The middle-class co-alition vs the commies

From Stuck in the Mud by Frank Luntz:

Frank Luntz, a corporate communications adviser, was pollster for the GOP's 1994 "Contract With America" and advised House and Senate Republicans from 1994 through 1999.

How Can the GOP Get Moving Again? Drop the Dirty Politics and Get Real.

"Don't be afraid to see what you see," Ronald Reagan once said.

Today, many of his disciples are choosing not to see the obvious. Republicans in Congress cannot regain their majority merely by relying on a coalition of traditional conservatives and evangelicals. They must reach out to what I call "the fed-ups" -- a large and growing constituency of independent voters who have held the balance of power in every election since 1992, and will hold it again in 2008.

It was only 14 years ago that nearly 20 million voters rejected both Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush in favor of H. Ross Perot, a little man with big ears and a big idea. Perot's principal claim on their allegiance in the presidential election of 1992 was his insistence that government should be competent, sensible and honest about its finances. His supporters were mad as hell and weren't going to take it anymore. Those voters -- 19 percent of the electorate -- demonstrated that there was a potent political movement of fed-up Americans.

Two years later, millions of Perot voters switched to the Republicans and helped them grab control of Congress. They stayed with the GOP for a decade because the party represented "good government." But red ink budgets, earmarked appropriations for bridges to nowhere, endless ethics scandals and a debacle of a war made them mad once again. In 2006 they deserted the GOP in droves and turned control of Congress back to the Democrats.

[...]

Despite its many problems, the United States remains a nation of dreamers. The American psyche is genetically wired to see possibilities. Faith in the future is in our DNA. It's why we historically vote for the more positive, hopeful, upbeat candidates.

[...]

Congressional Republicans didn't seem to notice in 2006, and certainly didn't seem to care. For the all-important swing voter in the center -- the current version of those 19-plus millionPerot voters -- Republicans came to represent the politics of hypocrisy and failure. They didn't have a message. They didn't have an agenda. They didn't have a purpose. And so on Election Day, these voters -- now about 16 percent of the electorate -- went elsewhere.

It is unfortunate that the Republican Party is currently dominated by hyperpartisan, gut-punching professional politicians and expert technicians whom I wouldn't want to face at the dark end of the electoral alley. They specialize in the flawless execution of "wedge" politics. That may have worked well in past elections, but no longer. The latest gimmick is "branding" -- a Madison Avenue technique -- to reverse the Republican slide. But political parties are not brands, slogans are not a replacement for ideas and you don't sell leaders the way you sell widgets.

Many rank-and-file Republicans agree. But the party apparatus still doesn't get it. Over the years, I have become unpopular with the GOP hierarchy by telling the apparatchiks what they needed to know, not what they wanted to hear. Nowadays my work is far from the day-to-day grind of political partisanship. But if I were still in the thick of it, my guidance would be just 20 words long: Be bold, return to basics, stop telling, start asking, focus on results, abolish "earmarks" and embrace a permanent balanced budget.

[...]

The path to a GOP majority must be paved with solutions to the real problems of real people. Republicans should talk about expanding health savings accounts and educating Americans about the benefits they offer. They should commit to sunsetting government programs every four years unless continuing them can be justified. They should pledge the investment necessary to develop renewable fuels and alternative energy. They should challenge Democrats to tackle the burgeoning tax code and fight for tax simplification on behalf of hardworking taxpayers.

Republicans need a spirited, intellectually based rebuttal to every piece of Democratic legislation and an alternative to every policy -- not a new parliamentary maneuver.

[...]

Step one should be the abolition of earmarks for hometown and home-state projects. Nothing will undermine the lobbyist culture more than a clear and definitive statement that there will never again be a highway project like the Alaskan "bridge to nowhere."

Step two is to once again stand for accountability, a principle abandoned in the last Congress. If Republicans are serious about demonstrating that they understand what America wants, they will support a balanced-budget amendment -- but with an important twist: The declining Social Security surplus couldn't be used as a numbers game to "reduce" shortfalls, and there would be a clause making it difficult to raise taxes.

[..]

Republicans lost their congressional majority because they lost touch with what Americans really want. As a pollster, I rarely hear voters call for smaller government. They tell me that they want more efficient and more effective government. (Note to Republicans: There is no starker symbol of Washington's inefficiency and ineffectiveness than the federal government's inability to control our borders and prevent illegal immigration.)

The GOP cannot win without attracting those 20 million middle-class swing voters. Reagan attracted them - and kept many of them permanently - but they are not partisan and will vote for whomever is the most authentic, positive and sincere candidate. They abandoned Bush Sr and voted for Perot which got us 8 years of Billary. The GOP needs to go back to it's traditional Big Tent philosophy - a party for the whole middle-class not just the party of the religious right; the party of business, low taxes and practical optimistic politics.

The GOP needs the religious right but ordinary Americans dislike interfering busybody nosyparkers like Falwell and Robertson, who rightly or wrongly, are perceived to be pulling the GOP strings. But middle-class Americans especially dislike the Democrat socialist elites who keep their positions by manipulating their underclass of "poor pitiful victims." Ordinary Americans aren't "victims." We're winners and we just have to keep pointing out that the Dems are losers and whiners.

It's our election to lose so let's make sure we win. (In fact I know we are going to win - I feel it in my old bones.) Let's attract the middle-class swing voters and this time let's keep them for as long as we can. It really doesn't matter that our presidential candidate be perfect. We can hold his feet to the fire of "fed-upness" if he gets out of line. I've never been much of an admirer of "leaders" anyway unless they are team leaders. Ordinary Americans are the team and we can correct and criticize our leaders whenever we want.

PS I read all the blogs that link here and many of them are "hardcore" religious conservatives. Some of them won't be happy till Jehovah sits in the White House. It's time for those hardcore conservatives to realize who their real allies are not only in the war on terror but in the culture war too. It's the non-partisan, non-religious middle-class - Nixon's "Silent Majority." They may not be perfect Christians or perfect gun proponents or totally anti-abortion but they are our best allies. They are the people who right now are pushing Giuliani's numbers up in the polls and relegating the flip-flop phony "religious conservative" Romney to the bottom rung. They can smell authenticity, pragmatism and optimism a mile away and fakes always smell fishy.

The bottom line is that most ordinary middle-class Americans don't care much care for ideology. What they do care about is keeping as much of their hard-earned money as they can out of the hands of spendthrift government bureaucrats and using it to educate their kids, build comfortable homes and pursue their own happiness in their own way - and maybe buy another gun. America is a nation of individuals and their families not of groups, classes or even parties.

We each want to create our own America not live in some fake peoples' paradise controlled by government like the Europeons. (That's not a typo.). Then once we've created our own individual little America, we co-operate with allies to defend each others' property and freedom. America is first and foremost simply a geographical area settled by like-minded people who believe that private property and individual sovereignty are the basis of civilization.

Mayberry and Mayhem

A bit of a ramble: I was sitting in my rocking-chair on the verandah last night thinking. According to John Edwards there are two Americas. In his tiny little pea-brain, those are the "Haves" and the "Have-nots." Actually there are a whole lot more than two Americas but, broadly speaking, there are at least two and they're not what he thinks. The two Americas are Mayberry and Mayhem.

To me the thing that keeps Mayberry from being Mayhem is tradition. I'm not a "real" conservative. I know that. I'm too tolerant of many things that "real" conservatives find offensive. I may be tolerant of them but that doesn't mean that I condone them. All that means is that there's not a whole lot I can do about them so I accept them rather than bang my head against a brick wall. I can't change Mayhem but I can live in Mayberry and ignore Mayhem. I can live by the traditions of Western civilization, Christian kindness and common decency even if it looks like the rest of the world is going to hell in a hand-basket.

I lived in Mayhem aka San Francisco for 25 years. I tried to adapt and make the most of it but eventually I realized that I was not going to be able to fit in and I was certainly not going to be able to change it. So I left and moved to Mayberry. Old acquaintances from San Francisco scoffed at me and told me that Mayberry does not exist; that it is a figment of my imagination.

But Mayberry does exist. Maybe Mayberry doesn't have as big a population as Mayhem but it exists all right in small towns and nice suburbs all over the USA. It even exists in small pockets in cities. Even San Francisco has a few decent people trying to raise their kids as best they can but I would never try to raise kids in a city. Like Andy Griffith, I was a single father for a few years when I lived in the UK and the first thing I did was get out of London and move my son and me to a small town in the Cotswolds where he did not have to fight for survival and lose his innocence too soon.

London in the 70s was not nearly as bad as most cities are nowadays. It certainly wasn't as bad as San Francisco is today. Most of the inner-city schools are battle-grounds. City kids grow up thinking that it's a dog eat dog world because so many of their peers are predators.

A lot of white kids become "wiggas" in order to adapt and survive. Maybe they don't really jump right into the "wigga" subculture of easy drugs and sleazy sex but they wear "thug" clothes and adopt tough attitudes so that they blend in and don't attract the attention of the predators. That's not the America I want to live in. I want to live in the America where kids are still kids until they are 18. Give me Mayberry over Mayhem anyday.

In Mayhem, the kids have to grow up too quickly while the adults seem to revert to a sort of perverted "childhood" of "hooking up," irresponsible promiscuous sex and narcissism. And I'm not talking about just the gays in San Francisco; the socalled "straights" are just as indecent. You can't blame only gays for destroying marriage and family. Promiscuous "straights" have done their fair share and have contributed just as much destructive behavior. I could tell you stories about socalled "straights" in San Francisco that would make your hair stand up on end.

Anyway, it's not like any of this is new. It's been going on throughout history. Sodom and Gomorrah have always been around and probably always will be. I just don't want to live like that. So I moved to Mayberry and, yes, in spite of the scoffing by my Mayhemian acquaintances, Mayberry really does exist.

Here in Mayberry neighbors do take care of each other; kids are still kids until they go to college and the adults are decent, kindly and responsible. In Mayberry kids aren't glued to the TV or Internet all day long absorbing the sickness and debauchery of Mayhem. In Mayberry kids have to help feed the chickens and milk the goats. I often think that I would like to take away kids' TV and computers and give them a flock of chickens to tend instead.

Maybe I'm nuts because I know that the whole of America will never be Mayberry and I also know that it never was. Mayhem has always existed. I just don't want to live in it. I prefer having the Cleavers as neighbors to maniacal muggers with meat-cleavers ready to chop my head in to steal some money to buy a quick fix of brain-rotting drugs.

When I was a kid, my Mom used to tell me whenever I was upset about something nasty that was happening in the world, "Just ignore it. Evil will always be there. If you focus on it and try to fight it, you will become like it. Concentrate on the goodness and beauty."

I thought she was being unrealistic until maybe ten or fifteen years ago when I realized that she was in fact being quite realistic. One person can't fight all the evil in the world alone. That's not to say that I should just give up and let the evil win but it does mean that I should not exhaust myself fighting it. I need to surround myself with beauty and grace and focus on what's positive and creative if I want to be strong enough to withstand the negativity and destructiveness.

The best way to fight evil is to be happy. Happiness is infectious. You can't fight darkness in the dark. You have to turn on the light to see what you're doing. The funny thing is that the darkness disappears as soon as you turn on the light and you see that darkness was not something real but simply the absence of light.

So I'll just live here in my little Mayberry and be happy. Even if I can't do much good at least I am not contributing to the evil.

Sunday flowers

Just before dinner last night I was sitting in my rocking-chair on the verandah having a cup of tea, listening to the roar of the sea and watching the rain in the dusk. There was a really windy storm coming in. The surf's so loud because the waves are 20 feet high. The ocean is rough because there's a battle going on between cold air from Alaska and warm air from Hawaii.

I watched the lightning (a result of the clash of different temperatures and pressures) flash over the ocean and listened to the thunder rolling in, getting closer and louder. The weather has been like this for a couple weeks and is expected to go on like this for another week or so; rain, wind, day temps in the low 40s and nights just hovering around freezing. It's snowing in the hills east of us and we've had snow flurries and hail for a few days now.

Anyway I was thinking that I had not done a Sunday "flower post" in ages mostly because there were no flowers blooming in mid-winter. I need a break from politics regularly and Sunday used to be my Sabbath when I would focus on nice things like flowers and poetry. Fortunately Spring has sprung and finally I have some flower pics to post.

The daffodils started blooming about two weeks ago.























Daffodils in the snow.























The cherries also started blooming two weeks ago. The first time I ever saw cherries blossoms in snow was in London. It was May and a late Spring snow-storm surprised everyone. I wish I had a picture of the cherry tree outside my house in London. It seemed to float on a pond of pink petals which had fallen on the white snow beneath it.


















We have not had enough snow to stick but this is what cherry blossoms in the snow look like.


















Last week we bought a weeping cherry tree to plant in the front yard beside the driveway.


















I will probably not live long enough to see the weeping cherry look like this. This is a very old tree.
















The camellias have also started blooming.

















A flowering quince - one of the first flowers to bloom in Spring. I had never seen a flowering quince until I moved here. The only quinces I ever knew were hedges with fruit. We had a quince hedge on the farm when I was a kid. Years after we moved away from the farm, my Mom was reminiscing to my sister and I about it. "Do you remember the quince hedge that grew between the kitchen door and the toilet?" she asked us. "Yes," I answered. "No," replied my sister. She was still a toddler when we left the farm. Then she added, "But how did you get a quince hedge to grow in the house?" It took us a while to realize that she had forgotten that the toilet was outside and that the quince hedge ran from the kitchen door to the outhouse. That's a family joke to this day.

















Another early Spring bloomer is the acacia which is known as the wattle tree in its native Australia. We used to call it mimosa in South Africa.


















A couple of weeks ago we discovered a madrone tree in the forest. We are busy clearing another acre of land of underbrush and dead white cedars (which are all dying of phyllopthera) and there was this old madrone. I was very happy because you cannot transplant madrones and have to grow them from seed. It is a magnificant tree native to the Pacific Coast. The trunks and branches are covered with red bark but, when the branches die, they turn black.























Normally madrones are tidy rounded trees but the one we found had been mis-shapen by other trees growing too close and it has long spindly branches.
















Right now the madrones are all in bloom. They are not only beautiful trees but are also harvested for timber. The wood is very hard and is used for flooring. Because the trunks and branches are not straight, they cannot be cut into planks but are turned into small "tiles" used to make parqet flooring.

Comparing

I wanted to compare where I live now to where I lived before, San Francisco. They do not show data for towns of less than 25,000 (and the largest town in this county has a population of 15,000) so I made this chart using the data from the US Census Bureau's State & County Quick Facts. I also included the figures for the whole of the USA.

There are a couple of things that jump out immediately:

93.6% of the population in my county is white. The USA figure is 80.2%. Only 56.6% of the population of San Francisco is white and 32.9% is Asian.

San Francisco has a home-ownership rate almost half of the national average. Well, housing in San Francisco costs four times as much as the national average.

If I turn the population figures for my county into numbers instead of percentages, I see that, out of a total population of about 65,000, there are 325 blacks, 650 Asians, 1,500 American Indians and about 3,000 Latinos. Most of these people live in the largest town. There are no other races besides whites in the town (pop. 1,800) nearest my farm.

I have 88 tenants in my rentals which are all in the biggest town. Only one of my tenants is black. I used to have 2 Latino tenants but currently have none and I have only one Asian tenant.

Only 2.7% in my county are foreign-born compared with 36.8% in San Francisco and 11.1% in the USA. That translates to 1,755 foreign-born folk in my county. Eight of those 1,755 foreign-born folk in my county are from South Africa.

Yes, we get around. There are 40,000 South Africans in San Francisco and nearly half a million in Los Angeles. There are about a million South Africans in the USA and another million in the UK. About 100,000 migrated to other countries, mostly Australia and Canada. Nearly one-third of South African whites have left the country in the past 20 years.

Cats and dogs

I was sitting outside in my rocking-chair on the verandah last night sipping a glass of wine after dinner when one of the cats jumped onto my lap. This cat is pretty darn good as cats go but it still has that one thing which makes it a less practical pet than a dog - nasty claws and, may I add, a solipsistic attitude. Sure dogs have sharp teeth but I've never had a dog that bites if I've gotten it before six months old or before it was mistreated by some idiot who needed to be "fixed" more than his dog.

I've adoped plenty of cast-off dogs in my life and curently have four "rescued" dogs. Some of the adoptees did bite at first (always out of fear and insecurity) but eventually stopped. Cats simply claw you to pieces just being affectionate - or so they think - they're really just using you as a rubbing-post. Maybe I don't much care for cats because I've had to have tetanus shots twice after vicious cat bites. As Shakepeare said: "If cats were as big as dogs they'd be illegal." (Okay, maybe it wasn't Shakespeare; maybe it was Socrates or Ann Landers or some other philosopher.)

I've kept cats and dogs most of my life. I've also kept (in ascending order from earliest childhood) frogs, silk-worms, snakes, fish of many varieties, rabbits, parakeets and canaries. In fact I have some of those critters right now - all except the silkworms which I haven't seen since I was six or so. (Do kids even keep silkworms these days? Every kid that I knew when I was six had silkworms.) I've always liked having critters in my life to keep me down-to-earth.

Anyway, I was sitting in my rocking-chair thinking about cats and dogs and human beings. After survival, the two most important things to living creatures are freedom and security. Cats live for their own freedom and pleasure. Dogs prefer security. Humans like a balance of freedom and security. Too much freedom leads to anarchism and nihilism. Too much security leads to socialism and communism. So I made this chart. (If it's too small for you to read - as it is for me - click it to enlarge.)

The city of Titty-poo

The town in Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta, "The Mikado," is of course spelled Titipu but is pronounced Titty-poo and still raises a few giggles from the audience 120 years after its first performance. Last night we went to see "The Mikado" at the little theater in the nearest "city" (which has a population of 9,000.) The auditorium holds about 200 people and it was packed.

I was first introduced to our local theater last year when we went to see our neighbors' daughter sing and dance in a musical version of "Anne of Green Gables." Part of the pleasure of going to the local theater is people-watching. The county's "gentry" come out in their Sunday best and it feels as if you've been transported back into the Fifties. The county ladies all have old-fashioned hairdos and still wear perfume (something which is unheard of in San Francisco were it is practically illegal because of pressure by all the lesbian vegetarians who claim to be allergic to scent.)

The other difference between here and San Francisco is that Oregonians are mostly descended from British settlers and are a fairly reserved bunch compared with the mostly Irish (and pretty loud and bawdy) San Franciscans. Middle-class Oregonians don't show off quite as much and their children are much better behaved. The audience was packed with kids ( whole families drive into town from the surrounding farms) and there was not one brat among them. They're probably mostly home-schooled and all sat politely and quietly while waiting for the show to begin.

Now, I'm not much of a Gilbert and Sullivan fan but you take what you can get in the boonies. In theory the Savoy Operas are fun but, in practice, they are boring and repetitive. Although, to be fair, they are not quite as boring and repetitive as what passes for musicals nowadays. I'm thinking particularly of Andrew Lloyd Webber's dreadful "one-melody musicals." How this man has succeeded in making millions from his crappy "musicals" beats me. I would never waste money on going to see them in the theater but I did rent a DVD of "Evita" once and stopped watching it after 20 agonizingly boring minutes. How many times can you listen to a reprise of "Don't cry for me, Argentina?" It's not an awful song but every song in "Evita" sounds just like it.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, Gilbert and Sullivan. I played the part of Nanki-Poo in my boarding-school's production of "The Mikado" and can still sing "A wand'ring minstrel I." For that matter I can still sing "Three little maids from school are we" and "The flowers that bloom in the Spring." But, Gilbert and Sullivan operettas are not "great music." They were the precursors of "music hall" and were meant to be enjoyed when you are slightly drunk after a big dinner and lots of booze. Because of having to drive home in thick fog last night, I had to sit through it stone-cold sober which was quite painful.

The first thing that you notice about our local theater productions is that the average age of the cast is 90. Okay, I'm exaggerating a bit; it's probably 60. Although the dowager duchess of the players is 83 and has a little stool at the side of the stage to sit on all through the shows. She is included in all musicals because she still has a remarkably clear soprano. The youngest member of the cast was the man playing Nanki-Poo who is about 40. The gentlemen playing Ko-Ko, Pish-Tush and Pooh-Bah were all three score and ten or more.

The ladies who sing "Three little maids from school are we" were also fairly ripe. Yum-Yum and Peep-Bo are local nurses in their forties and Pitti-Sing (our local librarian) is in her sixties.

At 9:15 pm there was an intermission and I decided that I'd had enough. I was dying of heat - the theater is not air-conditioned - and it was getting close to my bedtime. I realized that I could not stay awake for another hour and a half of Gilbert and Sullivan no matter how accomplished the actors were - and they were - so I came home and went straight to bed exhausted from my big night out on the town. I'm getting too old to stay up past my bedtime because I wake up at 6 am no matter what time I go to bed.

The next show is in May when they will perform Cole Porter's "Anything Goes." Now that's what I call a real musical but I think I'll go to the Sunday afternoon matinee.

My new blogging agenda

When I first started this blog, it sometimes took me weeks to write long essays amd about the only items that I posted regularly were my Sunday flower pics. The essays were mostly written in the hope that my son would take them to heart and see the error of his socialist ways.

Then a few fellow conservative bloggers discovered me and unexpectedly I had a handful of regular readers. I made comments on their blogs and they made comments on mine. They linked to me and their readers started reading my blog until, by last Fall, it had snowballed into me reading and commenting on nearly a hundred blogs and vice versa.

It was fun at first. I enjoyed the instant gratification of having my silly rants praised. I even enjoyed the nasty comments of the few moonbats who read my blog but all the time that I spent blogging started eating into my real life. By last Fall I had an average of nearly 200 readers per day and was coasting on the energy that I got from them.

But I no longer had time for my other hobbies. My fishing boat sat idle, covered with a tarp in the backyard. My garden began to look neglected. I seldom took the dogs for long walks; spent very little time with the other animals and I stopped cooking. (Fortunately Andy is as good a cook as I am so we didn't starve.) I also stopped writing what I really enjoy: long well-researched essays.

I realized that I was out of my depth. Many of my fellow conservative bloggers are about my age and most of them are retired or semi-retired. I still work a full-time job and I just couldn't keep up with my fellow bloggers. Several people started noticing that I was flagging and did not seem as enthusiastic as I once was.

Then something else occurred to me: maybe I was wasting my time. I was mostly preaching to the choir anyway and many of the conservative blogs started sounding like echo-chambers. I stopped reading (and commenting on) as many blogs as I used to and my readership started decreasing until last month when it dropped down to about 120 per day. I'd never set out to be a pro "blogger" so, while I may have been a bit disappointed, I was not upset.

I use writing mostly as a way to clarify my own thoughts and enjoy writing long, rambling essays where I'm not sure of the final outcome. But that's not what blogging is all about. It's mostly for commenting about daily events and gossipping. Sure, it's enjoyable to poke fun at the moonbats but that soon gets stale as they are so predictable.

Last week, when I was up to my eyeballs in taxes and finding new tenants for my rentals, I decided to quit blogging. That coincided with Giuliani announcing that he is still considering entering the POTUS race and I began to see that many of my fellow conservative bloggers are anti-Giuliani. That re-energized me. I'm convinced that, if Rudy runs, he's the guy to beat Hillary Clinton. I'm also convinced that Clinton must be taken seriously.

I'm also certain that Republicans need to put aside their minor disagreements and concentrate on WINNING. Maybe I should change the name of my new blogroll, "Run, Rudy, run!" to the "Coalition of the Winning" because I'm not going to flog a dead horse if Giuliani turns out to be a loser. I'll back whatever Republican I think can win the race to the White House.

But I'm not going to get back into the whole "blogging as socializing" thing again; visiting and commenting on blogs that all agree with each other until it sounds like an echo-chamber. I don't much care about my falling readership. It's already dropped again since I started stumping for Rudy and is now down to about 100 per day.

I'll write what I want to write when I want to write it and I intend to spend more time with my animals and doing more gardening, cooking and fishing this spring and summer.

Two sunsets

Yesterday afternoon there was what the British call a "mackerel sky." It's a harbinger of light rain within the next 24 hours. Is this called a "buttermilk sky?"

















Yesterday's pink and blue sunset. After this, rain clouds began to blow in off the Pacific and it rained all night and day until just before sunset today.


















This afternoon when the rain stopped. The last of the clouds block out the setting sun.


















The sky is still too overcast for a dramatic sunset so it's a simple silver and gold sunset.

It's my party and I'll cry if I want to

In the eyes of the theocon purists, those of us who are Giuliani fans are not "real conservatives." Okay, I'll concede that maybe I'm not a real conservative but I am a real Republican in the tradition of Presidents Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush Sr and Jr - and Goldwater. All of these men were/are mavericks with strong convictions which they stuck to in spite of opposition.

Lincoln was (incorrectly) despised for being a "nigger lover." Teddy was reviled by his own party for opposing monopolies. Eisenhower was criticized for using the National Guard to protect the rights of blacks in the south. Nixon was lambasted for his overtures to China. Ford is still loathed by "real conservatives" because he "compromised too much." Bush Sr was roasted for raising taxes and Bush Jr is villified for not being hard enough on illegal immigrants - among a host of other sins in the eyes of the theocons.

Even the darling of theocons, Reagan, would not be elected by "purist" conservatives nowadays. After all he gave amnesty to 2 million illegals thereby opening the floodgates to ten million more. What is not well known outside of California is that, in 1978 when Reagan was just starting another run for POTUS, he opposed the Briggs Initiative in California. He knew that this could damage his reputation in the eyes of the theocons but he stuck to his principles and helped to defeat it.

From Wiki:

Proposition 6, more commonly known as The Briggs Initiative was an initiative on the California State ballot in 1978. Sponsored by John Briggs, a conservative state legislator from Orange County, the failed initiative would have banned gays and lesbians from teaching in California's public schools.

The Briggs Initiative followed similar legislation that had passed in Oklahoma and Arkansas, banning gays and lesbians from teaching in public schools. It stated that any teacher that was found to be “advocating, imposing, encouraging or promoting” homosexual activity could be fired.

However, it is historically significant that the polls changed in the opponents favor when former Governor Ronald Reagan, later President, publically opposed the measure. The Initiative was defeated by more than one million votes.

Reagan vigorously opposed the ballot initiative sponsored by religious conservatives that would have barred homosexuals from teaching in the public schools. The timing is significant because he was then preparing to run for president, a race in which he would need the support of conservatives and moderates very uncomfortable with homosexual teachers. As Lou Cannon (Reagan biographer) puts it, Reagan was “well aware that there were those who wanted him to duck the issue” but nevertheless “chose to state his convictions.”

Reagan explained his opposition to Prop 6 by saying that it was an inhumane attack on personal freedom and individual rights.

Goldwater, once the darling of the Dixiecrats, of course would not be at home in the GOP of today. He was very wary of the theocons of his day and the GOP has been hijacked by those theocons/former Dixiecrats who haven't got a clue about classical Lockean individual sovereignty and want to control people much the same way that the commies do.

The GOP is truly the Big Tent party. Let's not ruin the only political party which stands for individual freedom, private property and self-reliance in the USA. The GOP has traditionally been the party of sensible, practical, business-like people who understand that the world is far from perfect. Since the days of Lincoln, it's been the party of "the lesser of two evils" pragmatists who want to win not the bailiwick of fanatical "purists" and ideologues who are willing to cut off the branch on which they are sitting.

Theocons and paleocons, by insisting on ideological purity, could destroy the underpinnings of the freedom that allows them to practice their religions or be grumpy curmudgeons. If you want to be fanatical, then maybe you belong in the Constitution Party. The GOP is for those of us who are willing to settle for the lesser of two evils in a fallen world.

Run, Rudy, run! blogroll

Yeah, I know - not another blogroll but I'm betting all my money on this horse until another "better" candidate appears. Until then, I'll be campaigning for Rudy.

Just add the code to your blog and email me at joubertconlon@hotmail.com

Here's the code:

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"
src="http://rpc.blogrolling.com/display.php?r=
828b66bb5c239b24dc07ba55d376b828"></script>

Sunset

"Never brag," my dear departed mother used to say and I never did until I became an American. When I lived in Europe, I was constantly told that Americans were "uncool" and "show-offs."

So - some Americans are boastful. Not all Americans are but some of us don't mind being thought of as fools because we tell everybody how lucky we; so blessed to have the freedom to be and do and make and own whatever we want.

Here are some pics that Chas took of the sunset on the day that we had a forest fire in the mountains ten miles east of us.

The setting sun casts the shadow of the big old alder tree on the house.


















The big old alder tree with two wild-bird feeders. We scavenged those picnic tables from the RV park as they were falling to pieces. Now they provide shelter for the chickens from hawks (a real problem) and a place to have a cup of tea and some home-made cookies on a sunny afternoon.


















The sun begins to set through a haze of smoke from the forest fires. These photos don't capture just how ruby red the sun was.


















The big old alder is beautiful in all seasons and stands in sharp contrast to all the pines and firs with which we are surrounded.


















Swanky, the tomcat, watches the sunset from the front verandah. He's basically a good-for-nothing, lazy, pleasure-loving, decadent commie - like all "cool cats" and other hippie types.


















His Imperial Majesty, Swanky, the RV park cat that I "adopted" from a tenant. Yep, Swanky thinks he's royalty as most deluded, drug-addled, Democrat-voting, welfare-sucking, hand-out hustling trash do. But he's so pretty.


















Swanky has not been his usual happy-go-lucky self ever since we had his wife, Smudgy's, wheels removed and she is no longer interested in playing hanky-panky with Swanky.


















Smudgy casually pretending not to be stalking some hens. She, like all lionesses, is the real hunter genocidal maniac in our feline family and has single-handedly wiped out an entire tribe of squirrels and a whole nation of chipmunks. She specializes in bearing gifts of half-eaten baby possums, wood-rats, field-mice, moles, voles and assorted birds and snakes.


















Meantime the almost full moon rises in the east behind the house. If I could wake up in the middle of the night and take the time to dress warmly, I would take some pics of the forest and the meadow in the moonlight. Moonlight in the deep darkness of a country garden is beyond simply magical. Maybe I'll do that next summer.


















Going.


















Going.


















Almost gone.