Rincewind

From The American Conservative:

A call for conservatives to think about the consequences of Barak Obama in the Oval Office.

__________________
~~ Veritas simplex oratio est ~~
No matter how far a wizard goes, he will always come back for his hat. --T. Pratchett

<---- You know you're getting old when you rely on your forum meta-data to remind you how old you are.

Required Reading for all TG sandboxers

AMosely

This doesn't really add up. Bush's brand of conservatism has sold voters on "staying the course" in Iraq. I agree that there is fracturing going on among conservatives, and for various reasons they do not support McCain, but I would venture a guess that very few would be willing to go so far as to support an anti-war policy. That simply isn't going to change overnight.

Sure, except no self-respecting conservative, especially a neocon, would ever, ever accept what they consider defeat. As McCain is so unfairly quoted as saying, they will "win this war" if it requires keeping troops in Iraq for 100 years. Stubborn tenacity does not even begin to describe their collective mentality.

I'm hoping that they are forced, by the hands of voters in November, to accept defeat. Not defeat in Iraq or even in the 'GWOT', but the defeat of post-Reaganite neoconservatism running through the veins of any man, woman or child in the US government.

__________________

TheSkudDestroyer

Interesting, but like Mosely said: McCain will gladly keep us in Iraq until "The job is done"

A war can last 7 days. An occupation a life time

__________________

Elwenil

I dismiss anyone who says something as foolish as "when I take office, the first thing I will do is pull our troops out of Iraq". Anyone who knows anything about war and politics knows that this is impossible and gives ignorant the impression that this individual will end the war immediately and everything will be peachy again. If we were to pull out of Iraq immediately, the country would collapse and it would become a war zone for all the various factions fighting for control of the people, oil and the money that comes from it. Regardless of what you think of the war, or our reasons for being in it, you have to understand that abandoning them to their own devices would be a greater tragedy at this point.

I will vote for McCain because he is the only one who seems to understand the realities of the situation and is not making false promises about the impossible.

__________________
|TG|Elwenil

Steeler

Conservativism can never fail, it can only be failed by insufficiently conservative leaders.

The article is a nice try, but I don't buy the self-serving narrative that somehow self-described conservatives were against the war in Iraq the whole time and can conveniently wash their hands of it now that things have gone sour. Conservatives signed on to the war in droves. They voted for the war, they voted for the tax cuts that fail to pay for it. They voted for increased executive power, or allowed it to grow unchecked when it was unilaterally taken. They voted for breaks for Big Business and endorsed the concept of Big Empire, willing to give away the author's supposed conservative principles while their political party happened to be on top. The war was conducted according to utopian "market-based" principles, allowing all sorts of corruption and incompetance to creep in starting on day one.

And now, NOW the "true" conservatives step out of the woodwork to shake their heads and wag their fingers at the people they themselves helped put into office? Mendacious.

The author is right about one thing. McCain does seem hell bent on basically doing exactly the same things as Bush: Pandering to the reactionary right, staying in Iraq, expanding the war where possible, and acquiring more power for the executive.

It's also interesting to see the author endorse Obama over Clinton, given their near-identical foreign policy platforms. Perhaps Clinton's organizational pedigree of having defeated powerful Republicans in the electoral arena makes her a less viable alternative.

__________________

Steeler

Who has said that?

__________________

TheSkudDestroyer

Democratic candidates only say it because it's what the people want to hear.

But we all know that we're not going to be leaving very soon..

__________________

TurkishDelight

This guy disgusts me. He wants personal freedom and liberty, but votes for obama?

Idiot....

__________________
|TG-Irr|Turkish

TheSkudDestroyer

So do you and all your klan mates hate Obama or what?

__________________

Hambergler

No self respecting conservative would agree with that article.

__________________

TurkishDelight

Don't even go there Skud, I don't find that funny at all. I have just about every type of person in my family, and I take great offense to that.

I dislike Obama for many reasons, none of which have anything to do with "Klans" or any other bull****...

__________________
|TG-Irr|Turkish

Lusitano Louco

NewsFlash: it is a war zone now.

ScratchMonkey

On a related note, had I been old enough, I would have voted for the first woman to get an electoral college vote. No, it wasn't Ferraro.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodora_Nathan

__________________
Sig

Elwenil

Newsflash, you didn't read the whole sentence. Stop trying to look for things to say something smart about and try to read enough to understand.

__________________
|TG|Elwenil

ScratchMonkey

But it is a warzone, and an expensive one. $100 billion a year, conservatively speaking? That should probably be taxed on all exports out of Iraq, so that any oil produced there compensates for the war subsidy.

__________________
Sig