A Conservative for Obama

[hcap]

http://www.dmagazine.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?nm=Core+Pages&type=gen&mod=Core+Pages&tier=3&gid=B33A5C6E2CF04C9596A3EF81822D9F8E

In 1964, at the age of 16, I organized the Dallas County Youth for Goldwater. My senior thesis at the University of Texas was on the conservative intellectual revival in America. Twenty years later, I was invited by William F. Buckley Jr. to join the board of National Review. I later became its publisher.

Today it is so-called conservatives who are cemented to political programs when they clearly don’t work. The Bush tax cuts—a solution for which there was no real problem and which he refused to end even when the nation went to war—led to huge deficit spending and a $3 trillion growth in the federal debt. Facing this, John McCain pumps his “conservative” credentials by proposing even bigger tax cuts. Meanwhile, a movement that once fought for limited government has presided over the greatest growth of government in our history. That is not conservatism; it is profligacy using conservatism as a mask.

Today it is conservatives, not liberals, who talk with alarming bellicosity about making the world “safe for democracy.” It is John McCain who says America’s job is to “defeat evil,” a theological expansion of the nation’s mission that would make George Washington cough out his wooden teeth.

This kind of conservatism, which is not conservative at all, has produced financial mismanagement, the waste of human lives, the loss of moral authority, and the wreckage of our economy that McCain now threatens to make worse.

...I now see that Obama is almost the ideal candidate for this moment in American history. I disagree with him on many issues. But those don’t matter as much as what Obama offers, which is a deeply conservative view of the world. Nobody can read Obama’s books (which, it is worth noting, he wrote himself) or listen to him speak without realizing that this is a thoughtful, pragmatic, and prudent man. It gives me comfort just to think that after eight years of George W. Bush we will have a president who has actually read the Federalist Papers.

[46zilzal]

you left out the best part:“Every great cause,” Eric Hoffer wrote, “begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” As a cause, conservatism may be dead.

[hcap]

A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.
Franklin D. Roosevelt

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
John Kenneth Galbraith

[ArlJim78]

whoever wrote that was clearly never a conservative.

[Tom]

All liberals are damn fools.
>>>Me.






You doubt me?
Read any two posts by hcap.
Any one by 46.

[bigmack]

Hate to break up romper room for you two nitwits (46 & The Scourge of Monroe), but...

Perhaps Zilly can contact the author of that piece, Wick Allison, and convey his thoughts about how he should have killed his kid who was born with special needs.

Dem Dem's just love their McC.

uSpcxkKlEFA

[pandy]

The Bush tax cuts have nothing to do with the current financial crisis, or the deficit. The deficit is mainly a result of the war, the financial crisis is the result of a real estate bubble caused by low interest rates and reckless lending by banks.

People think that Clinton's tax increase balanced the budget, but Clinton benefitted from the technology boom, which was luck, and he also cut military spending. But basically he was able to balance the budget because of the booming economy driven by cells phones and the internet.

[HUSKER55]

Hcap you are joking right. You disagree with Obama on alot of the real issues but you are going to vote for him because he read The Federalist and he is conservative. I am conservative and I read The Federalist. If I were a democrat then I guess I could be president.

If you think tax cuts, Obama's core plan, are going to solve the problem then I think you may need to reconsider. Tax cuts will not solve this problem. What will solve this problem is less government spending, less freebies and an extremely large cut in the number of people on the governments payroll. Perhaps Iraq should payup for some of the costs involved in the war. Tarriffs need raised and free trade zones need elininated.

The next nation that wants a handout send them the United Nations complex.
That doesn't work either.

Democrats talk about healthcare but Hillary has tried for 16 years and she still can't get a majority vote even in the senate and most senators agree something needs to be done.

Several big moons ago, if you recall, South America had a problem that the good ol USA decided to help them on. (Brazil??) One of the programs the congress put in place for them was the mandatory retirement savings accounts that they could add more to at anytime with no limits with a guaranteed ROI of 6%, if memory serves. (I believe it was the Carter adm???)

When I was a kid gov bonds paid 8% . Today you can get a better deal at the local bank for 4%. There is no incentive to save or invest for the small fry. Seriously, most brokers have a minimum of $5000 to start an investment and the brokerage fees will kill you expecially if your acccount gets "churned".
They can't afford to do any less, at least in my neck of the woods.

I have presented my ideas of what needs to be done across a broad range.

What do you think needs to be done? Looking forward to your reply.

husker55

:)

[Tom]

O'Bama is three things:


a liar
a fraud
a nothing
O'Bama a conservative? When PIGS FLY. :lol::lol::lol:

[bigmack]

RDVUPqoowf8

[Tom]

:lol::lol::lol: Good video, Mac......Stand up!

[ArlJim78]

case closed, what else has to be said.

[Tom]

Did you catch Rush today, Jim?
He did another expose on O'Bama laid over "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" Hilarious! Perfect timing, and he can't hear the music!

T3k8H_9SjoM

[ArlJim78]

i heard it but was busy and not able to pay full attention.
he's really on fire lately, funny and picking apart all the messiah crap at the same time.

Rush, you magnificient bastard!

[Rookies]

And an e-mail from the left...

"
I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this
straight.....


If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents,
you're 'exotic, different.'


Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, a
quintessential American story.


If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic
Muslim.


Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a
maverick.


Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.


Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating,
you're well grounded.


If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community
organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years
as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee,
spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the
Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and
Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.


If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years
on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.


If you have been married to the same woman for 19
years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.


If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress,
and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.


If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex
education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.


If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're very responsible.


If your wife is a Harvard graduate laywer who gave up
a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.


If you're husband is nicknamed 'First Dude', with at
least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.


OK, much clearer now."

;)

[bigmack]

OK, much clearer now."
Sure is. Puerile, viral emails are meant for fools & Canadians just can't help but be fascinated with the neighbor downstairs.

[Secretariat]

The Bush tax cuts have nothing to do with the current financial crisis, or the deficit. The deficit is mainly a result of the war, the financial crisis is the result of a real estate bubble caused by low interest rates and reckless lending by banks.

People think that Clinton's tax increase balanced the budget, but Clinton benefitted from the technology boom, which was luck, and he also cut military spending. But basically he was able to balance the budget because of the booming economy driven by cells phones and the internet.

I guess the phrase "the buck stops here", or "on my watch" don't matter to a GOP President. They are accountable for nothing.

1. The tax cuts benefittting the wealthiest. You say the deficit is mainly a result of the war, and yet you say the Bush tax cuts had nothing to do with the deficit? At no other time in a time of war, (and as GW says a time we must all sacrifice, has the wealthiest Americans been given tax cuts hiking the deficit to be paid by future generations. Sorry, Pandy. You can't engage in a perpetual foreign wars on borrowed money from China, accruing interest that taxpayers have to pay for, and then state that the deficit is not his fault dur to tax cuts. The GOP used to be for balanced budgets. GW expanded spending dramatically, AND borrwed the money meaning it is more and more in useless interest to be paid to China, while we lose that money that could have been used for worthwhile projects (such as shoring up the freemarkets such as AIG and Fannie and Freddie).

2.Phil Graham's bill repealing Glass-Steagall which McCain voted for and almost every Republican in Congress in 99 set in motion a disaster. Clinton did not veto that bill but should have, and Bush was on record as supporting the repeal of Glass Steagall. This had as much to do with the Housing mess as anything. Bush welcomed Greenspan's lower interest rates as the markets naturally rose during lower rates, but they stayed low too long. Now they're low, and we're heading for higher inflation as the Feds keep printing more money devaluing your dollar.

3. Cutting the miiltary? It was a Cold War military and the Republican Congress during most of Clinton's era wanted that peace dividend as well.
To say Clinton benefitted due to new technology is true. Bush's could have benefitted by really encouraging new technolgies in stem cell research and alternative fuels, but they didn't. They got in the way. We could have been the world leaders in new fuel cell cars, and new cures for disaease. Instead we engaged in a protracted war (one based on a series of lies) and pretty much did nothing except for allowing oil companies to get richer.

4. Republicans have pushed and pushed for total freemarkets, and unbridled deregulation for years. We're now seeing the consequences of those actions.

I can almost buy some of the stuff you say, but the first statement is just flat out wrong.

[JustRalph]

Conservatism is so dead that naming a Conservative to the ticket puts John McCain back in it..........

Yep, dead............on arrival :bang:

[Secretariat]

Gotta smile at this post over on Daily Kos:

Commenter at CNN.com:

"Republicans lowered my taxes, and will keep them low. But the value of my home has dropped 20%, my health insurance costs have doubled, gas costs $4.00 a gallon, and my investments are in the tank. Please, tax me. "