From the AP: "Pearl Harbor survivor Houston James of Dallas embraced Marine Staff Sgt. Mark Graunke Jr during a Veterans Day commemoration in Dallas. Graunke lost a hand, a leg and an eye when he defused a bomb in Iraq last year."
We are still at war. And this election result should require all of us to lay aside partisanship and figure out how best to honor those serving us and how best to secure the least worst option in Iraq.
(Photo: AP)
A "proud conservative" writes:
I’m a 29 year old, lifelong conservative Republican, and Roman Catholic from Pennsylvania. I’m not sure I agree with you 100% on everything, but I appreciate your intellectual honesty – with yourself and with your readers. I used to be a huge Rush
Limbaugh/Rick Santorum kind of Republican. I supported the war in Iraq. Voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004. I was disappointed by your endorsement of John Kerry, but I realized what a difficult decision that was for you.
I didn’t completely understand it at the time, but now I do. You recognized the failings of the President and his cabal and the failings of Republicans in Congress long before the rest of us did. I began to move away from the far-right wing of the party when I realized how politicians used wedge issues like gay rights, abortion, guns, and flag burning to turn out the vote. Once they retained their power, they let the issues die, as they fully knew they would. Combined with the corruption in Washington, and the President’s inability to admit he’s wrong, I began to question my own beliefs.
Your writings on the role of faith and fundamentalism in politics has been an eye-opener to me. Your articulation of a more authentic conservatism – the conservatism of Reagan and Goldwater and Thatcher – has made me question my own beliefs and question what it truly means to be a conservative. Consequently, as I near my 30th birthday, I find myself moving away from people like Rush and Rick, and towards what I hope is a more honest and humbler political philosophy.
I believe in smaller government. I believe in efficient government. I believe in honest government. I believe in reason informed by faith. I believe in politics, informed by faith, but not ruled by it. I believe in the principles of government as set forth by the Founding Fathers. I believe ours is not a Christian nation, and it never was. It is a nation built on the ideals of the Enlightenment. Ideals born in Judeo-Christian thought, but tempered by secular reason and rationality.
The case for just such a renewed and vigorous conservatism – optimistic and inclusive and modern – is made in my book. Agree or disagree, I hope it helps further and deepen the debate now raging.
… to the Dems in the key states of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Compare the tallies in 2000 to 2006. The Rove strategy is in ruins.
Was this ironic:
Now that it’s past midnight, I begin my Santorum for SecDef campaign. Rumsfeld will likely resign before year is out. And so …
The entertainment over at NRO is quite spectacular.
Money paragraph:
We need to refocus on our conservative principles of less government, lower taxes, less regulation, strong national defense, judicial restraint, and fiscal conservatism. We have a very vibrant and strong party and a philosophy that works. We just have to recommit ourselves to better serving the American people.
No mention of same-sex marriage, abortion or stem cell research? There are signs of life in the conservative soul. Maybe some of them will even read my book, making the case for just such a return to basics.
The obvious result of last night’s returns is the complete historical and geographical inversion of what was once the Republican Party. Nixon’s cynical Southern strategy has now been played out to the nth degree – and, after a good period of opportunistic success, it has failed. All the states Lincoln fought against are now the bastions of his own party. And most of the rest of the country – especially the sane, common sense conservatives of the MidWest whence Lincoln himself hailed – have been forced into the Democratic camp. Formerly solid, freedom-loving Republican states, like California, are now overwhelmingly Democratic.
The GOP is now very much the party of Dixie; and the consequence of this election is that the Congressional leadership is even more Southern than it was before. The irony is that it was the moderate Republicans who were disproportionately punished electorally by the extremists in their midst. And so the party that lost because of its extremists now sees itself more dominated by the extremists. Nixon’s cynical ploy – played beyond the extreme by Rove – has, in other words, come back to haunt and defeat his party in the end. Because it over-reached.
So now the battle for the soul of conservatism can begin in earnest. Either the Democrats will capture it; or the Republicans will recapture it. My manifesto is here. I’m open to debate it anywhere anytime.
A handy primer.
… McCain! I mean: who else? He’s been president for six years, hasn’t he? Money quote:
The long and short of this bad but not horrific night was that majorities must act like majorities. The public cares little for the "traditions" of the Senate or the way the appropriations process used to work. It demands results. Handed a large majority, the GOP frittered it away.
The chief fritterer was Senator McCain and his Gang of 14 and Kennedy-McCain immigration bill, supplemented by a last minute throw down that prevented the NSA bill from progressing or the key judicial nominations from receiving a vote. His accomplice in that master stroke was Senator Graham. Together they cost their friend Mike DeWine his seat in the Senate, and all their Republican colleagues their chairmanships. Senator McCain should rethink his presidential run. Amid the ruins of the GOP’s majority there is a clear culprit.
What else does Baghdad Bob Hewitt say? Ah, yes, this:
"…Senator Santorum is now available for a seat on the SCOTUS should one become available."
Clinical.
A pathetic scene from a polling station in Philadelphia, where a legally qualified polling officer is barred from entering a station in urban Philly to ensure fair practices. The cops do nothing.
That’s the question. A reader sums up the argument:
Assuming that the Dems get the Senate, could Rove’s final play be: Bush accepts Rumsfeld’s resignation, appoints Independent Lieberman as Secretary of Defense and Connecticut Governor Rell (Republican) appoints a Republican to fill Lieberman’s Senate seat, putting the Senate under effective Republican control with Cheney’s vote as tie breaker?
That is possible, but it would, I think, be politically suicidal for the president. (Still, his campaign rhetoric was suicidal, so maybe he’ll stay that way.) If Lieberman holds the key to a Senate majority, appointing him SecDef would be too political a move, even for Bush. It would divide far more than it would unite.
But there I go again, giving Bush the benefit of the doubt. He’s done crazier things, hasn’t he?
(Photo: Bob Falcetti/Getty.)
The Dish 