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Elephant Season Begins November 7

We don’t often like discussing politics because it’s such a filthy business these days, and besides, if there’s anything worth saying about politics, no doubt Daniel Larison has already said it. Nonetheless, it is interesting to see the schadenfreude developing amongst conservatives eager to see the Republican Party wreap what it hath sewn come the midterm elections of November 7 this year. The GOP has really done it this time, or so says the common wisdom, and the combined effect of conservatives staying home on Election Day and of swing voters swinging to the Democrats may very well throw the House of Representatives to the Democrats for the first time in twelve years. The glee conservatives once exhibited only for the most delightful defeats of Democrats is now, in a truly bi-partisan spirit, extended to the Republicans as well.

Why will conservatives stay home on Election Day? Well, that is not the right question, as it is the natural inclination of the conservative to be at home. The question then is: why should a conservative vote Republican? The President, for starters, is an ardent devotée of liberal internationalism abroad and wants to impose it with our military, which he has disgracefully abused as his own little plaything. In Congress, meanwhile, the Republican majorities in both houses have enacted an orgy of spending and goverment largesse as if the concept of self-restraint is foreign and irrelevant, while refusing to act on issues important to conservatives, such as border enforcement.

Voting Republican means we get liberal internationalism at our own expense (in blood, mind you, not just taxes), while at home we get porous borders (despite the terrorist threat), implicitly condoned illegal immigration (it’s good for business!), egregious spending (the ‘compassionate conservatism’ which is neither compassionate nor conservative), and the expansion of the powers of the federal government (continuing and augmenting the flagrant breaches of the Constitution which began in the 1960’s). Such being the case, the real question should be: what kind of self-respecting conservative would support such things with his vote?

But of course there is a silver lining. As much as conservatives may delight in seeing the Republicans thrown from office, in our two-party system the defeat of Republicans means the victory of Democrats. This is most unfortunate. However, with the appointments of Roberts and Alito to the Supreme Court (which will likely be remembered as one of G.W. Bush’s few conservative acts in his eight years as president), there is a feeling that sooner or later the highest court in the land will hear cases which return power to the states, as ordained in the Constitution. Having Democrats in charge, given their traditional predilection for centralization, might further spur such cases to come to the fore.

So farewell, then, GOP majority… and good riddance. Think about what you’ve done and come back in a few years. We are good Christian folk, after all, and forgiving; we will likely give you another chance in the future.

NOTE: I should clarify that we are speaking in this post only about the federal government. No doubt there are many decent conservative and conservative-leaning GOP officeholders on the state and local level.

Published at 9:23 am on Wednesday 13 September 2006. Categories: Politics.
Comments

How is vanquishinging Muslim extremism abroad aided by taking down a secularist dictatorship and replacing it with a democracy which may very well empower the Islamists? And in between the dictatorship and the democracy is a lawless period in which Muslim extremists may kill with impunity. (Every day we hear the count of dead tortured bodies found on Baghdad streets).

“We will not win the battle against global extremism unless we win it at the level of values as much as force.We can only win by showing that our values are stronger, better and more just than the alternative. That also means showing the world that we are evenhanded, fair and just in our application of those values.”

But what precisely are “our values”? After nine years in power, we can be quite certain that whatever Tony Blair’s values are, they most certainly are not the traditional values of the West.

Perhaps by “our values” he means liberalism, which entails materialism and individualism, and is most unpalatable to the Christian as well as destructive towards traditional Western societies. Well if that’s what this war is about, then I’d say fight on. With any luck the Islamists will kill all the liberals and the liberals will kill all the Islamists and the rest of us could go on with out business.

The trouble is that the liberal individuo-materialists (be they ‘New Labour’ or neo-con Republicans) aren’t fighting their own battle. They’re sitting back in their government offices and think tanks while the brave men (and, sadly, women) of the United States armed forces die every day for their loathsome ideology.

You have to admit, it’s a brilliant strategy. Given that the Armed Forces are not generally composed of liberal individualists, they kill two birds with one stone (almost literally). They send the more-or-less conservative-leaning army to fight the Islamists and no matter who dies, the liberal individualists have won. An Islamist dies, one less enemy abroad. An American soldier dies, one less potential threat at home. Having the army fighting abroad also keeps it from getting any ideas about, er, shall we say, re-orienting the route of government at home away from the liberal-individualist-materialist project.

“That also means showing the world that we are evenhanded, fair and just in our application of those values.”

Yet I doubt that they (since we have established that it is ‘they’ and not ‘us’) actually are evenhanded, fair, and just in their application of their values.

Fighting Islamic extremism is unappreciably important, which is why the mistakes of the Bush-and-Blair crowd are all the more woeful.

— Andrew Cusack 16 Sep 2006 9:27 am

Excellent response, Andrew.

— kd 16 Sep 2006 11:02 am

The GOP record in Congress is pretty appalling. However, be careful what you wish for.

Committee chairs in a Democratic Congress:

John Conyers
Charlie Rangel
Dennis Kucinich

The German Communists said “After Hitler, us.” Most of them were killed.

— Grumpy Old Man 17 Sep 2006 9:31 am

Hmmn…Andrew, I believe that as a faithful Catholic it is your duty to vote. As well as your duty to vote for the least pro-abort candidates you can find in a sea of pro-aborts. Our votes were bought by the blood of men who came before us. It is disrespectful to their memories to not vote as well as make a mockery of their deaths. I’m sure you will have clever things to say about how you can still abstain but I have three words; Supreme Court Justices. If the Congress goes Democratic you can forget another pro-life justice. The battle for this country is in the courts. It is for that reason alone you must take your widow’s mite (in NY a Republican vote is indeed a widow’s mite) and pull the lever. Wear a clothespin on your nose if you have to. Read this from the Boston Globe if you need more convincing:

Senator John F. Kerry yesterday called for a new national commitment to reduce the number of abortions, saying that both sides on the abortion debate can reach “common ground” on the sharply divisive cultural issue that was prominent in his defeat in the 2004 presidential election.

In an intimate speech laced with references to his Catholic upbringing, Kerry chastised abortion-rights supporters and anti-abortion activists for the “overly partisan” tone that has polarized the nation. Despite their intense opposition, Kerry said, there are areas of agreement — such as tax credits for adoptive parents, more government aid for working mothers, and health insurance for everyone.
“Even as a supporter of Roe v. Wade, I am compelled to acknowledge that the language both sides use on this subject can be, unfortunately, misleading and unconstructive,” Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, told an audience at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif. “Instead of making enemies, we need to make progress.”
The speech is Kerry’s most extensive attempt to describe his religious views and define where he stands on so-called “values issues” since President Bush defeated him for the presidency in 2004. Bush and the Republican Party used abortion, gay marriage, and other controversial social issues to motivate conservative voters to the polls against Kerry.
Throughout his career, Kerry has said he is personally opposed to abortion but would not impose his views on others. On the campaign trail in 2004, Kerry said he believed human life begins at conception but asserted that, if elected, he wouldn’t appoint a Supreme Court justice who would “undo a constitutional right” by overturning Roe.
Kerry said in a telephone interview yesterday that the speech is in the same vein as his past comments about the need to make abortion safe, legal, and “rare.” He said he wanted to exhort both sides of the abortion debate to recognize the sincerity of each other’s beliefs and “be more honest about the complexity of the moral decision here.”
During the 2004 campaign, Bush often spoke of promoting a “culture of life” to contrast himself with Kerry. Some Catholic archbishops, disturbed by Kerry’s more liberal positions on abortion and stem cell research, questioned his right to take Communion and urged parishioners to vote against him.
According to the Pew Research Center, Bush, a Methodist, carried the Catholic vote by five percentage points, even though Kerry was the first Catholic presidential nominee of either party since John F. Kennedy in 1960. Exit polls in 2004 indicated that Bush swayed some voters by expressing his faith.
Kerry’s close defeat caused some soul-searching among Democrats about religion and values in politics. The senator told his audience yesterday that the bruising campaign with Bush taught him that despite his reticence to talk publicly about faith, “if I didn’t fill in the picture myself, others would draw the caricature for me.”…

If we stay home, we let them define us.

— Mrs. Peperium 19 Sep 2006 4:06 pm
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