Sunday, March 15, 2009

Shooting the Messengers

Tommy de Seno calls for John, Meghan McCain to leave the Republican Party

As one continues to assess the current state of the American Republican Party, one can't help but think that some honest, heart-felt criticism is certainly in order.

The Republicans have lost the White House and lost control of both Congressional houses. To make matters worse, far-right ideologue Rush Limbaugh seems to have seized control of the party's public image.

At a time like this, when times are so dark for the Republican party, Justified Right's Tommy de Seno wants to drive some of the party's most concerned supporters out.

John and Meghan McCain are in de Seno's sights. Their unforgivable sin is purported to be criticizing the American conservative movement and working with the enemy.

"I grew tired of McCain fighting our agenda, voting against tax cuts, bowing to global warming loons, insulting Christian leaders, ganging against us with his liberal 'Gang of 14' and passing useless laws with liberals like Senator Russ Feingold. — Not to mention snubbing CPAC," de Seno writes.

"The press rewarded McCain’s behavior by labelling him a “maverick” for bashing the Republican Party (if a Democrat bucks his party, like Lieberman, the press paints him as a traitor, not a maverick)," he continues.

De Seno then goes on to address Meghan McCain, who recently took on Ann Coulter in the press.

"Now comes his daughter Meghan McCain, proving the old adage that the poop doesn’t fall far from the pig’s rear end, Meghan has joined her father in the Republican bashing business," de Seno writes.

"Writing on The Daily Beast, an Internet blog, she takes on author Ann Coulter," he continues. "She says she 'straight up doesn’t understand' Coulter (probably all those big words Ann uses). She labels Ann’s followers part of a 'cult' (Meghan must be reading the papers — that’s how media refers to our whole party!). She takes a swing at CPAC, too (chip off the old block, that Meghan)."

If Meghan McCain doesn't understand Ann Coulter, she certainly isn't alone. In a blog post on the National Post's Full Comment blog, John Moore notes that Coulter's current rhetoric is incredibly out of sync with the comeuppance the GOP recieved in the recent election. Ironically enough, de Seno credits himself and his likeminded ilk for that comeuppance, when he notes their refusal to support the elder McCain.

"It’s painfully clear she has crossed the threshold of her half life," Moore writes. "Her mantra that liberals are pitiable, conniving, traitorous losers and that conservatives are valorous, patriotic administrative geniuses plays poorly against the backdrop of the hand-over from George W Bush to Barack Obama. Imagine penning a panegyric to dirigible travel while crossing the Atlantic on the Hindenburg."

Yet de Seno seems to think that criticizing Coulter -- who, along with Limbaugh, currently remains one of the best reasons not to support the GOP -- should be considered off-limits for Republicans.

Quite the contrary. What the Republican party needs more than anything is a critical voice from within the party to remind it that people such as Limbaugh, Coulter and de Seno are leading the Republican party too far into the political fringes for it to even possibly remain viable.

In the world of politics, some times one's worst critic is their best friend. Sadly, individuals like Tommy de Seno are all to eager to push any critical voice out of the Republican party.

Shooting the messengers will not solve the Republican party's problems. Unfortunately, individuals such as de Seno are afflicted with itchy trigger fingers.

5 comments:

  1. When I look at the comments in response to Moore's article in the National Post's full comment blog, I'm suddenly reminded of what drives me crazy about some veins of conservatism.

    Many right-wingers decry what they view as the sneering condescension from "limousine liberals" and others who they feel look down their noses at them for their political beliefs. That, by itself, certainly exists, and I have no doubt that many of those experiences are true.

    Conversely, however, it's people like most of those National Post commenters, and conservatives like Craig Chandler, who give me the same impression of sneering condescension and contempt for anyone who dares to disagree with them, as if believing that the government can have a positive role in society and the economy, that markets need to be balanced for best effect, or in supporting a social safety net to help your fellow citizens if circumstances beyond their control suddenly screw them over are all traits that are somehow un-Albertan.

    The comment about how there is no such thing as a Red Tory, and that they're all Liberals, strike me as the commenters at the Post doing to John Moore exactly what de Seno and his ilk are doing to Meghan McCain-shooting the messenger.

    A part of me is tempted to say that this is part of the reason why the National Post has been a consistently unprofitable money loser for years.

    Are there left-wingers and others who look down their noses at those who have individualist, free-market beliefs, or who believe in smaller taxes and less government? Yes, and it's no less appalling when they do it, but this cuts both ways, when the likes of de Seno and Craig Chandler show contempt for anyone who has views that differ from their own.

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  2. And even with the challenging political times facing them, they refuse to change in any way, shape or form.

    They're going to be dinosaurs fairly soon, I'd say.

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  3. "If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less."
    General Eric Shinseki

    Apparently, that archaic old martial arts lesson rings true even in politics: Your worst enemy is yourself.

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  4. Here's something else that occurred to me, and I can't believe that the Bush hasn't been called out on it more often by conservatives:

    Pierre Trudeau and Brian Mulroney were quite rightly criticized for their massive deficits and ratcheting up of the national debt, which we're still paying for. No country can finance everything on credit and hope to get away with it.

    But that's exactly what the Bush administration did. Bush cut taxes, which is fine by itself, but then he also went on a huge spending spree to finance the invasion of Iraq, the expansion of the Department of Homeland Security, the buildup of the military, the Ballistic Missile Defence system, the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, and everything in between.

    Bush didn't reduce the size of the American government-he rapidly expanded it.

    How come Bush never seemed to be called out on this by the likes of Coulter and Limbaugh? Why was it alright for him to finance all these things on credit, when many people scream bloody murder when you try to finance something like a national daycare program or affordable housing?

    Cutting taxes to actively reduce the size of the state's operations, or raising them to finance new programs, are one thing, but apparently the Bush administration thought it could both launch new programs without having the money to pay for them.

    Amazingly, none of the conservative writers who are always calling on Canada and the U.S. to reduce their social spending appear to have seen anything wrong with what Bush was doing, particularly when he was borrowing money at a rate that would have embarassed Pierre Trudeau.

    Go figure.

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  5. Most of the Republican ideologues in question are certainly not fiscal conservatives. Not legitimately, at the very least.

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