The 2009 Republican Party of Virginia Convention served as a milestone for many Virginia conservatives, as the only true contest anyone really cared about was a resounding success for those who want to see conservative principles rebound in the Commonwealth, and who saw Ken Cuccinelli as the standard bearer for those principles.
Ken Cuccinelli Speech At Republican Party of Virginia 2009 Convention from Joe Budzinski on Vimeo.
For the record, Ken Cuccinelli’s speech for attorney general nomination was much better than the speeches of either of his opponents. They were not even in the same ballpark.
Bob McDonnell was uncontested for nomination for governor; Bill Bolling was barely contested for nomination for Lieutenant Governor; the RPV Chairman race was between a guy who really knew how to give a speech and a guy who sounded like he was reading from his shopping list at Barnes and Noble.
This Convention was all about the race for nomination for attorney general, and Ken Cuccinelli won after the first ballot with at least 51% of the vote over the combined vote totals of John Brownlee and Dave Foster. That race was the only reason I and a whole bunch of people I talked to even bothered to make the trip down to Richmond on a beautiful Saturday, and thank goodness Ken won.
The bottom line message to take away from this event: Conservatives, don’t give up. While it might be too early to say a new day is dawning, the sun is definitely peeking over the horizon. We have a candidate we can go to the well for in the coming months. You might have reservations about Bob McDonnell, but Ken Cuccinelli is someone who can really make a difference for our nation. I will see you all out on the campaign trail.
Besides me and the lovely Linda B, NVTH friends I talked to in Richmond included: ACTivist, Blog Fu, Brian Withnell, Bulletproof Monk, Cathy Mac, Donny Ferguson, Eve Barner, Mark Sell, G. Stone, Jacob, Jane, Loudoun Insider, along with illustrious Sterling Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio (for whom I was wearing the traditional orange ball cap in solemn camaraderie), and blogfather John of Loudoun. And frankly, the Convention was just so packed with people it was nearly impossible to find anyone so I don’t think I saw a fraction of the people I knew there.
Bad for networking but FANTASTIC for Republican prospects in upcoming elections.
My Twitter comments from the Convention are here. Photos and more comments are below the fold.
By the way, a major highlight of the Convention was a speech by a Virginia Tech cadet which I missed most of. As soon as that video is posted I will link to it. It was not just a “good speech,” it was a seminal event in Virginia political culture. When someone gets it uploaded somewhere it will be a new post here. It is going to be one of the great political video clips of all time.
Keynote Speaker Sean Hannity reminded us why we need to be involved in politics, why the Democrats currently running our country are so worth opposing, and why Sean Hannity is such a likeable, engaging guy when he is in any venue other than on his TV show.
You won, guys. All that work paid off.
This is a key part of the 2009 theme and also for the next few years. The Tea Parties have set the stage.
Blog Fu was man on point for the blog video coverage. Hats off to you , Mr. Letiecq. That was a lot of work.
Bob Marshall, who probably would have given Mark Warner a run for his money last year in the Virginia U.S. Senate race, had last year’s Convention gone a little differently.
Some people I talked to thought the Cuccinelli victory was a message to the “Republican establishment” who supposedly preferred the kinder, gentler option of a different attorney general candidate. Specifically, one person said “Cuccinelli’s victory is a repudiation of McDonnell and Bolling” and opined that the top of the ticket had been pulling for Brownlee – and that this was evidenced in the signage all around the Coliseum where Brownlee was promoted alongside Bolling. Personally, I don’t know that the sign placements signified anything. I do know that Cuccinelli won, which was no small task. Presumably the top of the ticket realizes this.
You could buy all kinds of cool stuff at the RPV Convention, genuine alpaca products included. For me, that made the experience complete.
Tags: Cuccinelli
Let’s face it. This country is in extreme difficulty, to the point where I am inclined to fly the national fiscal/economic flag upside down in a play on the international distress signal. The Chinese think we are fiscally nuts. The same kind of attitude seems to be arising elsewhere, even in Russia. The only way left to stop this is if our conservatives and moderates can work together toward the specific goal of pulling the nation out of this fiscal mess without backsliding into divisive arguments about social issues. In my opinion, a truce in pursuit of a common, vital goal is absolutely necessary.
At a time when the national debt is through the roof, when the annual Federal budget is unbelievable, when we are printing money hand over fist and continuing to borrow with abandon just to pay the bills, we are facing a demand for a huge increase in the highway budget and other spending; a tremendous need for funding of reformed health care; the cost of two wars; an impending fiscal collapse of both Medicare and Social Security; and the tomfoolery of cap-and-trade; ad nauseum. The President himself has admitted that we are “out of money.” We are literally begging our largest creditors for forebearance. Moreover, despite all the 2008 campaign promises, there are now moves afoot to tax the Hell out of you and me because the bucks siphoned out of the so-called “rich” are not nearly enough to cover the bills due or coming due.
Now, in all this you want to debate the political ideologies of Cooch or Lori Waters?!!! Look people, put the crap behind you and start working together. While you are fighting tooth and nail over a loaf of bread, the store is burning down around you. Get over it. Victory first. Then we can debate the other things.
Victory demands that you put a united shoulder into the effort. On Loudoun Insider’s blog, I likened this fight to a football team being down by a substantial margin in the first quarter. The job now is to cut that margin TD by TD. You don’t do that by cheering for your quarterback and running back and hoping your offensive tackle falls on his face. You have a goal. You support all of the team out of necessity, even if you wouldn’t care to go out and have a beer with some of them. This job of coming back TD by TD in a united manner applies to the national, state, and local levels.
St. Paul once admonished Christian evangelists to shake the dust of a city off their feet and go on elsewhere if the people of that city ignored efforts to preach the Gospel. If I may apply that to our current national situation, I have to say that I do not have that option. There is nowhere else to go. Therefore, I ask everyone to stop the bickering and get to work.
As for Sanity, I have a special admonition. You are a loyalist for sure; and there is a part of me which admires such loyalty no matter the cause. But, lad, I ask you to take a long look at the path you are on. Your man Obama has, in my opinion, vastly overreached fiscally and politically and, using a Napoleonic allegory, appears to be taking all of us on the road to Moscow. As a true and blue loyalist, you could well wind up in a political sense replicating the fate of Napoleon’s Old Guard at Waterloo.
In my view, proven loyalists like you and others could do all Americans a very good turn by advising the President that he is in dire danger of going much too far. He is apparently not getting that kind of advice from those around him or those in the Dem Party leadership on the Hill. Otherwise, no matter where you and I stand on the ideological and political spectrum, both of us could well go down together on a ship that has no lifeboats.
One possible outcome could well be some form of statism cum totalitarianism. Lad, I don’t know what you have done in your life; but I have lived in totalitarian states. I can assure you that, as a liberal, you won’t like it any more than I did.
Wolv,
‘The only way left to stop this is if our conservatives and moderates can work together toward the specific goal of pulling the nation out of this fiscal mess without backsliding into divisive arguments about social issues.’
With all respect, this is the thinking of the past 15 years. Conservatives were to be seen, work hard and shut up. I paraphrase LI here. The difference between our current crop of moderates and the loons in the Democrat part is the difference between a slower death and a slow death.
We saw compassionate conservatism of Bush. That was the culmination of the moderate’s domestic policy. Guess what? That policy put us here. The profligate spending of the Bush administration was a financial fiasco with the Republic brand on it. Obama’s spending is far and away worse, but, Obama would not have happened had we not gone down the compassionate conservative path. Jeb Bush recently had a well hailed speech in which he called for us to abandon Reagan and find new principles for the 21st century. It was well hailed by the NYT and Specter. I say forget them.
Our government and society where built on people pursuing happiness. There should be NO guarantees. The no-child-left-behind, the drug benefit, the other crap culminating in 6000 earmarks per year is what has lead to Obama. The moderate wing has had its day in the sun. Time to regain the Republican brand’s fiscally conservative street cred.
That means one cannot ‘compromise’ ones principles by compromising with the opposition. Meeting the Democrats half way only delays the inevitable — and leads us to the same place that the outright socialists want. Snow, Specter et al used this ‘lets meet them half way’ approach as have many other moderates. For some issues there should be no compromise.
Cuccinelli isn’t a loser because he is conservative–he is a loser because he is a turd.
Jacob, as you know, these are no ordinary times. I agree that Bush was partly instrumental in getting us here and the probable cause for the advent of Obama on the national stage. That is, quite frankly, history now. The problems are in front of us and are, in my view, far beyond acute. Not trying to be trite about this; but we are all in the same boat and had better learn in this particular instance how to paddle together.
The time has come to address the present problems that could well take us ALL down. To do that, all sides have to sublimate things which are ideologically precious to them. This means to me that moderates and conservatives are going to have to join hands honestly to rid the room of that giant fiscal/economic elephant and agree to leave the other intra-party battles for another time. No room here for backroom politics or clever maneuvers. And I am not talking here about reaching out to liberal Democrats. I am talking about conservative Republicans and moderate Republicans joining as a team for a specific, urgent purpose.
Let me give you one of my war stories. It’s in Vietnam in the war zone. There is a small ship with sailors crowded together in WWII-style berthing areas. A knife fight broke out in the berthing area between a Black sailor and a White sailor, probably over a racial epithet or something similar. Here you are in a war zone, where everyone on that ship depended on the other guys to do their jobs in order to keep everyone alive. And two guys whose lives depended on each other are fighting it out with knives in the berthing area?
Well, if moderate Republicans and conservative Republicans want to engage in knife fights behind the lines while the real war and the real enemy are out there, we could being dooming all of us to defeat. Moderates and conservatives are both under an obligation to approach this alliance honestly and with genuine purpose. I will state it once again. These arguments over Cooch and the like are counterproductive for the real effort to stave off fiscal and economic disaster at both the state and national level. If FDR could find it feasible to ally us with Joe Stalin for the specific purpose of battling Hitler, what’s wrong with people who cannot even find a way to effect an alliance with those who carry the same party label in order to do battle against a common foe? That does not mean compromising forever one’s principles. It means joining together for a specific purpose on which everyone can agree.
At 5:39pm on 3 June 2009, a disease-ridden rat was spotted climbing up one of the ship’s hawsers. The Black sailor and the White sailor would have both drawn their razor-sharp deck knives and gone after that rat together.
Loudmouth Inciter said:
June 3rd, 2009 at 5:39 pm
Cuccinelli isn’t a loser because he is conservative–he is a loser because he is a turd.
LI- tell your mother to stay off this blog.
“Kee-rist how did NVTH end up the debating ground for conservative bona fides.”
You mean this ISN’T Too Conservative blogsite? Sorry.
Wolv,
I hear it tastes like chicken
Joe,
“Kee-rist how did NVTH end up the debating ground for conservative bona fides.”
Hey. TC has been laying all the worlds woes at the feet of conservatives for how long? LI acts as if we and not the Dems are the real problem. So we are having a little talk about this on our site for a change. So far it has been respectful except for the appearence by bizarro world LI.
Jacob, the feral cats on the pier spoke only Vietnamese and couldn’t tell us what rat meat tasted like. As it was, after that firefight broke out right next to the pier between the VC and US Marines, they tell me the cats took off.
Yank,
I have no problem dealing with moderates on the same issues that concern all. The moderate Republicans are NOT the problem. The GOP has been inundated with RINOs and these people are no different from liberals or progressives. Let me explain it s-l-o-w-l-y for you. If a guy is dressed in a Reb uniform but he talks, acts and especially smells like a Yank, is he a Reb? That is the problem with the Republican party. We may have different forms and beliefs but ALL of them should be different from our opponents. There are current Repubs in office and some vying for office that are NOT truly Repubs. That is the extent of the arguement for me. I don’t want a “name” win if I get the same gruel that the other party is serving. If liberal candidates lie to get elected and then turn 180 and STILL have backing from the press and idiots, why would I want that same philosophy to win on behalf of “my ” party? It doesn’t make sense and the people lose too much.
If Republicans are conservative and moderate, and you have people in the party knocking down a nominee for a position because they feel “he isn’t winable enough”, please show me where you would find the unity? I don’t trust Wolf but I continue to vote for him because of what the opposition has to offer. Same with Gilmore. And Rust. And all the rest. These people are NOT conservative or moderate but are the lesser of 2 evils. If the Dems put up a candidate (and Deeds ain’t bad) that did things correctly, I would vote for him. IT IS NOT THE PARTY BUT THE CANDIDATE! When the GOP gets its collective head out of its ass and starts putting forth candidates with a true difference than what the opposition fronts, then maybe I will start voting partyline. Until then, the best candidate for the people and our freedoms get my vote. I would be a fool otherwise.
BTW, Jacob, that line about “disease-ridden” rats was no joke. I was in line at Clark Field in the Philippines to catch a flight for Saigon when some Filipino doctor asked to see my vaccination record. He took one look at the record, pulled me from the line, and jabbed a needle into my arm. “Against the plague” was his explanation. Jeesh, that’s all I needed at that moment.
Loudnouth Inciter wasn’t me, if anyone thinks otherwise.
I have never laid the blame for the world’s ills on conservatives – jacob you have a huge reading comprehension problem if that’s what you get from reading my stuff. Liberals are of course the big problem but the biggest problem of all with Virginia and Loudoun Republican hierarchies is that they have been nominating candidates who are too conservative to get elected in the first place, leaving the store to be minded by Dems. Of course those Dems often profess to be moderate then rule as liberals once they get in. Therein lies the problem – to get in the door in the first place on our side you have to be to the right of Reagan (hell, Reagan would be a RINO in many local GOP circles!). This precludes any real perceptable shift to the center for the general, we lose, and the cycle repeats.
The demographics of Loudoun and NoVA in general are long gone for super conservative candidates to win. There will be the occasional oddball like Delgaudio, but I would argue that most of his land use philosophy is anything but conservative and has led us into this demographic hellhole. Density equals democrats, and Loudoun is going the way of Fairfax.
My problem isn’t with being too conservative, it’s with being too conservative to the exclusion of common sense and electability.
ACT, my friend, you get the “unity” by using some strategic and tactical common sense on forming a battle line that can work when the overriding goal is one that none of us can afford to lose. To Hell with RINO’s in my book. I’m talking about genuine party moderates, not poseurs faking it for political profit.
Your allegory about the Yank posing as a Reb made me chuckle. Ever hear of that Mosby rider who was called “Big Yankee”? I believe he gave up his life at some point for the “Cause.”
By the way, you Rebs were among the leading lights in the Revolution….Washington, Jefferson, Marion, Lee, Morgan, etc. You fought like Hell to rid us of that pernicious king — including one of Mrs. W’s ancestors, who was in the 2nd South Carolina of the Continental Army and was among the first to fall in battle for our republic. Not too many decades later, you Rebs were desperately seeking the help of the British in your battle against us Yanks. Man, if you could do that, you can agree to agree within the Republican Party in an effort to stave off disaster. I am personally just as conservative as you are; but, damn it, I want to win this thing any way I can. The family feuds can come later.
I look at The Bulletproof Monk and Loudoun Insider, for example. Both were anti-Cooch and Brownlee supporters. It is to me quite natural that they would have some petulance after losing this battle. But, darn it, although I know neither of them personally, I have gotten some idea of their mettle just be reading this and their own blogs. To my mind, they are both fighters. I’ll be darned if I would cut them out of this deal. I want both of them in this critical battleline. They bring their own brands of firepower to the fight. You can argue about all the rest of the stuff afterwards, hopefully at a victory party.
Besides, if you ever suggested to the Monk that you were going to take away his guns and force him to drive around in a Yugo, I bet you’d realize quick that you had a flaming conservative on your hands…wooosh, I tell you!
Appreciate the words, Wolv. Hell, that’s worth a brew.
Yes, I come from a rather long line of firebrands (two who rode with Mosby) …so you could say I come by it naturally.
Yes, I’m in it to win it.
Because the alternative is dealing with a democrat in the office for the rest of the term.
Better that we put the candidates up who’ll appeal to most of Virginia’s voters. That’s where the real decision is made.
“A recent pew poll shows 34% self identify as conservative. Only 17% call themselves liberal.”
Leaving exactly HOW many in the middle??? My math says 49%.
And most of them can be convinced. The problem is, they are busy making ends meet, and get their information from the “drive-by” media.
I know that LI said several things requiring correction above, but I’m too lazy and uninterested to find the particulars.
The short of it is that Jeff (I’m John, btw) is happy that Republicans in Richmond doubled the state budget, because the Democrats would have … well … probably doubled it … because the Republicans, even de facto middle of the roaders like his friend Lori Waters would have raised heck, and checked them.
The main thing is to get as many “R”s in office, and you just can’t do that if they start talking about issues. If Republicans paint themselves green and hug the middle, we’ll beat the Dems.
The coat tails of issue-less establishment Republicans like Jerry Kilgore, “W”, and John McCain couldn’t possibly explain losses by grassroots conservatives locally. Instead, the temerity of these grassroots conservatives in standing up to and taking flack from the two moonbats at Equality Loudoun is the reason for their demise.
Did I sum up your positions fairly accurately?
In response I’d say that on the previous board there were two (Eugene Delgaudio and Mick Staton) and a half (Lori Waters, though we barely stopped her from joining with Steve Snow, Bruce Tulloch,Clem, and the Dems in the first budget season) fiscal conservatives. The rest were as bad as Dems. All of them lost or dropped, seeing the writing on the wall. When you spend like a Dem, as almost all of them did, your grassroots base won’t support you.
As to Albright in Blue Ridge, he did better than Weber would have done, in a district that is impossible for a Republican to win. Clint Good, with his NEA endorsement, couldn’t win. Maybe the check his firm made to Stevens Miller will help him in the next race, I don’t know.
Geary Higgins, a slow-growther, couldn’t win Catoctin District. Why not? If “be green and speak in generalities” wins, why didn’t it work for him?
Loudoun Insider-approved Republican candidate Weber has used his newspaper to romance big spending Loudoun Insider approved “Republican” Bob Lazaro. This has garned for him tens of thousands of dollars in payments to his paper, from the town of Purcellville, which coincidentally made his paper the paper of record. If Ben wins next time, there will so many financial and considerations attached to him that he’ll be as useless as Tulloch, Clem, and Snow. But hey, he will have the letter “R” after his name, and he won’t tick off the moonbats mentioned earlier, and that’s all that matters.
Btw, BM, great job with the math problem!
John,
Your post is filled with a great number of falsehoods, exaggerations, and flat out misrepresentations. I WILL point them out.
You have to “name” names, because, quite frankly…that’s what all of you seem to do when you’re losing a battle of wits.
You get on a high horse about Eugene Delgaudio and Mick Staton, and attempt to point out that they were/are fiscal conservatives. Staton was a buildout guy who supported new homes that bring new children and are the very reason that the tax rate grows in such large increments.
Delgaudio just got through being the lone vote for the travesty that was an over-priced insider deal. I can’t tell you how thrilled I was to see a “fiscal conservative” vote in support of a $47K per acre that’s actually worth more like $15K per acre. All because Sal dropped $1500 bucks at his last run for office.
THAT warmed the Delgottago perception up for 2011, I got to tell ya.
If you think Brownlee was not a conservative, then you are a lost cause. Any other idiot out there could have figured out that he was as conservative as Cooch. He wasn’t nearly as offensive, however. I freely admit that Potter and you have that market cornered. Neither of you has the ability to influence change in anything, because you probably get more doors slammed in your face because of your attitude, and your one way approach. And we need not forget about YOUR robo-calls. Both of which violated law. One broke Va. law–(and you ain’t out of the woods yet on that one).The other violated Federal Law, and after that pathetic offering…your man got a stunning 8% of the vote.
“As to Albright in Blue Ridge, he did better than Weber would have done, in a district that is impossible for a Republican to win.”
Oh, really? I suppose that noone clued you to the fact that the Blue Ridge and the Catoctin Districts are the two most conservative Districts in this county.The fact that they continue to elect anti-developer candidates should provide the rest of us with a clue as to their intent for Western Loudoun. Yet the Marriage Amendment went over huge in those two districts. Go figure.
“Geary Higgins, a slow-growther, couldn’t win Catoctin District. Why not? If “be green and speak in generalities” wins, why didn’t it work for him?”
Because he took developer money?? Because Sally was in the race?? Step back into the real world, John. You’re in la la land, again.
What a lost mind he is.
You didn’t come close to getting my positions correct, which is exactly why no one takes you seriously, except for your fellow loons.
Catoctin and Blue Ridge are the most conservative districts in the county – the only two to go for McCain, Allen and the Marriage Amendment. They elect slow growth supervisors simply because they are CONSERVATIVE. They resist change and want to keep things as they are – that’s real conservatism, not a bastardized version of “property rights”.
Ben Weber is a good guy but was never going to beat Jim Burton, just like Geary Higgins will never beat Sally Kurtz. And just like any of your fellow wingnuts will never beat Frank Wolf. Maybe you can try impersonating them as drunks – maybe that will work!
LI,
‘you have a huge reading comprehension problem if that’s what you get from reading my stuff.’
With respect you spend more time slamming Cooch than you do any single Democrat. Reading comprehension? No. The is is about the amount of time you spend dwelling on a given issue.
As for your going after the imbiciles on the school — way kewel.
The problem is that you Republicans talking about “getting back to conservative roots” are talking out both sides of your mouth and creating a path to nowhere.
1. You claim the problem is big spending and deficits. I don’t disagree, actually. We (Americans) have been overspending and overconsuming for a very long time.
2. Your solutions to #1 (at least indirectly based on the candidates you seem to prefer) are to (a) cut taxes and (b) focus on abortion, gay rights, and guns.
The problem is that your solutions in #2 in no way help solve #1.
i. Cutting taxes just makes the deficit worse but we’re already at the lowest taxes in what, 40 years?
ii. The focus on the social issues, while perhaps laudable, is very tenuously related, at best, to our soaring deficits.
iii. And, most people DON’T CARE about deficits. By becoming fiscally prudent, you will negatively impact people’s lifestyles in the short term. No way around it. So even if it is the right medium-term solution, it will be a tough sell. That’s why even Reagan was a “spend like crazy” president.
So, my recommendations would be to:
1. Focus on spending less, but in ways that will have reasonable impact: no more bailouts, reasonable steps for SS and military.
2. Push for health care reform that breaks up the HMO “cartel”. We spend more on paperwork than most countries spend on health care. We need to get over the “we have the best health care in the world” because we don’t. We spend too much and our life expectancy is too low. There has to be a Republican alternative to BHO’s proposals other than “stay the course”.
3. Get past the “lower taxes, lower taxes, lower taxes” mantra. It’s prudent to, say, index gax taxes to inflation, have reasonable estate taxes, bring high-earner rates in line with the Reagan years.
4. Embrace reasonable candidates with reasonable views on abortion and gays. Have a goal to reduce abortions, not outlaw them, and while gay “marriage” may be a barrier to you, there’s no reason why gays couldn’t/shouldn’t have civil unions with the same financial benefits that marriage brings. Embrace that and you would be seen by many as the more reasonable of the two parties.
I don’t believe for a minute that you’ll do any of these, and, frankly, I’m glad, but if you did, you would be surprised how many people would begin to identify as Republicans.
Jack, perhaps I should have brought up the Voting Rights Act under the Sotomayor thread.
Gentlemen, gentlewomen, you all have a sacred heritage. In an effort to end the internal disputations and create some sort of unity for action, let me give you a couple of reminders of that heritage:
“So must we sink? and at the stern command,
That bears the terror of a tyrant’s word,
Bend the weak knee and raise the suppliant hand,
The scorned, dependent vassals of a lord?
The wintry ravage of the storm to meet,
Brave the scorched vapor of the autumnal air,
Then pour the hard-earned harvest at his feet,
And beg some pittance from our pains to share?”
J. Trumbull, “An Elegy on the Times”, 1774.
“Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of Nature has placed in our power.”
P. Henry, Richmond, Virginia, 1775.
“We must indeed all hang together, or most assuredly we will all hang separately.”
B. Franklin, Philadelphia, 1776
“But now, by the power of transplantation, like all other plants, they have taken root and flourished! Formerly they were not numbered in any civil list of their country except in those of the poor; here they rank as citizens. By what invisible power has this surprising metamorphosis been performed? By that of the laws and that of their industry.”
Michel G. J. Crevecoeur, “What is An American?” 1782.
Now, if you just want to go on fighting amongst yourselves….
BpM,
‘“A recent pew poll shows 34% self identify as conservative. Only 17% call themselves liberal.”
Leaving exactly HOW many in the middle??? My math says 49%.’
Read the rest of the comment BM, and read LI’s copmment to wwhich this was a response. Otherwise you are just barking.
The point here was that the country as a whole is not leaning left. Those in the middle span the gap between lib and con. Given the data points at the ends it is not unreasonable to assume that the middle leans more to the right than the left.
We got sold a bill of goods by the media. McCain was more your guy than he was mine. You should be more ticked than I am. So why are you lighting into me about this?
Wolv,
‘Now, if you just want to go on fighting amongst yourselves….’
Sometimes it is better to air things out. Looking at the mess above, only Sanity and BM are having hissies.
It all reminds me of something my mother-in-law once told me about her late husband. Every time she went to a family gathering at the homeplace, the guys would start wrestling and boxing with the kind of gusto that would make you think they all hated each other with a passion. But let some outsider touch any one of them and that outsider was faced immediately with a phalanx of brothers and brothers-in-law who could both fight and shoot — And I believed her every word. My father-in-law at age 90 still shot a gun like Wild Bill Hickok in his prime. (Funny, because Hickok took his first law enforcement job about three miles from where my in-laws wound up living.)
Well, the family feuding has been fun. The Convention is over and done. Now, some strangers have showed up in the neighborhood just alookin’ fer trouble. Time to unlimber the political weaponry, present a united front, and run those troublemakers clear out of town. You can go back to feuding after the place is cleaned up.
Wolv,
OK. But can I still tease BM?
Sanity?
Let’s take this one part at a time.
“We (Americans) have been overspending and overconsuming for a very long time.”
Overspending and overconsuming is that which takes money and a persons’ want or need. It is called freedom and capitalism. I’m assuming that you would like to curtail this by “rationing” available goods and keeping the U.S. citizens poor? Very stupid statement on your part which brings us to “We (Americans)..”. Which America do you refer? If you are a U.S. citizen then your loyalties seem to lie with some other american country with a communistic/socialistic bent. All the rest of your blather was just noise.
We don’t need your opinion or instructions-we can get that from Obama.
Wolve,
“you Rebs were desperately seeking the help of the British in your battle against us Yanks.”
We were seeking the acknowledgement from the UK that the CSA was a soveriegn nation so we could get goods and support, yes. We also used the French to fight the British in 2 other wars I remember and paid them back threefold. We didn’t like the British but they had arms and we had cotton and we didn’t have much of a Navy to fight the blockade. It was nothing more than a “back-rubbing” session. They hesitated, we went to Gettysburg without Stonewall and the rest, as they say, is history.
To unite the Repub party we need to offer things different from the Dems. They have liars, cheaters, con artists and free-loaders….and that is how they got into office. How is any other party going to be able to compete with that without being the same cloth with a different name? So what do we have to lose by being truthful and law abiding in our nominees? Can’t be any worse than what it is now, can it?
I am putting an open-ended offer on a get together and I won’t bring it up again. I have a little over a year left in this area and you just need to leave your burrow and get out. My credentials are impecable and my word is golden. You keep your ananimity and I get to use audio instead of wearing out my digits. And, no, you explain to Mrs. W this ain’t no fancy date or nothing.
Jacob, I kinda think I would get BM’s O.K. on that first. Maybe in writing?!!
BTW, forgot to add that my mother-in-law told me there was only one person who could make all those boys back down when they got out of hand. Their mother…and she didn’t weigh no more than 90 pound soppin’ wet. I tell you, we’ve lost something over the years in this country.
Well, lookee here, fellas. We got us a carpetbagger comin’ to town. Appears he calls hisself Brian Schweitzer and sez he’s the governor up Montana way….as well as the chairman of the Democratic Governors Association (DGA). Coming to town all swaggerin’ and such to endorse McAuliffe and do some campaigning with him. He sez it’s personal and got nothin’ to do with the DGA. That McAuliffe fella must be gettin’ might desperate, bringing in them ‘baggers from way out in the High Rockies.
So, Wolve…what yer sayin’ is that you think I’m a 90 lb. mother hen?
Now, Monk, don’t you go gettin’ me caught up in all this. I’m just the messenger boy here.
Jeesh, reminds me of a story I once heard that I’m sure the Monk will enjoy. Back in the day when the Phillipines were still under American control, command responsibility was shared by a U.S. Navy admiral and a U.S. Army general. The two reputedly hated each other’s guts. It got so bad that they stopped speaking to each other. Whenever they had to communicate, they sent some poor enlisted guy back and forth with messages. That went on for a long time.
Well, the admiral and the general both died and were buried in Arlington Cemetery. When the enlisted guy died, they also buried him in Arlington…..right between the graves of the admiral and the general.
I swear this. When I was a young college chap, I had a part-time job as a tour guide, including tours of Arlington. I used to point out the three tombstones to the tourists in my charge. Just can’t remember the names of the three guys anymore.
Jacob — Do you recall anyone around her implying that the Monk was a “9o lb mother hen”? Maybe we can blame it on Zimzo?!!
Just saw an interesting video on the Bearing Drift blog. Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer giving a speech in which he chews out some politico from New York for daring to tell the people of Montana how to run their own state. Election coming, folks. The hypocrisy should begin to fall like the Summer rain. We need to take advantage of every little drop.
Wolve,
My mother was like that. Since us boys had thick heads, it took shoes or nails to get us in line. She didn’t make 5 feet and was right about 90 pounds but she sure had strong 1 inch nails on those little fingers. Once she got hold of your upper arm, pulling away was about as smart as trying to pull your arm out of a hungry sharks mouth. The shoe was used if we were wearing jackets (she wasn’t about to break those weapons…I mean nails).
[...] Check out the video from NOVA Townhall. [...]