I get mailings from both the Democratic and Republican National Committees. Tonight I got an email from President Clinton telling me that John Kerry needs my support. Very, very unreservedly pro-Kerry and not about himself at all, just like his convention speech.
But I liked this mailing I got from the Republicans better:
Dear Dean,
Today we face the greatest test of our generation, defending our nation from a depraved, malevolent force that opposes our every interest and hates every value we hold dear. There was no avoiding this war but we will survive. Our enemies must not.
In this challenging time, I am grateful for the leadership of President George W. Bush and his steadfast resolve in defending our nation. He has led this country with moral clarity about the stakes involved and the strength to achieve unconditional victory.
Our President has not wavered in his determination to make this world a better, safer, freer place. Our nation must not yield in this long, tough fight to vanquish international terrorism and with George W. Bush as our President, it will not.
My friends, this is the most important election of our lifetime and I wouldn’t be writing you if I didn’t firmly believe in President Bush’s leadership and the need for his re-election in these challenging times. As Democrats gather in Boston, I am asking you to demonstrate your strong support for President Bush by making a contribution to his re-election campaign at www.GeorgeWBush.com/JohnMcCain/ today.
To the work of many American generations who protected our interests and championed our values abroad must now be added the defense of our freedoms here at home from a clear and present danger. We are very fortunate that in these challenging days we have a President and Vice President that have demonstrated time and again the determined, clear thinking necessary to prevail in this global fight between good and evil.
With your continued support and hard work, I am certain that the President’s campaign will prevail this November.
www.GeorgeWBush.com/JohnMcCain/
Thank you for your belief in our nation and your strong support of President George W. Bush.
Sincerely,
John McCain
U.S. Senator
Remember how Kerry tried to get McCain to be his running mate? Most of us who know John McCain’s record knew better than to think he’d ever support Kerry’s agenda.
I don’t normally make my choice on who to vote for until after both national conventions are over, but after Al Gore’s speech last night, I knew I’d made the right choice in joining Blogs For Bush.
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As an aside, it shows, also, why President Bush will win – when the Democratic convention ends, President Bush will hit the road touting his agenda for 2005 and beyond…intertwined in this agenda will be the plain fact of the matter that we are at war and the man to vote for is the man who is leading us in war, not the man who is carping over this or that particular aspect of the war.
Actually, John McCain says Kerry never once asked him to be his running mate.
Good point. I have no doubt he’s telling the truth either.
He made his unwillingness known publicly, and loudly, on several occasions, so I guess that would have been pointless.
It seems so strange to have the Democrats running on a platform of appeasement and isolationism and the Republicans running on a platform of confrontation and internationalism. As if the first 70 years of the twentieth centruy didn’t happen. Franklin Roosevelt should be hitting about 500 rpm right now.
Personally I cannot believe that the Democrats would give a speaking role to Pres. Carter. He is definitely not one of the happy moments of the last thirty years. Memories of that time make Marley’s ghost seem cheerful.
I wonder when the grown-ups are going to re-take the Democrats and put the nutjobs back into the shadows, like the Republicans did with the religious right?
I was impressed how much Gore whinged last night. His whole schtick about knowing about being unemployed is just so patronising its amazing…what a total arse.
I think the Democrats made a huge mistake in allowing Al Gore to speak at the convention. It has been obvious for some time that he has pretty nearly gone off the deep end. Everytime I see his picture, I thank God that he is not our president now.
I am also a blogger for Bush, and I’m proud of it.
I don’t agree with everything Bush does, and certainly not everything the Republican Party stands for, but I have more in common with Bush than I do the Democrats or Kerry.
Mike: That’s the thing about American politics, and that’s why I refuse to let anyone peg me as “Democrat” or “Republican.” If you look through history, the parties have often flip-flopped on major issues. Indeed, if you looked at their respective records, you could well argue that Nixon was the most “liberal” President since Franklin Roosevelt and Clinton and Kennedy the most “conservative” since Eisenhower. Depending on how you peg these things. Indeed, Kennedy and Reagan were probably closer to each other on policy and philosophy than any two Presidents in the last half-century.
So the real issue for the serious-minded voter is what ideas you support.
It is entirely and completely possible that in the next few decades the Democrats will become the 2nd Amendment party. It’s entirely possible the Republicans will become the dove party that supports expanded welfare state spending. Don’t believe it? Just look at the long stretch of American history. Anyone who thinks either of the party has positions that are set in stone and never changes is being a fool.
This is why I just chuckle at anyone who says he’s a “hard core Republican” or a “loyal Democrat.” What the hell’s that mean? Tell me about the ideas you stand for, and we’ll talk. And don’t generalize please; no one’s in favor of high unemployment, dirty air, protecting the guilty, hurting the innocent, etc. What are your specific policy proposals? Let me hear ‘em and we’ll talk.
Clinton oversaw shrinking of the Federal government (when measured against total population or total GDP). Bush has saw an expansion. Is that bad/good? Depends on your perspective and circumstances. I’m uninterested in such generalities. Where is the party today and what are they all about today? That’s what matters to me.
You have only a vague idea where the parties will be in four years, and none where they’ll be in 20 or 30. Ain’t America grand?
Actually Dean, I like to think the parties don’t change nearly as much as the people within them do. For instance, one might make the case that the Republicans are anti-black, and I won’t deny that a lot of segregationists fled the Democrats, took up residency in the party, and caused a whole heckova lot of trouble. But in doing so, they were forced to openly disavow segregation and hide behind the rhetoric of States’ Rights. Surely, you might say to yourself, you’re not going to claim that the Republicans were always the party of States’ Rights? Of course not, but they were the party that tried to defend the Union under the Constitution, and what Lincoln tried to do in his election was say that the moral ethic that slavery should not be expanded was greater than the issue of States’ Rights. It’s no irony that that exact same paradigm is being played out today with gay marriage, seemingly in conflict with the ideologies of the parties. But the Republicans have generally held that there’s a balance there that needs to be maintained in a strict reading of the Constitution, and the Democrats have generally said that the Constitution can mean what they say it means. (Recall Wilson and the League of Nations, FDR’s court packing, and the Dixiecrats’ denial of the 14th Amendment through Jim Crow.) The people change, the rhetoric changes, but the ideologies are a lot firmer than you would suggest.
I began my blog with this as a theory, and the further I go on with it, the more I believe it. Go back and read what I quote Lincoln saying in my very first post, where he claimed that the Republicans were the conservative party. And now we’re the conservative party again… the conservative party that stands for equal rights through a color-blind society? For economic freedom from excessive taxation? For interventionism in the world through a daring new concept of pre-emption to combat a never-before seen enemy?
Yah, right. We’re conservative alright.
Dean: I know the parties change position – its just that I still find it fascinating that the position change is as extremem as it is and within living memory. Just as the parties venerate leaders whose positions they would absolutely disagree with today.
For example, Churchill changed parties several times – not that he changed, but rather that the parties did.
Personally, I am a Republican. If it was 1940, I would be a Democrat. I believe America is a force for good, I believe in an active, interventionist foreign policy, I think appeasement is to be used to get a better position for the upcoming confrontation and not as an end in itself, and I think a strong military is absolutely necessary.
If the party changes, then I’ll change parties. That simple. Now regarding the Epsicopal church….
Black Republican: You make a good point. Almost an “eloquent” point (joke, joke, please, I couldn’t help myself!). Although I must say the historic move of segregationists in the South from the Democrats to the Republicans has really always been terribly exaggerated. When you look at the actual numbers they were pretty damned small, and a number of Republicans who were never segregationists got tarred with that stigma for no good reason. You know, people like to say when Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act he said he’d just given the South to the Republicans for the next several decades, but no one likes to remember that he said it because most blacks in the South were Republicans at that time, so he had just guaranteed (in his mind) a victory for Republicans in areas where much of their base (blacks) was now finally guaranteed a vote.
Tarring either party with the segregationist past is just not appropriate. You know, Bull Connor’s dead. Let him be dead.
Since I’m sticking up for the Republicans though now let me stick up for Democrats: historically their reputation as the Dove party’s also not really right. Harry Truman and Franklin Roosevelt were not pussies. John F. Kennedy hated communists his whole life and gave us an even bigger military buildup than Ronald Reagan did. And for all his reputation for being a wimp, Jimmy Carter actually threatened to use nuclear weapons if the Soviets tried to expand further than Afghanistan, making him so far as I know the only President to ever openly make such a threat to the Soviets. (Reagan’s “the bombs begin dropping in 5 minutes” joke doesn’t count.) The Scoop Jackson Democrats were no pushovers either.
Still in one sense I’ll give you this: the Democrats have always, always defined themselves mostly by collecting a vast collection of various small interests and gluing them together in a sometimes-awkward coalition. The Republicans have usually taken strong stances on a handful of principles, and stuck to those come hell or high water. That does seem the hard kernel of a difference between ‘em.
Mike: Well said.
Without coming off as too personal, your last paragraph really helped me to understand how you view these things and why you sort of like these conventions. As opposed to someone like me who hates them.
Unless the race has been close and the convention determines who the candidate will actually be for that party, I see these conventions as little more than an annoyance and a circus side show. It’s all fluff and no substance. (And I hate fluff and no substance.)
But you actually listen to the speeches and determine which candidate you will vote for, based on their speeches and their “ideas”?
That’s really interesting.
It would never occur to me to do that. It never occurred to me that other people do that. I knew that there were changes in the poll numbers after these things, but I could never figure out why (for people who follow politics and government). I don’t base my choice on what they say or how well written or delivered their speeches. The speeches are valuable to me only as a method of determining how much of a liar they are (or aren’t) by comparing what they say they want to do to what they’ve done in the past. I vote based on their record and nothing else. If the disconnect is huge then you know the candidate is devoid of character. Nothing but their record is an accurate indicator of what they WILL do.
I have an answer for you, Connie. Most people won’t get it, but I’m writing it now. I’ll post it as a main article.
You’ll get it, though many people won’t.
Mrs. Du Toit: For those who like politics as a sport, conventions are like following your team to the play-offs. They are reunions. They are parties (in the fun sense). They are where you meet others you haven’t seen in a long time. You listen to boring speeches and yell yourself silly over them because that’s what you do. You scarf down free food and look to find who has a hospitality suite so you can get free drinks (and sometimes overstay your welcome and get tossed out). (True Story!) You see who has the best CFS (Cool Free Shit). You try to convince others that your particular hobby horse of an interest is something they too ought to support. And you make snarky comments to your friends about the wierdos these events do attract.
Eventually you stumble back into the daylight wondering if your liver will ever recover, where you parked your car, and if you actually signed up for all those grassroots activities you fear you did (they should not have sign-up lists in the hospitality suites).
Then its back to work like you were a normal person. Or something.
Dean wrote:
“It is entirely and completely possible that in the next few decades the Democrats will become the 2nd Amendment party.”
If that ever happens, I’ll be a Democrat. Until then…
“Still in one sense I’ll give you this: the Democrats have always, always defined themselves mostly by collecting a vast collection of various small interests and gluing them together in a sometimes-awkward coalition. The Republicans have usually taken strong stances on a handful of principles, and stuck to those come hell or high water. That does seem the hard kernel of a difference between ‘em.”
That pinpoints exactly what is wrong about the Democrats and the Left generally, and what is right about the Republicans and the Right. I’m Independent, but at least the Republicans have some semblance of a philosophy, contradictory as it is.
Mike – sounds like a fandom ‘Con (a Convention of a Different Color, so to speak).
When John Kerry wins this election, I can’t wait to see the painful disappointment in all my disbelieving conservative friends. The crow will be piled high in November so get ready to take a bite. I only wonder what kind of right-wing conspiracy plan the Rove nutjobs have cooked up…this is going to be an interesting election year.
Dave: Some people take it more seriously than I do. As I do not want elected office, it isn’t a big deal to me. People there also use it as the place to meet people and build a support network for their candidacy for an elected or appointed office. Yes, there are campaigns for appointed office – the appointer will have a number of people angling for the position, getting endorsements, etc. You can talk to and plan with a large number of people quickly at a convention because they are all in one spot. So conventions may not actually nominate the parties’ headlining act, they actually fulfill a large number of other functions for the parties. I have only been to state conventions, not a national one (I am nowhere near active enough to be sent as a delegate to a national convention) but a lot does go on, with some actual nomination fights for some offices (this is at the state level).
It is fun – pep rally, campaign central, grip-and-grab fest, party, etc.
Timothy: If the election is such a *lock* for Kerry – why should you care what Rove might be planning.
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