Open Thread: Big Talk Butters No Parsnips
3 days ago
Showing posts with label Conservatives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Conservatives. Show all posts
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Brilliant Quote of the Day
This is one of the best quotes I've read in a really long time. Read the whole article.
"Let me offer what is evidently a radical argument — identifying the candidate that best approximates your ideological beliefs is not sufficient reason to cast a presidential vote on his behalf. Yes, a conservative is naturally going to weigh a candidate’s adherence to conservatism very heavily, but not as an end in itself. The ultimate goal is to choose the candidate whose election most benefits the country, not the candidate whose beliefs most closely reflect your own." -- Conor Friedsdorf
Monday, October 27, 2008
NASCAR Patriarch Endorses Obama
One of the founding fathers of NASCAR, Junior Johnson, endorsed Barack Obama in a fundraising email to Obama supporters:
My family and I have given this election a lot of thought.
Our country is in a rough spot, and we're going to need some serious change. There's only one candidate ready to deliver it -- and that's Barack Obama...
Every day I talk to someone else who's never voted for a Democrat, but now they're voting for Barack Obama. They realize that Barack understands what we're going through here in North Carolina. And they're ready for change.
So I've made up my mind, and I'm ready to get involved. I know that I could never have won a race without my pit crew, and I know Barack can't win this one without us.
Breaking: Stevens Found Guilty of Felony Corruption
Embattled Alaska Senator Ted "The Internet is a Series of Tubes!" Stevens was found guilty today on seven felony counts of corruption.
Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens was convicted of seven corruption charges Monday in a trial that tainted the 40-year Senate career of Alaska's political patriarch...
Stevens, 84, was convicted of all seven charges he faced of lying about free home renovations and other gifts he received from a wealthy oil contractor. Jurors began deliberating Wednesday at noon.
Stevens faces up to five years in prison on each count when he is sentenced Jan. 26, but under federal sentencing guidelines, he is likely to receive much less prison time, if any.
Top 10 Reasons for Conservatives to Vote Obama
A top-notch Top-10 list from the Daily Dish on why conservatives should vote for Obama:
10. A body blow to racial identity politics. An end to the era of Jesse Jackson in black America.
9. Less debt. Yes, Obama will raise taxes on those earning over a quarter of a million. And he will spend on healthcare, Iraq, Afghanistan and the environment. But so will McCain. He plans more spending on health, the environment and won't touch defense of entitlements. And his refusal to touch taxes means an extra $4 trillion in debt over the massive increase presided over by Bush. And the CBO estimates that McCain's plans will add more to the debt over four years than Obama's. Fiscal conservatives have a clear choice.
8. A return to realism and prudence in foreign policy. Obama has consistently cited the foreign policy of George H. W. Bush as his inspiration. McCain's knee-jerk reaction to the Georgian conflict, his commitment to stay in Iraq indefinitely, and his brinksmanship over Iran's nuclear ambitions make him a far riskier choice for conservatives. The choice between Obama and McCain is like the choice between George H.W. Bush's first term and George W.'s.
7. An ability to understand the difference between listening to generals and delegating foreign policy to them.
6. Temperament. Obama has the coolest, calmest demeanor of any president since Eisenhower. Conservatism values that kind of constancy, especially cmopared with the hot-headed, irrational impulsiveness of McCain.
5. Faith. Obama's fusion of Christianity and reason, his non-fundamentalist faith, is a critical bridge between the new atheism and the new Christianism.
4. A truce in the culture war. Obama takes us past the debilitating boomer warfare that has raged since the 1960s. Nothing has distorted our politics so gravely; nothing has made a rational politics more elusive.
3. Two words: President Palin.
2. Conservative reform. Until conservatism can get a distance from the big-spending, privacy-busting, debt-ridden, crony-laden, fundamentalist, intolerant, incompetent and arrogant faux conservatism of the Bush-Cheney years, it will never regain a coherent message to actually govern this country again. The survival of conservatism requires a temporary eclipse of today's Republicanism. Losing would be the best thing to happen to conservatism since 1964. Back then, conservatives lost in a landslide for the right reasons. Now, Republicans are losing in a landslide for the wrong reasons.
1. The War Against Islamist terror. The strategy deployed by Bush and Cheney has failed. It has failed to destroy al Qaeda, except in a country, Iraq, where their presence was minimal before the US invasion. It has failed to bring any of the terrorists to justice, instead creating the excresence of Gitmo, torture, secret sites, and the collapse of America's reputation abroad. It has empowered Iran, allowed al Qaeda to regroup in Pakistan, made the next vast generation of Muslims loathe America, and imperiled our alliances. We need smarter leadership of the war: balancing force with diplomacy, hard power with better p.r., deploying strategy rather than mere tactics, and self-confidence rather than a bunker mentality.
Those conservatives who remain convinced, as I do, that Islamist terror remains the greatest threat to the West cannot risk a perpetuation of the failed Manichean worldview of the past eight years, and cannot risk the possibility of McCain making rash decisions in the middle of a potentially catastrophic global conflict. If you are serious about the war on terror and believe it is a war we have to win, the only serious candidate is Barack Obama.
Republican Rep. Larry Pressler Endorses Obama
The flood of Obamacons continues:
Former Sen. Larry Pressler (R-S.D.), who was the first Vietnam veteran to serve in the United States Senate, is the latest Republican to back Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign, Politico learned Sunday.
Pressler, who said that in addition to casting an absentee ballot for Obama he'd donated $500 to the Illinois senator's campaign, cited the Democrat's response to the financial crisis as the primary reason for his decision.
Steve Benen notes something very important about the endorsement:
Pressler's explanation for why he dumped McCain for Obama is the part that stood out for me. For weeks, the pundits have noted that the financial crisis has seriously undermined the McCain campaign. That's true, but it overlooks why -- McCain has handled the crisis really badly. It's not enough to simply note that a focus on the economy is necessarily good news for Obama; McCain had a chance to deal with this crisis effectively and he blew it.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Quote of the Year: Case for Obama
This is from last year but Andrew Sullivan's early case for Obama is as prescient and wise as ever:
If you believe that America’s current crisis is not a deep one ... if you believe that today’s ideological polarization is not dangerous, and that what appears dark today is an illusion fostered by the lingering trauma of the Bush presidency, then the argument for Obama is not that strong ...
But if you sense, as I do, that greater danger lies ahead, and that our divisions and recent history have combined to make the American polity and constitutional order increasingly vulnerable, then the calculus of risk changes. Sometimes, when the world is changing rapidly, the greater risk is caution. Close-up in this election campaign, Obama is unlikely. From a distance, he is necessary. At a time when America’s estrangement from the world risks tipping into dangerous imbalance, when a country at war with lethal enemies is also increasingly at war with itself, when humankind’s spiritual yearnings veer between an excess of certainty and an inability to believe anything at all, and when sectarian and racial divides seem as intractable as ever, a man who is a bridge between these worlds may be indispensable.
Friday, October 24, 2008
McCain Adviser Charles Fried Votes for Obama
CURRENT McCain adviser and staunch conservative Charles Fried endorsed Obama today and said that he voted for him by absentee ballot. Ouch, kinda close to home for Sen. McCain...
Charles Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School, has long been one of the most important conservative thinkers in the United States. Under President Reagan, he served, with great distinction, as Solicitor General of the United States. Since then, he has been prominently associated with several Republican leaders and candidates, most recently John McCain, for whom he expressed his enthusiastic support in January.
This week, Fried announced that he has voted for Obama-Biden by absentee ballot. In his letter to Trevor Potter, the General Counsel to the McCain-Palin campaign, he asked that his name be removed from the several campaign-related committees on which he serves. In that letter, he said that chief among the reasons for his decision "is the choice of Sarah Palin at a time of deep national crisis."
Fried is exceptionally thoughtful and principled; his vote for Obama is especially noteworthy.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Republican Former Minn. Governor Endorses Obama
The flood of Obamacons continues unabated:
Arne Carlson, a former Republican governor in Minnesota, has endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.
Carlson said Thursday that the Illinois senator's stances on the Iraq war, the economy and green energy goals won him over. Carlson, who served from 1991 to 1998, also cited recent comments by GOP Congresswoman Michele Bachmann questioning whether politicians have "pro-America or anti-America views."
"Regardless of our party, regardless of our partisan inclinations, there is no interest more compelling than the interest in the well-being of the United States," Carlson said at a gathering of Obama supporters at the state Capitol.
Carlson added, "He has laid out for this nation a vision for a national purpose."
Ordinary Conservatives for Obama - Video
This is a pretty powerful video of ordinary, everyday conservatives speaking out on why they're supporting Obama over McCain in this election:
Monday, October 20, 2008
Conservative Ken Adelman Endorses Obama
Conservative foreign policy hawk Ken Adelman joins the ranks of the Obamacons.
A brief bio from the New Yorker:
Ken Adelman is a lifelong conservative Republican. Campaigned for Goldwater, was hired by Rumsfeld at the Office of Economic Opportunity under Nixon, was assistant to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld under Ford, served as Reagan’s director of arms control, and joined the Defense Policy Board for Rumsfeld’s second go-round at the Pentagon, in 2001. Adelman’s friendship with Rumsfeld, Cheney, and their wives goes back to the sixties, and he introduced Cheney to Paul Wolfowitz at a Washington brunch the day Reagan was sworn in.
In recent years, Adelman and his friends Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz fell out over his criticisms of the botching of the Iraq War. Still, he remains a bona-fide hawk (“not really a neo-con but a con-con”) who has never supported a Democrat for President in his life.
Here's an excerpt from his endorsement:
Why so, since my views align a lot more with McCain’s than with Obama’s? And since I truly dread the notion of a Democratic president, Democratic House, and hugely Democratic Senate?
Primarily for two reasons, those of temperament and of judgment.
When the economic crisis broke, I found John McCain bouncing all over the place. In those first few crisis days, he was impetuous, inconsistent, and imprudent; ending up just plain weird. Having worked with Ronald Reagan for seven years, and been with him in his critical three summits with Gorbachev, I’ve concluded that that’s no way a president can act under pressure.
Second is judgment. The most important decision John McCain made in his long campaign was deciding on a running mate.
That decision showed appalling lack of judgment. Not only is Sarah Palin not close to being acceptable in high office—I would not have hired her for even a mid-level post in the arms-control agency. But that selection contradicted McCain’s main two, and best two, themes for his campaign—Country First, and experience counts. Neither can he credibly claim, post-Palin pick.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Crazy McCain Campaign Ladies
My mom always implores me to try to sympathetically understand the ignorant Republican base that's out there wandering around America screaming wildly about how they believe Obama to be a baby-killing, terrorist sympathizing Arab-Manchurian candidate. Although I generally try to give ignorant rubes little quarter, this piece in the center-leaning American Conservative gives me some pause for sympathy:
Perhaps you‘ve seen it, the near-precise moment when John McCain lost control of his campaign. The scene is a now familiar one, the bogus “town-hall meeting.” He’s passing the microphone around like a decrepit Donahue, standing before a woman who starts by saying she “can’t trust” Obama; McCain is nodding along, intimately engaged for the moment in manipulating the neurotic angst that is the dwindling lifeblood of his campaign. About the time she says her fear is due to what she’s been reading, a look of worry creases his trademark frown of condescending concern; he’s contemplating preemptively snatching the microphone back from her, when she lays it on him: Obama is “an Arab”. She’s managed to confuse her slander (assuming there isn‘t an “Obama is an Arab” email careening about the internet), but it matters not.
Taking back the microphone, still in the affectedly somber tones we usually hear dulling the senator’s continual call to panic (before the more immediate economic panic swamped it along with his campaign) he informs his disappointed supporter that while he‘s spent the last several months denouncing as irresponsible peace-mongering Barack Obama‘s marginal departure from a foreign policy of serial occupations determined by the requirements of AIPAC and the defense industry, no, the man is in fact human, and all that entails. The crowd lets fly with various notes of despair, all but booing their candidate.It was about as close to sympathetic as our too-proud would-be president has come in a long time, but it’s the anonymous woman, now a momentary punchline, who deserves our compassion (in taking a break from writing this I find her being parodied on television as “Crazy McCain Campaign Lady”). Her only sins are a lack of sophistication and an abiding faith in a political party. In taking advantage of this that party has terrorized her with the serial bogeys of Iraqi WMD, Iranian nuclear weapons, treasonous Democrats and now an Islamic Manchurian Candidate, with only resolute John McCain and his platoon of lobbyists and ideologues standing athwart these allied furies, united solely but unalterably in their Hatred of America and Her Freedoms.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Bill Kristol: McCain Campaign: 'Stupid... Pathetic... Flailing'
Conservative Republican moron Bill Kristol was on Fox News Sunday today and had a moment of reason and clarity, calling the McCain campaign "Stupid", "Pathetic" and "Flailing". Pretty amazing:
Friday, October 10, 2008
Real Conservatism May Yet Rise from the Ashes
I have to say that I am very impressed by the writing over on the site Culture11. I suggest you check it out if you have Conservative (yes, "C"onservative -- not the abomination Bush/Cheney have foisted upon us) or even just even-tempered leanings. It's good stuff.
Here's how a reader on the Daily Dish sums it up:
You and I don't agree on everything. I'm an atheist (although not in the anti-religion vein that Bill Maher subscribes to and I was glad to see you take him to task). I was against the invasion of Iraq. But, the one thing I do agree with you on is that "conservatives" have lost their way. However, I felt that a proper debate about that was impossible in the age of Malkin and Coulter.
I found no solace in the libertarian fringe that dominated the Ron Paul grassroots or Libertarian politics in general. I was often attacked as a Godless, terrorist, lunatic, and traitor on right wing forums for trying to start a conversation on where we as conservatives a heading. I've never responded in kind and ultimately left those sites to their own devices.
Through all of it, I continued to read your site. You truly seemed like "one crying out in the wilderness" and I was listening. Then I stumbled through a few links on one of your post to discover Culture 11. Realizing the site is still young and may yet become dominated by the "foaming-mouth" right-wing, it has given me hope that post culture war conservatives may still still have a fighting chance. No one has attacked me on the basis of religion and arguments are conducted in a respectful-thoughtful manner. So, the long and short of this e-mail is to thank you. Thank you for being a rational conservative and pointing me in the direction of the site. You are not alone and now neither am I.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Quote of the Month: Palin a 'Fatal Cancer'
Conservative writer and perennial McCain apologist David Brooks recently called Sarah Palin a "fatal cancer":
[Palin] represents a fatal cancer to the republican party. When I first started in journalism, I worked at the National Review for Bill Buckley. And Buckley famously said he'd rather be ruled by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. But he didn't think those were the only two options. He thought it was important to have people on the conservative side who celebrated ideas, who celebrated learning. And his whole life was based on that, and that was also true for a lot of the other conservatives in the Reagan era. Reagan had an immense faith in the power of ideas. But there has been a counter, more populist tradition, which is not only to scorn liberal ideas but to scorn ideas entirely. And I'm afraid that Sarah Palin has those prejudices. I think President Bush has those prejudices.
Quotes of the Day
Here are a few gems I came across today. In case you haven't noticed, I added a handy feature called "Today's Quotes" to the top of the left column of the blog. Enjoy!
"At the end of the debate, Brokaw asked McCain to get out of the way of his Teleprompter. He might as well have been speaking on behalf of the future: Senator McCain can you please get out of the way so we can get on with it?" -- Arianna Huffington
"You guys are nuts ... With due respect, I think tonight was a disaster for our side. I'm dumbfounded that no one else seems to think so. Obama did everything he needed to do, McCain did nothing he needed to do. What am I missing?" -- conservative water carrier Andy McCarthy writing on the ultra-conservative National Review Online about McCain's debate performance.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Wife of Sen. Chuck Hagel to Endorse Obama
Lilibet Hagel, wife of Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, plans to endorse Obama:
Lilibet Hagel has scheduled a 10 a.m. news conference in Alexandria, Va., on Tuesday with Susan Eisenhower, the granddaughter of Republican President Eisenhower. Susan Eisenhower also is an Obama supporter. [...]
She said it will be her first endorsement of a Democrat and that perilous world conditions were a factor. "The fact is we're in two wars, two of the longest we've ever been in. We've run up a third of our nation's debt in just the past eight years. We're in the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression," she said.
The Hagels know John and Cindy McCain, and she said her endorsement was not meant to slam them.
"This isn't anti-McCain. This is pro-Obama. I'm just convinced he's the right person," she said.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Wingnut Krauthammer Calls Election for Obama
If you don't know who ultra-conservative wingnut Charles Krauthammer is, well, that's just as well. Suffice it to say that he isn't a huge fan of Obama.
Regardless of that, he basically just dismissed McCain and called the race for Obama. Pretty stunning.
TPM reports:
One thing to watch for: Prominent conservatives essentially conceding that the race is over. This morning, none other than Charles Krauthammer waves the white flag:Part of reassurance is intellectual. Like Palin, he's a rookie, but in his 19 months on the national stage he has achieved fluency in areas in which he has no experience. In the foreign policy debate with McCain, as in his July news conference with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Obama held his own -- fluid, familiar and therefore plausibly presidential.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. famously said of Franklin Roosevelt that he had a "second-class intellect, but a first-class temperament." Obama has shown that he is a man of limited experience, questionable convictions, deeply troubling associations (Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers, Tony Rezko) and an alarming lack of self-definition -- do you really know who he is and what he believes? Nonetheless, he's got both a first-class intellect and a first-class temperament. That will likely be enough to make him president.
As if that weren't enough, Krauthammer also compares Obama's temperament to that of Ronald Reagan, causing no shortage of wailing and gnashing of teeth at McCain's Arlington HQ. Not exactly the message the McCain team wanted from conservative megaphones on the morning after Sarah Palin's big makeover debate.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Photograhic Evidence of an Obamacon
The ever-elusive species Obamacus Conservatigensus was spotted today in Texas:
National Review's Kathleen Parker Under Attack
As I wrote about last week, a steady stream of conservative writers and journalists have soured on Sarah Palin and have called for her replacement. One of the first to lead the charge is Kathleen Parker, a writer for the ultra-conservative National Review Online.
As a result of Ms. Parker's call for Sarah Palin to leave the McCain ticket, she has come under siege from the "no-brain-just-gut!" red meat Republican base:
Allow me to introduce myself. I am a traitor and an idiot. Also, my mother should have aborted me and left me in a Dumpster, but since she didn't, I should "off" myself.
Those are just a few nuggets randomly selected from thousands of e-mails written in response to my column suggesting that Sarah Palin is out of her league and should step down...
That we have become a partisan nation is no secret. This week has provided a vivid example of where rabid partisanship leads with the failure of Congress to pass a bailout bill vitally needed to keep our economy from unraveling...
Such extreme partisanship has a crippling effect on government, which may be desirable at times, but not now. More important in the long term is the less-tangible effect of stifling free speech. My mail paints an ugly picture and a bleak future if we do not soon correct ourselves.
The picture is this: Anyone who dares express an opinion that runs counter to the party line will be silenced. That doesn't sound American to me, but Stalin would approve. Readers have every right to reject my opinion. But when we decide that a person is a traitor and should die for having an opinion different than one's own, then we cross into territory that puts all freedoms at risk. (I hear you, Dixie Chicks.)
Our day of reckoning, indeed, may be upon us. Between war and economic collapse, we have enormous challenges. It will take the best of everyone to solve them. That process begins minimally with a commitment to engage in civil discourse and a cease-fire in the war against unwelcome ideas.
Although I appreciate the tenor of her sudden plea for rational nonpartisan dialogue (oh-so-conveniently put forth now that she has come under attack), I would ask Ms. Parker this: "How exactly do you feel you are holding to your ideals of 'civil discourse' when you continue to write for the rabidly ultraconservative National Review Online?" Further, "How about some words of calm and conciliation when your unhinged colleagues put out another frothing article about Barack Obama filled with lies, innuendo and thinly veiled racism?"
Leaving aside Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Fox News in general, National Review Online is one of the most consistently fact-free partisan "Democrat Attack" media outlets out there today. See for example a recent post from Ramesh Ponnuru personally attacking conservative Obama supporter Douglas Kmiec as a "silly and confused man".
Ms. Parker may suddenly be talking the conciliatory talk but she better start walking the walk. A good way to start would be to associate herself with a less batshit conservative publication. Until then, doesn't this inherent hypocrisy make her call for us to all ratchet down the partisanship sound just a little bit hollow?
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Saturday, September 27, 2008
Quote of the Day II
Conservative writer Daniel Larison has more on the Palin-Couric interview debacle:
[Sarah Palin] is a natural product of mass democracy’s ongoing pursuit of charismatic mediocrity, in which voters not only seek someone with whom they can identify but also actively discourage politicians’ cultivation of expertise. Expertise grates against their egalitarianism, and so they try to avoid it in their political leaders.
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