Radley Balko makes the Libertarian case for why the Republicans must lose. Mike Matthews has often stated to me that one of the reasons he is for Obama and the Democrats this time is because the Republicans must be punished for Bush. Balko agrees, if only to get the party back to “conservative” principles Goldwater and Reagan. Now, I think those principles have been shown to have failed spectactularly, given the current state of the economy, but at least we can agree, the Republicans must be punished. And while the loss will allow the Republican to clean up their internal mess through a wonderous (for us) civil war, we Democrats will clean up their mess across the country.
The Republican Party has exiled its Goldwater-Reagan wing and given up all pretense of any allegiance to limited government. In the last eight years, the GOP has given us a monstrous new federal bureaucracy in the Department of Homeland Security. In the prescription drug benefit, it’s given us the largest new federal entitlement since the Johnson administration. Federal spending—even on items not related to war or national security—has soared. And we now get to watch as the party that’s supposed to be “free market” nationalizes huge chunks of the economy’s financial sector…
Joe Klein hits it out of the park today.
Anyone who talks about the “pro-American” parts of the country is making an anti-American statement.
Anyone who talks about the “real” parts of Virginia doesn’t understand that all of Virginia is real–just not the reality as fantasized by the sort of people who see some parts of the country as more “pro-American” than others.
Anyone who describes one part of the country as “most patriotic” has lost all sense of what patriotism means.
….
But, seriously, you have to wonder why John McCain has spent so much time questioning the patriotism of others, especially his opponent, in this campaign. Is it because he once signed a prison “confession” that he considered treasonous? If so, please know that we don’t blame you. You’re a patriot, Senator, and a hero…at least, you were until you started questioning the patriotism of others–by saying things like they’d rather win an election than a war, and by implying that they’re soft on terrorists. Then you became something else entirely. And it hasn’t worked very well, has it?
Yes, he went there. In a good “Have you no decency?” kind of way. He did not attack McCain for his actions while a prisoner of war, because who would? I would like to think that I can handle torture and that I would never give in to my enemy captors, but the reality is, I probably would, just to stop the pain, or to save another prisoner of war’s life. That is what John McCain did. They threatened him and tortured him, and said they would kill another if McCain did not sign the confession. He signed it. That is not treasonous at all. That is heroic. That is courageous. But maybe John McCain is not proud of what he did, and he is trying to project what he thinks is his failings onto others.
