On Breaking Ranks...
There are those who say that those of us who are gunning for Harriet Miers and her boss are doing more harm than good by breaking ranks with the President. They assert that we are placing the President’s entire agenda in jeopardy, that we might even lose the Senate in ’06.
In response to such assertions, I can only ask this: what visionary conservative policy initiatives might be put in jeopardy by the President and Senate being weakened? Is there some new trade barrier, Medicare expansion, alien amnesty program, tasty pork project or bloated federal budget that we might miss out on? God forbid! Now, I suppose it is possible that Bush and his friends in the Senate have a conservative policy agenda that they’ve been keeping secret from us for the past five years or so. If they do, I suggest that this would be a damn good time to roll it out. If they don’t, then I see little practical harm in weakening this party, which has spent the last five years paying lip service to my principles while governing like Democrats.
A weakened President is a setback for the Party in the short term, but this is a game being played out over decades. There are fundamental principles at stake. These principles will hopefully live on and triumph long after we are all gone, but they’ll only live on if they are vigorously and unapologetically defended. Of course there are times you take half a loaf rather than none. Every reasonable person understands that. We’ve been accepting our little crumbs and half loaves for the past five years, on the understanding that there was a full loaf on its way. Now, our promised package has arrived. We have opened the shiny, colorful bag that was supposed to have the full loaf we were promised years ago, and discovered that it contains only a few moldy crumbs.
We probably can’t get our hands on the full loaf now. It’s been stolen and probably eaten. The only thing left to do is to make the “breadmakers” pay a heavy price. Perhaps next time they’ll think twice about promising something they don’t intend to deliver. Perhaps they’re slow learners. In that case, we’re just going to have to go through this exercise time and time again until the professional insider politicians understand that we are serious as a heart attack about this. Eventually, they will come to understand that fucking us over is seriously not worth it. Until they come to that understanding, they’re going to have problems.
I want the White House to understand without a shadow of a doubt that this nomination is unacceptable to many of the people who have heretofore been some of his strongest defenders. I want George W. Bush to cringe when he thinks back to his decision to nominate Harriet Miers.
In response to such assertions, I can only ask this: what visionary conservative policy initiatives might be put in jeopardy by the President and Senate being weakened? Is there some new trade barrier, Medicare expansion, alien amnesty program, tasty pork project or bloated federal budget that we might miss out on? God forbid! Now, I suppose it is possible that Bush and his friends in the Senate have a conservative policy agenda that they’ve been keeping secret from us for the past five years or so. If they do, I suggest that this would be a damn good time to roll it out. If they don’t, then I see little practical harm in weakening this party, which has spent the last five years paying lip service to my principles while governing like Democrats.
A weakened President is a setback for the Party in the short term, but this is a game being played out over decades. There are fundamental principles at stake. These principles will hopefully live on and triumph long after we are all gone, but they’ll only live on if they are vigorously and unapologetically defended. Of course there are times you take half a loaf rather than none. Every reasonable person understands that. We’ve been accepting our little crumbs and half loaves for the past five years, on the understanding that there was a full loaf on its way. Now, our promised package has arrived. We have opened the shiny, colorful bag that was supposed to have the full loaf we were promised years ago, and discovered that it contains only a few moldy crumbs.
We probably can’t get our hands on the full loaf now. It’s been stolen and probably eaten. The only thing left to do is to make the “breadmakers” pay a heavy price. Perhaps next time they’ll think twice about promising something they don’t intend to deliver. Perhaps they’re slow learners. In that case, we’re just going to have to go through this exercise time and time again until the professional insider politicians understand that we are serious as a heart attack about this. Eventually, they will come to understand that fucking us over is seriously not worth it. Until they come to that understanding, they’re going to have problems.
I want the White House to understand without a shadow of a doubt that this nomination is unacceptable to many of the people who have heretofore been some of his strongest defenders. I want George W. Bush to cringe when he thinks back to his decision to nominate Harriet Miers.
posted by Eman at 1:21 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home