"A HOUSE DIVIDED" - Pukin's FReeperversary Rant

It is getting somewhat strange around these parts when not only the President, but yesterday the First Lady was personally attacked by someone claiming to be a ‘Conservative’. Can there be any doubt that there are forces among us looking to drive a wedge between us?

A few weeks ago, this forum’s owner attempted to remind all of us of the big picture, that regardless of any personal animosity towards the President or Republican Party over their adherence to Conservative principles, that they are still a clear choice over the alternative Democrat Party rule. At that time, I assumed that FReeper-sanity had been restored, and that some of the negative rhetoric aimed at those in Washington D.C. would be dialed back.

Free Republic is a political forum with a proud history and vision, responsible for dragging Dan Rather from his post, and providing countless radio-talk shows with their daily talking points. FReepers are unique in their determination and energy towards protecting and defending the goals of our Founding Fathers.

We are also quite a powder keg of emotion and anticipation, expecting our Republican majorities to take advantage of this opportunity to make permanent gains in our Conservative agenda. Some might argue that this opportunity has been squandered, but those persons would be ignorant of history, lacking understanding that change cannot occur overnight in Washington, and that this is the way our Founders designed our Republic.

In frustration, impatience, and ignorance, we have allowed this forum to become a haven for those who do not share our Conservative goals. I do not blame our enemies anymore then I would blame a scorpion for stinging me. If anger and stupidity were one’s nature, I would expect the trolls that infect this forum to be angry and stupid consistently, which also makes them somewhat easy to detect.

The trolls are not the problem, though. The problem is that so many of us are allowing ourselves to be taken in by those who seek only to prevent us from going to the polls in November to keep their stinking hands off our government for another term. There can be no doubt, that no matter how disappointing our current government has been in promoting the Conservative agenda, that the alternative, enabled by our staying home will be MUCH worse.

The way to deal with Republicans who have actively worked against our goals is to defeat them in Primary elections. We do not even have to defeat them all, only enough of them to send the message that we will indeed target them if they work against our agenda. It should be the goal of EVERY conservative to see that Lincoln Chaffee is defeated in November. His seat is one we can afford to lose. Were I a Rhode Island resident, I would vote for the Democrat if only to send a message to Snowe, Hagel, Collins, Graham, and especially that bastard Specter that their primaries just got a lot tougher.

We only need to get one of them, and Chaffee is the one to get. It does not really matter if a Democrat takes his seat; he will be junior and mute as long as we maintain our overall majority in the Senate.

The one thing that bothers me here like nothing else, is the simple disrespect of the President. Am I am Bush-Bot? Damn straight I am. If you want to know why, click on my handle to read Southack’s excellent list of Bush’s accomplishments in office. But if Bush had done almost nothing in office, it would be no excuse for some of the slights and disrespect he has received from some of us on this forum.

Some of the things I have read here this past week match in tone what one can find on our favorite Democrat sewer site. Someone calling himself or herself a FReeper was promoting shooting aliens at the border until they stopped coming. Is that what we are about? Obviously not, and that so-called Conservative has been eliminated from this forum.

I think it is important to remember that you and I have just as much responsibility as George Bush does in changing our culture to better reflect Conservative values. Right now, this very moment, Conservatives have the government they deserve. We put them there. They are not our mommies and daddies sent out to bring home our Conservative bread. That responsibility lies with all of us. These Republicans represent us, they don’t serve us. Our job is to pick the best individual and send him/her to Washington in the hope that their CHARACTER will see them through.

This is why it is such a nutty thing to consider punishing the Republican party, when we should be letting them know that we’ve got their back, but if they cant do the job, we will replace them with ANOTHER Republican, instead of handing the reigns of government to the party of anger, hopelessness and despair. We sometimes like to think that those people we send to Washington are different from us, that they are capable of meeting our every need and desire.

I want every one of you to think about what you would consider to be your perfect mate. Maybe some of you think you have found that person. If you are married and totally in love with another person, that is great. Now I want to ask you to think about the last time that person you love, who is PERFECT for you, completely pissed you off. Remember, this is your perfect mate, your one true love. Do they do everything you want them to do? Obey your every desire? If you answer yes, I am going to put you on my troll list.

Those people in Washington do not even cut your lawn, yet you expect perfection. Get over it.

I am issuing a challenge to every person who considers him or her to be a Conservative; why don’t we all commit to a return to HONOR? Do we honor our Conservative agenda when we comport ourselves in disgraceful ways? Is it an honorable thing to suggest that our President is a moron, as I read here a few days ago? Is it honorable to attack Laura Bush or any other person representing true Conservative values?

Some of you might argue that George Bush is not representing Conservative values to your liking. I would remind you that the first thing Bush said upon taking office, is that he was going to be President of ALL the people, not just some. You know that if you followed Bush from the beginning that he campaigned of the very immigration platform he is defending right now. Did you vote for him? Yeah?

If you have ever had a steak at a Ruth’s Chris restaurant, you know that sometimes they bring that wonderful steak to your table with a sprig of parsley on it. I hate parsley. Hate it. If I were to treat my steak the way some of us want to treat our President, I would have to throw out the steak, due to that nasty parsley that comes with it. I can deal with the parsley to get the steak, and that is what I am asking FReepers to do.

Expecting perfection from any person, group or team is a recipe for disaster. George W. Bush is my president. You can disagree with him, you can blame him for your problems if that is your desire. If you disrespect his office, his service, his risking his life to be with our troops in Iraq, his steadfast desire to bring a new tone to Washington, or if you just like the way he keeps Democrats so pissed off they lose their minds on a regular basis, I ask you to treat him and his wife with respect and cut the personal attacks. If you call him ‘Shrub’ or ‘Jorge’ consider yourself my enemy.

Right now, our real enemy are the Main Stream Media, the Democrat Party, and all who follow and support them. If you want to jump-ugly on someone, why not start with those leaky bastards and give our side a break?

Only trouble, not all of us have that ability - we are the learners.
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Thanks for your kind words.

I understand your valid point.

However, Virtually all of us have the capacity to do some of the following:

1. When standing in a WalMart line . . . if someone ahead or behind us makes a stupid liberal remark, we can graciously state a list of facts to refute it because we've been read up on FR.

2. If we see a headline on a Supermarket tabloid while waiting in line, we might comment to our partner in an informative way, loud enough for bystanders to overhear us. Often people will eavesdrop and accept things as true eavesdropping that they'd reject if said to them directly.

3. We can find a host of ways to be overheard in public in gracious, wise, thought provoking ways which will eat way at the liberal insanity some people walk around in a fog in.

4. We can write letters to the editor.

5. We can give handouts from FR to the liberals and moderates and conservatives in our personal work, social, shopping, church, club, sports networks--especially TODAY'S TOONS. Those toons are more persuasive than you think. The truth in them is hard to argue against--even for a lot of liberals.

6. We can call-in to talk radio and TV shows and insure that the conservative viewpoint is put graciously, wisely with great punch and potency.

7. Better, we can team up with a handful of other FREEPERS or other conservatives and relentlessly dial into talk radio to insure that the main points needed to be made on a topic get finished regardless of how quickly any one is cut off.

8. Those who are good speakers and well known in their communities can volunteer to speak to garden clubs etc. about the implications of liberal idiocy laws on their club's priorities, values and goals. For example, most garden clubs would be incensed about the imminent domain treason the Supreme Court has turned loose on the land.

9. We can spend at least a little time on other forums related to our hobbies and other interests. For me, that's UFO etc. sorts of forums. Many of them are flaming liberal forums. No need to worry about influencing the brain dead. However, many on such forums are unthinking liberals but are fairminded enough to think if given food for thought--especially THOUGHT BOMBS which niggle away at them and eventually explode with clarity and truth that jangles and jars them loose from their blind mindless liberalism.

More importantly, many such forums have maybe 200-1,000 lurkers. At least maybe 20-75% of those lurkers are likely to be liberals--many of them with some fairmindedness that makes them vulnerable to the truth well presented.

10. If some folks are timid about presenting verbal or written stuff of their own creation--there's plenty of material on FR that folks would be happy for you to use. And, folks, imagine, if you saw your freedoms taken away because you were too timid to speak up within your social network--and you realized only too late that your timidity, shyness, cowardice was a key cause--how would you feel then.

WE MUST STAND UP AND BE COUNTED WHILE WE CAN STILL STAND at all.

Worth reposting: The new 'Republicans vote on Wednesday' game (FR mentioned)

The new 'Republicans vote on Wednesday' game
By Dustin Hawkins

Apr 12, 2006

We’ve all seen the e-mail sent out days before an election: “Democrats vote on Tuesday, Republicans vote on Wednesday. Don’t forget to vote! Wink, wink.” Or vice versa. Republicans can be just as juvenile. Generally speaking, such “friendly reminders” are sent as a joke, which then may or may not actually trick a few people. Probably those who are tricked are better off not voting anyway, but that is another point altogether. (In case you haven’t voted recently, everyone votes on Tuesday.)

But there seems to be a new “Republicans vote on Wednesday” taking form in time for the 2006 election. This effort targets grassroots conservatives known for their passionate views about issues who may be open to a grassroots voting rebellion. But the effort is being led, or at the very least aided, by liberals pretending to be grassroots conservatives, as opposed to actual grassroots conservatives themselves.

The premise follows a scheme previously found most often on talk radio programs: a liberal activist calls a conservative radio host, such as Rush Limbaugh or Laura Ingraham, and delivers the line: “I’ve been voting Republican for 30 years, but I’ve finally had it and I’m not voting this year.” Or my favorite: “I’m a Reagan Republican, but I’m fed up and voting for John Kerry.” (Because that is what Reagan Republicans would do, vote for John Kerry.) At this point, the host usually asks a couple of questions and it becomes painfully obvious that the supposed Reagan Republican has probably never voted for anyone left of Michael Dukakis.

The intentions are clear: the caller hopes to make it appear as though there is already a large uprising of conservatives who are rebelling against GOP candidates, and thus, wishes to incite other Republicans to pick up the same attitude and pass it along, leading to the Democrat becoming more competitive. The successes of such a strategy on voting habits are unclear, especially given that the conservative radio host often refutes the caller’s talking points.

But the pretend-conservative act is being carried onto a whole new playing field, one that has become wildly influential over the past few years and one that does not stand to be instantly recognized as a fake. That playing field is the blogosphere, which is then used in conjunction with massive e-mailings to “spread the word” (as one e-mailer insisted I do to my readers/e-mail list) to other conservatives.

The concept is the same: the blog or e-mail claims, first, that the said writer has been a conservative for years and that they have “had it with Republicans.” They then point to an issue that conservatives would likely be upset about such as excessive spending, immigration, or the expansion of government. Their supposed rage over the issue has convinced them to either not show up to vote in 2006, or, in order to really show Republicans, vote for the Democrat instead.

The blogs and e-mails are convincing in their wording and could incite the sort of reaction that occurred following the Harriet Miers nomination to the Supreme Court. Of course, any liberal could read Free Republic and find out what’s irritating conservatives this week, grab a handful of phrases, and toss it on their “I’m a conservative but voting for a Democratic because of (insert issue here)” blog. After tossing in a few posts about the evils of Hillary Clinton and abortion, the blog is now being run by a bona-fide “conservative.” A few e-mails and link connections later, the message of conservatives voting against Republicans is spread.

Now, I won’t dispute that there are probably some conservatives that might actually sit out the election or vote for a third party candidate, but probably not enough to actually swing an election. (Unless of course a “conservative” grassroots effort gets well-underway to change that.) What I do dispute is the idea that such an idea is already widespread. Last week alone I received more than ten e-mails or links to recently created blogs that pretty much say the same thing, and it is only April.

One “conservative” e-mailer and blogger, later found to be a fraud, started by saying that over a dozen of his conservative friends were going to campaign against their Republican candidate (one in a tight race) because of his stance on immigration, and another dozen of his friends had already stated they would vote against him. The blog had been up less than a month, adding to my suspicions.

I have more than a handful of conservative friends and surprisingly – or not so surprisingly – not one has taken such a position, despite our shared frustrations over many Republicans in the House and Senate. In general, my acquaintances take the position that it is better to vote for someone who is good on 8 out of 10 issues than bad on 9 out of ten.

Curious about the e-mail, I began a back-and-forth emailing with the “grassroots conservative,” pretended to agree with him, and two days later it became painfully obvious that he was far from a grassroots conservative. When I called the blogger out on his bogus scheme, he responded only with: “Win some, lose some.” The election games have begun.

Dustin Hawkins is a Townhall.com political reporter

-PJ

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