POLITICS AND NATURE

If the national conversation is about past republican failures of performance (a referendum), then Republicans lose. If, however, the conversation is a fact based discussion about reality, the nature of the world, the serious threats we face, and which sets of ideas and solutions will best serve the American people as we move toward the future -- and how destructive a choice for the Left would be (a choice), then Republicans can win.                                                    Newt Gingrich, Thinking About November; on his website at: http://newt.org/tabid/102/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/2166/Thinking-About-November.aspx

The Persistent Republican Majority

Good old Newt. I guess the election last year was a referendum, according to his logic. Now, this article is not discussing the death of the Republican Party. No, never count them down. They are a bit dispirited at the moment and they are still trying to play the blame game attacking the Democrats at every opportunity and they will be back with a vengeance......may even win the road to the White House next November. This article, in contrast, is about the death of true conservatives and this goes back as far as the '60s when Barry Goldwater warned of so-called conservatives who refused to take conservative social values.

As for Newt, he foretold of a new, dominant Republican majority guiding the nation from 1994 on. And, thanks to some rigged voting machines and intimidating Grand Old Party actions in Ohio, Ralph Nader, and an uninspiring campaign by Al Gore, he was very nearly correct. But that was then and this is now.

Yep, conservative thought died a long time ago, it is just that no one knew about the funeral. It has died the death of a thousand cuts beginning with the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 and it was followed closely by the appointment of Chief Justice John Marshall in 1801 and the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Calvin Coolidge watched over a sick and depraved conservatism and Herbert Hoover pounded the final nail in the coffin by ignoring the plight of the American public at the lower rings of the economic scale, ushering in FDR for a never before or since four elections.

They Were Not Conservatives

Richard Nixon was not a conservative and Ronald Reagan wasn't conservative either. Nixon set up the economic downturn following his fall from grace in the '70s and Reagan's budgets consistently outspent the liberal Democrats he faced in Congress. The closest thing to a conservative revival was overseen by the most recent Democratic President, Bill Clinton, when he worked with the admittedly conservative Republican Congress following the 1994 elections. After Clinton left office, the Republican Party lost their demon and headed off into a grand adventure of spending and corruption which would likely make Lyndon Johnson blush.

The only real difference is where the spending priorities are focused. Right now, the President and the minority party in Congress have re-discovered their roots, they claim Washington is broken at every campaign stop, and they blame the Democratic tax and spend liberals who want to create a giant bureaucracy telling you where to go to see a doctor and how to act and that you exist for the benefit of the state.

Unfortunately, in their fantasy world, they persist in ignoring their own history, or like Newt's new books, they re-write history.....and then blame liberals for revisionist history. It is confusing really.

And Then There's..... The Dems

The Democrats, meanwhile, are doing everything they can to squash the tiny amount of support they do have in running the nation. Of course, they have a president who refuses to work with them and 49 Republicans in the Senate who are marching in lock step and refusing to yield on any issue, a ruse making Harry Reid shrug his shoulders, accuse the president of something or another, and assuring the so-called "conservative" media attacks him as being useless and gutless and a fool.

And they are successful in their attacks on the majority leader. Much more effective than their attacks on Speaker Nancy Pelosi who comes out of the other side of the Republican attack machine looking much better than poor Harry.

Republicans have made a concerted effort to spin reality into a weird hallucination in which they had nothing to do with excessive government spending, abuse of power, and squandering a surplus in the national budget. Their mind trip is going to turn into a national nightmare if people don't stand up against these freaks and encourage the party leadership to get back into reality.

Romney says Washington is broken everytime he gets up to speak and then he warns of the Democrats. McCain says he'll go in and move everything around to fit his liking despite over twenty years in the Senate, and his newfound respect for W's dirty tactics in South Carolina 8 years ago as just part of the process. Republicans as a whole are convinced they had nothing to do with the current climate in Washington or the any of the problems. The Party of Accountability?

The Real Story

No matter what they tell the nation, people have to realize Democrats haven't had power in Congress for 13 years. It is all the fault of the Republicans. They did it. And now they refuse to take responsibility because they are still after power. They are not conservative.

All a conservative is these days is someone who:  panders to people by shouting how righteous and godly he is; vehemently attacks judges, promoting misunderstanding of the justice system; claims the right to life label (abortion laws have not changed in 35 years); borrows and spends to his heart's content (why tax when we can put off paying for what we want today by racking up the debt?); supports tax breaks for massive corporations who move operations overseas and to people who drive the largest of SUVs; denounces anyone caring about environmental health as extreme; and promote their own family values and patriotism despite numerous marriages and no history of volunteering in the armed forces.

This is Today's Conservative and They Will Sell You Out As Soon As They Get the Best Offer.

Frivolous Fred from Tennessee (or is it Virginia?) today made jokes about climate change before he derided the need to do anything because of scientific uncertainty and accused those of us believing things need to be done as trying to end the debate and proclaiming with authority that this is not science. Well, Fred is correct about scientific debates, but that was about it. His rhetoric shows the head in the sand mentality so attuned to the thinking which got this country into the situation its in. Like Coolidge and Hoover before, Fred will ignore all problems if he gets his hand on the imperial scepter because he believes in local control. Unless he knows some folks down in the oil patch or watching over the coal mines. 

To be fair, Fantastic Fred claimed all people who have grandchildren should care about the environment but he disagrees with the fear factor surrounding it all. I'm sure his buddies conducting mountain top mining operations are happy to hear he will stand up for them.......those guys just never get justice. So, he's calling for more study.

I've never met a scientist who believes all questions are answered and discussions should be closed off. This being said, there is a thing in the scientific and policy communities called the "precautionary principle." It means if something is possible or, as is the case with global warming and its relation to carbon emissions, then it is better to take action in case it is true. As John McCain has been saying in his stump speeches, what is the harm? If we take action the worst we do is clean up the environment. How bad can this be?

Now Fred probably was told by someone from the Heritage Foundation or some other conservative think tank (which is basically a group of people so dedicated to a specific ideology that everything they do is aimed to prove a pre-determined outcome) things he told the audience like, the world has warmed before, the world has also cooled, and the other nations like India and China won't do it so we won't unless they do. Now that's what I call forward thinking and leadership. Of course, Fred and I don't agree on much. I heard him on the radio yesterday and the announcer asked him something like people in South Carolina like him but they wish he would run for office, as it is it seemed like he was sauntering. Or something like this. Frantic Fred got mad. Said it was "cute" but he was running on substance. 

Personally, I hope he saunters back to Tennessee, or Virginia, or Hollywood, or wherever it is and he takes his family values back to his second wife and enjoys the rest of his days raising his children and sleeping on the porch. It is my humble opinion he is a second rate actor and a foolish man hiding a heart full of hate and misunderstanding below his southern drawl and ponderous demeanor. But this is just me. I feel fairly confident no one in South Carolina is reading this tirade so fundamentally Fred has nothing to worry about from me. 

The Fairy Tale 

The Republicans are all fond of change now. No one is running from the White House for the first time in something like 56 years. It was 1952 and Harry Truman's Vice President Alben Barkley decided, for whatever reason to return and live out his days in the U.S. Senate instead of making a go of it on Pennsylvania Avenue. Truman recruited Adlai Stevenson, a good man, but a dwarf in comparison to Ike and Ike crushed him mercilessly in popular and electoral votes. In any case, the Republicans now will tell people anything they want to hear, except McCain who tells people what they "need to hear" and in the end, they will all support George W. Bush and his spirit crushing method of leading the nation into history's sewer.

They will not change anything except giving more stuff to corporate power if they win anything back. They are committed to raw, animal power and will stop at nothing. Karl Rove was an overpaid clown who failed to win in 2000 without extremely questionable tactics and should have crushed the opposition in 2004 (this is what usually what happens when an administration continually warns the public of mushroom clouds and danger and death) but he won by a small margin.

Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich are the only things the Republican Party has offered to this nation since Nixon hung his head in shame and returned to California. Newt was followed by cheap imitations like Tom Delay and Mark Foley and Bob Ney who could never have kept a functional government together on honest terms which is why they will leave history with a tale of degradation and destruction unheard of since the days the Duvaliers treated Haiti like their personal island. So corrupt and inept these men were they could not even take responsibility but blamed it all on booze. Booze didn't create the pedophile in Foley or the criminal in Ney, they were simply soulless creatures barren of any scent of humanity. Delay was too imbued with his own righteousness he didn't blame anything but the liberals.

There is no redeeming factors involved in the Republicans fall from grace and their is very little to show they have learned from the errors of their ways. And it seems unlikely they have learned since they refuse to work with the Democratic majority and they continually whine and cry as if they have been correct all along. The facts dispute them and they should spend some time in the corner to think about what they've done. And if the Democrats do the same thing in the future, maybe I'll eventually vote Green. As long as they don't nominate Nader again. 

I think whoever is elected to the White House, Dennis Kucinich would be really good at parking cars, or he could take people's hats when they come in on winter days. The little guy needs a real job.