Yesterday former Congressman and current full-time hypocrite, Bob Barr (no relation) announced his Libertarian candidacy for the presidency. I'm not sure I'm entirely sold on the Naderization of the the Barr candidacy, however. Nonetheless we have to remember that Nader received less than 3% of the vote in 2000 and look what that did to the overall outcome. So I do indeed see the argument that Barr could prove to be a thorn in the side of John McCain and the GOP.
It's no secret Barr and the GOP don't like each other. When he left office in 2003 he left under clouds of overwhelming evidence of extra marital affairs and all kinds of ethical and moral troubles. As a leading proponent of the Clinton impeachment, Barr would later find himself thrown to the curb by the very Party he fought hard to ensure would guarantee the moral rule of this country. Funny how karma works.
Another neat and interesting tidbit to remember is that the last time the Democrats won the presidency was because of a lot of help from a conservative third-party candidate named Ross Perot. The GOP surely can't be excited about this latest addition to an already very unpopular year for Republicans.
Barr has enough problems of his own and he's obviously figured out that it's much easier to write books and smile on tv than to go out and get a job. There isn't really much I can add that would discredit his candidacy other than to say look at his record and decide if that's really what you want in a president.
5.13.2008
Enter the Spoiler
5.12.2008
Moving The Right Forward
My last few posts have dealt with some turmoil on the right. It might come as a shock to most, but the Republican Party is in a sort of soul searching mode. Their big question is how to move forward after the disastrous presidency of George W. Bush. This has led many to come up with new ideas, new ways to market their brand and even newer ways of trying to get the public not to mention President Bush while talking and thinking about who to vote for this year. It's in their best interest to make John McCain, and the GOP, appear as if it has nothing to do with the Bush legacy.
Last week I highlighted Victor Hanson and his list at what Republicans should do if they want to succeed in the future, essentially don't do what George Bush did. Today I found a new website about to be opened by some of the great young minds on the right. They're calling it The Next Right. It looks promising and I don't want to judge a book by its cover. I think it would be nice to have a right wing information place that doesn't consist of Rush Limbaugh, Drudge and Fox News. I hope Patrick Ruffini & Co. don't fall into the same trap that has succumbed so many right wing thinkers: right is right is always right.Put simply, the party, and in many cases, the movement, has lost its moorings. Earmarks exploded ten-fold, and it wasn’t under a Democratic Congress. In this winter’s primary, we saw the once mighty fiscal-social-national conservative coalition turned in on itself, with economic conservatives pitted against social conservatives. And too many of the “experts” in the Presidential campaigns this cycle failed to modernize the way the party does business, clinging to the old top-down rostrums of direct mail and fundraising-by-cocktail-party in an increasingly networked and crowdsourced world.
I can only wish that Ruffini opens his site up to comments. It's so frustrating that many of the top right wing sites don't allow comments. If they are truly wanting to open the Party up to new ideas and new ways to progress move forward, taking a few comments from some outsiders is the best way to do it. Coming to terms with the 21st century and moving away from neoconservativism would be a huge plus too.
5.10.2008
A Republican's Socialism
I'm not sure how many times I've heard Republicans and neocons refer to Obama and Democrats as socialists this election cycle. It seems like daily. Here's more from Hanson's list on how to fix the Republican Party:
...Obama's alternatives to the above would be to turn toward more government, higher taxes, more bureacracies, more dependence of the individual upon the state, etc. And I can't believe the public wants a prescription that historically simply doesn't work.
[...]
Moving toward a lite version of the Obamian/European "bipartisan"and socialist view of government and calling it a new conservatism is a prescription for utter disaster.
Yes more government is something only belonging to Democrats. It was fine when George Bush increased the size of government and it was not a problem at all when Reagan raised taxes and it seems to have been no big deal when George Bush created the Department of Homeland Security making the individual more dependent upon the state, etc. And I can't believe the Republicans haven't caught on that no matter how many times they keep telling themselves that they are the party of small government and individual responsibility they haven't discovered they are historically simply anything but.
The last time the size of the federal government shrank it was under a Democratic president. The last time there was a tax rate that produced a surplus and allowed for unprecedented economic growth it was under a Democratic president. Suggesting that Obama wants to move towards a socialist view of government is being ignorant to the last 8 years of George Bush.
What's sad is that Hanson is supposed to be some sort of law professor at Tennessee if I'm not mistaken. And he's absolutely and intellectually wrong when conveniently leaving out Bush's socialist government and wrong to state that Obama wants to move toward socialism. If Republicans want to chide socialism, they needn't look very far to find it.
Voting twice for a president who has done nothing but increase the overall size of government and done nothing but make the individual more dependent upon the state is okay as long as the president is a Republican. But if not, then socialism again becomes a concern of the Republican Party.
Future of Conservatism
"Republicans by consensus in Washington need to be less tolerant of sleeze than Democrats, since conservatism and traditionalism are moral precepts."
There probably isn't a better sentence that sums up modern conservatism than the one above by Victor Hanson. I've always considered myself a conservative Democrat. Conservative in the classic Goldwater sense, not in the modern Limbaugh sense. And I think where conservatism went wrong was when they used morality to judge their ideology. It is humanly impossible to set a moral standard when morality was never meant to be set. It's something to strive for no doubt. But not something that can define politics. It just can't. Some may disagree with me, and that's fine.
When morality is your precept, it automatically gives off the impression that others who don't walk your line aren't moral. That too is debatable but over the last 15 years or so we've seen many politicians of the conservative lot turn up scandal after scandal causing the "movement" to become scarred with uncountable hypocrisy. It would be wise, in my view, to set the bar a little lower than morality. Of course doing that destroys modern conservatism and admonishes the Christian right. In the long run, I think it's worth it.
5.09.2008
More Conservatism, Not Less
I'm in the midst of reading the much talked about list by Victor Hanson about how to move the "conservative movement" forward.
Some may read the list as a call to action while others may read it as one of those lists people make about how to spend their money when hoping they might win the lottery. Put me somewhere in-between because I can't quit laughing long enough to finish reading it.
I'm going to write more about this later once I get a chance to let it all sink in. I wanted to give people a chance to read before I comment. It's short and worth the read.
*Update:
It's been an interesting read through Hanson's list of what can cure the Republican Party. What jumps right out at me is there is nothing about the environment. There's the mention of "gas prices," which calls for more drilling and more coal production but nothing to safeguard the future of our environment. I think this is a mistake on Hanson's part. A clear oversight it must be. I know many Republicans who are green and believe in a cleaner future.
I also didn't notice any mention of gay marriage and abortion. But he does mention morals so maybe that's what he's referring to. I'll have more later I'm sure.
1.30.2008
Rush Weighs In
I normally don't have a habit of paying attention to what the drug addicted Rush Limbaugh says. He's a fat ass, draft dodging, chickenhawk, sleaze ball. But he does, somehow, have great influence on the right wing. If that's who they want as their spokesperson, then that's up to them. I'll take Josh Marshall any day. Any way, the point I want to make is that me and druggie might actually agree on something. To an extent that is.
"There was no figure in our roster of candidates who rose up to challenge him or galvanize conservative support," Limbaugh said on his daily radio program. "All the candidates on our side, forThe Ticker goes on:various reasons, are uninspiring or worse — and so, just as I predicted, the base has fractured."
"He is not the choice of conservatives, as opposed to the choice of the Republican establishment — and that distinction is key," Limbaugh continued. "The Republican establishment, which has long sought to rid the party of conservative influence since Reagan, is feeling a victory today as well as our friends in the media. But both are just far-fetched and wrong.”Where I'm going to depart from druggie is when he says that Republicans are seeking to rid the party of "conservatives." I totally disagree with that. I agree with Limbaugh that the party is fractured and that the whole slew of candidates were uninspiring or worse, but the Republican Party has never had a monopoly on conservatism no matter what Rush says. What the party is trying to distance itself from is neoconservatism rather than conservatism. And the biggest brand of that is the fact that Rush's home state of Florida went against his advice and still chose McCain.
The conservatives are still there. What we are witnessing is a shift away from neoconservatives, or the crazies in the basement. Republican exit polls from both South Carolina and Florida show a very moderate Republican base showing up. To me that's a good thing. It's very possible to be Republican, conservative and still be progressive. Suggesting that anything close to center, like Limbaugh is doing, is ultimately the death of a party, or worse the death of America is tiresome tripe from a delusional talking head. People want change.
1.14.2008
Willn't Work
It’s op-eds like this that get Democrats like me all giggly inside. But I’m not falling for this farce, again, from George Will. For nearly two years I read Will as he bashed and bruised George W. Bush with his prose. Pretty much calling him everything but a white man and finding nothing to agree with him about, Will went jab for jab with Bush and then the weekend before the ’04 election he endorsed the presidency of Bush for a second term. It was almost like being slapped in the face. I was so certain Will was going to denounce his conservatism or at least Bush’s neoconservatism, but nonetheless Will figured that a crappy president with no exit strategy for Iraq and no domestic policy for his own citizens was better than anyone else could do. Nope, Will’s article over the weekend is the same old wishful thinking from what might be the last true conservative journalist left in America. And I’m not falling for it this time.
