A quick question

I never liked Randi Rhodes...she was annoying to me. Schultz was very good and presented his positions with rational arguments and thought. I didn't tend to agree with him, but I at least could gather an opinion.

His stream is here: http://www.bigeddieradio.com/listennow.html But he's not hosting the show today, so don't bother.

 

Yes, I'm beginning to be concerned about where the relgious right is taking my party.

For the record, I voted against Gay Marriage ban when LA tried to ammend its constition in September. I just don't think the government has any business saying who can and can't get married. (the ban passed overwhelmingly, but has since been overturned in court). I guess I've got a Libertarian streak. But I still vote Republican.

But I'm also pro-life, so where does that leave me?

It'll be interesting to see who gets nominated by the party in 2008.

 

I disagree with Bill on the war, too, but I'm hoping against hope that dubya and his crew will prove me wrong and make me apologize to Bill. I am pessimistic and expect that we are just in for another example of the adage the no good deed goes unpunished. The thing that really chaps me about the left is how they take the position that we are evil warmongers, that dubya just did this because of daddy, that it's a war for oil, etc. And, even though it's hard to remember who said what, I think that I've read a fair amount of that from our currently-pretending-to-be-sane Lastort.

This is very reminiscent of the left during Vietnam. They couldn't just oppose the war, they had to side with the filthy commies.

And as far as talk radio goes, Air America is typical of command-economy lefties - they don't seem to realize that Limbaugh started out in small markets and honed his craft. There's hundreds of guys like him, and he rose above the crowd. There's plenty of left-wing hosts here in the San Francisco area - but who emerged form this morass of political correctness to become a national figure? Michael Savage! These lefties are behaving the way that they believe capitalism works - create pure pollution, with no commercial byproducts, make a slick marketing campaign and the stupid public will buy it. I hope that they aren't vindicated, that would set a bad example.

 

this is fair, though I disagree.

I think Kerry's mistake was that at first he was Bush0lite in the primaries when he was debating Howard Dean and then he became Michael Moore when he was debating Bush.

I think you needed to find someone with Howard Dean's conviction from the start, but not someone with such anger. You should have ran a Clinton type, someone who went out there and said "I am opposed to the war and this is why...." without being angry or elitist. Kerry was sort of all over the map on Iraq. Granted Clinton himself said that Bush was 'doing the right thing' in terms of Iraq. But you know what I mean.

Also I really do think you need to ditch Michael Moore and the hollywood celebs. I thought that Ben Affleck was ok cause he didn't come off as obnoxious. Janeane Garafallo on the other hand just sounded pissed and angry and irrational.

Mike, i'm probably a little more liberal than the other guys here. I have voted for Democrats and will again. I'm anti-gun. I like Lieberman quite a bit. I'm a vegetarian, which for some reason is a liberal idea to many. I think guantanamo bay is wrong. But your party offended me. Michael Moore basically slandered our troops. Kerry made speeches basically saying that France is more important than Poland (who I hope to Allah gets a military base). The ACLU wants God removed from everywhere and every place, which might be techicly correct but if I can go to Dearborn, MI and see Mosques and public Ramadan displays without being offended, why can't everyone else?

I know war is a very controversial subjet, I think the far left handled their anger in the wrong way and moved people to the right. We need to be able to have a open debate without calling people fascists and Nazi's. The problem is everyone knows Bush isn't a Nazi or a dictator.

To answer your question, the religious right - I don't really have an opinion of them either way and Bush's faith doesn't offend me. Despite the religious right' being alleged moral police who hate gays, you gotta wonder how Will and Grace and Queer Eye are on prime time TV if their influence is so great.

 

I just want to say that I disagree completely on your analysis of Kerry's "War" meme.

Just saying "I'm opposed to the war and here's why" isn't enough. What does it accomplish?

The WMD story is played out, although our pals on PoliForum don't know it. Old news. We're there now, with 120,000 guys and a war to win.

So unless you have some plan (Kerry's "secret plan" really doesn't count) about WHAT TO DO then discussing what you objected to 18 months ago (when, incidentally, you voted FOR the War) doesn't impress anybody.

And that was Kerry's problem. He would have been happy to say "I think we should pull out completely, tomorrow". Would have said it in a heartbeat.

Only problem is, the electorate would have lsaughtered him because, frankly, that strikes people as abject surrender. And Americans believe that Moore is dead wrong, that there IS a threat, and they expect the President to be in charge of making sure their kids don't get fire bombed at school.

And Kerry had such a dismal anti-Military (AND anti-American) record that he was trapped. If he even implied that he was planning on pulling out, he was dead as nails.

SO he babbled nonsense. Yes, he would have gone into Iraq, but he would have done it "more wisely". Iraq is the wrong war at the wrong time, but he never said what the RIGHT war was. Tora Bora was a Bush mistake, although clearly Bush is not a commander on the ground and doesn't approve ops, so all he was doing was criticizing the US Army, which is REALLY a no-no.

There was just nothing he could say. Which, in a way, is the point.

What he SHOULD have said is "Look, whatever the history, we're there and we have to let the wonderful, courageous and highly skilled prosfeesionals of the US Army do their job. They will get everything they ever ask me for and then some for as long as it takes to get the job done there. "

Period. Nothing else to say. Take the whole damned thing off the table and run on issues you can win on.

But he just couldn't do it. He had a pathological need to prove that he wasn't the dirtball Vietnam traitor everyone has said he was for 30 years. So he made the war a centerpiece despite having nothing whatever he could safely say about it:

"Kill them all" sends his base into hysterics, or Nader.

"Bring the boys home" makes people think he's that Vietnam traitor he keeps saying he isn't.

He was simply the wrong guy. Lieberman would have won. Gepheardt would have been tough too. Kerry was a joke and the day he got the nomination Rove must have broken out the Champagne: that was the day Bush won reelection.

 

Well for me anyway, gloating ended on Thursday morning.

It's time to get back to normal. I've got more important things to deal with, like getting prepped for "My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss" on FOX.

 

Well, there are threads for gloating and there are threads for discussion. We've got a big menu here at Bill's Conservative Diner....

 

I am not a Republican Party member, but am seriously considering it because, to quote Eric Cartman, "Democrats piss me off." As a nascent Republican, I am obviously a South Park Republican.

A political party is simply a concentration of power. Ideologies attach themselves to one or the other party as a matter of convenience. People who see anti-Christian influences in society are more likely to be those affected. They identify those factors promoting those anti-Christian influences being largely from the political left, which is closely identified with the Democratic Party. Thus, they provide some political capital to the party in opposition, the Republicans.

If the political climate permitted a multitude of political parties, then we'd have to anticipate a Christian Party in America. This party would obviously campaign against South Park, but I delight in it. As a Christian, I don't put religion as my highest political impuse, and I obviously enjoy many offbeat things. I'd identify with a Conservative Party as a Christian rather than as a liberty-leaner within a Christian Party. I think most Christians make similar choices to whatever politics they have.

So the Christian support in the Republican Party looks more like an anti-anti-Christian support in the Republican Party. Anti-anti-Christianity is something a non-believer can believe in, so it is a good compromise position between the Christian right and the Republican Party.

Things might have been different if Christianity were identified with Socialism in the formative years of Socialism in this country, but Athetists and anti-religionists have a strong home in the Left.

 

Bill, I am just saying for me, and I think for many in middle America that an anti-war Democrat could have made a good case. But he/she would have had to do it in a civil way. I'm open to the debate on Iraq and sometimes myself I feel conflicted about it. But although there is some debate to be had on Iraq, there are definately good reasons to go to war with Iraq and many of them are discussed here. The problem is that Howard Dean and Michael Moore saw absolutely no reason whatsoever and that's a dishonest view to take and they took it a step further and called anyone who believed in the war "stupid" or a hate monger.

To be fair, many republicans did play the "if you're not with us then you're a traitor" card too, just not the good Republians. Bush never said anything like that.

 

As a Christian I'm not a Supporter of the Christian Coalition for the following resons:
1) In my opinion (as crazy as this sounds to you non-christians) our main battle is a spiritual one, not a political one.
2) Pushing a political agenda in the name of "Jesus" can come off as "forcing our religion on you", which is something I would never try to do to someone.
3) Never been a fan of Jerry Farwell

As a Christian I support the Republican Party for the following reasons:
1) This election for me was about what roll the U.N. was going to take in American politics. If Kerry won our troops would already be trading in their helmets for blue ones.
2) I don't believe in taking something from somebody else just because they have more of it than I do, therefore I do not support Democratic policy of "Tax the crap out of the rich and redistribute to the special interest" taxation policy.
3) In order for Ultra Liberals to have a majority voice in the Democratic party they've done an excellent job running off us Christians so naturally I'm going to go to the political party that doesn't go out of it's way to mock me.

So in conclusion, for most Christians it's not a matter of us trying to drive a certain political agenda, it's more supporting an agenda that aligns with our values.

 

I thought I said I leaned right, but.....

Anyway, the scariest thing I learned in this election is that my screwed up life experiences have made my position on abortion identical to Kerry's. See older threads on that touchy subject for the history, I'm not getting into it again, hurts too much.

I think I may have been one of the only people in the country who understood his f-ed up explaination in the debates.

My position on that topic prevents me from ever saying I'm a hardcore conservative. Whatever Pataki and Guiliani and Ah-nald are, is probably the closest to my politics.