Levees Not War

Yesterday’s piece “The Silence of the Dems” was originally meant to introduce some choice excerpts from a tough, hard-hitting post by our friend Pat at Hurricane Radio titled “Why the GOP Is Going to Win in November.” We do not concede that heavy losses are inevitable, but here’s why Dems are in such trouble. Be sure to read the piece in full—we’ve filed it under “Rants We Wish We’d Written”—but first, as a warm-up, here are some heavy punches. (Might this be a fitting post on the weekend Rahm Emanuel leaves the White House? You decide.)

“Why the GOP Is Going to Win in November”

You get elected with a mandate for change, and then proceed to make minor, incremental changes that your political opponents use to cast you as a communist. . . .

You withdraw, expecting blind support from your own side while leaving the debate to your political opponents, because you think if you are nice to them, they will stop acting like lunatics. You think that the American people will turn in disgust from their lunacy without you having to do anything, even though that flies in the face of every historical indication of American culture.

You allow revisions of the last 10 years of history to go unchallenged. . . .

On policy, you step back while the Pelosi/Reid situation in Congress gives us a politically disasterous, confusing and meekly submitted stimulus; a confusing health care plan that removes the majority of real progressive reform; Gitmo remains open, and the plan to actually bring the terrorists to trial has faltered; we double down in Afganistan without really doing what needs to be done to win that conflict; we leave 50,000 troops and a host of defense contractors in Iraq; some of the worst excesses of the drug war and the war on terror continue unabated. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, despite broad support for repeal, remains—even politically gamed to a defense spending bill.

Let me be clear—if I have to defend the Health Care Bill because it was originally a “conservative” idea, there’s a reason your supporters aren’t up for this go-round in November. Not a single one of your opponents voted for the bill, and yet it was their think tanks that proposed most of it. One of their Presidential candidates from the last go-round made something like this happen in Massachusetts with the help of their new Senator from Massachusetts. That was basically their bill, without disbanding Medicare and Medicaid to pay for it.

That means THEY got THEIR legislation passed while THEY were in the MINORITY and NOT A ONE OF THEM VOTED FOR IT.

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