*NOTE* - Conservative columnist Dylan Hales will be my guest on WTMA’s The Morning Buzz (1250 AM, listen online here at wtma.com) this morning (6/19/08) at 8 AM for the entire hour, and the Ron Paul Democrat himself, Bob Conley will be my guest, and will be taking listeners’ questions, at 9 AM. Writes Hales:
“On Tuesday June 10, 2008, something interesting happened here in South Carolina. For the first time in a long time, an authentically populist conservative won a close race in a very important political primary.Bob Conley is a virtual unknown who defeated an establishment candidate supported by the usual coterie of party insiders and special interest groups. The primary victory was narrow (1,058 votes) and the turnout was very low (only 17%), but nonetheless Conley, a conservative, observant Catholic from a blue-collar background, will be his party’s candidate for the U.S. Senate come November—as a Democrat.“Flattop Bob,” as he is often called, would likely be the first to tell you that he was a long shot to win the Democratic nomination, as he is no conventional Democrat. Whereas his opponent, well-known lawyer and longtime party activist Michael Cone, was the safe and obvious establishment choice
Maverick Conley bolted the GOP a few years ago over amnesty, war and trade policy and was a vocal supporter of Ron Paul’s presidential bid.
Though his primary campaign was poorly covered by the media (a blessing in disguise), Conley represents a unique combination of dissident, anti-establishment themes running on the fringes of both major political parties and his candidacy is perhaps the best hope for putting a paleoconservative in the U.S. Senate this November.”
Like a fine wine, America’s greatest living man of letters only seems to get better with age. Gore Vidal, the cantankerous patriot, on Bush, empire and “isolationism:”
Democrat Bob Conley stands for ending illegal immigration, protecting American workers, bringing our troops home from Iraq, increasing veterans’ benefits, reducing our dependence on foreign oil, ending Wall Street bailouts, repealing the Patriot Act, cutting spending, and fidelity to the Constitution. Conley, the Democrat, sounds more like Ron Paul, the Republican. As it turns out Conley voted for Paul in February.
When asked about his challenger Conley’s conservatism, Graham said, “From what I can tell, he doesn’t represent moderation. I represent a brand of conservatism that you will feel comfortable with.”
Quite frankly, Sen. Graham, your brand of conservatism sucks. It’s not even conservative. On crucial issues like immigration, Iraq, and spending, Graham stands for broken borders, botched invasions, and bloated budgets. Conley doesn’t.
As a matter of practical politics, Graham will have to blatantly lie heading into November, proclaiming himself the “true conservative” in a race where nothing could be more untrue. Even on social issues, the pro-life, anti-gay marriage Conley measures up fine against the incumbent senator.
But he’s still a Democrat, right? Given the track records of President George W. Bush and GOP senators like John McCain and Graham, the loyalty of conservatives to the Republican Party has produced more heartbreak than results. It might be time for conservatives to quit looking for love in all the wrong places.
Thank God. That’s why I like him. Writes Lew Rockwell:
“I rooted for Democrat Webb against Republican George Allen for senator from Virginia. Unlike virtually all public officials these days, Webb is a guy with real achievements, and in downing Allen, he killed the neocons’ handpicked choice for president in 2008. Now Webb is being mentioned as VP for Obama. I immediately liked the idea, but now I am sure it would be right.”
Lew’s “sure” is linked to an article in the dependably awful The New Republic called “Webb of Deception: Jim Webb isn’t a liberal; he’s a reactionary. So why are liberals falling for him? Writes, obviously out-of-touch, elitist liberal Richard Just:
“I am amazed at how many Democrats have fallen for Jim Webb. This madness has to stop. Now. Unless we want to end up with a vice president who harbors a worldview that is fundamentally illiberal, not to mention downright creepy.”
What’s so “creepy about Webb? Continues Just:
“So what is Jim Webb’s underlying worldview? Not only is Webb not a liberal; he is pretty much the opposite of one. I realize The Weekly Standard may not be the most credible judge of a candidate’s liberal credentials; but the magazine ran a great piece about Webb in 2006 that called him “the most sophisticated right-wing reactionary to run on a Democratic ticket since Grover Cleveland.” The author, Andrew Ferguson, made a pretty convincing case. The article quotes extensively from Webb’s books, relaying staggeringly creepy quotes about his Scots-Irish heritage such as this one: “In a society obsessed with multicultural jealousies, those who cannot articulate their ethnic origins are doomed to a form of social and political isolation. My culture needs to rediscover itself, and in doing so to regain its power to shape the direction of America.” But Webb’s brand of Scots-Irish nationalism is just the beginning. There is also his well-documented misogyny (he once wrote an article called “Women Can’t Fight” and famously denounced the investigation of the Tailhook sex-abuse scandal as a “witch hunt”).”
LOL. I like every bit of this. Keep the “creepy” coming! Just continues:
“It turns out Webb is also something of an apologist for the Confederacy. He has accused “revisionist politicians and academics” of trying “to defame the entire Confederate Army in a move that can only be termed the Nazification of the Confederacy.” There are clear similarities between the Sons of Confederate Veterans’ worldview and Webb’s. For one thing, they share an unhealthy obsession with the past.”
I likely won’t be voting for Barack Obama for President for the same reason I wouldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton – as conventional liberals, they promise to maintain and sustain the growth of government. This should be reason enough for any conservative to oppose them.
But it’s not. It has been said by many on talk radio and elsewhere that Obama is not simply a liberal, but the most Leftist person to even run for president, that he’s a socialist, and even an extreme, black nationalist. Pretty scary stuff, right?
But I can remember a time in the not-so-distant past when Hillary Clinton was the imminent threat and was portrayed as the most Leftist person to ever run for president. The same goes for John Kerry in 2004, Al Gore in 2000 and Bill Clinton in 1992. When I first started listening to talk radio here on WTMA as a teenager, Rush Limbaugh told me that if Bill Clinton was elected president, Americans would lose their cars, their homes and their country. Clinton would equal doom, we were told.
So tell me. Exactly, how was Bill Clinton significantly worse than either George H. W. Bush or his son? Needless and expensive foreign wars? Check. Open borders? Check. Growing government? Also check, but at least Bill Clinton balanced the budget one year, something neither Bush ever accomplished. So if Clinton was the extreme Leftist Limbaugh claimed he was, what does that make either Bush?
In 2000, we were told, time and again, that Al Gore was even more Leftist than Clinton. We never found out.
In 2004, the standard line against John Kerry was that he was the most liberal Senator in Congress. The Massachusetts liberal was never elected, so we don’t know what kind of president he might have been, but we do know that the same thing is now being said about Obama. In regard to Kerry, how could he have possibly been any worse than Bush?
And how can Obama possibly be any worse than Bush? If the Republican cheerleaders on talk radio talked as much about the gross incompetence of their own president as the alleged secret “socialist” agendas of any future presidents, I might be able to take them seriously. But they don’t. Republican failings – some of which, as of late are considered to be some of the worst in American history – are completely ignored so that Sean Hannity can talk about Jeremiah Wright for three hours.
Are John McCain’s positions radically different from those of your standard Democrat? The only significant difference I can think of might be on foreign policy, and as the 2006 Congressional elections taught us, you can’t even count on the Democrats to get that right. It seems the only thing Republicans can do to cover up the failings and inadequacies of their own candidates is to pretend the Democrat is the devil or worse. And it works.
But this is a parlor trick, not honest politics. Without question, the most villainous figure to the mainstream Right for the last few years has been Hillary Clinton. The average Republican voter has long been led to believe that a Clinton presidency would lead to hell on earth. The bell-ringers and whistle-blowers who drove the “Stop Hillary Express” knew no boundaries and showed no mercy for the former first lady.
But now they are telling us Obama is even worse. How is this so? Why should we believe that Gore, Kerry, Hillary and now Obama really were or are hardcore communists, when Bill Clinton, of whom they said the same, was no more socialist than his predecessor or his successor? And what are the chances that each Democratic candidate every four years is somehow more liberal than the last? What is the likelihood? Or is someone lying?
That each election becomes a concerted effort by the Right to cover up the flaws, faults and misgivings of crappy Republicans by making Democrats look even crappier is absurd, when in reality both Republican and Democratic presidents have given us the same sort of bloated and intrusive government that conservatives are supposed to abhor.
I don’t have to make up imaginary, extra reasons to show how Obama would be undesirable as president. His basic liberalism works just fine. And I don’t have to make up imaginary, extra reasons to show how McCain would be undesirable as president, as his platform, party and current president aren’t much to brag about. Portraying Obama as some sort of “boogeyman” is but the latest calling card of a mainstream conservative movement that seems to have run out of ideas – and portraying McCain as the lesser of two evils grossly ignores the devil not hiding in the details, but front and center, and in plain sight.
“Madrid - It will take the United States a century to recover from the damage wreaked by President George. W Bush, US writer Gore Vidal said in an interview published on Saturday.
“The president behaved like a virtual criminal but we didn’t have the courage to sack him for fear of violating the American constitution,” Vidal told the El Mundo newspaper.
The author, a trenchant critic of the US-led invasion of Iraq, said it would take the United States “100 years to repair the damage” caused by Bush.
“We live in a dictatorship. We have a fascist government …which controls the media,” he said.
Vidal also said presidential aspirant Barack Obama was “intelligent” adding that it would be a “novelty” to have an “intelligent” person in the White House.”
Writes The American Conservative’s Fred Reed at LewRockwell.com:
“Why Webb? Think about it. You’re a black guy running for president. Obviously race wasn’t a show-stopper. But there are a lot of people who are a little shaky about the idea – many not so much because of race per se as because they think you would go for all sorts of far-left social policies. In their minds, black equals Hillary but more so. (A few think you are a Moslem terrorist. I hope not, as then we would have two terrorists running. What kind of choice would that be?)
Now if these folk look at the Democrats and see a highly sophisticated black guy from Harvard (everything they aren’t) running with some tedious generic pol with good party credentials but not much else, the Space-Alien effect will occur. People from Harvard look like extraterrestrials to them. They’ll figure they have nothing in common with the Democrats, and that leaves God Help Us as president. You can’t do that to the country, Barack. It isn’t right. Where’s your sense of responsibility?
Now, Jim Webb. He is Like Them (and like me). He is very heartland, Scots-Irish, and did not grow up drinking designer water. He saw a lot of heavy combat as a Marine in Viet Nam. People know it because they have read his book, Fields of Fire, which he actually wrote.
He would be a splendid counterweight to McCain. On his war record, McCain is not a phony like Bush, Kerry, and Hillary the Sniper Dodger, but neither is Webb. I doubt that there exists a VFW post that would not be delighted to have him speak. If Hillary or Kerry came within telephone distance, they would probably put up concertina wire. Rich brats don’t play well in Legion halls.
Now, the Democrats are traditionally terrified of seeming Soft on Defense, and sometimes think they need to do something stupid but ferocious, so as not be come up a quart low on their virility dipstick. Webb, to put it mildly, in not vulnerable on this issue. He would provide an excuse for adult behavior.
In short, Barack, Jim Webb would give you what you ain’t got.”
“Mr. Conley is not only more conservative than Lindsay Graham (who isn’t?), he is in fact a Ron Paul Democrat.
This may seem strange to some, but it shouldn’t. I have argued before that the anti-corporate mentality of many “labor” Democrats could be channeled into an authentically pro-liberty message with a little education, and that seems to be Conley’s goal. Conley is not only right on war (unlike Graham’s primary challenger Buddy Witherspoon), but he is also right on trade, immigration, civil liberties and amazingly enough the Fed! While I myself find many of the social issues to be peripheral at best, Conley is a pro-life, observant Catholic. His slogan appears to be “help me fight the neocons and advance the cause of liberty”. What serious paleo or decentralist would ignore that call to action?
Already folks are counting Conley out and treating his campaign as a joke. A friend of his sent me a message today suggesting that he “accidentally won the nomination”. One can hold on to that theory if they like, but I believe it was divine intervention and I will do my best to make sure Conley is the next Senator from South Carolina.”
Not my own thoughts, but Dylan Hales, who I agree with on the unfortunate, early loss of Tim Russert:
“It may seem strange to some to see an epitaph for a establishment liberal on this page, but the truth is I have always had a soft spot for Tim Russert. While I often times felt he took the wrong side on certain issues, and he was as beltway a journalist as you could possibly get, Mr. Russert was also a legitimately “tough interview” in an era of fluff and sentimentalist, sensationalist garbage. These days you can’t expect much from the mainstream media, and Russert did not preform as strongly pre-war as I would have liked, but he did his best to call a scam a scam when the shit hit the fan. On top of that Russert was one of the only major network reporters who would even dream of giving time to folks like Ralph Nader and Ron Paul and his presence in that regard will be sorely missed
Above and beyond all of that Russert was an Irish Catholic, localist patriot of Buffalo, who was unafraid to call his father his hero, and loved his little piece of the Earth more than most of us could imagine. For that alone he should be remembered and he will not be forgotten.”
Weekly Standard editor William Kristol (son of neoconservative godfather Irving Kristol) is arguably the most powerful and influential neoconservative journalist in the country. The Weekly Standard consistently suggested that Iraq was a menace and left readers with the impression that Saddam Hussein had ties with Osama Bin Laden, Al-Quada and was responsible for 9/11. Of course, we now know that none of this was ever true. Here’s an example of The Weekly Standard’s duplicity:
The Weekly Standard is so closely associated with the Bush adminstration and the Iraq war that Vanity Fair published this parody:
Well, one military wife decided to let Mr. Kristol know exactly what she thought of him and his colleagues constant drumbeat for war, the price Americans are paying and her personal cost:
The "Southern Avenger" Jack Hunter is a conservative commentator (WTMA 1250 AM talk radio) and columnist (Charleston City Paper) living in Charleston, South Carolina.
