Gephardt’s Speech

I know this guy posts a lot of comments here. but trust me…it’s not backscratching…go click over and read his analysis of “Gebhardt’s” (I couldn’t resist) recent speech on the war – good, bad, & ugly.

If I didn’t have a job, and sons, and a relationship, and I wasn’t spending all my time scribbling in a copy of Rawls, I could do as good a job as he’s doing. Really. No, really.

8 thoughts on “Gephardt’s Speech”

  1. I write the following as a third-generation, life-long registered Democrat who voted for Gore:

    The Democratic party needs to resoundingly lose the next election. They need to be overwhelmingly defeated for the long term health of the country and the party.

    I am almost 100% certain that I will vote for Bush in 2004. Bush has earned my respect and confidence over the past two years, but I will also be voting against my party who I do not currently consider fit to govern. My biggest concern is that the Republicans will misinterpret their mandate and lose focus. The ‘middle of the road’ is theirs for the taking.

  2. Joe, I think the Republicans have already misinterpreted their mandate and lost their focus. Don’t get me wrong – I’m still voting Bush in ’04, but I’m not happy about it. While I’m sympathetic to the liberals about losing their party to the far-left nuballs, how do you think free-trade, small-government conservatives feel about losing our party to the left? I’ll never forgive Karl Rove for making me wish for the days of Democratic fiscal responsibility and trade liberalization (did I really just write that?).

  3. I’m not an economist but I wonder if the government simply had to go into major debt partly because of the downturn in the economy.

    Also, the idea that the Republicans have ever been responsible with money or even for small government is hilarious to me. Afterall, Reagan, the patron saint of Republicans everywhere, spent like a nutter.

    Also, “Gephardt” is still misspelled in the text. I don’t think he has a chance. His face is freaky (does he have eyebrows?) and it’s too difficult to spell his name.

  4. When handicapping the Democratic primaries, I think you’re all missing the most important question:

    How tall is he?

  5. Reading the posts here from the Disgruntled-Democrats-Grudgingly-For-Bush Club, I am convinced that the Democrats don’t have a chance. The bad side of that is that progressive politics don’t have a future (other than in a quite distant one). The good news is that I can go ahead and vote for Gephardt without jeopardizing my conscience and, incidentally, placing our national security at grave risk in the hands of the Disloyal Opposition.

    Frankly, I like Gephardt and am not shocked (merely “shocked, shocked”) at the good, the bad and the ugly (one of my favorite films, btw). It’s called politics. Bush does it all the time. If Gephardt is “dissembling”, to use Porphy’s term of choice, Bush does it all the time. It’s called the lying about WMD theme that Steven den Beste so aptly proved for us yesterday in the Wall Street Journal. It’s also called misrepresenting just about everything he has said about the wonderful effects his favor-the-rich policies will have for workin’ folk and the economy.

    I don’t care whether Bush “dissembled” “shaded the truth” or spoke outright “falsehoods” (to borrow again from Porphy) about WMD precisely because that’s precisely what politicians do for a mass audience (again, see Den Beste). Bush Père claimed that we were fighting Gulf War I to liberate Kuwait from naked aggression. Does anybody really believe that? Is it a better political basis for assembling a coalition than, say, securing world oil supplies?

    The issue du jour – actually, the issue of our times – is national security and will remain that way for quite some time and the Dems are therefore stuck with a pretty bad hand against an incumbent wartime president for the election campaign. That means they have to attack Bush on that issue where they can, which will mean walking over a lot of hot coals, or at least yellow-caked uranium nuggets. Maybe they’ll get irradiated, maybe they won’t.

    Anyway, why should I give Bush a pass on WMD (I think it’s irrelevant), give Bush the Elder a pass on “liberating” Kuwait (totally irrelevant), and then insist on purity from Gephardt and the other Dems? Give me a break. We pro-intervention Dems are taking out our frustrations on the wrong folk. We’re over reacting.

    Gephardt has strong national security credentials and I’ll let him play the game to the end and see what he and the other Dems, including Dean, ultimately present.

  6. G.G.

    1) You assert that Den Beste “proved” something that I’m sure he would disagree that he even argued, much less proved or attempted to prove.

    2) You’re asserting facts not in evidence in claiming “Bush lied” about something like Iraq’s WMD program; it would have to be a vast conspiracy indeed, spanning from the UN to the French Government and going back through 8 years of the Clinton Administration. All no doubt part of an insidious plot so that Bu$h could invade Iraq in ’03.

    3) A tu quoque isn’t very apt here in any case; if you actually read my post you’ll notice that the point it makes is that candidates running on how important “truth telling” and “being straightforward with the American people” is, but then spend the bulk of their words doing the opposite in a way that misrepresents things in order to undercut a war effort you claim to support – well, you are inclined to let him off the hook so I suppose there’s no point in bothering to continue this point.

    Therefore, moving on:

    While I’m sympathetic to the liberals about losing their party to the far-left nuballs, how do you think free-trade, small-government conservatives feel about losing our party to the left?

    I’ve castigated the Bush Administration on these points, but we aren’t really losing the Republican Party to the Left. The fact is, in most of the ways that are really relevant, the Bush Republican Party has simply become the Kennedy – not Ted, but John, and not the JFK of later myth but the JFK of reality – Party. Strong on defense, assertive in foreign policy, tax cutting, but for more government programs (just not as big as, say, LBJ), and a mixed record on trade in order to “protect” blue-collar industries (steel tarrifs, anyone?) and farmers (bloated farm bill, anyone?), increased regulation, survelance (Pop Quiz: who was AG when MLK’s phone was tapped?), and the like.

    That’s life in the slaw lane. At least someone’s moved to fill that part of the political spectrum now that the Ds have abandoned it. But it does mean that there needs to be a party promoting restraint in government spending and less regulation.

    The problem with many moderate Dems is they fail to recognize their man when they see him, so ingrained is their partisanship.

    (Yes, I’m being a bit cheeky here).

  7. G. G., one more thing:

    If you’re going to invoke Den Beste to support your assertions, you may want to at least read what he wrote on the subject, in particular in this post, which was the precursor of the post from which the WSJ article was derived.

    In it he asserts the opposite of what you claim he “proved”.

    I’ll also recommend this post by Daniel Drenzer.

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