A House Divided
I am back from the Dane County Republican Party's Lincoln Day dinner Saturday at the Sheraton Hotel. I may have been a bit jet-lagged since arriving home from New Mexico less than 24 hours earlier to a snowed-in driveway. So, perhaps my fatigue is responsible for the lack of rah rah I felt.
For one thing, only two times, by my count, did speakers invoke the name of John McCain, our presumptive nominee.
Master of ceremonies Roger Stauter closed the evening by paraphrasing Lincoln: "A house divided against itself cannot stand -- we must rally around John McCain."
Yes, and we must take our castor oil. (I am old enough to know what that is.)
Maybe that is why I wore a Nixon-Lodge pin on the lapel of my sports jacket to the event. Were Republicans in 1960 actually excited by that ticket? Yet, it darn near won over a truly exciting, Obama-like candidate in JFK. I do think that John McCain is much more electable than Bob Dole in 1996, who was the inevitable nominee and just as inevitable loser. And part of the ennui may be because none of the candidates on our side got a chance to send roots down into Wisconsin soil.
State party chairman Rance Preibus and featured speaker U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan sounded the theme for the night, which was "We have to hold our elected officials accountable." It was directed at the spendthrift Republican Congress but seemed to be aimed at McCain, as well.
My tablemate, who has been well connected to state Republican politics since the very early days of Tommy Thompson, allowed that McCain might be O.K. -- if conservatives hold his feet to the fire. (State Republicans keep looking for the next Tommy Thompson just as national Republicans look for another Ronald Reagan.)
It is well documented that many Republicans dislike John McCain because, for starters:
- He co-sponsored so-called campaign finance reform with Russ Feingold. I agree, what hasn't already been struck down by the Supreme Court remains atrocious, anti-speech legislation.
- He has gone out of his way to diss the religious right.
- His immigration bill amounted to amnesty the easy way.
- He thinks global warming might be real.
But I like him for the very independence of his thinking. While Barack Obama talks about reaching across the divide, so far he has been nothing but a big tease. John McCain actually does it.
And his life story is unbeatable. Spend five and one-half years in the Hanoi Hilton and you can damn well say what you want. In that regard, he reminds me of my old Dane County Board colleague Don Heiliger of Stoughton, who was a prisoner of war in the same place and at the same time and for the same duration. Blunt to a fault; not blow-dried and focus-grouped (or groped). Don has three moods: gruff, gruffer, and run for cover!
Get used to it. There was only one Ronald Reagan. But like the Gipper, John McCain is his own man. He does not change his convictions to suit this year's fashions, to quote the abominable Lillian Hellman. My own litmus test is this: if I respect the person, I don't have to agree with all of his position papers.
Might as well say it: Rush Limbaugh got old for me very quickly. For one thing, he addresses his audience as "You people." !!!
Orthodoxy is sclerotic
I can't make a better case that Russ Douthat, senior editor of The Atlantic magazine, did in a piece in Sunday's Or that his extensive record as a free-trader, a tax-cutter and an opponent of pork-barrel spending wasn't sufficient to qualify him as an economic conservative because he had opposed a particular set of upper-bracket tax cuts in 2001. Or like yesterday's Democratic Party. One final thought about McCain. He made the correct call to criticize Rumsfeld -- and only he could have done that -- and right to call for the surge. In the past week, the enemy strapped dynamite to developmentally disabled women and sent them into an open air pet market where children frolicked. What kind of people do that? And why does anyone think that we can walk away from that and they can't reach us? Evil, unchecked, spreads. True of Hitler, true of Stalin, true of Saddam Hussein, true of Osama bin Laden. Paul Ryan told Republicans Saturday in Madison: "They feed on fear. They grow when we shrink from our responsibilities." Also at Saturday's Lincoln Day . Gene Hahn sung the ending to his farewell after 18 years representing the 41 Assembly District (northern Dane County, southern Columbia). Gene is in his upper 70s but withheld a Democratic challenger in every election. Can we keep his seat? But Gene Hahn was something of a McCain, what with his bills to legalize hemp. And not enough politicians can sing, although Dane County Clerk Bob Ohlsen has a great set of pipes. But only Gene Hahn sings his speeches. Potted in New Mexico New Mexico truly is the land of enchantment, as its license plates proclaim (feeling it necessary to add "U.S.A." after the name of the state). New Mexico has a unique and colorful mix of Anglo, Hispanic, and Native American heritage. I added to my collection of Pueblo pottery with pieces from the Acoma, Jemez, and Santa Clara Pueblos. Could not help but notice that the Indian School in Santa Fe has a familiar nickname: the Warriors. The same name under which Al McGuire won a national championship at Marquette University, now politically incorrect. And the high school just outside of Jemez Pueblo is nicknamed the Braves. Fans of sports team do not call their teams by disparaging names -- except perhaps when they lose -- whether it is the Stoughton Vikings or the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame. What is it about Democrats that they can't run an election? New Mexico's Democrats participated in Super Tuesday but their results won't be known until sometime next week. Same old story, long lines, long waits, not enough ballots, and confusion. One more thing about global warming: Tuesday's high of 33 in Albuquerque matched its previous coldest February 5. At least I missed Madison's blizzard but not this weekend's subzero temperatures.
Republican primary voters who turned to (Rush) Limbaugh for their marching orders were asked to believe that Mr. McCain's consistently hawkish record -- on Iraq, Iran, the size of the military and any other issue you care to name -- mattered less to his standing as a conservative than his views on waterboarding.
Douthat puts the Pharisees on notice:
With their inflexibility, grudge-holding and eagerness to evict heretics rather than seek converts, too many of conservatism's leaders sound like the custodians of a dwindling religious denomination or a politically correct English department at a fading liberal-arts college.
