Hey, we nominated the wrong guy!

[Gustaf]

The only clear trend is what you mgiht call social progressivism, or perhaps simply increased tolerance. Tolerance for different life-styles, minorities and individuals has been increasing. This seems like a clear trend to me. Look at how people viewed/view homosexuals, Jews, Irish, blacks, etc.

Abortion is different, as are many other social issues.

HockeyDude, the 20s was pretty liberal actually...more so than several later decades, I'd say more liberal than all, except the 60s and 70s. And the 70s was probably more liberal than our current decade.

[NHPolitico]

Two things.  First, I thought Obama hit the tones that the house wanted to hear, and it exploded.  However, his rhetoric and policy are both dovish and protectionist.  I have seen many good speakers who did not translate that into votes (Jesse Jackson).  Illinois will give us left wing Senators for a long time, and so Obama will be a Senator for a long time.  However, I don't think he appealed to centrists or independents.  He's an extremist with a lot of dirt.

He hit Bush on supporting reservists who are injured and a bit of protectionism does sell (no to tax cuts for sending jobs overseas).

[Akno21]

He along with Harold Ford, John Edwards, Bill Richardson, and maybe Hillary Clinton will hopefully be on Democratic tickets for years to come.

[Gustaf]

He along with Harold Ford, John Edwards, Bill Richardson, and maybe Hillary Clinton will hopefully be on Democratic tickets for years to come.

Hillary Clinton is hopeful only for Republicans...

[Storebought]

Barack (ie, "Barry") Obama = yesterday's Harold Ford.

[JNB]

    The direction of society does not go on one direction with either economics or social values/morals. The 1920s was a time of economic conservatism and social liberalism(at least how it was defined then), the 30s, was a time of economic liberalism, but at the same time, morally it went in quite a conservative direction.

   As for the Kemp wing of the party being dead, I see GW Bush as having adopted most of Kemps ideas in terms of being for tax cuts before fiscal responsibility and trying to use the language if opportunity that Kemp used, albiet he has far less than the oratory skills than Kemp has on a bad day. I do think if Bush loses this election, that the Kemp wing of the party will be indeed quite dead.

[muon2]

I would have agreed with you on Harold Ford until about 10 days ago, but I heard him on the Bill O'Reilly show, and he has turned WAYYYYYYYYYY to the left of where he was just two years ago. If Obama is well to the left in practice, then he's not the threat I perceive him to be. BUT....the rhetoric he used tonight was not left or right....it was AMERICAN, and that's something I have not heard from the Democratic Party in a LONG, LONG time.

He had some speech on C-SPAN a few days ago, I don't detect a leftward swing.  His voting record, however, is what counts, and he is VERY moderate.  He only got a 'C' from the NAACP.

Also, I thought Obama's rhetoric was left-wing tonight.

Tweed,

If VOTING RECORD is what really counts (and I'm not sure it does in the modern era of politics) then you better get ready for the second term of G.W. Bush!!! If people voted according to Kerry's voting record, you guys would have ZERO chance, but voting record is apparently just one relatively minor factor in today's media driven world.

As for Obama's rhetoric, it was NOT left wing, it was NOT right wing, it was moderate and it spoke of the United States in POSITIVE language that I have not heard your party use in a long, long time.

In simple terms, Obama sounded like a guy who feels the cup is "half full" and not "half empty", and that's in stark contrast to John Kerry, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, Howard Dean or any of your other recent party heavyweights.

I've had the opportunity to meet Obama briefly and listen to him in the legislature. He is extremely bright and well-spoken. The fact that he does not sound like a south-side Chicago pol helps him immensely. His record is substantially to the left of even the center of IL politics. He has defended that record as a product of the district he represented - a very smart statement, since it can hide whether or not a US Senate record will match that.

One reason I would have liked to see Rauschenberger take Ryan's place on the ballot this summer is that he is a fellow State Senator with intelligence. He would have really highlighted the voting record and made Obama clarify each of those votes. As an Illinoisan I would like to know if the positions Obama has held on past issues were merely a reflection of his district, or represented his personal beliefs.

[Mort from NewYawk]

Uh, this guy is no moderate.  He's a far left socialist who could win the White House the only way a socialist could win it - by disquising himself and he can do it

The reason so many Republicans are gushing over Barack is that he incorporates into his rhetoric the founding ideal of liberalism, embodied in the opening of the Declaration of Independence that Barack cited – that there is a self-evident, universal set of human rights endowed by the Creator.

The urban Democratic party of the twentieth century traditionally celebrated America as the hope of immigrants, a land that combined unity, or equality with regard to individual rights, with diversity of race and national origin. All of this was replete in Barack’s presentation.

Through the twentieth century, socialism was seen by many immigrants and their advocates as an extension of the liberal ideal to class, as a progressive idea in a country in which there were now millions of Eastern European immigrants flooding the cities of the Northeast and Midwest. With regard to America’s foreign policy, the liberal ideal from Wilson through Kennedy was that America is made more secure by creating and supporting democratic states abroad, that indeed the ideals of the Declaration impel us to advocate for freedom abroad as well as at home.

After the Soviet Union and China became our adversaries, the socialist ingredient in the liberal ideal became a conundrum for the Democratic party. Lingering infatuation with socialism by the Democrats made the Republicans seem more patriotic in their conduct of the Cold War. The welfare state came to be seen as the misapplied socialist ideal gumming up the works of the free market, a valid part of historic liberalism.

The civil rights movement has been the only landmark display in the last 50 years of the Democrats successfully advocating for the historic liberal ideal. After that, the ideal has in large part been eviscerated from the party, and transplanted into the Republican party, beginning with Ronald Reagan. A former Democrat in the mold of Harry Truman, he embraced the historic liberal ideal as it pertains to race and national origin, but rejected the socialist idea completely. He was the ultimate Cold Warrior, using the liberal ideal of promoting freedom abroad as a rhetorical battle cry against Communism.

True liberalism still lives in the speeches of idealistic Democrats like Barack Obama, but those speeches will be seen as all sizzle and no steak until he supports policies that advocate individual and collective responsibility without regulated distributionism, and support for the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for the citizens of Arab nations, who have been morally, politically, and physically beaten into a pulp by the depravity of their so-called leaders.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Obama for President!

[WalterMitty]

markdel:  if im not mistaken, jack kemp *did* run for president in 88.

[JohnFKennedy]

Mort, I have been wondering for a while now, who do you plan to vote for in November, I cannot read it from your posts, they are always intelligent and always towards the centre like a true politician should be! So, who will you be voting for?

[© tweed]

Mort, I have been wondering for a while now, who do you plan to vote for in November, I cannot read it from your posts, they are always intelligent and always towards the centre like a true politician should be! So, who will you be voting for?

Look at his signature.

Plus he says he doesn't trust Kerry because he "based his career on an anti-war movement."

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Kerry's a hero for his opposition to that war. Anything against Vietnam = good.

[MarkDel]

markdel:  if im not mistaken, jack kemp *did* run for president in 88.

Walter,

Technically speaking, yes, he was involved in some of the primaries. But in order to get nominated, you have to actually make an effort in terms of fundraising, working the media, lobbying other big-name members of your party to your cause, etc....and Kemp simply refused to do ANY of these things in 1987 and the early stages of 1988 when he had a realistic chance to be the nominee.

For example, he refused to attend the Iowa caucus and spent virtually all of his time in New Hampshire. And when he did not do as well in New Hampshire as he expected, he officially ended his candidacy even though his name stayed on the ballot in most states. He had NO organization in any state....he basically tried to use the media as his main weapon to get out his message, and in 1988, before the advent of the internet and the true 24-hour news cycle, this was a hideous strategy.

So the joke in Republican circles was that Kemp put his name on the ballot, but never actually RAN for President...

[WalterMitty]

did you support pete dupont in 88?  he was/is much like kemp minus the annoying football analogies.

[Mort from NewYawk]

Mort, I have been wondering for a while now, who do you plan to vote for in November, I cannot read it from your posts, they are always intelligent and always towards the centre like a true politician should be! So, who will you be voting for?

Look at his signature.

Plus he says he doesn't trust Kerry because he "based his career on an anti-war movement."

I don't trust a man who built his career on an anti-war movement to be the Commander in Chief.

yes, unless someone supports every single military action the US gets into they should never be President :eyesroll:

I vote Kerry.

You miss the point. Plenty of people did not support the war in Vietnam, but John Kerry had the motivation to found an anti-war organization. As an organizer of protest actions, he collaborated with similar leaders on the left who were reflexively, ideologically, opposed to American military and political leadership, many of whom were pacifists and socialists (like yourself!). Isn't it reasonable to assume that those ideals, those collaborations and friendships, are at the core of his political beliefs?

That's fine for a Senator, but not for a President at this time, when unpopular decisions about military intervention may need to be made in order to win this war that we're in. There is a time for war, and a time for peace. I don't trust John Kerry's judgement in discerning between the two.

I've been a lifelong Democrat who voted for Lieberman in the New York primaries. I knew a year ago, however, that there was no other Democrat running that I could vote for, so I'll vote for Bush this year.

I’m a Harry Truman and JFK Democrat, a social progressive who feels that the greatest Democratic twentieth century domestic achievement was the codifying of racial civil rights. I also believe in the  Wilsonian idea that America has an obligation, a responsibility in the world, given to us by our history as a nation of immigrants seeking refuge and opportunity. That obligation is to stand for individual rights and representative government everywhere, and in doing that we ensure the continuation of democracy. Since 9/11, I support the doctrine of pre-emptive war, when it is consistent with this larger American obligation. I believe that the Iraq war will prove to be a successful war that was primarily waged for democracy and human rights.

As I said earlier, the impact of socialism and the Vietnam War on the Democratic party has been crippling. The best Democratic presidential contenders since the 1960’s, in my opinion, were Henry Jackson and Joe Lieberman. Jimmy Carter, Gary Hart, Bill Clinton, and Al Gore all had promise at one time, but after 9/11 they have lost their perspective on this American obligation. To me, Kerry is a Democrat who shares the McGovern, Mondale, and Dukakis perspective on foreign policy. He is a smart guy, with integrity, courage and a powerful ambition for the Presidency. But I believe we could get ourselves and the world into a lot deeper trouble with him and the foreign policy advisors he chooses running our military and foreign policy.

[JohnFKennedy]

I've been a lifelong Democrat who voted for Lieberman in the New York primaries. I knew a year ago, however, that there was no other Democrat running that I could vote for, so I'll vote for Bush this year.

I’m a Harry Truman and JFK Democrat, a social progressive who feels that the greatest Democratic twentieth century domestic achievement was the codifying of racial civil rights. I also believe in the  Wilsonian idea that America has an obligation, a responsibility in the world, given to us by our history as a nation of immigrants seeking refuge and opportunity. That obligation is to stand for individual rights and representative government everywhere, and in doing that we ensure the continuation of democracy. Since 9/11, I support the doctrine of pre-emptive war, when it is consistent with this larger American obligation. I believe that the Iraq war will prove to be a successful war that was primarily waged for democracy and human rights.

As I said earlier, the impact of socialism and the Vietnam War on the Democratic party has been crippling. The best Democratic presidential contenders since the 1960’s, in my opinion, were Henry Jackson and Joe Lieberman. Jimmy Carter, Gary Hart, Bill Clinton, and Al Gore all had promise at one time, but after 9/11 they have lost their perspective on this American obligation. To me, Kerry is a Democrat who shares the McGovern, Mondale, and Dukakis perspective on foreign policy. He is a smart guy, with integrity, courage and a powerful ambition for the Presidency. But I believe we could get ourselves and the world into a lot deeper trouble with him and the foreign policy advisors he chooses running our military and foreign policy.

You just leaped a huge amount in my opinion of you (which was already high). I feel the same way, that I am a Democrat more like Truman and Kennedy than many modern Democrats.

[NHPolitico]

I've been a lifelong Democrat who voted for Lieberman in the New York primaries. I knew a year ago, however, that there was no other Democrat running that I could vote for, so I'll vote for Bush this year.

Since 9/11, I support the doctrine of pre-emptive war, when it is consistent with this larger American obligation. I believe that the Iraq war will prove to be a successful war that was primarily waged for democracy and human rights.

Thought you might like this (excerpted):

http://www.keepmedia.com/ShowItemDetails.do?refID=19&item_id=505604

The Case for George W. Bush
Esquire
8/1/04
Tom Junod

.... About President George W. Bush, though, I felt the satisfaction of absolute certainty, and so uttered the words as essential to my morning as my cup of Kenyan and my dose of high-minded outrage on the editorial page of the Times : "What an asshole."

....

Then I read the text of the speech he gave and was thrown from one kind of certainty—the comfortable kind—into another. He was speaking, as he always does, of the moral underpinnings of our mission in Iraq. He was comparing, as he always does, the challenge that we face, in the evil of global terrorism, to the challenge our fathers and grandfathers faced, in the evil of fascism. He was insisting, as he always does, that the evil of global terrorism is exactly that, an evil—one of almost transcendent dimension that quite simply must be met, lest we be remembered for not meeting it [I think that's a great line, and I'll bold others] . . . lest we allow it to be our judge. I agreed with most of what he said, as I often do when he's defining matters of principle. No, more than that, I thought that he was defining principles that desperately needed defining, with a clarity that those of my own political stripe demonstrate only when they're decrying either his policies or his character. He was making a moral proposition upon which he was basing his entire presidency—or said he was basing his entire presidency—and I found myself in the strange position of buying into the proposition without buying into the presidency, of buying into the words while rejecting, utterly, the man who spoke them. ... I have to admit that when I listen to him speak, with his unbending certainty, I sometimes hear an echo of the same nagging question I ask myself after I hear a preacher declaim the agonies of hellfire or an insurance agent enumerate the cold odds of the actuarial tables. Namely: What if he's right?

.... What haunts me is the possibility that we have become so accustomed to ambiguity and inaction in the face of evil that we find his call for decisive action an insult to our sense of nuance and proportion.

.... The reason he will be difficult to unseat in November—no matter what his approval ratings are in the summer—is that his opponents operate out of the moral certainty that he is the bad guy and needs to be replaced, while he operates out of the moral certainty that terrorists are the bad guys and need to be defeated. The first will always sound merely convenient when compared with the second. ....

IN 1861, AFTER CONFEDERATE FORCES shelled Fort Sumter, President Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus from Philadelphia to Washington and thereby made the arrest of American citizens a matter of military or executive say-so. .... During the four-year course of the Civil War, he also selectively abridged the rights of free speech, jury trial, and private property.


Not that the war went well: His army was in the habit of losing long before it learned to win, and Lincoln did not find a general to his liking until he found Ulysses S. Grant, whose idea of war was total. He financed the bloodbath by exposing the nation to ruinous debt and taxation, and by 1864 he had to contend with an antiwar challenge from Democrats and a political challenge from a member of his own Cabinet. On August 23, 1864, he was motivated to write in a memorandum that "it seems exceedingly probable that this administration will not be reelected," and yet his position on peace never wavered: He rejected any terms but the restoration of the union and the abolition of slavery. The war was, from first to last, portrayed as his war, and after he won landslide reelection, he made a vow not only to stay the course but to prosecute it to the brink of catastrophe and beyond: "Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.' "

Today, of course, those words, along with Lincoln's appeal to the better angels of our nature, are chiseled into the wall of his memorial, on the Mall in Washington. And yet if George Bush were to speak anything like them today, we would accuse him of pandering to his evangelical base. We would accuse him of invoking divine authority for a war of his choosing, and Maureen Dowd would find a way to read his text in light of the cancellation of some Buffy spin-off. .... I am, however, asking if the crisis currently facing the country—the crisis, that is, that announced itself on the morning of September 11, 2001, in New York and Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia—is as compelling a justification for the havoc and sacrifice of war as the crisis that became irrevocable on April 12, 1861, in South Carolina, or, for that matter, the crisis that emerged from the blue Hawaiian sky on December 7, 1941. I, for one, believe it is and feel somewhat ashamed having to say so: having to aver that 9/11/01 was a horror sufficient to supply Bush with a genuine moral cause rather than, as some would have it, a mere excuse for his adventurism.

.... It is a movement that is about death—that honors death, that loves death, that fetishizes death, that worships death, that seeks to accomplish death wherever it can, on a scale both intimate and global—and if it does not warrant the expenditure of what the self-important have taken to calling "blood and treasure," then what does? Slavery? Fascism? Genocide? Let's not flatter ourselves: If we do not find it within ourselves to identify the terrorism inspired by radical Islam as an unequivocal evil—and to pronounce ourselves morally superior to it—then we have lost the ability to identify any evil at all, and our democracy is not only diminished, it dissolves into the meaninglessness of privilege.

YEAH, YEAH, I KNOW: Nobody who opposes Bush thinks that terrorism is a good thing. The issue is not whether the United States should be involved in a war on terrorism but rather whether the war on terrorism is best served by war in Iraq. .... His obsession with Saddam Hussein led him to rush into a war that was unnecessary. Sure, Saddam was a bad guy. Sure, the world is a better place without him. But . . .

And there it is: the inevitable but . Trailed by its uncomfortable ellipsis, it sits squirming at the end of the argument against George Bush for very good reason: It can't possibly sit at the beginning. Bush haters have to back into it because there's nothing beyond it. The world is a better place without Saddam Hussein, but . . . but what ? But he wasn't so bad that we had to do anything about him? But he wasn't so bad that he was worth the shedding of American blood? But there are other dictators just as bad whom we leave in place? But he provided Bush the opportunity to establish the doctrine of preemptive war, in which case the cure is worse than the disease? But we should have secured Afghanistan before invading Iraq? But we should have secured the cooperation of allies who were no more inclined to depose Saddam than they—or we, as head of an international coalition of the unwilling—were to stop the genocide in Rwanda ten years before? Sure, genocide is bad, but . . .

[NHPolitico]

We might as well credit the president for his one great accomplishment: replacing "but" with "and" as a basis for foreign policy. The world is a better place without Saddam Hussein, and we got rid of him. And unless we have become so wedded to the politics of regret that we are obligated to indulge in a perverse kind of nostalgia for the days of Uday and Qusay, we have to admit that it's hard to imagine a world with Saddam still in it. And even before the first stem-winder of the Democratic convention, the possibility of even limited success in Iraq has reduced the loyal opposition to two strategies: either signing up for the oversight role they had envisioned for the UN, or else declaring the whole thing a lost cause, in their own war of preemption.

Of course, Iraq might be a lost cause. It might be a disaster unmitigated and unprecedented. But if we permit ourselves to look at it the way the Republicans look at it—as a historical cause rather than just a cause assumed to be lost—we might be persuaded to see that it's history's judgment that matters, not ours. The United States, at this writing, has been in Iraq fifteen months. At the same point in the Civil War, Lincoln faced, well, a disaster unmitigated and unprecedented. He was losing . He didn't lose, at least in part because he was able to both inspire and draw on the kind of moral absolutism necessary to win wars. Bush has been unable to do the same, at least in part because he is undercut by evidence of his own dishonesty, but also because moral absolutism is nearly impossible to sustain in the glare of a twenty-four-hour news cycle. ....

THERE IS SUPPOSED TO BE a straight line between Bush's moral absolutism—between his penchant for calling our enemies "evildoers" or even, well, "enemies"—and Guantánamo, and then between Guantánamo and the case of Jose Padilla, and then between Padilla and the depravities of Abu Ghraib. More than a mere demonstration of cause and effect, the line is supposed by those opposed to a second Bush presidency to function as a geometric proof of the proposition that the American position in Iraq is not only untenable but ignoble. It's supposed to prove that victory in any such enterprise is not worth the taint and that withdrawal is tantamount to victory, because it will save the national soul. In fact, it proves something quite different: It proves that just as the existence of the animal-rights movement is said to depend on the increasing American distance from the realities of the farm, the liberal consensus on the war in Iraq depends on the increasing American distance from the realities of soldiering. All Abu Ghraib proves is what Lincoln made clear in his writings, and what any soldier has to know from the moment he sizes up another soldier in the sight of his rifle: that war is undertaken at the risk of the national soul. The moral certainty that makes war possible is certain only to unleash moral havoc, and moral havoc becomes something the nation has to rise above. We can neither win a war nor save the national soul if all we seek is to remain unsullied—pristine. ....

.... Lincoln was fighting for the very soul of this country; he was fighting to preserve this country, as a country, and so he had to challenge the Constitution in order to save it. Bush seems to think that he's fighting for the very soul of this country, but that's exactly what many people regard as a dangerous presumption. He seems to think that he is fighting for our very survival, when all we're asking him to fight for is our security, which is a very different thing. A fight for our security? We can handle that; it means we have to get to the airport early. A fight for our survival? That means we have to live in a different country altogether. That means the United States is changing and will continue to change, the way it did during and after the Civil War, with a fundamental redefinition of executive authority. ....

Losing the war on terror? The terrible truth is that we haven't begun to find out what that really means.

.... A universal war—the war on terror—was succeeded by a narrow one, an elective one, a personal one, in Iraq. .... In a nation that loves fairy tales, the president seemed so damned eager to cry wolf that we decided he was just trying to keep us scared and that maybe he was just as big a villain as the wolf he insisted on telling us about. ...

I know how this story ends, because I've told it many times myself. I've told it so many times, in fact, that I'm always surprised when the wolf turns out to be real, and shows up hungry at the door, long after the boy is gone.

[NHPolitico]

And from http://freedomstruth.blogspot.com/

Lesson: Don't underestimate the lethality of the enemy. And understand that if terrorism didnt work at some level, it would have been defeated already. Despite the losses, which are heart-breaking, the real war of attrition here is the attrition of the spirit. That is what the terrorists want to do - wear US and the Iraqis down to giving up on making the new Iraq a better place. The terrorists' goal is to make us give up, like this man wants to, on liberating Iraq. Wrong answer!

We must remember Churchill's words - in 1942 - when tens of thousands of British civilians and soldiers had been killed already, with Britain defeated at Dunkirk, Norway, Singapore, Burma, North Africa, and advancing nowhere, with the British Isles ringed by German U-Boats sinking Britain's lifelines of sea cargo. To some it seemed hopeless, yet Churchill said this:

" Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never--in nothing, great or small, large or petty--never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy ... Do not let us speak of darker days: let us speak rather of sterner days. These are not dark days; these are great days--the greatest days our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race."

Let us honor the fallen, Iraqis and coalition, by finishing and winning the fight. It is ours to win if we persevere with the honor and skill that we possess. The only thing that can defeat us is defeatism itself.

[MarkDel]

I've been a lifelong Democrat who voted for Lieberman in the New York primaries. I knew a year ago, however, that there was no other Democrat running that I could vote for, so I'll vote for Bush this year.

I’m a Harry Truman and JFK Democrat, a social progressive who feels that the greatest Democratic twentieth century domestic achievement was the codifying of racial civil rights. I also believe in the  Wilsonian idea that America has an obligation, a responsibility in the world, given to us by our history as a nation of immigrants seeking refuge and opportunity. That obligation is to stand for individual rights and representative government everywhere, and in doing that we ensure the continuation of democracy. Since 9/11, I support the doctrine of pre-emptive war, when it is consistent with this larger American obligation. I believe that the Iraq war will prove to be a successful war that was primarily waged for democracy and human rights.

As I said earlier, the impact of socialism and the Vietnam War on the Democratic party has been crippling. The best Democratic presidential contenders since the 1960’s, in my opinion, were Henry Jackson and Joe Lieberman. Jimmy Carter, Gary Hart, Bill Clinton, and Al Gore all had promise at one time, but after 9/11 they have lost their perspective on this American obligation. To me, Kerry is a Democrat who shares the McGovern, Mondale, and Dukakis perspective on foreign policy. He is a smart guy, with integrity, courage and a powerful ambition for the Presidency. But I believe we could get ourselves and the world into a lot deeper trouble with him and the foreign policy advisors he chooses running our military and foreign policy.

You just leaped a huge amount in my opinion of you (which was already high). I feel the same way, that I am a Democrat more like Truman and Kennedy than many modern Democrats.

JFK and Mort,

Yes, there are MANY people who would be proud to call themselves Democrats in the tradition of people like Harry Truman and John Kennedy. They have a name for them now....what is it again....oh yeah....

NEO-CONSERVATIVES

And it's about time both of you guys, as people whom I respect, came to grips with the FACT that the Democratic Party you admire NO LONGER EXISTS.

[Mort from NewYawk]

MarkDel:

Yeah, I'm a neoconservative. I accept the label, if it's applied to my foreign policy position, which is on the order of Wolfowitz or Rice. As far as I'm concerned, in foreign policy, neoconservatism was Democratic liberalism (as in "liberating", upholding freedom and individual rights) before Vietnam. Conservatism in foreign policy was what the Republicans used to be - isolationists unless war was necessary for American business, nativists who rejected battling foreign tyrants if it was primarily for the sake of the beneficial effects of liberty in the world.

So I still have a green icon (if I wanted to irritate the Kerry supporters in the forum, I'd make it red). The war against terror is the overriding issue, so I'll probably be voting for the most hawkish candidate for awhile. Will that always be a Republican? How many times does the Democratic party need to get knocked on it's keester before it recognizes that it must appeal to the common sense of the American people?

I think that if Bush scores a decisive victory and the Democrats don't adopt a more muscular foreign policy, the party risks seeing a sizable defection of it's constituents, both to the Republicans, and maybe a new party.

By the way, thank you for the compliment you paid to me some time ago - I believe it was on the thread named "Terrorism".

NHPolitico:

Thanks for the articles. I'll read them this weekend. What I've seen looks good.