These election results are good news for people who don’t want to see GBW win 45 States; which he will if Howard Dean is put up by the Democratic Party. The only way the Republican Party can become a conservative Party is if GWB is put out of office in November; by his on Party base, over immigration, and jobs !

The theory that percolated through conservative circles recently — the one about it being a good thing for the Dems to nominate a madman like Dean — has always worried me. It seems a triumph of partisanship over patriotism. How can someone seriously hope for the deliberate descent into insanity of one of our country’s two great parties? If American patriotism is to be understood as in part a commitment to the health of our political system, then the implosion of a national party cannot possibly be a desideratum for patriots.

Mr. Cella’s thoughts and mine are in sync. At Lucianne.com, scads of people are in grief over Dean’s loss, saying over and over they wanted him to be the nominee so as to enable Bush to win 50 states. Here’s a comment I posted there about it:

“I think the people who are sorry for Dean’s defeat have become so partisan that they’re not thinking straight. All you’re thinking about is party advantage in the narrowest sense. But do you think it would be good for _America_ to have one of its two major parties nominate a lunatic for president of the United States?”

http://www.lucianne.com/threads2.asp?artnum=107427

It is good news I suppose in part becaused me and others see little difference between Clinton and Dean except that Clinton wears Teflon and is far superior to Dean in the political arena. I don’t know see how much more depraved and pathological a person needs to be to drop lower than Clinton. Couple this fact with the fact that Clinton was and is a much more effective leader than it appears Dean (or for that matter anyone besides Reagan) could ever be. We survived eight years under Clinton, we can survive four or more years under Dean.

This is speculation, but it appears possible that Dean would be so inept and lacking in Teflon that the Stupid Party possibly could run rings around him. Recall also that the Republican congress dealt Super Clinton (who could probably defeat Bush handily) and his party their most devastating defeat in 60 years if not in all of Republican Party history.

I agree that the Denocratic Party’s descent into madness does not bode well for the nation as a whole. I don’t necessarily see Kerry’s being that much less of a whack-job than Dean. There used to be a segment of the Democratic Party that really represented the working-class, typically unionized, white voters. Gephardt comes from this tradition. (His district is south St. Louis, which was once a collection of German, Polish, Italian, and Irish blue-collar neighborhoods - an area I grew up in.)

Carl has a point. The difference between Kerry and Dean may well be just political skill and degree of self-awareness.

(I hate hitting the “Post” button accidentally!) Of course, thanks to all of the liberal government polices (forced busing, Section 8 housing, neighborhood busting by greedy real estate agents, etc.) that have now had thirty years of toxic effect while the “free trade” and open borders crowd oversaw the destruction of the area’s manufacturing base, these neighborhoods have been decimated and repopulated by blacks and - increasingly - Mexicans. Thus Gephardt, who in the early-80s was pro-life, and anti-busing, has sold out to become the typical leftist despite some occaisional opposition to NAFTA, GATT. etc.

It is the white, working class wing of the old Democratic Party that really provided the opposition to much of the Globalist agenda of the Country Club Republicans so exemplified by the Bushes. Reagan, through his social conservatism and patriotism, was the only Republican to seriously appeal to this demographic, who (what’s left of it) are now effectively unrepresented politically. By purging the Democratic Party of this element (and its Southern counterpart) the Marxists running the party since 1972 have effectively turned it into an International Socialist Party. The social conservatives in the Republican Party have been liekwise betrayed - first by Bush I and again in 1995 when the Republican capture of the House and all the plans for real reform were largely derailed by Country Club Republicans siding with Clinton and the leftist media. By the impeachment fiasco of 1998-99, consrevatives were pretty much out of the driver’s seat. And now we have Bush II, who has turned out be even more of a wolf in sheep’s clothing than his father.

I’ll make a bet with anyone posting on this site. In fifteen years, whatever “lunacy” exhibited by this year’s Democratic candidates will be perceived as the “conservative” position, culturally and economically, in this country. I, too, remember the rejoicing in Republican ranks over the nomination of George McGovern in 1972. Republicans even chortled because a homosexual rights group in San Francisco endorsed the Democrat, forcing McGovern to repudiate it.

Now, some 32 years later, McGovern seems quaint and almost conservative in comparison … to George Bush! Can you imagine Bush and the Republicans denouncing a homosexual endorsement? Can you imagine George McGovern, going AGAINST labor and farm workers’ organizations, in favoring amnesty for illegals? Anyone think Nixon OR McGovern would have endorsed a Supreme Court decision mandating “diversity”, over and above affirmative action? How about the ‘72 candidates endorsing the denial of free speech that Bush signed into law as “campaign finance reform?”

Nope. You wait. Less than two decades from now, there will be no border b/w mexico and the U.S. Mexicans, moreover, will enter the U.S. as they please and be eligible for “diversity” openings in business, academe, and public welfare. Any American complaining about it will be fined into oblivion by the Federal election commission and/or locked into prison for violating “hate” laws. Homosexual marriage will not only be the law, but there will be extra tax incentives for it, to “right” former discrimination.

Finally, David Horowitz will go along with all of the above, because he believes these cultural issues are of little import. Above all else voters must support George P. Bush and his fellow mexicans in their war against Muslim terrorists attacking New York City from bases in the caliphates of Oklahoma City, Newark, and Charlotte, North Carolina and the Sunni Triangle of Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh.

I hope I am not read as praising a pale fool like Kerry, but it is difficult to imagine a real radical emerging from the United States Senate. For all Clinton’s pathologies, we were saved from him doing profound damage because he was fundamentally unprinciples. Dean problem is that he appears to actually hold principles. Give me an unprincipled egotist over a zealot any day of the week.

(Incidentally, this is part of the problem with Bush on immigration: he actually believes in it! Rove may be just a clever manipulator, but Bush is a zealot. It is far more difficult to argue a zealot out of his zealotry than it is to expose a schemer.)

“And now we have Bush II, who has turned out be even more of a wolf [a liberal] in sheep’s clothing [with a conservative facade] than his father.”

And his father didn’t even wear sheep’s clothing!

However, can we even say that Bush II wore sheep’s clothing? I repeat my point that when a politician tells you he’s a “compassionate conservative,” he’s telling you that HE’S NOT A CONSERVATIVE, at least not a conservative who can be counted on as such. But people didn’t want to hear it. They chose to hear what they wanted to hear.

Also, I frankly don’t see how any thoughtful conservative could have gone on regarding Bush as a conservative after listening to his inaugural address.

http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/001597.html

To Paul C: I, for one, will not be taking you up on yout bet. What you described in your post is the nihilistic, suicidal political dance we are dancing here in the West, including the US, that moves leftward ever after - the Hegelian Mambo. It’s rather like dancing around an active volcano and getting closer and closer to that ultiimate experience.

To Mr. Auster: You’re right about the Bushes. They’ve been liberals all along. Maybe it was the RNC spin machine conjuring up some blue smoke and mirrors to convince us social conservatives they’re on our side long enough to have us vote for them. Just trying to keep anyone form seeing that their emperors have no clothing at all. Well, guess what Mr. Rove? I saw your emperor and he’s buck naked! Never again!

Mr. Cella: I think you’re right for the most part about members of the Senate - but there is this Senator from New York who is a true blue zealot. I’ve little doubt that Gulags and re-education centers would appear across the fruited plain if that particular Senator were able to achieve her goals for America. (Not that GWB is that much better, mind you.)

As for Paul C.’s bet, consider a few other facts. In the early 1970s, some Democrats (e.g. Teddy Kennedy) openly held hearings on whether we should imitate the enlightened Europeans by nationalizing certain “key” industries (e.g. oil and airlines). When Hillary passed through her Watergate-era time warp and found herself somehow living in 1993, she thought it would be a political winner to propose the same thing in health care. That was a political disaster that still haunts her. The national rhetoric about such things was changed in the intervening years, partly by Reagan and partly by the deregulation efforts of the Carter administration.

Likewise, remember the rhetoric about the military and the intelligence agencies in the immediate aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate, and compare that to today.

I am plenty worried about the present and the future, but I think we might need something besides abject defeatism and fatalism. In fact, it is the short list of successes of Republicans (e.g. getting marginal tax rates down from 70% to 39%, and winning the Cold War) that force Republicans to find new issues today. Tax cuts are losing their magic, because today’s rates are less onerous, and if we make significant progress in the war on terror in the next 2-3 years and get out of Afghanistan and Iraq, then foreign policy will not be a big winning issue for Republicans. This could help force them to find new issues, and why can’t we be optimistic that we can steer the party towards OUR issues? That is what is behind my calls for emails to Senators and Representatives, along with the GOP headquarters, the President, etc.