Breath of Fresh Air in the GOP

I'm a registered Republican, yet I currently cannot stand the party. It seems like all the honest conservative intellectuals have been booted out of the tent in favor of those like Beck, Hannity and Limbaugh who only care about identity politics and scoring cheap political points instead of actually governing. So long as that is their modus operandi, I'm not having any part.

However, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) -also at this weeks First Draft of History conference hosted by The Atlantic - said the GOP needs to start calling out the fringe movements of their party as "crazy." Ah, It's about time.

First, he took aim at demagogue Glenn Beck.

Only in America can you make that much money crying. Glenn Beck is not aligned with any party. He is aligned with cynicism and there has always been a market for cynics. But we became a great nation not because we are a nation of cynics. We became a great nation because we are a nation of believers.

Next, he took aim at the "birther" movement (those that don't believe Pres. Obama was born in the USA and those who believe he is a Muslim.

I'm here to tell you that those who think the president was not born in Hawaii are crazy...He’s not a Muslim. He’s a good man. Now let’s knock this crap off and talk about the real differences we have.

Indeed. I know that kind of talk fires up the base, but it surely isn't going to garner the attention of independents. Keep it up Sen. Graham.

The Sarah Palin Fanclub Grows

Steve Schmidt, former McCain '08 campaign manager, gave a ringing endorsement of Sarah Palin at The Atlantic’s First Draft of History Conference, Schmidt said, “My honest view is that she would not be a winning candidate for president and if she was the results would be ... catastrophic.”

Atleast he admitted his error. When will Bill Kristol follow up?

Global Warming and Christianity

Comparing these two perspectives, who is more persuasive? Who offers a more realistic assessment? Who offers a more responsible and moral viewpoint? Legalistic Christianity vs. nonlegalistic Christianity at its finest.



OR

Is this – as some would claim – a failure to trust God, who has promised faithfulness to what he has made? I think that to suggest that God might intervene to protect us from the corporate folly of our practices is as unchristian and unbiblical as to suggest that he protects us from the results of our individual folly or sin. This is not a creation in which there are no real risks; our faith has always held that the inexhaustible love of God cannot compel justice or virtue; we are capable of doing immeasurable damage to ourselves as individuals, and it seems clear that we have the same terrible freedom as a human race. - Archbishop Rowan Williams, discussing global warming and environmentalism.

GOP at the Crossroads

Here is an excellent article in Newsweek written by David Frum discussing the internal battles for the future of the GOP and American Conservatism. Are Republicans going to become the party of O'Reily, Hannity, Palin and Limbaugh? Or will they become the party of Frum, Larison, Reihan and Duthat? I sincerely hope it is the latter, or else the GOP is destined to become an ever-shrinking southern theological party.
Preview:

In the days since I stumbled into this controversy, I've received a great deal of e-mail. (Most of it on days when Levin or Hannity or Hugh Hewitt or Limbaugh himself has had something especially disobliging to say about me.) Most of these e-mails say some version of the same thing: if you don't agree with Rush, quit calling yourself a conservative and get out of the Republican Party. There's the perfect culmination of the outlook Rush Limbaugh has taught his fans and followers: we want to transform the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower and Reagan into a party of unanimous dittoheads—and we don't care how much the party has to shrink to do it. That's not the language of politics. It's the language of a cult.

Quote of the Week

Courtesy of former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum:

A federal bank takeover is a bad thing obviously. I wonder though if we conservatives understand clearly enough why it is a bad thing. It’s not because we are living through an enactment of the early chapters of Atlas Shrugged. It’s because the banks are collapsing. Obama, Pelosi, et al are big-spending, high-taxing liberals. They are not socialists. They are no more eager to own these banks than the first President Bush was to own the savings and loan industry – in both cases, federal ownership was a final recourse after a terrible failure. And it was on our watch, not Obama’s, that this failure began. Our refusal to take notice of this obvious fact may excite the Republican faithful. But it is doing tremendous damage to our ability to respond effectively to the crisis.

Cautious On McCain

It's almost certain the election will be McCain v. Obama in the fall, but I have yet to decide between those two. McCain's stance on the war is suicidal, yet Obama has his liberal moments.

If you lean toward the conservative/libertarian side like myself, one would think voting for McCain is a shoe-in, however he appears to be taking some heat, especially from libertarians. It just goes to show how far removed the GOP is from true conservative principals and values these days.

Matt Welch from Reason Magazine and an author on a book about McCain took out an op-ed in the NYT to discuss the dangers of a McCain presidency.

Like many country-first, party-second military officers who began second careers in Washington, Mr. McCain is often mischaracterized as a politician without any identifiable ideology. But all of his actions can be seen as an attempt to use the federal government to restore your faith in ... the federal government. Once we all put our shoulder on the same wheel, there’s nothing this country can’t do.
It can be a bracing approach when his issues line up with yours — I, for one, would welcome President McCain’s unilateral wars on pork-barrel spending and waterboarding — but it’s treacherous territory for those of us who consider “the pursuit of happiness” as something best defined by individuals, not crusading presidents-to-be.