A Blank Check from America?

[kg_veteran]

October 24, 2006
A Blank Check from America?
By Thomas Sowell

link

Media pundits have just about given this year's election to the Democrats -- at least in the House of Representatives and perhaps in the Senate as well. They might even be right, for a change.

Some are saying that this could be like the 1994 midterm election shocker when the Republicans seized control of the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years. If so, the Democrats will win by following the exact opposite strategy from that which brought the Congressional Republicans to power in 1994.

The Republican strategy, crafted by Newt Gingrich, was to spell out their stands on key issues and to promise to bring those issues to a vote in Congress. They called their agenda "The Contract with America."

It is now clear to all that this year's Democrats are deliberately avoiding spelling out any coherent policy program of their own.

Their strategy is to second-guess, denigrate and undermine Republicans instead of offering an agenda of their own. Rather than having a contract with America, they are seeking a blank check from America. Moreover, they may get it.

How did the Republicans manage to bring themselves to this dire condition, just two years after winning both Houses of Congress, the White House, and most of the state governorships?

It wasn't easy -- and it wasn't new. It was the same thing that caused the first President Bush to lose his bid for re-election in 1992, after having had sky-high approval ratings in 1991. It was betraying the trust of supporters.

Back then it was the betrayal of the "No new taxes" pledge. More recently, it was the even worse betrayal of trying to legislate amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants, combined with insulting our intelligence by saying that it was not amnesty.

Add to this the Republicans' runaway spending and the fact that the war in Iraq has been going badly, and you have all the ingredients of a political debacle.

One of the ironies of this election is that it is the Republicans in the House of Representatives who seem most likely to pay the biggest price for the disaffection of Republican voters -- when in fact it was the House Republicans who stopped both the Senate Republicans and the White House from making mass amnesty the law of the land.

Senate Republican leaders deserve whatever happens to them. If this election were about the fate of one political party rather than another, it would hardly be worth thinking about.

But elections are not about which politicians get to keep their jobs, though the media cover the news as if the political horse race is the issue. Elections are about the fate of 300 million Americans and the future of this nation.

That fate hangs grimly in the balance as two irresponsible regimes in North Korea and Iran seek to gain nuclear weapons. Neither leader of these regimes can be deterred by threats of nuclear retaliation, as the Soviet Union was deterred.

Both are like Hitler, who was willing to see his own people decimated and his own country reduced to rubble rather than quit when it was obvious to all that he could not win. If you can imagine Hitler with a few nuclear weapons to use to vent his all-consuming hatreds in a lost cause, you can see what a nuclear North Korea or a nuclear Iran would mean for America and the world.

It is obscene that our media should be obsessed with some jerk in Congress who wrote dirty e-mails to Congressional pages -- and was forced out of Congress for it -- when this nation faces dangers of this magnitude.

It would be worse than obscene for some voters to cut off their nose to spite their face by either staying home on election day or actually voting a blank check from America for a party with a decades-long history of irresponsibility on national defense.

Even today, Democrats are arguing for more talks with North Korea and Iran, as if talk is going to stop such regimes from going nuclear, any more than talks with Hitler in the 1930s deterred him.

This is no longer about hawks and doves. It is about ostriches who bury their heads in the sand -- and about those voters who are prepared to give a blank check to ostriches.

[MavsX]

yeah dude..seriously we are so screwed

[dude1394]

All you can do is get out there vote and volunteer some moolah or time.

[MavsX]

thats true..when i was in college in ohio, i signed up to volunteer. I found a republican like headquarters for that county..and i got a bunch of signs and buttons and stuff..and answered some phones...it was in 2004 when bush won the re-election. Also I registered in ohio as a voter..so thanks to me we won ohio..woo hoo

[Usually Lurkin]

Here's Cox and Forkum's take on the loss of support in the Republican party

[Mavdog]

sowell actually believes it is immigration that is hurting the republicans?

huh?

[mcsluggo]

Originally Posted by Mavdog

sowell actually believes it is immigration that is hurting the republicans?

huh?

beat me to the punch...

[Usually Lurkin]

Originally Posted by Mavdog

sowell actually believes it is immigration that is hurting the republicans?

huh?

judging from talk radio, that was a pretty big straw

[kg_veteran]

Originally Posted by Usually Lurkin

judging from talk radio, that was a pretty big straw

Absolutely. Not that it will cause conservatives to vote for Democrats, but the conservative base, IMO, is not happy with the "amnesty by another name" plans that were nearly pushed through earlier this year.

[mcsluggo]

This was deleted earlier for curse words...

so here it is sans obscenities:

I know alot of you think this guy is the best thing since sliced bread... but I found that article to be weak swill.

As far as I could tell it only really took one position, and that one is clearly wrong:
Immigration is the main reason that republicans will lose the house and senate?
I don't think dis-affected republican or independent voters are under ANY illusion that Dems are going to more anti-immigration than the GOP. Nobody thinks that. Nobody.

And then he the rest of the article goes from that to offerring the tired old: everybody bad is Hitler, and everbody who disagrees with me is Neville Chamberlain... bla bla bla.

Sowell doesn't say ANYTHING here, compelling or not compelling. He says dems are ostriches, ignoring "the threat", but without saying what it is that would work, that the Dems are too afraid to come to grips with. So what is it?

First he says that a nuklear detterance doesn't work against N.Korea, and then he says that the dems want to <gasp> TALK to them, whatever the heck that means- but it is clearly morally bankrupt to consider it. The politicians advocating the views HE supports are in power now, THEY are the ones negotiating or posturing or planning strikes or opening the checkbook, or wahtever NOW. What is it that they are doing, or should be doing or will do if given the chance that is under threat of being undermined if the dems take over? What is it that they ARE doing NOW vis N. Korea/Iran that the dems would do differently if they came to power? He seems to imply (without ever stating ANYTHING) that we currently have those regimes backed up against the wall, and if we just have the intestinal fortitute to "keep up the pressure" we'd be able stare them down, and "win".

This whole piece is an big twisting bag of platitudes, with nothing at all inside. For this piece, you either agree with the general propostion: GOP = good, Dems = wussies, or you don't. It doesn't add ANYTHING to the debate. So I advocate replacing this article with the following more linear, streamlined version:

"THe GOP rocks, and democrats are Wussies. (also, lets control immigration better.)"

[Usually Lurkin]

immigration has hurt the republicans. And that's not all the author points to:

Add to this the Republicans' runaway spending and the fact that the war in Iraq has been going badly, and you have all the ingredients of a political debacle.

mcsluggo,
Sowell's point is not that republican voters are so ticked over the abandonment by their leaders over immigration that they'll vote democrat. It's that they won't be so excited about their leadership that they'll go out and vote. It's also not that voters are under the illusion that the Dems are going to be more anti-immigration than the GOP. It's that the immigration views of the democrats aren't on the front pages. The airwaves are full of Foley's emails and text messages instead. If we saw more stories about what the Democrats are pushing (on immigration, on Korea, on Iran, etc.) maybe the republican base would be more motivated.

[Mavdog]

Originally Posted by Usually Lurkin

immigration has hurt the republicans. And that's not all the author points to.

so it's the overall malfeasance of the current administration and not just a single issue?

[Usually Lurkin]

Originally Posted by Mavdog

so it's the overall malfeasance of the current administration and not just a single issue?

I think that's part of Sowell's point.

For me, who goes on the bench (and how easy it is for them to get confirmed) trumps all else right now. And "the current administration" has hit homeruns, though the congress could do better.

One result of the "no-agenda" Democrats (as Sowell might call them) is that I am free to imagine the obscene levels of malfeasance of that potential administration, and am further motivated to vote against them.