Posted on 09/24/2010 11:07:20 PM PDT by neverdem
When facing a tsunami, what do you do? Pray, and tell yourself stories. I am not privy to the Democrats' private prayers, but I do hear the stories they're telling themselves. The new meme is that there's a civil war raging in the Republican Party. The Tea Party will wreck it from within and prove to be the Democrats' salvation.
I don't blame anyone for seeking a deus ex machina when about to be swept out to sea. But this salvation du jour is flimsier than most.
In fact, the big political story of the year is the contrary: that a spontaneous and quite anarchic movement with no recognized leadership or discernible organization has been merged with such relative ease into the Republican Party.
The Tea Party could have become Perot '92, an anti-government movement that spurned the Republicans, went third-party and cost George H.W. Bush reelection, ending 12 years of Republican rule. Had the Tea Party gone that route, it would have drained the Republican Party of its most mobilized supporters and deprived Republicans of the sweeping victory that awaits them on Nov. 2.
Instead, it planted its flag within the party and, with its remarkable energy, created the enthusiasm gap. Such gaps are measurable. This one is a chasm. This year's turnout for the Democratic primaries (as a percentage of eligible voters) was the lowest ever recorded. Republican turnout was the highest since 1970.
True, Christine O'Donnell's nomination in Delaware may cost the Republicans an otherwise safe seat (and possibly control of the Senate), and Sharron Angle in Nevada is running only neck-and-neck with an unpopular Harry Reid. On balance, however, the Tea Party contribution is a large net plus, with its support for such strong candidates as Marco Rubio of Florida, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Joe Miller...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Whatever the democrats do.. the Tea party(caucus) is GROWING... strongly growing..
Hmmm... methinks Herr Krauthammer has been hammered sufficiently by Tea Party reality and is now trying to get in its good graces.
Chuck can still KMA.
He is not saying anything he hasnt said before....
>> is now trying to get in its good graces.
Krauthammer is a pragmatist and can easily survive the consequences of his dissenting views concerning the ladies.
Not really interested in anything Krauthammer has to say.
His actions/words concerning O’Donnell and Governor Palin tell me he is a Ruling Class Country Club Republican.
His disdain for Pro-life issues sealed the deal for me.
I don’t trust him a bit.
I agree. Love Krauthammer, irritated by his dumping on O’Donnell. Your tag line would make me laugh if it wasn’t so gruesomely accurate.
Well crafted tag line...
In an op-ed piece entitled “Disarm The Citizenry”, The Washington Post, Friday, April 5, 1996, page A19, columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote:
“Ultimately, a civilized society must disarm its citizenry if it is to have a modicum of domestic tranquility of the kind enjoyed by sister democracies such as Canada and Britain. Given the frontier history and individualist ideology of the United States, however, this will not come easily. It certainly cannot be done radically. It will probably take one, maybe two generations. It might be 50 years before the United States gets to where Britain is today. Passing a law like the assault weapons ban is a symbolic - purely symbolic - move in that direction. Its only real justification is not to reduce crime but to desensitize the public to the regulation of weapons in preparation for their ultimate confiscation.”
Has he disavowed those words? If not, I’m gonna write down his name in my book and draw a line through it.
I don't know, but 1996 was a long time ago. I hope he has, because Charles has been (at least until two weeks ago) mostly been a voice of reason and sanity.
Now that quote is scary!
That’s darned disturbing from chuck. Sounds like he’s got some major blind spots where freedom and liberty are concerned.
Why would anyone in their right mind want to model a society after the two failed liberocracies canauckistan and (Once) great britain?
If that is the path to being civilized, I will gladly throw my lot in with the barbarians. chucky can have his fantasy of a civilized society, I’ll keep my firearms.
Stopped reading as soon as I saw you had changed the title.
Nice touch, Squire Danaher...
George Mason of Virginia, 1788
“Stopped reading as soon as I saw you had changed the title.”
You’re confused. I lifted my post verbatim from here:
http://www.secondamendment.net/2amd6.htm
Hope this helps.
No wonder he supported Castle, who had an ‘F’ by the NRA.
Bump what you said.
There is no such thing as a “civilized society” where the citizenry can be enslaved by government and have no means of recourse.
What good is a "safe" seat if the one occupying it acts like a dim? Is it better to have a RINO than a dim? I'm not sure. With a RINO, you never know which way they'll go on an issue. Some, like the two up in Maine, are more reliable to the dims than many "official" dims.
Chuck is an advocate for high taxes on energy, pro-abortion
anti-creationism. He rejects intelligent design theory because this leads to “creationism.”
Mr K. is more akin to the northeast cultural liberal menatlity than to the middle American conservative for sure.
I notice Charles had to lower himself to appear on O’Reilly last week to “splain” himself about O’Donnell.
Oh, really?
Hadn't been aware of that instrumental, Straussian, let-them-eat-cake little opinion of his, concerning our Second Amendment rights.
Think we can wheel Charlie's chair into the back row for a while.
I'd like to see him and Chris Hitchens defend that idea of his in a discussion with Marie Curie, Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, and Percival Lowell. With Teilhard De Chardin refereeing.
Good luck, Charlie K.
a spontaneous and quite anarchic movement with no recognized leadership
. . .
What’s funny is that young progressives view themselves this way while their “rebellion” is managed and very establishment.
Okay, so American Survival Guide did. Thanks.
Here's another quote for you:
"It is true that with far stricter gun laws, Cho Seung Hui might have had a harder time getting the weapons and ammunition needed to kill so relentlessly. Nonetheless, we should have no illusions about what laws can do. There are other ways to kill in large numbers, as Timothy McVeigh demonstrated. Determined killers will obtain guns no matter how strict the laws. And stricter controls could also keep guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens using them in self-defense. The psychotic mass murder is rare; the armed household burglary is not."
--Charles Krauthammer, "A Moment of Silence," The Washington Post, April 20, 2007
I'm not saying he's great on guns, but just giving a better picture.
In your quote it is hard to tell if it is a future he “envisages” or endorses. Certainly if civilian disarmament is a future he wishes to see then he is no friend of ours. OTOH, if folks 50 years from know “allow themselves to become desensitized to disarmament” it is their own fault. I imagine none of us will still be here then. Certainly I will not be turning over a damn thing.
“Kill the Republican witch. Kill the women.
Go Mitt. Go Mitt. Go Mitt.”
Charles? Too many foreign cliches.
Do you have a link to the rest of that article?
Looks like CK is trying to suck up to conservatives after his ill considered remarks about Christine ODonnell.
No matter. I thought this guy was a beltway elitist with a conservative schtick before that, and I think he’s a beltway elitist with a conservative schtick now. Every now and then his true colors come shining through.
As a mere unwashed peasant, I’m far too coarse to appreciate his enlightened words. So I guess I’ll just have put him on the list as a pundit to be ignored.
This is a much different world here in the obamanation than in '92 and one would think it would be easy for the republicans, but if they try to run another rino in 2012 all bets are off.
The real challenge has always been to either first save the GOP and use it to save the Republic or abandon the GOP if it can't be salvaged and let the TEA party resistance form into something new and use that organization to challenge the progressives and restore the Constitutional Republic.
Is there a link to the entire article that this quote came from??
I'm thinking he's bemused by the FReeper "outrage." What did Krauthammer do, anyway? Call O'Donnell a weak candidate? (I'm asking because I don't know).
Krauthammer has been a huge supporter of the Tea Party movement from day one.
It Doesn't
You lifted an excerpt from a article which excerpted an article from Krauthammer. Without the i=original Washington Post article and its context, the excerpt could easily be used in the wrong context.
I would like to see the original Krauthammer article.
Wow! That’s a shocker.. at least to me! Has he changed his position since that article? It definitely sheds new light on Dr. K!
... and to comment on this piece by him... he just HAD to trash O’Donnell here as well!!
Thanks for the post.
It took a little digging but here is one..
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19960408&slug=2323082
Thanx very much. My digging only turned up “for purchase” copies in the archives, but I searched under the other title.
First, this is so at variance with reality that it's hard to believe even liberals believe it. The largest Tea Party event yet was the recent Glenn Beck rally on the Mall.
Nope, it was BIG, but not as big as 9/12 in 2009. Go back and look at the pictures ... 1,700,000 people! How soon they forget. (This not to take away from what Beck did, this just to add perspective and accuracy).
We tend to think of Charlie as infallible ... but there are moments, aren't there?
Check out the link in post #42.
His point is really that in the modern world, there shouldn’t be a need for guns, but .....
“So long as crime is ubiquitous, so long as Americans cannot entrust their personal safety to the authorities, they will never agree to disarm. There will be no gun control before there is real crime control.”
“...cost George H.W. Bush reelection, ending 12 years of Republican rule.”
Charles, Charles....we Americans are not “ruled” by anyone. Remember “government of the people”?
But it is nice to see the Establishment trying to catch the TEA Party train as it roars downhill to Nov. 2.
Thanks.
Watching his snobbery and condescension over the past couple of years, his cliched rhapsodizing over the "eloquent and intelligent" Obama has led me to discount everything he says. His disdain for Beck, his embarrassment in the early days of the Townhalls and tea parties (scolding us for yelling)...but the icing on the cake of my contempt was his remarks about Christine O'Donnell, and his sneering challenge to Palin and Demint to pull off her election in November. Krauthammer, since you think Jon Stewart is so funny, STFU.
How did he ever get where he is, anyway? Family connections, maybe?
People are making too much of this IMO. Krauthammer stated his erroneous views on O'Donnell but he is likely to write some good editorials in the future. I read editorials from people from all parts of the political spectrum. I am not obligated to agree or disagree with anything but weigh the arguments on their merits. I tend to agree with David Limbaugh more than anyone else but I won't quit reading anyone just because I disagree with him or her.
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