I highly recommend reading the text of Rudy Giuliani's speech. Very thought provoking and demonstrating that the mainstream Republicans were for going into Iraq for the same reasons most of us in the blogsphere supported going into Iraq. And it wasn't WMDs.
I'm trying to understand Kerry's various positions. He said at one time that Saddam and his WMDs were a threat that needed to be taken care of. Later he said that Saddam was a diversion from Afghanistan. Despite that, he voted for giving the President authorization to use force against Iraq. One wonders, if he thought Iraq was a diversion, why even give the President such authorization? He later said we're better off with Saddam gone but then in an interview months later says he would...
Peggy Noonan, one of my heroes, has an outstanding column in today's Wallstreet Journal about George W. Bush and how he has torn the Republican party asunder. It has always amazed me to see Bush haters trying to paint Bush as a "typical" Republican or "typical" conservative. He is neither. His out of control spending, his preference for loyalty over competency, his incompotent handling of Iraq, his left-of center views on federal education, immigration, and even welfare make him not a Repu...
Almost exactly a year ago I wrote an article about the Politics of Labels . I argued that American politics is really broken down more accurately into 6 categories. But in most discussions, we end up funneling everything into left vs. right or liberal vs. conservative. The more simplified you make these labels, the less accurate they are. Yet, it turns out that most people are able to identify themselves into one or the other. No one is purely a conservative and no one is pure...
Helen Valois has an excellent article about what "Cut and Run Conservatism" is. Now that Rush Limbaugh has chosen to demonize conservatives acting as conservatives instead as as Republican sheep, he may discover that outside his ditto-head bubble that there are many out there unimpressed with his rhetoric. Valois writes: And just what is a "cut-and-run conservative"? From what I can tell, this label applies to anyone who holds the (to Rush) illogical opinion that Republicans ought to ...
The Governor.. Staying with local Michigan politics further, Jennifer Granholm has somehow managed to keep a 7%+ lead. The reason this is shocking is that Michigan's economy is the worst in the nation. We're the only state that has kept losing jobs for the past four years. I actually like Grandholm -- as a person. I think she carries herself well. But I don't thnk she has the faintest idea on economics and business. Here is the thing a lot of people ignore at the state lev...
Here in Michigan, the senate race isn't as close as one might hope. It's Democrat Debbie Stabenow vs. Republican Mike Bouchard. Bouchard claims that Stabenow has been cynically avoiding any sort of televised debates . But I have not seen any real evidence of this. Right now, she's got a 9 point lead over Bouchard. As a business owner, I tend to vote for candidates who favor policies that help businesses. For instance, when my taxes are lowered, I have more capital to hire more people wh...
It is Day 4 of the Rush Limbaugh railings against frustrated conservatives who might sit out this election. And once again, Rush has tried to assign motive and intent to me and people like me (given that it was this article supporting Instapundit's premortem that helped set off this discussion). My motive? Apparently it's about power. I want to wreck things for the Republicans so that if the Republicans lose in November I can say "See, look at my POOOWEERR!" If Rush b...
Rush Limbaugh is unhappy with me. Or at least, people like me. Since Rush Limbaugh referred to my article (and kindly linked to it on his site) I feel I should respond to some of his points. I am not at war with conservative bloggers. I quote countless posts from many blogs on this program. I use them as resources. I'm referring to one blog post, and I don't even know who it is. I use a handle on-line. Draginol. I probably should just use my real name -- it's Brad War...
Given how often I get bashed for being a "right wing nut", being called a "liberal" dozens of times this week has made me conclude that I can safely say that my views are no where near the outter fringe of the political spectrum. Some of the comments, let alone email I've received, to the recent blogs I've writetn regarding Rush Limbaugh vs. Instapundit have been astounding. I guess I'm simply not used to seeing conservatives behaving so much like left-wing fringe advocates. When one is in...
So what exactly could the Republicans do to help win back the support of its base on a wide scale? Here are a few things: #1 Promose to bring fiscal responsibility back. Over at Instapundit , you can see Glenn Reynolds Pork busting. A lot of the pork is being done by Republicans. The infamous "bridge to nowhere" is but one example. When I hear things like "The deficit has been cut in half" it makes my skin crawl. Yea, because corporate taxes were up due to companies like ours payin...
In an episode of The Simpsons, Marge asks Homer "If I died, would you be sad?" and Homer responds "I dunno, woudn't be happy." That's pretty much how I feel about the Republicans. If the Republicans lose congress, I won't be happy about it. Not at all. I think that the Democrats plan for America is a bad plan. Democrats tend to worry more about intentions rather than results. What I am saying is that: 1) IF Democrats do win, it won't be the end of the world. Ou...
Today on Rush Limbaugh's show, Rush referred indirectly to yesterday's article about the Instapundit vs. Rush fallout. From listening to the show, Rush clearly seems to think that conservatives, such as myself, are being naive or as he put it, should "expand their horizons" on what the repercussions of a Democratic victory in November would be. Considerable time was spent on the premise that votes shouldn't be used to "teach a lesson". Or more to the point, that a vote really can't...
Recently Glenn Reynolds, webmaster of Instapundit.com, the world's most popular blog site and a conservative made the argument that if Republicans lose, it's because they deserved it. Rush Limbaugh today struck back with the charge of "Do we deserve to have our taxes raised? Do we deserve a cut and run policy in Iraq? Do we deserve to have endless congressional investigations?" The argument is strong but I think overlooks one thing -- we do have a Republican President right? Our taxes ar...
A couple of years ago when I started really getting into blogging I reached a fork in the road. My blog writings were starting to really get out there and bring a lot of traffic to my blog (back then Joeuser.com was just my site). The Alexa rankings help speak to that: So at its height, JoeUser.com which was just my site was nearing the top 10,000 blog sites total. I got a lot of traffic because I was blogging every day on political issues of all kind. That is the key to b...