Posted on 03/07/2014 7:20:25 PM PST by expat1000
Ted Cruz named the Republicans' three most recent losing candidates -- Dole, McCain, and Romney -- as having failed to stand on principle, which then, he suggests, caused them to lose.
McCain asks, rhetorically (and arguably demagogically), if Bob Dole had failed to "stand on principle" on "that hill in Italy" in which he lost his limb defending the country in World War II. He wants Cruz to apologize to Dole, but not, he says, to himself or Romney.
If I try to give McCain a break here, here's how I do it. Both sides of the RINO/TrueCon war have insults for the other side that drive the other side crazy.
RINOs hate it when you suggest they're "cowards" who "lack principle" or "the will to fight." I've gotten that a lot myself, and it is, as intended, quite personally insulting.
On the other side of it, RINOs have their own disparagements of TrueCons -- starting off with the suggestion that they're crazy, that they lack sophistication and don't understand politics, are overemotional, and so on.
So while I think it's a bit of stretch for McCain to claim Cruz was claiming Dole shirked his duty in World War Two (come on, he said nothing of the sort), I can guess that what rankles McCain here is this frequent messaging that RINOs, such as himself, are "cowards." Cruz's formulation -- that these men failed to "stand on principle"-- doesn't explicitly make the "coward" argument, but it does suggest it.
On McCain's side, of course, he has called Tea Partiers "hobbits" and other terms of disparagement. And in his call for an apology to War Hero Bob Dole, he's not-too-covertly reminding the audience that Ted Cruz didn't serve.
There are several real arguments going on in the conservative movement. Most of these have to do with real things -- policy, tactics.
I think what the party is doing, wrongly, is attempting to dodge the actual arguments by resorting to personal-level attacks.
Which is exactly the wrong thing to do. Rather than engaging and arguing about the stuff that actually divides us, we're attempting to hide these arguments (which everyone knows we have) under a cover of personal attacks.
Which are in fact worse and more embittering than just having the argument we're trying to avoid.
Arguments about ideology and tactics are not exactly pleasant, but there is, at least, a small bit of detachment from them, on a personal level. If I argue with a commenter about X position, the fight could get edgy and hot, but at least we're arguing about something other than one another's personal value.
Once something gets personal, forget about it.
This is why I say this is all backwards. We're avoiding a fight (which could be productive and clarifying) on the actual issues (which do need to be discussed) by instead resorting to personal stuff and argument-by-categorization.
That is, rather than discuss the actual issue, we tend to simply categorize the position -- "RINO," "buying into the left's premises," "crazy," etc. -- and let the categorization do our arguing for us.
But this isn't an especially useful way to discuss things, just tossing disparaging labels at each other or each other's positions.
I've given up, personally, deciding what position I support based on how "conservative" it's alleged to be, or not to be. The party is in a state of flux. When Rand Paul can be applauded for advocating a fairly isolationist position at CPAC -- imagine such a thing in 2003 -- I think it's clear we're in a rebuilding, and reconsidering, and rethinking period.
There is no point fighting that, and no use trying to avoid it. And it doesn't advance the ball any by calling things either "RINO" or "crazy" based on 2004's now-obsolete definitions.
We should decide which ideas are part of the core of conservatism based upon how true and useful those ideas are rather than resorting to how true and useful and idea might be according to how "conservative" someone says it is.
Oh, and let me say this about the unending Cruz/McCain feud: They should insult each other honestly. I think honesty, even in insults, is better than dishonesty.
Here is what Cruz plainly thinks about McCain: That McCain is essentially a Democrat, who values the opinions of liberals (especially liberal journalists) far more than those of conservatives. And we all seek to please those we think the most highly of. And so McCain is consistently critical of conservatives. He flatters liberal sensibilities in hopes they will flatter him in return.
And here is what McCain plainly thinks about Cruz: That he's a charlatan who's offering people looking for Big Wins the illusory promise of a Big Win, that he's conning people, that he's not being "straight" with constituents. That he's undermining Republicans to advance his own personal political position.
Now, a fight between McCain and Cruz in those terms would be ugly. But at least it would have the benefit of being an honest fight, not this bullshit we have going on right now.
And one more thing: "Moderation" in the Republican party is currently a slur because no one at all speaks up for it. Everyone claims to be The Most Conservative Possible, Ever. Except for a few people, like Collins and Kirk, almost everyone claims to be the Most Conservative, and claims to think the Most Conservative always wins.
Moderates plainly do not believe this. And it does them no credit that they pretend to believe it while plainly not really believing it.
And if they want to make a bit of moderation -- as McCain clearly has in him -- not a term of disparagement, they have to speak up in favor of it, and explain to people why they think moderation is not always some kind of sell-out position.
You know, I used to fight this characterization myself. People would say I was a moderate or not as conservative as they are, and it really used to bug me. I felt like I was "losing" the race. I mean, someone says he's more conservative than I am; I can't let that insult stand.
But in fact, look: In the wild west, there's always gonna be someone faster than you, and there are in fact going to be an awful lot of people further to the right than any particular person.
We're letting this be a silly game of More Conservative Than Thou precisely because we're letting this be a silly game of More Conservative Than Thou.
If McCain believes that some people are too conservative, then why does he not just forthrightly say so, and make a case for a Not Too Hard, Not Too Soft brand of conservatism?
Why continue this endless posturing over the game show Quien es Muy Macho? ?
If he thinks it's a silly game, he should say so. I'd respect him more for that.
I really think this system we've developed where all our actual debates are either sublimated or squelched is a bad one. All that ends up happening is that what should be discussed on an ideological plane winds up becoming personalized trash-talk, and everyone feels lied to, because no one's being straight with each other.
No one considers McCain a friend.
I was in college when Dole ran for pres and have no memory of what he stood for.
Funny Mccain couldn’t condemn his good friend Harry Reid who went after the Koch brothers. Nice/s
He stood for holding his pencil and talking about himself in the third person all day.
No way an elderly man was going to beat an attractive alleged rapist like Bill Clinton.
"I have to tell you. Sen. Obama is a decent person and a person you don’t have to be scared of as president of the United States," McCain told a supporter at a town hall meeting in Minnesota who said he was “scared” of the prospect of an Obama presidency and of who the Democrat would appoint to the Supreme Court.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrnRU3ocIH4
Mclaim should go down to the nearest hardware store and buy some rope and end his stupidity.
an attractive...Bill Clinton
Only women or men with limited intellect think that!
Bill had an attractive factor for sure. Kind of a slick cheap version of Elvis with or without the sax.
Despite the sax he had lots of sex in the White House, just not with the wife very often.
Dole looked like a civil war vet against Clinton at that time and kept referring to Bob Dole instead in the third person instead of saying “ME”.
I believe Obama is also McCain’s good friend, for what that’s worth.
That’s’ RSPECTFULLY”....! lol
Whatever you walking cadaver...
McShame was nicknamed “Songbird” by the North Vietnamese because he told them anything they wanted to hear.
I despise McCain as much as the next one, but you need to cite reliable source information for a claim like that.
I think Senator Cruz was saying that they didn’t take it to the Dems when they ran for president. This is true...they didn’t. McCain should keep his mouth shut.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/mccain-and-the-pow-cover-up/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMcYqtayU7c
http://tomohalloran.com/2013/06/20/john-mccain-communist-traitor/
What did Sheriff Joe say about it?
I’ve read he cost a lot of pilots their lives because he told the Vietnamese the flight patterns. They were sitting ducks. Yet because his daddy was an admiral he got to come home, divorce his faithful wife and marry a drug stealing millionairess, get elected to the senate then run for president. This country has been in trouble for a long time. If it was WWII he would have been stood up next to Private Slovic and shot.
It’s a shame that we were faced with someone running for president that we knew was going to be so bad for this country that it would make us vote for a traitor for president.
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