Republican Refusal to Repudiate Bush Will Continue to Hurt GOP
It is just a fact. There is point arguing or getting mad about it.
Republicans need to repudiate President Bush on every level of government – or continue to lose.
It is just a fact. There is point arguing or getting mad about it.
Republicans need to repudiate President Bush on every level of government – or continue to lose.
Yeah, because God forbid the Democrats actually get elected for doing something positive.
George Bush is the best thing to ever happen to the Delaware Dixiecrat, er, Democrats.
I’d be happy if just the Democrats repudiated Bush.
Ron Paul will. I doubt that the gutless wonders in our own democratic party have the foresight or vision to challenge him. I wish they did, but what I wish really does not matter becuase the sad fact is for the most part our party listens to money and special interests as much as the republicans do; and the voice of the poeple? Where is it? Does it have any place in the smoky backrooms of 19th century shady politics?
Dixiecrats are Republicans now and have been for a while, Dave – I thought you’re old enough to remember the massive switch during the ’60s and the civil rights movement…
…and yes Bu$hCo has been the best thing for killing the current GOP brand, de facto – helping the Dems, Libs, or whatever. People now realize that electing someone who thinks government IS the problem is, in itself, a self-defeating act.
The mythical strawman is no more….
“…and the voice of the poeple? Does it have any place in the smoky backrooms of 19th century shady politics?” In a word, no.
Ask Jason, he will tell you. This is democracy dude, get over it. At least it is if the influence is from lawyers and unions. If the influence is from wall street and industry, well, that is another matter 🙂
Ron Paul may be the ONLY candidate who would empower the people of this great country. The People want us out of Iraq; Ron Paul. The People are tired of the government printing money to buy votes; Ron Paul. The People want to be free to do as they wish behind closed doors and in their beds; Ron Paul.
Peace and Freedom.
I agree with Dave.
“George Bush is the best thing to ever happen to the Delaware Dixiecrat, er, Democrats.”
Dave … You should get involved in politics.
Maybe you can help on someone’s campaign.
“This is democracy dude, get over it. At least it is if the influence is from lawyers and unions. If the influence is from wall street and industry, well, that is another matter”
The system of government you describe is called polyarchy. Democracy or even real republicanism has nothing to do with that. Google it.
If you want a republic it must follow the norms of constitutional government. A government of the people, by the people, and for the people. So Ron Paul seems to represent the simple, more limited federal government the founders intended and has the voting record to back it up. The truth is that government is not the problem, but they overuse of government is a problem that needs to be addressed quickly before there is no more republic and we are all happy citizens of the North American Union or whatever they want to call it these days.
Peace and Freedom Forever.
Poor Jason. He asserts it’s a fact that the Repubs in local races need to repudiate Bush to win elections. He offers nothing but his assertion.
__________
“I’d be happy if just the Democrats repudiated Bush.”
Me too. I remember the debates I had w/ Jason about what a Dem Congress would do w/ respect to the Iraq War. He was convinced they would get us out of it. I told him it would never happen. Looks like that’s another one I got right and Jason’s Dem cultism left him w/ egg on his face.
And look at who the likely Dem nominee for prez is: a war monger who rivals nearly all the GOP war mongers running for prez.
I’m telling you, put it down, Jason and all the rest of the DE Dems who think they can run against, say, Cathcart because of George Bush are simply whistling on their way toward the gallows.
Here’s something interesting I learned recently. Guess who started all this “We’ll run against Bush” business in the DE Dem Party. John Daniello. It all filtered down to the true believers from him. I thought I would fall through the floor when I heard it. This was the genius who devised the approach?
That he devised it should tell you what it’s really all about. It’s about doing nothing, proposing nothing new that will alter the status quo in DE, it’s about not lifting a finger to expand the rights and opportunities for Delawareans, its about being too God damned dumb to present a progressive agenda to the people of this state.
Here’s something interesting I learned recently. Guess who started all this “We’ll run against Bush” business in the DE Dem Party. John Daniello.
..and by “learned” you mean “thought” right?
Anyway, to be sure the Dems have some bad apples, but Bush and Bush zombie-ism is (rightfully or wrongly) helping Democrats.
Like I said it is a simple fact. No use getting worked up about it.
Dana…
Obviously we must do more than just run against Bush. But I am troubled that you, as a progressive, feel like we must not lay a finger on Bush. That we must somehow not tie all the Republicans who supported Bush and every single one of his policies, and who, by the way, called each one of us traitors on many occasions in the past, to the President they so lovingly adore as some sort of second coming of Christ. I am troubled that you just want forget that Bush exists and that you want to forgive our Delaware Republicans’ vocal support of him over the last 7 years.
We will tie all Republicans to Bush for the next couple of generations, just like Republicans were tied to Hoover for all of the 1930’s and 1940’s. These Republicans will bear the consequences of their support.
Yes, we must do more to offer the choice between progressive policies and regressive policies. And you have some good ideas on that. And we could work together to do that. But you insist on attacking us for attacking Bush. It is beyond comprehension.
And by the way, John Daniello is wrong about a great many things. I personally have criticized him on his irrational fear of primaries within our party.
But sometimes he is right. On this strategy, I support him.
Indeed, you must ask yourself…if John Daniello said the sun sets in the west, would you deny it?
The Dems real secret weapon is not George Bush it is Dana Garrett. If he backs the Republican the Democrat is a stone cold lock. Someone should warn Richard Cathcart.
Now that is funny.
“Obviously we must do more than just run against Bush. But I am troubled that you, as a progressive, feel like we must not lay a finger on Bush. That we must somehow not tie all the Republicans who supported Bush and every single one of his policies, and who, by the way, called each one of us traitors on many occasions in the past, to the President they so lovingly adore as some sort of second coming of Christ. I am troubled that you just want forget that Bush exists and that you want to forgive our Delaware Republicans’ vocal support of him over the last 7 years.”
Same old BS. Go after Mike Castle on George Bush but Cathy Clouteir. Use Bush to attack the Repub Presidential candidate and whoeve4r runs against J Biden for Senate. There’s no connection except they belong to the same party. Joe Lierberman belongs to the same party as Karen Peterson, but you and I would cry foul if the GOP made the linkage.
Both you & Del Dem clearly operate on the principle that the ends justify the means. Winning is the only thing to you. I question your credentials to represent the ideals of my Democratic Party.
“but not Cathy Clouteir” it should say
Let me try it again:
Same old BS. Go after Mike Castle on George Bush but not Cathy Cloutier. There’s no connection except they belong to the same party.
Use Bush to attack the Repub Presidential candidates and whoever runs against J Biden for Senate. Joe Lierberman belongs to the same party as Karen Peterson, but you and I would cry foul if the GOP made the linkage.
Both you & Del Dem clearly operate on the principle that the ends justify the means. Winning is the only thing to you. I question your credentials to represent the ideals of my Democratic Party.
There’s no connection except they belong to the same party.
Big connection in my book.
Let’s agree to disagree.
No connection? Dana, what world are you living in? There are no good Republicans at any level of government so long as they stand for and support the policies they share with President Bush.
You are becoming a Republican apologist.
“But I am troubled that you, as a progressive, feel like we must not lay a finger on Bush.”
By the way, I see how this smear of me is running through some circles of the Dem Party. I suspect you are the author of it.
Now let’s talk about two aspects of this. One, the truth, a section you will undoubtedly skip. The second the consequences for you.
One. As far as I can tell, I was the first person on the DE blogsophere to declare that Bush & Cheney were war criminals, should be tried by the ICC and spend their natural lives in jail. I continue to do so.
I support the only candidate for prez for the DEMs who wants to impeach Cheney & Bush. You don’t.
So you are in no position to tutor me about being soft about Bush. Compared to me, you are his lickspittle.
Your mistake is to think that George Bush’s name is Cathy Cloutier. That’s just your laziness about digging into the real issues in DE.
Second factor: Keep spreading this lie about me and we’ll have a war. And I’ll win. I think you know that.
Second factor: Keep spreading this lie about me and we’ll have a war. And I’ll win. I think you know that.
ooohhhh….
He is going to open a file on you.
Dana…
You are a piece of work. Now you are resorting to threats.
1. I do not want a war with you. I am not spreading lies about you. Indeed, I do not talk about you to anyone except to your face or on these blogs where you can freely see it. You attribute way too much power to me. I am nobody in the Democratic Party here in Delaware but a party member and a citizen of Delaware. I am not an operative out to smear or destroy you. That you think so reflects more on you than it does on me.
2. Yes, I am in a position to tutor you, for you think you can preach to me. If it is ok for you to tell me how to act and what to do, then it is ok for me to do the same. You are just the same as me: a Delaware resident interested in and passionate about Delaware politics. You may have been doing this longer than I have, but that entitles you to nothing. You are no more important than I am. We agree on some issues and tactics and we disagree on some issues and tactics. You are no progressive or liberal God who can never be questioned. If you want to question me, you will have to put up with being questioned. You got that?
3. It is recent news to me that you are in fact a Democrat. I am glad you are part of this party. It is what I want, and as I said at the meeting on Wednesday, that in order to change the party you have to become the party. But at the same time, you are not the sole arbiter of who or what makes a good Democrat. Neither am I. You express your view, and I will express mine.
4. Finally, shove your fucking threats up your ass. “Consequences for me?” Who the hell do you think you are? What army do you have that you think you can threaten me into silence? You are acting like a fucking fascist Republican here.
Also, you have no idea who I support for president. I have said that I cannot decide and because of that I may vote for our own Joe Biden just to give him some votes in his home state.
And you say I ignore the truth
“. Yes, I am in a position to tutor you, for you think you can preach to me. If it is ok for you to tell me how to act and what to do, then it is ok for me to do the same.”
No, actually I am entitled to talk to you on these matters on ways you are not to me. And the reasons have nothing to do w’ either you are mean.
Argument like this are called LOGICAL FALLACIES:
1.Bush is a Republican.
2. Bush a terrible person.
3. Cathy is a Republican.
4. Therefore, Cathy is a terrible person.
Not only is #2 not entailed by #1 but but the sequence of illogic worses as we move to propositions #3 and $4 since it argues that mere party affiliation has the same ideological results on on both Bush and Cathy.
Of course, when I try to apply that same logic to Dems, you say nothing:
1. Lieberman is a Dem.
2. Lieberman is a war monger (e,g,: supports attacking Iran while we continue our attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan).
3. Del Dem is a Dem.
4. Therefore, Del Dem is a warmonger.
Your arguments are rife w/ these kinds of fallacies. While you have a constitutional right to put up as much gibberish about me as yoursel, your arguments against me are not logically justified.
In short you have the freedom to speak this gibberish but not the justification to defended inanities as leading to a sound and reasonable position. But I can make that claim about mine because, unlike you, I’m not speaking gobbldygook.
In short, I am in a position to teach you on these matter but not visa. I didn’t decide that. The laws of logic did.
Dana…I have news for you. Lieberman is not a Democrat. And further, your shit does in fact stink.
Zell Miller is, DelDem. And, though you disagree, Lieberman certainly is a Dem. His “I” identifier is total BS.
Zell Miller lost all rights to call himself a Democrat when he spoke at the RNC in favor of George Bush’s election.
Dana and Mike, answer me this: Let’s say that the hypothetical Delaware Republican takes a progressive stand on wind energy and open government, yet endorses Bush’s war in Iraq, supports Bush’s scaling back of our civil liberties, and believes in torture.
Will you apologize for that Republican?
“I may vote for our own Joe Biden just to give him some votes in his home state.” – DEL DEM
Nice to see a Democrat openly confess plans to cast multiple votes for their candidate.
Refreshing honesty from a crooked party tool.
No, DelDem…I never apologize for anyone. But I would support that Republican because I realize their progressive ideas on open government and wind energy would be GOOD for Delaware, whereas their support for war, torture, and scaling back of civil liberties means jack-shit in the state’s arena. IE…they can’t do shit about that shit. They can talk a good game, but they’ve got no power to continue/end the war, continue/end torture, continue/end civil liberties. You see, I can disagree with those with whom I disagree. But those people need power for me to not vote for them on those issues on which we disagree.
Cathy Cloutier can love the war and hate civil liberties all she wants. The woman has no power to do anything about it. She does have the power to say to Democrat thug Thurman Adams: “Get the damn open government bill out of your effing desk.”
Understand?
Hahaha….See how personal fighting disintigrates the problem and though you would probably agree if you could frame the problem, you come to the nodding agreement that one is a fascist and one is a crook. You are both ok in my book. Though DelDem tried to call me Marx one day when quoting Adam Smith, I do not blame him, I blame his teacher for not teaching him Adam Smith. I imagine this is a common problem.
Let me try, though I may not be right, and I apologize if I am not, to frame the problem. The problem is and the truth is the war has violated the articles of the constitution and the initial authorization of use of force. Anyone who still supports it should be held accountable, and certainly bears moral accountablity under the Nuremburg laws which we ratifed following WWII and are party to. Anyone who rejects the policy of this aggression completely, is being honest to the rule of law regardless of what party they belong to-anyone who does not is liable under the law whether they know it at this time or not. Period.
So I think we must be careful not to call names and keep first and foremost the fact that what is at risk is not our reputation in this debate, but our bill of rights and our liberty.
Please read Mike Ledeen’s Universal Fascism published in 1972 and you get an idea of what the neo-conservatives think and how they are trying to polarize and radicalize our political system by playing on our idea of manifest destiny; please do not take any offense if I suggest you need to read more about the looming crisis, but I feel it is a grave matter that needs to be brought into the open.
Mike, Yes, wish she would get the open government bill off Thurman’s desk….but I will bet you it will not happen until we reach a crisis? How much?
Very funny anon. While I do vote early, they won’t let me vote often.
Mike–
You answered exactly how I thought you would, and if Dana agrees with you, it confirms that you both have no credibility as progressives.
For you see, the Republican you vote for today for State Senator could run for higher office later. Where do you think the Republican Party finds new candidates to run for Congress? On trees? No, they find them in the state legislatures and local governments.
I would never vote for any candidate that supports Bush and his failed policies. You would. In fact, I will probably be an old man before I ever vote for a Republican, period. But you would do it tomorrow.
And that is the difference between you and me.
DelDem with all due respect, the only real difference between a republican and a democrat today is only who their pay master is. On the one hand you get one type of corporate socialism on the other hand you get another type of generalized socialism. In neither case are your concerns the real interest, the special interest concerns are the real interets and your liberty and the common interest is lost in the process.
“Dana…I have news for you. Lieberman is not a Democrat. And further, your shit does in fact stink.”
He’s a registered Democrat.
“Let’s say that the hypothetical Delaware Republican takes a progressive stand on wind energy and open government, yet endorses Bush’s war in Iraq, supports Bush’s scaling back of our civil liberties, and believes in torture.
Will you apologize for that Republican?”
Will I apologize for them? What a weird question. What’s your point?
But lets consider Sen. Thurman Adams, DEM. He hates open govt, kills such bills by putting them into committees where they will never see daylight, hates homosexuals & doesn’t want them to have legal protection, and suppose (it’s probably true) he supports the Iraq war and torturing Muslims.
But he’s running against a Repub, a quasi-libertarian type, who always objected to the Iraq invasion, hates the torture, Patriot Act, and supports open govt.
Who does DelDem support? Adams of the Repub?
I support the Repub. I owe it to every Delawarean. You don’t agree?
“Though DelDem tried to call me Marx one day when quoting Adam Smith, I do not blame him, I blame his teacher for not teaching him Adam Smith.”
Let me guess. It was over the labor theory of value. I love that moment when you get to show that Smith is the person who first showed that workers really don’t get compensated for anything like the real value of labor. Marx took the idea from him, but the hyper-capitalists don’t know thaT.
Yep. That is correct, but it was also over the difference between the free market and the mercantile market which I compared the modern multinational corporation and to the British East India Company both being Mercantilist-both being forms of state sponsored corporate imperialism that need to be “smashed forever.” Using Smith’s words.
And opposed it to the socialism of social spending like Medicaid/care and SSI that are sometimes necessary and important to protect those who are vulnerable. So I was branded out of “Marx’s playbook”…as opposed to out of Adam Smith’s appeals to humanitarianism.
What most people forget is that the founders carried around Smith, and read him, so they knew these arguments well. How unfortunate that all we know of Smith is the one saying “the invisible hand”…we forget he said first you have to smash the mercantile economy to establish a free market of voluntary associations and that that was part of what the American Revolution was about. State sponsored Corporate Socialism was the norm of George III’s England, and it was what led to the tea party and the Massacre in Boston and then the gloves came off. I would very much like for us to do the same thing today in a peaceful way to re-establish our liberty before we do not have any.
What we have forgotten is that tyranny is a very old form of government, liberty is a very young form only a couple of hundred years, and mercantilism is always the biggest single threat to it and can pay off politicians to and buy and sell them like commodities, through special interests who are “bees with stings of honey”….if you want a republican form of government and not either an oligarchy, polyarchy, aristocracy or empire, then Adam Smith is the liberty man.
Karl Marx is not. What we have is what Karl Marx loved, he loved “free markets that are not really free in that they increase the divide between rich and poor and hasten the rise of socialism.” So no, I want Adam Smith to come home and the rule of law to come home and the Constitution to be reinstated.
The hyper-capitalists are not capitalists at all, they are corporate socialists always looking for state subsidies and circle-jerking to the radical Thomas Friedman’s suicidal polices of empire.
“For you see, the Republican you vote for today for State Senator could run for higher office later. Where do you think the Republican Party finds new candidates to run for Congress? On trees? No, they find them in the state legislatures and local governments.”
This is total horseshit. To begin w/ it’s the slippery slope fallacy. But it’s even FAR WORSE than that because the slippery slope fallacy starts out w/ a valid hypothetical truth (e.g. If Viet Nam falls; the Viet Cong were fighting for that end)and then slips down the slope into absurdity (Iceland will fall eventually as well).
But in Del Dem’s argument the first term is MERELY ASSUMED to be true; it’s not even established. The first term is “Cathy Cloutier is a Repub like Bush, therefore she supports Iraq, torture, scaling back civil liberties, etc.”
Now Del DEm proposes to add to this preposterous position and another claim he only ASSUMES Cloutier holds: viz., she could become a, say, Federal senator someday and help legislate the positions Del Dems ASSUMES she holds.
His entire position rests on a tissue of assumptions, smears and fallacies.
Jason & Del Dem represent the worst kind of yellow journalism and sophistry. They attribute terrible views to politicians THEY DON’T EVEN KNOW THE POLITICIANS HOLD and then assert that someday in some other office these politicos will also instantiate the terrible policies and practices. There is absolutely no difference between this kind of argument that Del Dem and Jason make and Hannity, Limbaugh, & O’Reilly. No difference at all in the form of the argument.
Of course Tom Carper supports the war, the torture, the Patriot Act, etc., but that doesn’t make you fearful of Anthony DeLuca or Patty Blevins in exactly the same way, even though there is no question that they are far more frightening than Cloutier.
Now I’ll let you in on a little secret. When the progressive Dems were stuffing lies into the doors of voters in Cloutier’s district about how she supported all of Bush’s awful policies, I talked to Cloutier about it and she said she could stand the very positions the LIE SHEETS about her claimed she held. She hated those things Bush had done. That wasn’t a surprise to me because I know where she is com9ng from philosophically.
But the point is I asked. But the liars who spread lies about her during that election NEVER BOTHERED TO ASK her. Just like you don’t Del Dem & Jason. You don’t want to know the views that local elected Repubs really hold. You just want to assume the worst about them and conclude the worst about them. If it’s a lie, it’s perfectly OK.
You two disgust me. You guys are pigs. You’re not progressives. You are Democratic McCarthyites–better, you are a self-appointed cheka. You are enemies of the political process in DE; wolves in progressive clothing. Just more thugs and bullies to be placed on my shit list.