The Importance Of Being Difficult
Jennifer Rubin at Commentary, channeling Bill Kristol, on the efficacy of “No.” If conservatives were at sea a few months back in the wake of defeat, trying to figure out who they were and what their agenda was supposed to be, that may be in part because the importance of saying “No” and what should be said “No” to were not yet fully manifest:
Now it has unfolded. We know what Obamaism looks like. On the domestic side, it is liberal statism: higher taxes, mammoth bureaucracies, and a vortex of government regulation that sucks up private enterprise and transforms business decisions into political ones. It comes with an ungracious and sneering contempt for opposition. On the international scene, we have the intersection of incompetence and folly, with a strong element of cynicism. The Obami have deployed aggressive and losing gambits (Honduras and the Middle East), betrayed friends (Israel, Poland, the Czech Republic), snubbed allies (the Churchill bust goes home), thrown ourselves at the feet of adversaries (Russia, Iran), jettisoned human rights and the defense of democracy (Burma, Sudan, Iran), projected angst-ridden indecision (Afghanistan-war formulation), damaged our fighting ability (defense cuts and missile-defense withdrawal), and shown deference to debased institutions (the UN). Most alarmingly, Obama and his attorney general have scarred and scared our intelligence community and placed Lefty pie-in-the-sky moralizing above the safety of Americans (trying KSM, closing Guantanamo, and halting enhanced interrogations).
OK. I’m for being against that.
And so what should conservatives be doing? Well now it’s obvious — oppose, obstruct, warn, and cajole. There aren’t many weapons at conservatives’ disposal, but there are some. And the greatest is to be found in the reservoir of common sense and decency of the America people, who, when stirred, have risen up to oppose pernicious legislation and those whom they mistakenly trusted to behave in a responsible fashion.
Here’s Kristol:
What is the loyal opposition to do?
Oppose Obama’s destructive proposals (health care, cap and trade) and try to defeat them. Expose the foolishness of Obama’s ineffective policies (the stimulus, cash for clunkers) and show the American people their failure. And try to influence Obama’s policy choices by persuasion (Afghanistan), embarrassment (political correctness in the fight against jihadists), or legislation (Guantánamo), so as to minimize the damage done to the country on his watch.
In all of this, Republicans and conservatives can succeed, especially if they keep two rules in mind: Don’t celebrate bad news. Don’t root for the bad guys.
Republicans need to point out that Obama’s economic policies aren’t working. But they need to resist appearing to relish bad news for the country on Obama’s watch. When rising unemployment numbers come out, there is occasionally an unseemly sense of celebration in the emails that come from various GOP offices. More in sorrow than in joy, more in confirmation than in vindication–that should be the Republican mood as the news of Obama’s failures, failures which damage the well-being of Americans and of America, rolls in. And as the failures become ever more evident, conservatives can urge that he correct them, that he see the error of his ways and move on to the right path.
In areas where policies are still being debated–in foreign policy in particular–conservatives need to keep urging Obama to do the right thing. We are disgusted with Obama’s irresoluteness on Afghanistan. But we continue to urge that he side with the experienced military leaders he’s been fortunate to inherit against the second-guessing of political hacks (and of failed ex-generals turned political hacks). We conservatives want American soldiers to win wars, American interests to prevail, and American principles to flourish. We want the bad guys to lose. We’re happy to work with President Obama to defeat them–and we only wish he shared our clarity and urgency about accomplishing that task.
One year after his election victory, the wheels are coming off the Obama presidency. The first attempt in three decades unambiguously to govern America from the left is failing quickly and decisively. Our task is to minimize the damage to the country, and then to be ready to set things right–to use the next three years to lay the groundwork, intellectual and political, for a new era of a governing conservatism that can restore American prosperity, revitalize American strength, and restore the foundations for American greatness.
Sounds like the most conservative of conservative paths, for the GOP, for the nation, in the world at large. Let’s not do things that are destructive. I’d suggest that being calmly, rationally for things that aren’t destructive is the other part of that agenda. Horse-before-cart health care reforms, for example. Get the costs down and then talk about ways make it more broadly available, getting everyone on board with a program in a bi-partisan forum, rather than staging yet another a politically charged free-for-all. As for that KSM piece, not much to do but sit back and watch … and applaud the Obama administration, if it manages to achieve the execution of the 9/11 plotters, for applying conservative principles of justice.
It is highly unlikely our slow, defendant-favoring, innocence-assuming system of justice will have pushed the plunger on Mohammed by 2012. It is more likely we’ll be in the middle of, or will have just witnessed, a stock, off-the-shelf American courtroom fiasco that has the potential to be not just a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions, but a short-term security threat and a long-term security disaster for the nation, as well as being a political disaster for the Democrats in 2010 and Obama in 2012. Which is why, if Obama has any political sense whatsoever, pre-trial maneuvering will kick that trial down the road. Either that, or they line up the hangingest judge they can find to duct-tape KSM’s mouth shut and hogtie his lawyers. I’d advise that route. KSM still untried in 2012 is still an open sore, it just isn’t hemorrhaging.
Anyway, imagine what happens if Obama’s running for relection, health-care hasn’t passed and neither has that immigration thing Napolitano is weirdly suggestng they fire up now … or worse for everyone involved, if they have passed … plus, the deficit is through the roof, and Afghanistan is going bad thanks to his tinkering, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is having his criminal defense party, everyone’s invited. It’s all nightmarish to contemplate, and only nine months in, it doesn’t require much imagination. But what happens is it becomes the GOP’s election to lose. All they need is a candidate.
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Posted by Jules Crittenden at 2:34 pm Comments (2) on Sunday, November 15, 2009
2 Responses to “The Importance Of Being Difficult”
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November 15th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
And quietly, very quietly, start cleaning house now! Crooks and DIRNOs (Democrats in Republican name only) hit the road now.
November 15th, 2009 at 9:31 pm
Just say NO!
No Bailouts
No Stimulus
No Subsidies
No Guarantees
No Earmarks
No Pork
No Deficits
No Bubbles
No Tax Hikes
No Blank Checks
No Nationalizations
No Socialism
No Public Option
No Cap and Trade
No Single Payer
No Protectionism
No Public Funding
No Government Motors
No Government Cheese
No Pirates
No Bu11$#;+
NØbama