Posts Tagged ‘reality’

Lindsey Graham proves the power of the Tea Party

Posted: September 4, 2010 by datechguy in congress, elections, tea parties
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This story from the Hill (via Glenn) is more significant that you might think:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is playing defense against conservatives in his state angry with his record.

Nothing odd about that, lots of people are trying to shore up their bonafides these days

The Tea Party appearance was paired with appearances on conservative radio in the state, where Graham faced tough questions about whether he was adequately conservative.

Nothing strange there either, tea party groups and radio are great places to court conservatives. What is interesting is this:

Graham won’t be up for reelection until 2014, but conservative activists’ anger toward him suggests he’ll face a primary challenge in four years. He said that he’ll keep pressing forward toward consensus.emphasis mine

Think about that for a moment! Graham will not be facing the voters for 48 months and yet he is not only talking to conservative radio, but to the TEA PARTY groups to defend himself.

Anyone who studies politics knows that everything can change in a few months, just look at the difference two years has made for the one. Whatever one might think of Graham he is acutely aware of this fact, yet he is investing time and effort in meeting tea party groups. Why? Because in 4 years he believes he will need said groups for his political survival.

That tells you all you need about the tea party groups. Graham believes that they will still be a force through at least two more election cycles. Other republicans had better take note of this and get their conservative houses in order. Democrats had better do so too, this is a center-right country, even if our media is left-radical. I suggest that if you have to please either the voters or the media, please the voters, you can always find someone else to have a drink with at parties.

Lindsey Graham has read the tea leaves and seen the future, will the rest of the establishment GOP do the same?

Pining for the good old days of carbombs in Israel…

Posted: September 3, 2010 by datechguy in opinion/news, war
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Some things are just so ridiculous on their face that you can’t believe a prominent journalist actually said it:

“They [Israel] haven’t had a car bombing in two and a half years and the sad truth, really, is that the wall with the West Bank has actually worked.

Am I to understand that it is a regrettable thing that the wall to the west has prevented large amounts of Jews from living in fear and dying in violent slaughter? Time magazine has more:

Now observing 2½ years without a single suicide bombing on their territory, with the economy robust and with souls a trifle weary of having to handle big elemental thoughts, the Israeli public prefers to explore such satisfactions as might be available from the private sphere, in a land first imagined as a utopia. “Listen to me,” says Eli Bengozi, born in Soviet Georgia and for 40 years an Israeli. “Peace? Forget about it. They’ll never have peace. Remember Clinton gave 99% to Arafat, and instead of them fighting for 1%, what? Intifadeh.”

Does it occur to anyone that the wall actually provided peace. The Jews aren’t (and never were) interested in killing “Palestinians”, and thanks to the wall the “Palestinians” who apparently still want to kill Jews instead of you know having a life, can’t get to them.

As long as Arabs in general and “Palestinians” in particular consider dead Jews one of their favorite things you can’t have official peace, but if Palestinians can’t kill Jews, you will have defacto peace which apparently offends some on the left to no end.

The “Palestinians” elites hate it too, because with even defacto peace comes the responsibility to govern, and perhaps the reduction of the international welfare that has allowed the PLO leadership to line their pockets while ignoring their people for years.

Bottom line as long as “Palestinians” areas are Judenrein they are not interested in peace and we should stop pretending they are.

“Alaska republicans don’t like Big Government… who ever dreamed of that?”

Posted: September 1, 2010 by datechguy in elections, opinion/news, tea parties
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Stacy at the Spectator talks about Miller’s victory and makes an important point:

Miller’s victory was a vindication for a lot of people who have grown tired of seeing the GOP act as accomplices to the remorseless expansion of federal power. The campaign succeeded in large measure because the Tea Party movement has turned long-simmering conservative discontent with big-government Republicanism into an organized national force. Ever since the 2008 TARP bailout of Wall Street — for which Murkowski voted — more and more GOP voters have joined the insurgency that helped fuel the Miller campaign in accomplishing a rare thing: The defeat of an incumbent senator in a Republican primary.

It should not be forgotten that many establishment republicans were talking “repair” rather than “repeal” obamacare. The establishment Republicans are a lot more interested in driving the chuck wagon the stopping the gravy train. It’s only the tea party that keeps them honest. Smitty has a metaphor for this here.

As you might guess I don’t agree with Jane Hamsher much…

Posted: September 1, 2010 by datechguy in elections, media, politics, tea parties
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…but when it comes to the health care bill she is one of the few people on the left looking at the political consequences with open eyes:

The DCCC was very good at getting not-so-savvy poll analysts to try and discredit the SurveyUSA polling. (Those same pollsters, ironically, didn’t see anything weird in the Research 2000 polls they were quoting authoritatively at the time, which many now find suspect — though Jerome Armstrong spotted it). Somehow Democratic members of Congress engaged in magical thinking and believed Rahm’s BS about the popularity of the health care bill increasing if it passed.

Rather than focus on jobs creation in a country with climbing unemployment rates, Obama spent the better part of a year focused on passing a health care bill that looks like it will play no small part in the Democratic Party’s upcoming electoral woes.

Well, we warned you.

I’ll go one step farther. The Election of Scott Brown was the real breaking of the dam and the thing that made the Brown Election was the chance to stop the Healthcare bill. Forgetting everything else, the morale factor that the Election of Brown had for the tea parties and the GOP can’t be overestimated. Without the Brown victory you don’t have Miller in Alaska you don’t have the GOP establishment defeats in Utah & NC.

Brown’s election Made the Tea Party and the election climate that we have this fall, and the Healthcare Bill made Brown.

Democrats did this to themselves, Hamsher & Co tried to warn them.

I should point out that legal insurrection dissents:

I’m not buying that spin. It is true that Hamsher had some of the most devastating critiques of Obamacare. But when I wrote my Open Letter in January 2010 to Hamsher asking her to join us in defeating Obamacare, there was no response, either directly or indirectly, in words or in action. Instead, Hamsher and others were focused on improving (e.g. public option) not defeating the legislation, an ultimately futiile quest which required a level of subservience to the Democratic leadership in the hope they would come through for you. They didn’t.

Fair point.

memeorandum thread here

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