Conservative Refocus – by Barry Secrest
As with virtually most Conservatives, we always enjoy reading what Charles Krauthammer has to say and in his most recent opinion, we were not disappointed– but with wild reservations to put it mildly, as is more and more frequently the case these days, with many Conservatives.
Indeed, while the President has boldly if not haphazardly sent America spinning off into areas that it was never designed to function within, the moderate GOP intelligentsia seem to continually be playing by another set of rules altogether than the Obama regime’s take-no-prisoners approach to governing.
Krauthammer, especially to this writer in particular, exemplifies the moderate “run with the herd” approach that has worked about as well as trying to “milk teats on a boar hog,” at this point in America’s bifurcating decline. His column titled “How Fractured is the GOP“ seems to answer its own question and in spades, to which we can only reply…. let us count the ways, Mr. Krauthammer, just let us count the ways….
They Bring a Knife to the Fight, We Bring a… Fop
With regard to the current day GOP and in retrospect, the current political environment– its akin to pitting a bunch of prudish fops whose manicured nails have never seen a week without polish ( the GOP) against a band of armed and dangerous street fighting thugs– in the dark–and with night vision goggles, to boot (The Obama Regime) –while also trying to save a stranded kitten from its loftily precarious perch, in a buttonwood tree….Dare I venture which issue the GOP Foppery tries to resolve first?
You see, while Obama appears to be “breaking up” with regard to his well overdue re-entry into Earth’s still present atmosphere (although some climate change news accounts may differ) his autocratic team now finds an America both scorched and scarred from the excessive Left-Wing thuggery of Obama’s own leadership. This, even while we have a US Congress and America so divided and split asunder, that not even Atlas himself could heave the widened chasm of ideological schism back together.
While the Republican Party’s estranged Base has been and is continually being targeted by the IRS to this day at the direction of directly appointed Obama officials, we have congressional Republicans sitting in elegantly refined board rooms playing an extra-hard game of footsie with Obama’s dually appointed Left-wing apparatchiks. That not being quite enough, we also have thousands of pages of blacked-out emails and documents being officially sent to congressional IRS hearing attendees with barely even a squeak of protest from the remaining Republican foppery.
Our GOP Party, these days, unfortunately seems more eager to hit the congressional spa than to deal with those dreadfully boring hearings that require some delirious modicum of eye-straining attention.
However, that’s not even the tip of the iceberg as the Benghazi revelations keep pouring in, now, under CNN revelations. We have a congress barely squirming at the notion of reining in continual NSA overreaching, blatant journalistic targeting by the White House, which is unlawful by the way in case anyone forgot, and even Obama’s unlawfully disobeying his own law with regard to the implementation of the Obamacare train wreck. It just goes on and on and on, ad nauseum. Nixon must be squirming furiously in his grave, at this point and for good reason.
The Battle for America
So, what exactly does Charles Krauthammer have to say about all of this? Glad you asked. He begins below:
A combination of early presidential maneuvering and internal policy debate is feeding yet another iteration of that media perennial: the great Republican crackup. This time it’s tea party insurgents vs. get-along establishment fogies fighting principally over two things: (a) national security and (b) Obamacare.
(a) National security
As if Mr. Krauthammer is above it all?
Excuse me Sir Charles, just for a moment, but you have been pretty much right in line with what you call “those old fogies” as best we can tell, while admittedly, I’ve been in line with “the insurgents,” as you like to call us, or should I be even more clear and use the term” The people that saved your moderate GOP’s flagging ass?”–(Er..is that a bit strong, do you think?)
So, do tell us why, Mr. Krauthammer, I’ll keep a check-list tally:
Gov. Chris Christie recently challenged Sen. Rand Paul over his opposition to the National Security Agency (NSA) metadata program. Paul has also tangled with Sen. John McCain and other internationalists over drone warfare, democracy promotion and, more generally, intervention abroad.
-Hmm… so, Krauthammer sort of likes Gov. Chris Christie, while I was probably one of the first of the Tea Party types to raise hell at Christie’s brutish treatment of anyone that disagrees with him, and long before Hurricane Sandy came around, placing Krauthammer squarely with the GOP “Old fogies” group and myself clearly with the “Insurgents” on this point (Check)
Rasmussen Reports: Christie is Candidate GOP Voter Want Least
-On the NSA, an earlier quote from Krauthammer: ” I’m not at all upset by what was revealed today about the phone program. It is meta information. And you get ‘a’, you have to go to a judge. ‘B,’ it’s sifted by a computer looking for patterns. It’s data mining. If it finds a pattern it has to go see a judge again and look into it individually. And that I think is reasonable. ” (Check)
-On the NSA, I and many, many, others don’t exactly appreciate either myself or other innocents being constantly eavesdropped upon by Big Brother while the actual terrorists are blowing up things like the Boston Marathon and World Trade Center, each ostensibly ignored despite warnings….so (Check) here as well.
-As to the drone program, wanton if not indeterminate killing of Americans (their children) or anyone else abroad who “might” be a terrorist no matter whom else is blown up, is not exactly my idea of Democracy at work and as it regards McCain, the Senator seems now to be more vigorously against the liberty movement in America, than Obama himself, so, no–unlike “the old fogies” I am definitely a part of Krauthammer’s “insurgency” once again, at least as he defines it. Krauthammer, more or less, supports the drone program, by the way, “fogies” once again for him. (Check)
Scorecard: Krauthammer with the Fogies 100% and we “Tea Party Insurgent types” remain fully in opposition (Checkmate)
Krauthammer makes his next point:
So what else is new? The return of the most venerable strain of conservative foreign policy — isolationism — was utterly predictable. Isolationists dominated the party until Pearl Harbor and then acquiesced to an activist internationalism during the Cold War because of a fierce detestation of communism.
-I suppose that’s one way to put it, Charles, but that might be the wrong way, as well.
It’s not isolation we insurgents seek, but doesn’t it defy common sense to knock one dictator down, while forfeiting the precarious balance between nations, only for another dictator or theocracy to pop up in his place? How many soldiers’ lives did we painfully waste on Iraq? How much treasure did we piddle away only to see a civil war breakout after the “O” team pulled the plug on our decade-long efforts?
What did we get from Krauthammers avowed “nation-building exercise?”
Krauthammer continues:
With communism gone, the conservative coalition should have fractured long ago. This was delayed by Sept. 11 and the rise of radical Islam. But now, 12 years into that era — after Afghanistan and Iraq, after drone wars and the NSA revelations — the natural tension between isolationist and internationalist tendencies has resurfaced.
-Communism gone? It seems to be alive and most well in America, it also seems that Krauthammer hasn’t been paying close attention. But I must, regrettably, call Foul! Notice, now, how Krauthammer supplies a supposition, at first, that the Conservatives are isolationists, which is not at all true, by the way, only to transform his initial supposition into a falsely accepted untruth parlayed as fact. Now, instead of calling us the “insurgents,” as if that isn’t bad enough already, Krauthammer has turned the entire Conservative wing of the party into isolationists, while calling the moderate GOP “the internationalists.” Which label do you think looks best on your lapel?
Methinks Mr. Krauthammer has a bit of an agenda that he’s not telling us about. Now, who else did that in the recent past…hmmm…his name just barely escapes me…
In fact, thus far, Krauthammer seems clearly above it all while obviously towing the line for the “Fogies” –even while stealthily attacking the Conservatives and the Tea Party. My oh my…are you noticing what I’m noticing? Who else always sets himself upwards and apart from the political roiling while clearly being the one who actually started the roiling in the first place?
But now, Krauthammer goes deeper still while subtly altering his argument, almost as a sort of belated, “oops” –better back this truck up just a little. Watch closely:
In fact, both parties are internally split on domestic surveillance, as reflected in the very close recent House vote on curbing the NSA.
-True enough, but Krauthammer fails to note where each sub-ideological strain ends up, for instance, the Conservatives of the Republican Party in essence, have joined with the Liberals, while the Progressives of both parties have joined together at least as it regards unlawful surveillance by the US. Indeed, this major point tells us in essence, who’re the Progressives within each party respectively, while neatly dividing out those who’re not necessarily being used as the idiot- tools of the statist- extremists within our government.
Krauthammer: This is not civil war. It’s a healthy debate that helps recalibrate the delicate line between safety and security as conditions (threat level and surveillance technology, for example) change. The more fundamental GOP divide is over foreign aid and other manifestations of our role as the world’s leading power. The Paulites, pining for the splendid isolation of the 19th century, want to leave the world alone on the assumption that it will then leave us alone.
Now, who said anything about a civil war? But once again, Krauthammer assumes there is something healthy about the sacrificing of our liberties for the sake of false security. The Boston bombing proved that particular lie to be nothing if not an artificed illusion of the epic sort .
The Paulites, while exhibiting certain almost natal sensibilities with regard to foreign policy, still deserve seats at the table, especially if we stop to consider that the Progressives and the Liberals seem to rather laughably dominate the available seats, at least at present.
Krauthammer: Which (isolationism) rests on the further assumption that international stability — open sea lanes, free commerce, relative tranquillity — comes naturally, like the air we breathe. If only that were true. Unfortunately, stability is not a matter of grace. It comes about only by Great Power exertion.
Here Krauthammer and I diverge yet again, you see, it’s not the “exertion of great power” that brings about the acceptance of US policy, but rather, it’s “the existence of great power along with the wherewithal to use it if need be” that does the trick.
Krauthammer: In the 19th century, that meant the British navy, behind whose protection the United States thrived. Today, alas, Britannia rules no waves. World order is maintained by American power and American will. Take that away and you don’t get tranquillity. You get chaos.
Er…in case you hadn’t noticed, Mr. Krauthammer, I think I may have a little secret for you. The world, in fact, is already in chaos, and it’s a chaos that was brought about largely by the continuance of certain Bush foreign policies. Pretty much everyone agrees, those specific policies have been continued by Obama. Now, need I carefully point out that the chaos which exists in the world was brought about by the machinations of the moderates within both parties and then doubled down by the Progressive Extremists within both factions of the party, post-Bush?
Krauthammer: That (Nation building) is the Christie-McCain position. They figure that the country doesn’t need two parties of retreat. Paul’s views, more measured and moderate than his fringy father’s, are still in the minority among conservatives, but gathering strength. Which is why Christie’s stroke — defending and thus seizing the party’s more traditional internationalist consensus — was a signal moment in the run-up to the 2016 campaign. The battle lines are drawn.
Umm….Not exactly, Krauthammer is getting way too far ahead of himself, at this point, while assuming facts that simply aren’t in existence. First, Krauthammer rather blatantly assumes that Christie will be one of the Republican nominees. In this regard and in fact, that position doesn’t pass the stink test, quite frankly. Christie has so far both distanced and alienated himself from the GOP base, at this point, that most of us living out here in the real world no longer take the fat man very seriously at all, at least not as a Conservative.
Now, Krauthammer may have a point if we see an alignment of Christie as the Democrat nominee squaring off either against Paul or Cruz, for President. No one in the base can even look at Christie for any length of time without snorting in abject disgust at his pandering to the liberal media and its acolytes…while holding hands with El Magnifico.
Krauthammer now moves on to his next major point: (b) Obamacare
The other battle is about defunding Obamacare. Led by Sens. Mike Lee and Ted Cruz, the GOP insurgents are threatening to shut down the government on Oct. 1 if the stopgap funding bill contains money for Obamacare.
Here we go with the disingenuous “insurgent” language again. What if I told you, Krauthammer, that Mike Lee and Ted Cruz represent the new GOP of the old Reagan years? What if I told you that the old “fogies,” as you seem to now call yourselves, represent the failings of the GOP in general, which is nothing if not a centrist approach to Progressive statism at its most refined? What if I told you that Krauthammer has slid so far back to the Left, along with the GOP Moderates, because of the stark ways that both the media and the Obama Regime have skewed the truth, especially as it regards the birthright of our Constitutional Republic?
What it I told you that I have no doubt that Krauthammer is partially wrong in probably most of these tepid assertions simply because his vision is so terribly skewed by inner beltway apathy?
Krauthammer: This (the defunding of Obamacare) is nuts. The president will never sign a bill defunding the singular achievement of his presidency. Especially when he has control of the Senate. Especially when, though a narrow 51 percent majority of Americans disapproves of Obamacare, only 36 percent favors repeal. President Obama so knows he’ll win any shutdown showdown that he’s practically goading the Republicans into trying.
Why not let them try? How many times have we true Conservatives been correct, in the past five years, and the Krauthammer Republicans, wrong, time after time after time? Indeed, Krauthammer doesn’t like Obamacare anymore than we true Conservatives; however, Krauthammer is not willing to stand on his own principles due to “how it might appear” to the media and, by default, public perception. Which pig is trying to wear the lipstick now, Mr. Krauthammer? Who is refusing to stand on principle because of public perception? Truly, is that your only worry as the Obama Regime continues its burn back into Earth’s fiery atmosphere?
“History has always gone to the Bold,” Mr. Krauthammer, certainly not the timid.
Krauthammer: Never make a threat on which you are not prepared to deliver. Every fiscal showdown has redounded against the Republicans. The first, in 1995, effectively marked the end of the Gingrich revolution. The latest, last December, led to a last-minute Republican cave that humiliated the GOP and did nothing to stop the tax hike it so strongly opposed.
Indeed, a cave in, which, I might add, you and a large number of other “Conservative Media Professionals” were a part of, Mr. Krauthammer. This, even while I, and many others in our camp, repeatedly asserted that we must hold on principle or die in the vacuum of tepidity–it wasn’t we that died, Mr. Krauthammer, it was you and your lukewarm club members, good sir, who seem to misplay virtually every hand you’ve been dealt, while being governed by fear and the sallow palor of statism’s infection.
Krauthammer: Those who fancy themselves tea party patriots fighting a sold-out cocktail-swilling establishment are demanding yet another cliff dive as a show of principle and manliness. But there’s no principle at stake here. This is about tactics. If I thought this would work, I would support it. But I don’t fancy suicide. It has a tendency to be fatal.
To be certain, suicide is bad; however, political gendercide is even far worse as you of the beltway continue to tactfully demonize your own base and then slay them when the time is right, typically just before election time. By the way, how far have you gotten with that particular mind-numbed set of un-values, Mr. Krauthammer?
The GOP, by your own admonition, lies fractured even while it seems to hold to the inestimable fictions that you continue to perpetrate. You, Mr. Krauthammer, seem to think that Constitutional principles within the modern day are no longer worthy of sublime effort, when in fact, you detail the obscene vagaries of the Republican Party’s demise quite unwittingly in the process.
Krauthammer: As for manliness, the real question here is sanity. Nothing could better revive the fortunes of a failing, flailing, fading Democratic administration than a government shutdown where the president is portrayed as standing up to the GOP on honoring our debts and paying our soldiers in the field.
Manliness? Is this what you now call principle, Krauthammer? Manliness? How can a party that makes up slightly over one half of one third of the US government be construed by the public as a bully, Mr. Krauthammer? Especially in the face of the ever-present bullying that the Obama Regime has perpetrated, not only on the the American people but also the entire world at this point?
No one truly cares for Obamacare, installed and authored by the President. No one truly cares for the NSA’s overreaching into every American’s home, homogenized by the President. No one truly likes, at all, what happened in Benghazi, and even more do not care at all how the supreme bully in chief, Mr. Obama, responded to the ensuing cacophony of questions by calling them “phony scandals.”
Krauthammer: How many times must we learn the lesson? You can’t govern from one house of Congress. You need to win back the Senate and then the presidency. Shutting down the government is the worst possible way to get there. Indeed, it’s Obama’s fondest hope for a Democratic recovery.
How many times must we learn which lesson, Sir Charles? True, you can’t govern from Congress but then, there’s the other lesson, that being how is it that a President governing outside of both Congress and the law, not to mention the US Constitution, is somehow acceptable to you people within the moderate base? We keep seeing your collective mouthing of protestation and yet when the time comes to stand in collective defiance of tyranny and deliver, you cravenly pivot and cowardly attack your own.
The truest lesson is that which the GOP consistently fails to learn, and it’s the bellwether of all lessons: The 2012 election saw over 3 million less Republican votes than the 2008 election because of mindsets such as yours, which seem to despise your own political origins and to absolute folly, I might add.
So, how many times must we learn this particularly fatal lesson, Mr. Krauthammer?
Which brings us to the penultimate question of who are the actual insurgents within the Conservative movement if not America itself? I would submit that the defining of an insurgent must be predicated by the actual definition:
in·sur·gent (
n-sûr
1. Rising in revolt against established authority, especially a government. 2.Rebelling against the leadership of a political party. One who is insurgent.
n-sûr
j
nt)The actual problem, as I see it, is one of where our respective allegiances lie and across a multitude of principled fronts.
Krauthammer speaks of an insurgency against his own “my precious” Republican Party.
Our arguments are predicated, not on Party, but on the US and our nation taken as a whole. The true established authority in America is “We The People.” It is a basic precept set down in our charters of freedom and a thing that the GOP intelligentsia consistently forget, nevermind the entire political left.
The government’s authority flows from the will of the people as prefaced by the Constitution, certainly not from the grace of our elected politicians.
The current State of Fear in America seems nascent to our government’s insistent overreach and its consistent governance against the will of the people. In effect, our government itself is the true insurgent and it’s rebelling against the leadership of the people’s sovereign authority in the interest of artificed necessity.
So, there indeed, is your emerged insurgency, Mr. Krauthammer. Krauthammer worries and diverts over petty party politics while Rome yet burns, and herein lies the truest problem within both the GOP and the Democratic party, respectively.
Why not actually look at the much bigger picture, at least from time to time, while there is yet time?
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants, it is the creed of slaves
~William Pitt