support for candidates.” Sponsored by Bill Crocker of Texas, the unanimously-adopted resolution calls on all Republican Party leaders “to carefully screen” all candidates and to “determine that they wholeheartedly support the core principles and positions of the Republican Party as expressed in the Platform” and urges that “no support, financial or otherwise, be given to candidates who clearly do not support the core principles and positions of the Republican Party as expressed in the Platform.” The text of the resolution can be found here:

RNC resolution concerning party support of candidates – - POLITICO.com

This is the first time that the RNC has taken steps to ensure that Republican candidates are faithful to the Republican Platform. It empowers the RNC Chairman to consider the positions of candidates on issues and to deny funding to those candidates who are clearly out of the mainstream of our Party.  As Mr Crocker said after the resolution’s adoption: “No more Scozzafavas, please. No more Specters, please. No more Chafees, please.”

State and local Republican parties, the National Republican Congressional Committee and National Republican Senatorial Committee are independent organizations and the resolution is not binding on them. The RNC, however, is calling all Republican leaders to follow the RNC lead.  After all, what each of us does effects everyone.

With the adoption of the Platform Fidelity Resolution, I withdrew from consideration the Reagan Resolution and the Accountability Resolution, since the Platform Fidelity Resolution accomplish[es] our goal of demonstrating that this party is serious about standing for our principles, so that disaffected conservatives, such as tea party members, will be comfortable working with us in defense of freedom, and gained widespread support. See RNC Passes Compromise On ‘Purity’ Resolutions | TPMDC For additional accounts of this historic action by the RNC see the Washington Times

GOP leaders adopt litmus test of values for candidates – Washington Times and the AP

GOP Adopts Platform Test For Republican Candidates : NPR

As one of the disaffected former Republicans, I hope this ushers in a new commitment to the values of limited government and traditional social values. Now let us hope that the NRCC and NRSC will follow suit and those who are subsequently elected govern according to those traditional principles. I give kudos to the RNC leadership for this resolution.

The stage is set: In November, Californians will go to the polls and either legalize and tax marijuana or keep it decriminalized. Marijuana is the number one cash crop in California (and in several other states), grossing an estimated $14 billion per year! Grapes, by comparison, gross roughly $2.6 billion annually. Conservative estimates suggest that through legalization and taxation the cost would drop, tax would be applied and the net expense would be the same for the consumer, resulting in a windfall $1 billion for Sacramento. The time is right, the money is right and the resistance is small and shrinking.

Marijuana is relatively harmless as it is non-addictive, posses no substantial health threat, impairs users much less than alcohol and like alcohol, it comes in countless varieties and strains. Simply put, there is no reason to make this plant or its growth and consumption illegal. Legalization provides income to our strapped state, dramatically reduces its availability to minors and removes it from the control of sometimes violent criminal organizations.

The chief arguments against marijuana legalization are unfounded (think Reefer Madness). Those that clamor for its continued ban largely do so out of an over-inflated sense of “moral” superiority and ignorance. However, there are others that will not support legalization. Growers, organized crime and dealers will not want their source of income jeopardized by allowing government to regulate the business. You see, regulation means control. As it is marijuana is illegal and, thus, one of the last sources of truly free-enterprise. Nevertheless, applying criminal sanctions, banning its use and overcrowding our jails are a travesty. The time has come to undue almost 100 years of bad policy.

The last year of this first decade of the 21st century will bring us many challenges and, D.v., many blessings as well. Speaking for my part, I resolve to strive for constructive policy recommendations along with my typical criticisms. Conservatives face a tremendous opportunity to once again, as Buckley once said, stand athwart history yelling “Stop!” And it is clear that they must be stopped: those forces of destruction, confiscation, redistribution, secular salvation, usurpation, and tyranny. The question before us, as has been handily demonstrated in the recent past here at CD is, “what is conservatism?” How shall we then live? What methodologies will we need to adapt and resurrect to counteract these agents of “change”? Whom shall we trust to carry our standard? What, in short, is a credo by which we can measure all our rhetoric and action?

Peril abounds, as it always has. Folk wisdom tells us not to bash a bee hive with a creek rock. Doubtless, the occasional sting will occur, even with due caution in the apiary. Such stings do not imply that the caution we were exercising was inappropriate or should be jettisoned in a fury of pain and trauma. Especially when an epinephrine pen won’t work to prevent the anaphylaxis anymore.

Debt looms insanely large, and yet more and more clamoring is heard from old and new quarters. A serious audit of the books is due, and serious cutbacks are not only necessary but inevitable, regardless of how they come. Borrowing billions to send $50 billion annually in foreign “aid” is no longer feasible. We have long since shifted from a manufacturing and production economy, and thus the idea that we as a country can or should take on the burdens of other countries is as ridiculous as taking out a third mortgage on my house to pay my neighbors’ cable and electric bills. That’s one slice of a tragically large pie that has to be — finally — served.

Lastly, liberty should not be spoken of apart from attendant responsibilities, because it is derived therefrom. We are created beings, social beings, and the most basic duties we have are to the One Who created us and to those whom we are familially and then societally related. It is inside those boundaries that we are truly free from fear, from want, and from oppression.

We have our work cut out for us, friends and readers. Let us get to splitting the wood.

In less than one year Californians will go to the polls to elect a new governor. Their two main choices will be Jerry Brown for the Democrats and one of three Republicans from the San Francisco Bay area. No matter if it is Meg Whitman, Tom Campbell or Steve Poizner that gets the nod from the GOP, Jerry Brown will win this election. Its not that Brown is a strong candidate or that California is a blue state, the problem is that all three of these bay area Republicans are pro-choice. Therefore the base that simply must turn out in droves for a Republican to win will stay home, vote for a third party candidate and otherwise hand Brown victory.

I am one of these republicans. My conscience and my morals prevent me from voting for any candidate that advocates (or at least is ambivalent to) the killing of innocent children. Whitman has an impressive business record. Poizner is a strong fiscal conservative. Campbell has tough talk for Sacramento. All three have a faulty moral compass. There will be some who argue that I should vote for one of these three republicans because Brown is also pro-choice and a huge fiscal liberal to boot. By voting for one of the three Republicans, the argument will go, we can at least elect a fiscal conservative. Besides, they will say, even a pro-life Republican will be powerless to change the culture of death in California. What this argument is so subtly saying is “toe the line, vote for the member of your party for there is no hope.” I refuse to vote for someone either so morally unaware (at best) that they are pro-choice or they are so afraid of or indoctrinated by Bay area liberals that they willfully turn away from defending the lives of the most vulnerable.

This is a re-occurring theme for the GOP: Candidates that hold positions that appeal to “moderates” ( I hate that term) but drive away the republican base. The California election will play out first but even for the 2012 presidential election we will most likely see a rather flimsy candidate that many conservative voters simply will not turn out for, one that independents will not vote for and one that liberals will salivate over to run against. But there is still hope. Indeed, there is still time for another conservative and pro-life candidate to emerge, possibly from Southern California. Darrell Issa looked like a shoe-in but then endorsed Whitman. Peter Foy of Ventura County all but announced but knew he did not have the name recognition needed to even get the nomination. Still, there maybe potential candidates out there. We need a fiscal conservative with a backbone and a good set of morals. We need someone who has name recognition and is not a life long politician. We need someone that endorses limited government, fiscal restraint, is socially libertarian on most issues and stands up for those that have no say in this world, like the unborn. Does anyone have any viable suggestions? I didn’t think so.

But alas, this is the same problem that plagued Republicans in 2008 and it’s the same issue we will see when 2012 come around. Simply put, there seems to be a dearth of good fiscal conservative Republicans that are also pro-life and want less government. It seems we are forced to consider lackluster republican candidates each and every election. The result this time will be the return of Jerry Brown, a socialist liberal that has spent a lifetime damaging our state. And Republicans are directly responsible for his all but assured victory. C’est la vie in CA.

Ordinarily, I would take a good deal of time to point out that many here at the site have repeatedly pointed out the nakedness of the emperor. I would rehash the times Patriot-Act statists in conservative wool have been called on their leftism, secularism, and big-government authoritarianism. I would also bewail the unmitigated gall of such a character having the chutzpah to call his critics allies of Michael Moore, George Soros, and Nancy Pelosi.  I would loudly and often decry the shameless and unguarded honesty of those who reduce their philosophy to “kill” to the exclusion of sound economic policy, the sanctity of life, the sovereignty of our country, and a host of other issues. Normally. Not this time. This time I’ll let the argument you presented dismantle itself and show the readership of this blog how one-note, indefensible, and breathtakingly destructive your side is.

The article to which you linked, when read through the lenses of one conversant with history (which one would expect a self-described historian to do), demonstrated far better than I could of the bankruptcy of your side. Kagan starts out by mentioning the Great Depression. He failed to note any of the actual causes of that depression. He failed to take into consideration the “adventurism,” to borrow one of your words from a recent comment, of the United States leading up to that crisis. The economic decisions in the midst and wake of the Civil War (National banking acts of 1863 and 1864 which consolidated currency to fund the Union’s war; Federal Reserve creation in 1913; Aldrich-Vreeland in 1908, etc.) and the domestic and foreign policy decisions in the wake of the war (Reconstruction; almost immediate attempts at imperialism in Santo Domingo, Cuba, and Liberia – all of which came about due to slavery and its end; westward expansion, Indian wars, Alaskan purchase; Roosevelt’s splitting of the Republicans, his appointments to the Supreme Court, etc.; financial, monetary, and fiscal management and mismanagement), not to mention World War I, all contributed directly to the spreading thin of the American military and building resentment throughout the world.

Kagan goes on to insinuate that, because the United States seemed to somehow ignore foreign policy, Japan militarized and Germany fell under Hitler’s sway. This is howlingly funny. What we are required to do if we are to accept Kagan’s hypothesis is to absolutely and unequivocally deny that black is black, that water is wet, or that fire is hot. Aside from the fact that it was American “adventurism” (e.g., with the Great White Fleet, which further fueled a zealous desire to militarize in newly-nationalist Japan) which thrust Japan on its path toward imperialism (read about Perry’s Black Ships and the cracking of isolationist Japan, the Meiji Restoration, the Manchurian, Korean, and Russian campaigns of Japan), we can hardly be faulted for “ignoring” Germany: we had shipped thousands of American boys there to fight, bleed, die, and kill, and had established a new world-political body to deal with the German problem only 20 years before the 1933 Nazification. One could be excused for refusing to read any of the rest of Kagan’s ludicrous bombast after realizing this, but, intrepid soul that I am, I trudged on.

Kagan engaged in your least-favorite pasttime. He had the balls to criticize Ronald Reagan (gasp! the horror!) in practically the same breath as he criticized Jimmy Carter. Calling Reagan’s policy decisions about Lebanon “failed” and asserting that these policies led to the bombing of the Marine barracks is hardly what one would expect to hear you lauding. Implicit in this is the recognition that we should not have been there to get bombed. Reagan quickly and wisely realized this and did exactly the right thing: he got out and left Israel to what it was perfectly, demonstrably capable of doing: defending itself and letting Beirut and the Lebanese tend to their own damned affairs. No more Marines were killed there after that. No Al-Aqsa,  ”Quds Force,” or Hezbollah started trouble by killing Americans there. What a concept.  What were “Reagan’s failed policies” in Lebanon? Assisting a “multinational force” along with French troops and others to “keep the peace” in a sectarian civil war. What spawned the Muslim hatred and subsequent suicide bombings? Perceived American preference for Maronite Catholics and the shelling of Druze areas which inadvertantly killed civilians.

Kagan touches tangentially and seemingly accidentally upon one truth: things now are probably more dangerous for the U.S., but because of our huge overseas presence and constant “spreading of democracy” or “war on terror” or “search for WNDs” (we really do need to find those nasty World Net Dailies) or whatever they’re calling it these days, not because we are letting our guard down.

People are growing weary of the wars, growing weary of the constant misequation of the United States of America with Israel by the radical Zionists, and people are growing weary of the stubborn economic hardships put upon them by constant imperialism. Bring Americans home to defend America. Root out radical Islam here and deport it. If the resistance starts here, put it down swiftly and with no remorse. But there is no way we need to be defending South Korea from a tinpot near-dead in charge of a run-down non-entity. There is no justification for making all those “security guarantees” to states in the Russian sphere of influence. There is no way you could possibly believe that Kagan essay if you know and understand history. There is no way you can continue to call yourself a conservative and defend such Wilsonianism. It is definitionally schizophrenic, or alternatively simply mendacious, to claim to be conservative and yet espouse this baseless, historically-illiterate, radical Ledeenishness while at the same time believing it makes us safer. Your apologists split their time between appealing to how much safer we are and how dangerous it’s getting. Your side constantly purports to support “democracy” and “freedom” while working overtime - often in cahoots with outright radical socialist would-be totalitarians – to quash them through Patriot Acts, occupations of foreign countries, propped-up banking cartels and outdated unionized auto companies (remember which President started those great things?). Your side is trying to cling desperately to relevance, which is understandable. But for whom are you striving?

Much has been made of Sarah Palin’s departure from the Alaskan governor’s mansion.  Pundits, hacks, “reporters” and the vast unwashed of the American public each have their own theory as to why Proud Palin punted political purveyor-ship.  The answer:  no one really knows.  No one, that is, except Roger Stone.

Veteran political consultant Roger Stone has enlighted the world with his version of Palin’s perplexing  punchout.  According to Stone, it was simply brilliant political positioning that not only saves the state of Alaska money and time, but sets Palin up for the perfect presidential posturing.  According to Stone, “In fact, resignation as Governor was necessary to preserve any prospect that Palin could be nominated and elected in 2012 or beyond.”  

Stone also goes to great lengths to show how Nixon did the same thing and, viola, a president was inaugurated!  Stone writes:

It was 1962. Richard Nixon had had enough. Enough of being called “Tricky Dick, the man no one would buy a used car from.” Enough of the elitist derision that had come his way since the Hiss case. He had had enough of the liberal media who consistently held him to a higher standard than his Democratic opponents and poked fun at his lack of sophistication – he being the son of a grocer. So Nixon blew. He announced the end of his career in seeking elective office; “You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.” Six years later he was inaugurated as President of the United States.
…

Sarah Palin

This moment came last week for Sarah Palin and her husband Todd. Sick of the derision of the media for her unsophisticated country ways, her plain speaking and consistently being held to a higher standard than her critics, Palin had had enough. Palin resigned as Governor and, like Nixon, did not reveal her future plans. A follow-up FACEBOOK posting for her legions of admirers was clearly written in her own hand as it is plain-spoken and blunt.

Palin has the most valuable commodity a Presidential candidate can have – a base. Roughly 23% of Americans and 68% of Republicans have a favorable view of Palin. She alone has this kind of intense following. She alone can fill a large hall or small stadium anywhere in Republican Country. This is similar to the following that sustained Nixon through two defeats and his ’self-destruction’ in 1962 to win the White House in 1968.

Like Nixon, Palin needs some rehabilitation to her political image caused by the relentless attacks of the elitist media, the knife-work of the relatively talentless Republican Party pros like Steve Schmidt and her own self-inflicted wounds from the post election period that were born out of inexperience at this level of political combat. Like Nixon, Palin can re-make herself in the controlled environment of television. Instead of being tortured by smug media types like Katie Couric, Palin can demonstrate her better understanding of issues and articulate a case against Obama. She can be folksy and plain-spoken and above all, ’smart.’ All hail the Conservative Oprah!

But there is one major difference between Palin and Nixon: Nixon was smart.  Palin, on the other hand, appears, well, jovial but not that intelligent.  Sure, she has a following but this is largely a reaction to the media’s constant lambasting of the Northern Nanny Stater.  She is hailed as a ultra conservative republican with the credintials to win elections.  Yet for all the talk, she often sided with the liberals and democrats in the Alaskan legislature.  She runs a state that is famous for its welfare state and federal subsidies.  As my father put it, her job is slightly less important than that of the Cook County dog catcher’s. 

I know, I know, she was unfairly targeted by Couric et al.  But if she can’t fend off the ”attacks” of a nincompoop like Couric,  she doesn’t stand a chance against real journalists.  I mean, since when is “where do you get your news from?” a hard question?  I applaud Palin’s family values, her gutsy entrance into American political culture.  But she is in over her head.  She simply is not smart enough, quick enough or conservative enough to get my vote for anything other than governor of Alaska.  And no amount of extreme make-over candidate edition from Fox News will cure that.  Let’s move on.

Can you guess which Carolinian will be president in 2012?

A.  John Edwards

B.  Mark Sanford

C.  Jim Demint

D.  Lindsey Graham

E.  None of the above

I have to choose E.  For two small states they sure have a lot of politicians shooting themselves (or their spouses) in the feet.