While the nabobs are busy writing obituaries for America's conservative party, Republicans are lighting birthday candles and singing rousing fight songs. While the punditocracy clucks "whither the Republican Party - the new Whigs?" those of us on the righteous Right are winning back large swaths of the population.
There is nothing like the Democrat(ic) Party restored to full power to shock fibrillating conservative hearts back to life. My party was pronounced dead and buried after Goldwater's historic landslide defeat by Lyndon Johnson in 1964. Then came the "Great Society," a classic over-reaching of government into society.
I note these developments:
- A plurality of Americans polled support keeping Guantanamo open. [Gallup, January 2009] My guess is those numbers are a solid majority by now.
- California voters last week (May 19) turned down five spending referenda by an average of 65% - declaring no new taxes to fill their state's $21 billion hole. Ed Garvey, Mark Pocan, Jim E. Doyle, are you listening? Didn't hear that? It wasn't reported. [George Will deconstructs.]
- America is now majority pro-life, according to the Gallup Poll. Fifty-one percent of America defines itself as pro-life - "a significant shift from a year ago, when 50% were pro-choice and 44% pro-life." [More Americans "Pro-Life" Than "Pro-Choice" for First Time]
- Ending race- and gender-based affirmative action will win a ballot initiative in Colorado. So says a Rocky Mountain News poll, conducted by Public Opinion Strategies, found 53% in favor of Amendment 46.
The gift that keeps on giving
Cue Sally Struthers. Cue unbearably treacly pathos. Zoom in on solitary teardrop tumbling down dewy cheek.
"They sit in tiny cages, here on the island of Cuba at a place called Guantanamo - far from their home camps in the mountains along the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Many of them have not been in a fundamentalist madrassa for months. Won't you help them? Won't you sponsor a terrorist? Can't you reach into your heart for $5?
"Yes, just $5 a day can make so much difference.
"Just $5 can pay for 5 minutes of an ACLU lawyer's billing rate.
"Just $5 can enroll a detainee in job training - airline pilot, bridge inspector, nuclear plant engineer.
"Look at this poor soul. His name is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. He was forcibly abducted from his homeland, torn from his trade, the manufacture of plastique. Won't you help?
"Just $5 can place Khalid with a loving family - maybe your own?
"Just $5 can resettle Khalid and 239 more like him in your hometown. With access to your schools, your libraries, art museums, power plants and other critical infrastructure.
"You will receive a full color photograph of your terrorist with a note of thanks. Remember, in their culture "Die pagan crusader" is the highest form of compliment! Won't you call today?"
Paging all good liberals
So here is the Blaska's Blog challenge: Dane County Board, throw up a resolution offering to take a terrorist off President Obama's hands. Madison Common Council, do your part. You want to close Gitmo? Git 'er done! Take a couple. Pocan and Miller - want to slip some more policy into the budget bill? Bring the detainees to Wisconsin. "Legislate like you mean it."
Show your fellow lefties what Wisconsin can do when it puts its heart before its brain. Let's show California Sen. Barbara Boxer that she's a scaredy pants.
"We only have one max security prison in California and it's, right now, overbooked, that's the case," Boxer told CNN Sunday's John King on State of The Union. "In all, we are worried and we want to see what the plan is."
Even Alcatraz Island is off-limits, according to California Senator Diane Feinstein.
Alcatraz puts me in mind of the House on the Rock near Dodgeville. That tourist attraction could house quite a few "detainees." The Kathleen could strap ankle bracelets on them and they could act as docents.
What about Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin? No one's living there at the moment. Frank croaked in 1959. Even his grave is empty. Nothing like a little Prairie style architecture to enrich the soul. Pretty soon the new inhabitants will be working the drafting tables like Frank's indentured "apprentices" - drawing up "plans" of their own!
Strange New Respect
The Capital Times has been trying to beautify Dave Obey for eventual sainthood while he is still alive. Rep. Dave Obey has finally performed the first of the two miracles required by the Church. He stripped out $80 million from the appropriation funding the evacuation of Guantanamo's terrorists to these domestic shores.
Note that neither Wisconsin Democrat, Russ Feingold or Herb Kohl, voted to fund President Obama's scheme to close the Guantanamo terrorist lock-up and transfer its jihadists to domestic soil. The vote was 90-6. Those who opposed:
Durbin (D-IL) Harkin (D-IA) Leahy (D-VT) Levin (D-MI) Reed (D-RI) Whitehouse (D-RI)
Think about what seeding terrorists in our prisons will do.
After a year-long investigation launched by the Bush administration, the feds cracked down on a ring of murder-minded black Muslim jailhouse converts preparing to bomb two Bronx synagogues and "eager to bring death to Jews." They also planned to attack a New York National Guard air base in Newburgh, New York, where the suspects lived and worshiped at a local mosque. [Michelle Malkin: The jihadi virus in our jails]
Stop the nonsense; contact Act! For America to add your name to Barbara Boxer's and Nancy Pelosi's in opposition to bringing terrorists onto these shores.
Go, Dick, go!
I may be biased (May be? Hell, I am!) but I think the former veep made uncommonly good sense. One of the most important policy documents of our time is Dick Cheney's speech to the American Enterprise Institute last Thursday. Here are some excerpts:
Keep in mind that these are hardened terrorists picked up overseas since 9/11. The ones that were considered low-risk were released a long time ago.
… Terrorists hate this country precisely because of the values we profess and seek to live by, not by some alleged failure to do so. Nor are terrorists or those who see them as victims exactly the best judges of America's moral standards, one way or the other.
If fine speech-making, appeals to reason, or pleas for compassion had the power to move them, the terrorists would long ago have abandoned the field. And when they see the American government caught up in arguments about interrogations, or whether foreign terrorists have constitutional rights, they don't stand back in awe of our legal system and wonder whether they had misjudged us all along.
The British Daily Telegraph outlines "the 10 punches Dick Cheney landed on Barack Obama's jaw."
Republicans at play
"So I says to Obama, you're no Lincoln"
attribution unknown
