Posted on 12/04/2004 9:38:27 AM PST by GeneralHavoc
Welcome to FR.
Is this who I think it is? ;-)
A certain law student at a certain Pittsburgh university, perhaps?
Congrats. Remember us when!
Wow! nice article! good to see one of our FR own get some recognition.
Chris, you have made a very good start on a great future. We are proud of you!
I should of had you autograph your business card ! I coulda been rich! ;0)
GregB, me thinks Grasshopper may be there already.........
I think that was uncalled for on FR. And you are assuming that I am a "buddy", which I am not.
Sorry if I misenterpreted what you meant but usually the horseshoes and grenade comment means that it doesn't matter that you tried if you don't win.
Since you are not from PA I don't feel you have any idea of what we went through here. And we almost pulled it off with no money and fighting our own party. That was an accomplishment in itself. Specter spent tons of money here, had Santorum (Mr Pro-Life) campaign for him and even called for Pres. Bush to campaign in the last week of the election. Not bad to loose to 2 powerful senators and the president by 17,000 votes, eh ?
And Chris had a MAJOR role in that happening. We destroyed Specter in Western PA and if we would have had Chris's twin working in the east I am sure we would have sent Specter to the unemployment line easily. Then you would never have had to do all of the calling, writing and emailing everyone under the to keep Specter from becoming head of the Judicial Committee. And DC has never seen anything like the response against Specter becoming chair of the JC. And Chris also played a major part in starting that, too.
You're right it was. Like I said I'm frustrated in that I did put effort into calling senators but ended up feeling it was all for not.
But belittling the actions of others just because I feel I failed is immature on my part and I apologize.
I had tears in my eyes as I read this in the local paper. It is a great article, especialy as the author is not exactly a conservative himself, nor is the paper, though they are strong pro-life.
I have known Chris for several years now. He is a rising star in the world of politics. If there is any case for human cloning he is it.
Chris is not for sale as has been mentioned previously and if he does even think about selling out he knows he will feel my boot in a key area of his anatomy. And I am not the only one with this position concening him. He knows I know where he lives and I can walk it in a matter of minutes.
Welcome to FreeRepublic,gadfly
Hey! Congrats on the great story, Chris. Scranton? I once had a nuclear war going with John Webster of WEZX radio there. But that is a whole other story.
Could you post a link to your blog?
PING
"Republicans are totally destroying their credibility because they constantly spend out the wazoo. We have legislators up on Capitol Hill that spend like drunken sailors and then they try to sell the argument that we need tax cuts," he said. "I think we have to get rid of this old kingmaker system where people in the back room decide who runs. Let's have primaries, let's have the war of ideas. Let's have excitement again where we debate issues. And I think in the war of ideas, conservative ideas win out."Lovely thought, but primaries -- more democracy -- ain't gonna stop the spending, it'll only make it worse. How do you think Mr. Specter kept his derriere in office so long? It wasn't by spending money in ways to offend the voters. He lost it only when he offended those voters with ideas, not when he spent money. The story here is one of politics, not reform.
You have all the energy -- and all the delusion -- of the insurgent and the reformer. Here's what a Gridiron skit had to say about this, so eloquently, so bitingly, back in 1911, when the "reformers" of the day thought they had everyone on the run:
I'll gather you all in ere I have done;Go get yours, but don't push "reform." It's unbecoming of a true conservative.
for every party, as it starts in life,
Is led by a reformer, brave in strife;
And when his cause is won he does his best
To firmly hold it safe ‘gainst every test,
Defending each assault with all his powers.
We're all stand-patters -- after we get ours.
You gotta take the system before you can run it. The lesson of the Toomey primary should not be "how close" but "how far." Power is within, my friend, not without.
You gotta take the system before you can run it. The lesson of the Toomey primary should not be "how close" but "how far." Power is within, my friend, not without."
It's late and I'm tired, so forgive me if I am misunderstanding the point that you are trying to make.
It seems as though you're dismissing Chris, and his considerable efforts, with a pat on his head. Am I wrong?
You say: "Go get yours." as though he was gaming the system. Is that your intent? Do you honestly believe that there are not people who want liberty?; who want to rid the system of the back scratching, vote buying, tax dollar spending BS politicians?
If, and I repeat IF, that is your intention, then what are you doing on FR? I thought that was the goal of FR. Please correct me if I am wrong in reading you.
If I am reading you correctly, I think that your attitude is part of the problem. Should we never try to clean things up?
You are correct as usual BadRay........
Well, that's one vote for that point of view. ;-)
Thank you, good lady.
I'll let you figure out the irony in your post. Too funny, lol!
You say: "Go get yours." as though he was gaming the system. Is that your intent? Do you honestly believe that there are not people who want liberty?; who want to rid the system of the back scratching, vote buying, tax dollar spending BS politicians?The "Go get yours" was from the Giridiron satire of refomers I posted. I meant nothing more than the context of the poem.
What Mr. Lilik has done is all very well. It's where he wants to go that bothers me. Good politics are conducted the way he went about it: communicating, organizing, and fighting for one's ideas within the existing politic -- and not the way he proposes to go about it further, which, he suggests, entails some sort of reform of the party and primary systems and political discourse in general. I take issue with this, as he is quoted from the article:
"I think we have to get rid of this old kingmaker system where people in the back room decide who runs. Let's have primaries, let's have the war of ideas. Let's have excitement again where we debate issues..."Isn't that exactly what he got -- a primary, a debate, a "war of ideas" -- and, it would appear, "excitement" --? Discourse we ever need, and Mr. Lilik is to be applauded for his contribution to it. But more primaries? More democracy? Come on, he's damning the very system that empowered him. He's either casting straw men or seeing ghosts, and either way it reeks of the high of reform, which is why I posted my warning. Why folks here took that as a blanket condemnation of the man can only speak to that same over-earnestness I'm warning against.
Back in the progressive age, which I study, and from which I found that Gridiron skit, direct primaries, direct election of Senators, initiatives, and the assorted forms of direct democracy were pushed on the people by zealots and the impatient who claimed that the representative system had failed self-governance. Without getting into the horrid results of enslaving politicians and legislators to public whim and flattery, I bring this up only to point out, as is the case in Mr. Lilik's calls for change, the movement for direct democracy was passed within the constraints of the old representative system.
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