Quote of the day

Specter’s votes may “mean something to the people of Pennsylvania,” but apparently their votes for Toomey mean nothing to him.

By the way, do all the people who donated money to Specter’s huge campaign war chest get a refund, now that he switched to the party they were donating money to defeat?

You can’t deny the brilliance of Meg’s political advice: a political party always brings in scads of voters by agreeing with the most vicious criticism of its opponents, conceding that its most stalwart supporters are hateful idiots, and announcing that it needs some time alone to find itself. Meg also thinks it would be a great idea to loan a pile of money to a friend that’s about to go into drug rehab, and told the police you were one of his dealers.

I agree with Meg that we Republicans need to define who we are. I just disagree that we should then immediately apologize for who we are, and ask our opponents if they would like to define us, in the hopes they will do a better job. Here are a few definitions for Ms. McCain to consider:

We are the people who believe our children should be provided for and encouraged, not enslaved to pay for our indulgences.

We are the people who support and revere the men and women who sacrifice everything to protect us… and we support what they do. The harder their task, the more we support them.

We respect and honor the traditions passed down to us across centuries, and we don’t think every aspect of normal peoples’ lives is presumptively defective, or subject to deconstruction.

We believe we can celebrate what we hold dear, without automatically insulting those who don’t wish to join us.

We think free men and women, using their ingenuity and ambition to solve the problems of life, will *always* do a better job than the government.

We believe the purpose of government is to promote confidence among consumers and producers, not dominate and replace them. We say that government cannot be both a referee, and a player in the game. We demand the right to take risks in the pursuit of reward. We do not define our worth as the portion of our income the government doesn’t think it needs at the moment.

We believe government should be restrained. We think any government official, of any rank, who tells a private citizen he is compelled to accept government money belongs in a prison cell, not a cabinet seat. We do not intend to allow politicians to dictate the length and quality of our lives. We maintain that government should be the first to tighten its belt in tough times. We think the proper way to “stimulate” an economy is to stop seizing the wealth of the people who participate in it. We say that national defense is the most important and solemn duty of the federal government, and therefore it is the LAST department that should see a cut in funding.

We strongly believe the legitimacy of our democracy is influenced by the integrity of our voting system. Voting fraud should be aggressively prosecuted and punished – no one involved in a voter fraud scam in 2008 has any business walking the streets as a free man or woman in 2012. We demand transparency in campaigning, and that any campaign which will not provide it should be ended immediately, without further discussion.

We believe that being an American requires more than simply standing in one of the 50 states. We take ALL of our laws seriously, including the laws governing immigration, the laws punishing political corruption, and the laws against perjury. We do not believe the enforcement of these laws varies, depending on political rank and party affiliation.

I think we can find enough politicians to meet those definitions, and rally enough voters behind them to get them elected. We can do without Arlen Specter.

Doctor Zero on April 30, 2009 at 12:24 AM