"Of course that's just my opinion, I could be wrong." Dennis Miller used to say this after each of his rants but you never hear the opinionated fools known as talking heads ever say this and it comes to mind since there is now a small but growing chorus led by George Will and Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain that the Democrats swept into Congress because the Republicans gave up on their vision of small and limited government (read - Congress' intervention in the Terri Schiavo case). I never knew McCain was the libertarian type what with his campaign-finance reform and all and Will should know that we have or are supposed to have 3 co-equal branches of the government, that the judiciary does not have the final word on matters of life and death, and that many people, even some liberals, can forgive a desperate family for going to the Congress to intervene on behalf of their incapacitated daughter. Conservative Linda Chavez and yours truly seem to be the only ones on the right track here, of course the War was uppermost on voters' minds but as she pointed out the other day in her column 1 in 4 people who voted in this last election were union members even though unions make up only 12% of the workforce and 3/4 of these voters went for the Democrat. Will seems to be reinventing conservatism to mean you can't help cognitively disabled people to escape a painful and agonizing death from starvation and dehydration at the hands of spouses with ambiguous motives. Will is no small intellect but he is hardly the pro-life conservative he was in the past (he recently came out for embryonic stem-cell research for example) and everytime he does this I'm going to check him on it.
I myself opposed the War from the start but have grown more tolerant of it, I never thought Bush deliberately lied about those WMDs to get us into war and so I figured even though it may not be the right war Bush acted in good faith and losing is not an option, once you're in it you have to win it, it's just that I don't see the Sean Hannitys really grasping the message voters sent and if you want to win the White House in '08 you have to get rid of your ostrich politics. The American people are not inherently anti-war but they do want wars fought competently, they re-elected Bush over Kerry mainly to finish the job. That conservatives like Hannity are willing to forfeit the '08 elections because the War is all-consuming is, to put it mildly, somewhat amazing to me. I'm no longer the hardcore Republican I used to be (if I ever was one) and now I'm just floating around in Independence land, tired of the ideological trenches and the lack of moral consensus in this country and most of all TIRED OF ALL THOSE TALKING HEADS. People who masturbate your mind
The time to have this debate about the proper role of the 3 branches of gov't would have been when Roe was passed, now it's too late and any attempt to backtrack and question is seen as a radical misunderstanding of gov't. When I went to high school we were taught in History class about checks and balances, that the legislative judicial and executive branches of gov't are co-equal but now everyone, including most conservatives, do not question the prevalent view that the judiciary is the most powerful branch of gov't. Did the Supreme Court really have the Constitutional power to sweep away the abortion laws of all 50 states? I say no but accepting this mentality paved the way for Schiavo and Florida Governor Jeb Bush's cowardice in that matter.
ReplyDeleteIndependence land isn't such a bad place, especially when you see the potential list of presidential hopefuls for the Republicans, no true conservatives are leading the pack. I am not even looking forward to 2008.
ReplyDeleteIf it's a choice between Rudy and McCain I'd have to go with McCain though. At least he makes motions at being pro-life, Rudy is even for partial-birth.
ReplyDeleteTo show you how our government is supposed to work a judge can pass a sentence on a criminal but a governor can commute that sentence or pardon the criminal after he's served some time, the Founding Fathers trusted that most times the 3 branches would work with wisdom. I do believe that Florida Governor Jeb Bush could have commuted Terri Schiavo's death sentence.