Fight the good fight Karol. It's a tough time to be in the city, no doubt, and a bleak 4 years upcoming. In many ways, things are more interesting now in that the election was obviously lost (and so, not too interesting) after the Wall Street meltdown, whereas now there are the interesting battles for the party leadership. And I agree re: Obama, he did a great job of projecting a blank slate during the campaign, but now that he is elected he will be forced to make many hard decisions that will disappoint constituencies and contradict campaign promises. My guess is the country and the general populace world will cut him some slack for a year or so (though I anticipate that actual foreign government leaders will not only "test" Obama, but flat out push him around), but I take comfort in thinking that it's all downhill from here for Obama's popularity. When he descends from his lofty rhetorical clouds, I doubt Americans will be as supportive, though I also expect the media to act as a full-time PR machine for him, so it'll be tough to call him out on his contradictions. In the meantime, there's plenty that needs to be done to get ready for 2010.

But I'm with ya, I'm frustrated and more motivated than ever to get the GOP message out.

Shortened version: blah blah blah sour grapes blah blah blah blah blah.

Yes, so sour are those grapes, man are they sour. My favorite candidate of all time, John McCain, just lost the most important election in history. Sour, sour grapes. Ya got me, anonymous doofus, ya got me.

Ghez. Hmm, let's see did you hold Bush to his "no nation building promises"? His "Reaching across the aisle" crap? Oh, but definitely you were all over him about growing the federal government running up a trillions of dollar tab, right? RIGHT? tap tap, hello, is this thing on? Whatever Obama does or doesn't do, he'll be right there in a long line of men who didn't do a lot things they said they were and who did do a lot of stuff nobody ever saw coming. You can pretend that he's a special messiah and should be way better than any of his predecessors or that his t-shirt wearing supporters are super duper hypocrites because democrats and liberals are naturally better than your people...oh, aww...so sweet. Okay, we'll take it. Hope we live up to those expectations.

Yes, conservatives absolutely held Bush to all of these things, except for the reaching across the aisle crap because A)he got spit at every time he tried and B)who the hell wants him working with Ted Kennedy, anyway? Are you seriously trying to say that conservatives didn't hammer Bush on his spending? What, you think liberals did that? They didn't, we did.

Obama's supporters are hypocrites, some more than others, and it will become more apparent as his administration gets under way. And I'll be there to point and laugh all the livelong day.

People aren't arguing about gay marriage? Maybe not from an Obama standpoint, but I can't open my Facebook account or email without another plaintive plea for all the terrible homophobes to "stop the hate" or another call to vandalize Mormon churches. Now that Palin's offstage and the real, actual anti-Palin hatred is (finally!) beginning to wind down, it seems like the crazies are moving to Prop 8 as their protest du jour.

Mike, they can't use gay marriage as a reason to vote for Obama, he's against gay marriage. They usually just look the other way on this one.

My questions weren't about "conservatives" - I know andrew sullivan was all over Bush. My question was about you. Karol Nicole Sheinin. Did you hold Bush to all his promises or did you jump ship from the Coors campaign midway to help reelect the President who grew the government more than anyone in sixty years, who wanted to throw open our borders and reward criminals with citizEnship. Or say, even if Bush tricked you in '04 and you thought he was gonna change, you at least repudiated him, right...didn't clamor for a third Bush term? And you certainly didn't vote for John Mccain who was all about bailouts and buying depressed mortgages and even more liberal immigration plans than george "work card" bush, right? You voted for Barr, right? Cause you're no hypocrite.

Yes, I absolutely hammered Bush on spending and immigration. Absolutely, definitely, google it. And I hated McCain all along, mostly on immigration.

Bailout was trickier. I opposed but feared what would happen if we didn't do it. I don't know, it was nuanced, as they say.

But actually, I'm wasn't talking about specific people. I have no doubt you will do near zero criticizing of Obama on the issues on which you disagree with him. For such a passionate opponent of the death penalty such as yourself, you never blog about it because well, Democrats are for the death penalty now, what can ya do? I was talking more about "liberals" and "conservatives" collectively and so my point stands that yes, conservatives criticize their own MUCH more than liberals ever do. But that's because liberals can't win elections being liberals while conservatives can and have.

And please, don't try to goad me with Sullivan. Unless you want me to start referring to your VP candidate from 2000 as the example to which liberalism must aspire.

And if I had a middle name, which I don't, it would be Nikol as the "c" letter makes a different sound in Russian (see my first name).

There is a web site that published all the rumors that MSM disseminated on Palin that proved to be untrue. There are over 60 on that list. No wonder she was down in the polls.

However, she still has 91% approval rating among Republicans.

Me, I not arguing with anybody until the unemployment rate goes to 15%. Then I will tell everyone, I told you so.

At least Obama can't run on a platform of Change next time. He said in his acceptance speech that we may not get there (where?) in one year or even one term ... trying to keep people from giving him a deadline for meeting his promises of, say, April 2009.

Just wait till the honeymoon halo dissipates over President Obama's head. When the real world dials him up on the red phone and he has to answer. Thats when we will know what the liberals have gotten us into.

Economically Obama's parade of big names does not impress me one bit. Yeah Warren Buffett claims he doesn't mind paying more taxes - how exactly is that supposed to make it any better for the rest of us? The Oracle of Omaha is like 80 and has more money than he and 300 grandkids could never get around to spending. For the business owners trying to build something and already being bombarded by federal, state and city, medical care, 401k, and all the other costs of doing business - adding MORE federal doesn't help him in anyway. The more you take from him the less he has left to build his business, take on new hires, and (PERISH THE THOUGHT) put some money into his own pocket. Obama spent probably 10-20% of his mic time talking about creating more jobs thru his "Green Economy" pipedream. So he's going to do it at the detriment to the existing Mom and Pop shops that work 12-16 hour days for their fiscal independence. Its Anti-American Class Warfare being called to charge.

But the liberal saps will point at such a backer (Warren Buffett) and say, "see if the richest can do it, so can you!" BULLSHIT! more levied taxes (which based on the extended state of the market's grief will be delayed somewhat, THANK GOD!), help the lazy not the needy. Needy of tax relief does not equate to "The Needy" as in the homeless, the helpless, and the destitute. Those truly in need of tax relief are those who are working hardest for the money they need to part with because some Liberal La-la-land Demagogue decided it would make his "feel" good to "spread the wealth". Again, thats a Class Warfare battle cry. What's next? Vive La Resistance? Off with his head?

Capitalism is the blood that runs thru the veins of the United States of America. Without it, the World stops. Don't believe me? Look around. The entire World economy, which 6-12 months ago - the so-called ECONOMISTS would have you believe were hinged on BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China). And the oil run-up was effected by the projected needs of the BRIC, and the cost of gold ran up to contend with the battling currencies (including the forever inflated failed experiment called the EURO). But what was the true lynchpin? The US. The US began to teeter and wobble and the BRIC and EU started to run for the hills, when we began to tumble they outright crashed. And now that we are seeing the worst of it, they are devastated and waiting again for us to lead the way.

Look at the dollar. We are arguably the country in the worst of it. 10Trillian Dollars in debt (and the odometer keeps rolling), and yet, the US Dollar is stronger now than it has been in 6 or 7 years. But the Dems don't care, how could they? They don't understand the concept of money. They magically get it by pushing thru policy and before the ink on the check dries, its already spent.

Alan Fronshtein
Card-carrying Republican.

Here's something to consider. Not every Democrat cares about gay marriage. Not every Democrat thinks guns are some awful scary thing. Not every Democrat believes that capitalism and corporations are inherently evil. And, not every Democrat thinks the death penalty should be abolished.

And maybe, what many of us realized and liked about Barack Obama is that he didn't need to take some extreme lefty positions on these issues to prove something. His overall assessment of helping the middle-class, and resolving our foreign policy disasters, and reaching a reasonable solution in Iraq to bring troops home, and going to fight the real war in Afghanistan...it was those key issues that really drove Democrats out to the polls this election.

Oh, and Sarah Palin -- she's not smart. She's exhibited absolutely no independent thought, analysis, or understanding of the major foreign policy or economic issues facing our nation today. Sure, she's charismatic, and she may have a future in the Republican Party, but she should spend four years learning more about what goes on in the world outside of Alaska...

Joe Biden is not smart, and now he's the proverbial heartbeat away. Ugh.

And maybe, what many of us realized and liked about Barack Obama is that he didn't need to take some extreme lefty positions on these issues to prove something.

And maybe you didn't realize his run to the center was just the tie that goes with his general election empty suit.

Interviewed by Katie Couric on the "CBS Evening News," Joe Biden said, "When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, 'Look, here's what happened.'"

FDR wasn't president then, and Americans didn't have TVs. It's hard to choose one example of "Joetox" Biden's stupidity when there are so, so many.

"But that's also an opening for conservatives. We must spend the next four years defending our positions like a strong foreign policy or the need for a free market. But because Obama ran on so many conservative principles, all we need to do is hold him to them, as we can be pretty sure they were an election device and not much more."

But here is the thing Karol. Our positions of a strong foreign policy. You know. Like getting Osama. And standing for the freemarket. As opposed to spending taxpayer dollars on bailouts.

The memory of Herbert Hoover plagued conservatism from 1932 until 1964. And W. is going to plague us for a long time. Even worse, too many conservatives went along with W. for way too long. It will be a long time before we should take any of the Lexington Avenue and Beltway conservatives seriously since National Review, The Weekly Standard and the radio shows were all polishing W's apple for the last 8 years.

W did a lot right, we forget that in the constant discussion of what he's done wrong. And while we can fault him, a lot, for not being conservative enough, he was by far the better option when having to choose between him and Al Gore or him and John Kerry. I don't feel like I can say that about John McCain. As I've written here before, I consider him a "5" on a scale of 1-10, and Obama a "4" (Reagan is a "9" for comparison's sake). So, 4, 5, who cares? Whereas Bush was a 6 for me, and Gore was a 2, Kerry was a 1.

Katie Q.

Sarah Palin is smart.

One of the the many things MSM kept from you was that she was elected Chair of the Intergovernmental Organization for Oil Reclamation. This organization is composed of the oil producing states and Canada.

I heard a speech she gave to the organization on the importance of oil reclamation. It was very technical and very wise.

The problem Palin faced was that McCain's economic policy made no sense so she had to memorize his stands verbatim. She after all was the VP nominee and could not make her own policy.

I agree that she needs more polish and that she should spend some time acquiring it but she is very smart.

I'm not sure that W did a lot right. Then again, I might expect a lot out of my Presidents. Pretty much after the Alito and Roberts I'm at a loss. Your mileage may vary, but I expected a lot more of GOP control (or near control) of 2 levers of power from 2000-2006.

Iraq--even if you argue it was necessary, it was a clusterf*ck. We went from "spreading democracy in the Middle East" (um, that's a bad plan...but okay) to "wow, the Shiites and Sunnis aren't killing on another _every_ day, Al Qaeda hasn't blown up a mosque this week, and our death toll is down to single digits a month--VICTORY!". That's like saying "We're going to Berlin!" and then stopping at the World War I armistice lines. Unsat.

Constitution--Um, McCain-Feingold? FISA? The Supreme Court having to say, "Hey, a**hole, the 14th Amendment means what it says!"? You know, I don't ask for much, but I sort of figure the first 10 shouldn't be screwed with, and I get sort of jiggy when we start deciding who was natural born or not in the Executive Branch. Bad history with those sorts of decisions and those of us with high melanin content, plus I'm arguably a native German by birthplace.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

The sooner we're rid of this Cult of the Presidency, the better we all will be.

Man oh man, I thought NDS was the queen of the supercilious dumbasses, but then katie g comes along and snatches the crown off her head.

I always enjoy listening to those who know nothing about national security policy blither about the nuts and bolts of how we make it happen. All wars are full of brilliant and stupid acts. Like any endeavor, the important thing is to keep one's eye on the ball, and the ball in the middle east is the Iranians. We're in Iraq because we couldn't have any effect on them from Saudi. We're in Afghanistan because it allows us to bracket them. We literally have them in a box geopolitically. At the same time, the Saudi's aren't as vital to us as they once were. Now if we carried this out to the logical endgame, we'd have a friendly government in Baghdad, and a strong democratic counterweight to the real source of global terror right on their doorstep.

We never went into Iraq with an intention to leave, no matter what was said publicly. Sadly, Barry is easily more supercilious than katie g, and possibly just as stupid. So, he will toss the keys to the kingdom to Malachi, who will cozy up with his Iranian buds, and open up the terrorist floodgate from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Israel. If you want to see the holy land, make it before next summer, unless you're into that whole glow-in-the-dark thing.

Casca,

Oh, I might know a little bit about national security, and I stand by my statements. I've heard the "we went to Iraq so we can get to Iran" argument before, and that makes the war even less of a "victory" than comparing it to the original goals.
Tell me, with what Army and logistics are we going to threaten Iran? You know, the folks who conducted an open commando raid that killed our soldiers, keep handing EFPs to the folks killing our soldiers, and the people who keep threatening us and our allies with various mischief. Call me crazy, but if that's your idea of "containment" I sure hope you don't raise exotic pets. Simply put, if you simply acknowledge the _numerous_ causus belli the Iranians have provided then containment becomes a whole lot easier.
As to Afghanistan being the "other" bracket, when all of our supplies go through a thoroughly uncowed Pakistan I'm not so sure we've got a good bookend going. Especially with the Taliban seemingly able to regenerate itself. Thankfully, as in Iraq, Islamofascist jacka**es make horrible guests and it appears (according to The Long War Journal and a couple of other open sources) that some of the Northwest tribes are growing sick of them.

I don't disagree in principle with the schematics of a Persian sandwich. However, if we're going to go that route, then something should have A. been said openly and B. we should've gone into Iraq with a lot more firepower than we did. If I'm setting up a geopolitical AA I don't half-a** it, and I definitely make sure whatever idiot I prop up as the boss understands his mouth only gets to keep moving as long as I'm pulling the strings. As in, "You go off script, you go offline a**hole." Instead we've got some democratically elected Prime Minister whose more afraid of al-Sadr (speaking of which, why is Moqtada still breathing again?) than he is of us.

If Bush's plan was to change the Middle East then we tried to do it on the cheap. If the plan was to contain Iran then this wasn't clearly enunciated. Funny, at some trade school / prison I attended I believe there was a lesson about if you lead a democracy into war you must make sure the people are fully vested in the war goals. It would appear that no one in Bush's inner circle got that briefing or, if they did, they didn't pay attention. Now, thanks in no small part to the decisions they made from 2001-2006, I don't think the geopolitical foundation is set for us to remain in Iraq even if we wanted to.

Just sayin', but maybe the time to have the "Okay, that's it, we're kicking some religious fanatic a** in an era-changing fashion!" was on 9/12, followed by mobilization to do such. Instead, yes, I agree that if anyone was planning on going to see the Middle East (especially Jerusalem, Mecca, Tehran, etc...) they may want to do so _now_--but I heartily _disagree_ that it's going to be all Barry's fault if/when the sun rises about 2-20 times in the next four years.

P.S. And for all you smarta**es, that's 2-20 times in one day.

Great post Karol especially the last paragraph.

The comments on here not so much...

"We're in Iraq because we couldn't have any effect on them from Saudi. We're in Afghanistan because it allows us to bracket them."

Giving regimes like Iran an enemy keeps them in power. I thought we were in Afghanistan to punish those responsible for 9/11 and in Iraq to remove a despot who invaded his neighbors. Saddam was no friend of Iran if we wanted to keep the pressure on Iran we would've left him (Secular Sunni) in power instead of allowing the Shia to inevitably elect pro-Iranian gov'ts. I doubt there is any serious security individual that doesn't believe Iranian army elements are involved in the Iraq insurgency. Which for the most part has never been as bad as the media proclaims it to be.

Israel is more than capable of defending herself. I would site the recent Syria expedition or the one in Iraq decades ago. Although a very good [read only] ally to the US Americans in Iraq have done nothing to soothe the insurgency that Israel faces. The Massad historically has been efficient enough to pickup on nuclear activities of its neighbors and acts accordingly.

We got rid of Saddam no need to for our military to have an unclear mission. IT is time for them to come home regardless if the casualties are not that bad.

We need a secular strong man who isn't afraid to smack down the pro-iranian shia's...hmmmmmm

We lost 110 guys denuding Iraq of its organized military. Unfortunately we stuck around. We have Iran penned in...oh wait Iran insurgents have us bogged down...

I'm not sure if anyone noticed but a lot of the anti-war sites such as antiwar.com have turned sharply against Obama and his disguised 55k man perm-o-ccupation.

I mostly agree with Jake (first time ever?) on Palin. She's not a stupid person at all, and I she's clearly a good politician.

That said, she wasn't ready to be McCain's VP nominee in this election -- or for a national campaign generally given the issues voters were focusing on this time around (and from McCain's perspective, was a bad choice given the campaign he actually ran). She will be ready next time around (although, and this is probably where any agreement ends, I just don't think she is going to be successful on the national level).

I know andrew sullivan was all over Bush

I'm gonna frow up

I'll say there's been too much post-election gloating. Supporters of New Zealand's National Party should show some self restraint.

And don't get me started on Canada's Conservatives...

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