Posted on 10/17/2004 4:08:40 AM PDT by huac
"If Drudge has it right, then the Kerry-Edwards campaign is going to do its damnedest to turn our fine nation into a banana republic.
To these guys, winning office is more important than the sanctity of elections. Holding power is more important than the Constitution. Much as I despise at least half of what most Republicans stand for, they don't seem nearly as willing to trash the system they're trying to run. Too many Democrats, especially at the national level, just don't care that our system, our nation is far more important than any single election...
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To these guys, winning office is more important than the sanctity of elections. Holding power is more important than the Constitution. Much as I despise at least half of what most Republicans stand for, they don't seem nearly as willing to trash the system they're trying to run. Too many Democrats, especially at the national level, just don't care that our system, our nation is far more important than any single election.
I could mention the Lautenberg Trick in New Jersey. Or Gore's ballot shenanigans in Florida. Or the voter-registration fraud currently going on in Colorado, Nevada, and elsewhere. Or the Democrats' successful call to bring election observers into this country. Bring them in from where, Venezuela? Hey, no big deal sullying the reputation of the world's oldest continuously-functioning democracy, just so long as we can make the Republicans look bad, right?
The rules don't matter. The reputation of the country doesn't matter. The political health of the nation doesn't matter. Power matters.
I don't mean to say that Republicans haven't used dirty tricks, or won't in the future. But I have yet to see them pull anything as crass as replacing a losing candidate with a more-popular one just weeks before election day, and in violation of state law. I have yet to see Republicans calling on the world's most corrupt international organization, run largely by apparatchiks from the world's most brutal dictatorships, to pass judgment on how we run our elections. I have yet to see the Republicans encouraging their own to commit fraud by shouting "Fraud!" where none yet exists, putting at risk everything we've built here in the last 228 years.
Because, in the end, that's what the national Democrats are doing: They're trying, however inadvertently, to destroy the Republic in order to rule it.
Democracy is the free market of political systems. And like any free market, it can't function without some basic level of trust. That trust comes, slowly, from hammering out rules even competitors can live with. That trust comes, with difficulty, by honoring those rules, even when your candidate doesn't win. That trust exists in relatively few places around the world.
That trust is hard to come by – and it's easy to lose. Ask the German voters of 1933. Or the people who voted in Afghanistan's first-ever presidential election last week. Or the people of Iraq, whose lives are, quite literally, on the line as they try to make something decent of their nation.
The system, the trust, is far more important than anything else. It's more important than the White House, or Congress, or Social Security, or jobs, or even the Terror War. Our Constitution is rigged to make it hard for any party to screw things up in the short time of four years. There's always another election around the corner, if you think the current crop of office-holders is screwing things up – that's the beauty of our system.
But maybe there won't be another election, if you cause the people to lose faith that elections work.
I was raised in a very Republican family. The first election I could vote in was 1988, and I voted straight-ticket Republican. But only the one time. I grew up – I learned that my own convictions were more important than party affiliation. I learned that my own estimation of individual candidates was more important than whether they had a D or an R next to their names. Since then, I've voted for a lot of Democrats, including for President.
Now, I know this is an angry essay. However, I don't mean to imply that all Democrats are evil and all Republicans are sweetness and light. Far from it. But for the first time in 16 years, I'm going to vote Republican straight down the line. If I have to punish a couple of local Democrats I'm fond of, then so be it, but I have to try to get a point across: The national Democratic Party is bad for this country.
I don't say that because of their policies, which I probably agree with more than I do the Republicans. But because their tactics would cause more harm to this country than the Federal Marriage Amendment, the Republican budget deficit, and Congress's corporate tax giveaways, combined.
I'm just one guy; I don't expect my vote to mean much. But the Democrats are willing to treat – in advance - my vote, and all it represents, with feigned contempt. So I can't, in return, treat the Democrats with anything less than genuine contempt.
Excellent rant. And he hits the point that disturbs me most about what's going on: I seriously think that the Dems are interested in destroying the system.
I'm not sure what they want to replace it with - and possibly they haven't even considered that themselves - but they are doing everything possible to make it grind to a halt, ensure that people lose confidence in it, and make it impossible to ever start it up again.
I don't especially fear John Kerry, but I fear a John Kerry victory...especially since any scenario in which he wins will be a very close and contested election. A John Kerry victory validates everything that the Democrats have done since Election Day 2000.
It validates a media completely in the bag for the Democratic Party and means objective journalism is dead and buried.
It means that Hollywood will become a liberal propaganda machine, giving us Farenheit 9/11-like movies before every election and a travelling troupe of celebrities to brainwash teenagers into thinking and voting liberal.
It will mean tampering with elections and election law is fair game. Break ins, intimidation, vote fraud, and demagoguery will become the norm. The courts will become an active part of the election process with judges arbitrating and deciding elections, in some cases removing the voter from the process entirely.
The truth will become just another campaign tool, as the media and Democrats just see it as a means to be manipulated and ignored as needed in order to achieve their desired outcome.
That's the world we're going to live in if John Kerry wins. That's why Bush *has* to win, and why the Democrats and the liberal media have to be convinced that such tactics won't get them back in power. Add that to the stark ideological differences between Bush and Kerry, and this is hands down the most important election we've had since 1980, if not since the end of WWII.
Posted by: Mike M at October 14, 2004 11:23 AM
Amen.
Ping
Nailed it, a perfect 10. I am glad that I am not the only one that has a genuine fear that the demoncrats will destroy the election process with their "rules, we don't need no stinking rules" approach. I often wondered how the Germans were so stupid as to enable Adolf Hitler to come to power. I use to feel that there was no way it could happen here. I don't feel that way any longer. Once the media has sold out to a particular party and no longer fullfills it responsibility as a watch dog of democracy, it is now possible for the unthinkable to happen in this country. Damn shame considering all the blood that has been spent to preserve this noble experiment in self government.
That's the world we live in, no matter which party wins. Liberals won't become less active when they lose, they'll become more active, more brash.
bump for later
Truly, first and foremost we believe that we are defending America by attacking the enemy on his turf. For God’s sake what do people think the likes of Zarqawi/OBL would be doing if they were not on the run trying to prevent us from establishing modern states in the Islamist world? There is no safe haven! This is only true because the US Army and Marine Corps is in his back yard. Also, we are providing hope for people who have been brutally oppressed for a generation. What an insult to tell those of us who know, and are doing the fighting and dying, that this is the “wrong war, wrong time, wrong place”. Imagine the effect on our military if we have a commander in chief that believes our brothers and sisters have died in vain.
Like you I am more liberal than the President on most social issues, but these issues can wait, and probably will seem irrelevant if a nuclear devise is exploded in NYC, or we experience a couple of Breslan’s in the United States. I beg, plead that my friend’s on the left or undecided, cast there ballot for the President this election, on only one issue, the war on terrorism. Ask yourself what does Ed Koch, an east coast liberal Jew, know that I don’t know. Sorry for the length, be proud of your military. LTC Bob Hope
Posted by: Bill at October 14, 2004 11:16 AM
.....The rules don't matter.....
This statement needs to be sharpened considerably.
The Rats are Rabble controlled by Lawyers. The function of the undereducated Rabble is to vote. The lawyers provide a carefully controlled portion of the revenue stream to the Rabble in exchange for the vote.
The Lawyers believe "THE LAW DOESN"T MATTER" The law is malleable and can be forged into any thing that will allow a judge to issue a ruling favorable to the issue at hand.
The great truth and legacy of the Clinton Administration is there is no law, there are no rules. Rats control, live with it.
At some point, hopefully soon, being a Dem will tilt to where it equates with being a loser. Team America is a good start.
God Bless 'em!
Amen!
They're trying, however inadvertently, to destroy the Republic in order to rule it.
Exactly... This should be the greatest fear of all Americans. It took over 200 years to get it close to right and for the sake of power it can potentially be ruined in a single day...
It took over 200 years to get it close to right and for the sake of power it can potentially be ruined in a single day... - tomnbeverly
I think we're all feeling the same thing. I suspect that many Americans are; many people I've spoken to who are not generally doomsayers or alarmists are very concerned about the future of the Republic, which the left seems determined to take over at any cost (including that of destroying it). Even a few years ago, I myself would have thought of such a scenario as "tinfoil hat" stuff, but not any more.
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