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by Lisa Fabrizio |
February 15th, 2008
In the spirit of compassionate conservative counseling, I write this letter to hold your feet to the fire on what you called “positions that have not met with widespread agreement from conservatives.”
How we got here we’re not really sure, but the reality seems to be, august Senator, you will be our nominee in the 2008 presidential election. Yes, I was at CPAC and heard your well-reasoned and fairly well-received speech and yes, you did press some of the right buttons. You spoke of your lifelong commitment to pro-life issues and your intention to reduce the size of the federal government; of your opposition to nationalized healthcare and your admiration for Justices Roberts and Alito and your pledge to win the war in Iraq.
But Senator, I also listened to the rest of the voices at the conference, some of which, shall we say, damned you with faint praise, and at this point, that is all that I can muster myself. Some of those voices suggested that, should we all coalesce under Ronald Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment and support your candidacy, we can only do so in good conscience by holding your feet to the fire on what you called “positions that have not met with widespread agreement from conservatives.” You vowed to “seek the counsel of my fellow conservatives,” and so I write in the spirit of compassionate conservative counseling.
Senator McCain, you said in your CPAC speech that, “the proper object of justice and the rule of law in our country is not to aggregate power to the state but to protect the liberty and property of its citizens.” Yet you are on record as supporting, and even sponsoring, legislation that would cripple the liberty and property of our citizens through excessive and needless carbon cap-and-trade policies, oppressive gasoline taxes and exorbitantly increased energy bills; all to serve an agenda that is based, at best, on questionable scientific evidence.
So Senator, as most conservatives feel that the whole man-made global warming canard, or as it is now more conveniently called, climate change, is nothing but the Left’s latest attempt to hamstring and thereby socialize our economy, I ask you to repudiate your support for the McCain-Lieberman Act and to distance yourself from your Democratic opponents — both of whom hold nearly identical views as yours — on this issue. And while you’re at it, can you please clarify your position that drilling for oil in ANWR would be equivalent to drilling in the Grand Canyon?
You also told the folks at CPAC that, “we share a conception of liberty that is the bedrock of our beliefs as conservatives,” and that that liberty, “as Burke warned, it can be ‘nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.’” Well Senator, I wonder if you realize that most conservatives hold you personally responsible not for nibbling, but for chomping off a great deal of our Constitutional rights with your McCain-Feingold bill. Will you own up to the fact that protecting political free speech is at the core of the First Amendment?
Senator McCain, these are but two of the all too many disagreements you spoke about at CPAC that might separate your conservative brethren from you on Election Day. I hope you don’t mind that I’ll be writing you from time to time to remind you of the others. As you probably know, you came in second to Mitt Romney in the CPAC straw poll, even after the former Massachusetts governor announced he was dropping out, with 29% of poll respondents claiming they would not vote for you.
The great majority of the folks at CPAC, although crushed by the fact that they no longer seem to have a dog in this fight, treated you for the most part with civility and an openness to be convinced that you truly seek to court them and address their concerns. The ball is now in your court. I urge you to pick up that ball with the graciousness of a winner and treat us with the respect and lack of contempt you have often not shown us. Remember, the Eleventh Commandment goes both ways.
Thanks for your attention. You’ll be hearing from me again, real soon.
mailbox@lisafab.com
Visit their website at: http://www.lisafab.com
Responses to "Dear John: Part I"
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Lisa, I usually disagree almost violently with your submissions, however I am in agreement with your points in this one.
Having said that you left out the most important areas where McCain makes himself an unattractive if not dangerous candidate so let's go further:
Senator McCain you profess support for the "war against terrorism" and support our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan why do you turn a blind eye to protection of our homeland? In the McCain Kennedy amnesty act you seek to keep our borders open and to legalize 12-20 million people without any regard to existing law or the the potential domestic terrorism effect of said legalization rather than deportation. Will every single person be vetted personally and reviewed for criminal and terrorist connection? Of course not therefore you fail the first commandment and constitutional requirement of our president…protect the homeland. Receiving our support requires more than just a wall, bring our troops home and let them garrison our borders, remove the illegals through self deportation by making it impossible for them to survive in our country, and then develop an immigration program driven by our country's needs not by idiotic chain migration or feel sorry parameters.
Adventuresome wars are another item you have promised us. Instead create fortress America, bring the troops home from Bosnia, Korea, Japan, Germany, England and all those other far flung places. We no longer need troops on the ground in those locations with today's rapid deployment capability and weapons systems. Become a peace keeper and protect our interests and by the way reduce our deficit by reeling in these expenditures funding other countries.
Comment by Mickey G | February 15, 2008
Lisa,
Good start. Based upon McCain's apostasy, you plan to write — what? — 13 more articles as substantive as this one?
Just not kidding.
The day after Florida, we anti-McCainiacs erupted. We were heard, and big time. Now, the Republican Party and even ‘true’ conservatives are rallying around McCain. The pendulum is swinging in their favor, but only after bloodying our head on its last apogee.
I erupted after Florida. My McCain disdain is long and deep. I can’t countenance him as President. In fact, I vowed to myself to vote for Hillary about 4 hours before reading that Coulter so vowed, too.
Ann’s been pilloried for that comment and others she’s made since then. Liberals are happy. Conservatives are doing their politics of personal destruction for them.
Here’s my point: Despite Ann’s negative Q ratings, she’s articulating the best anti-McCain case around. We need to adopt her case as our own but, even more, we need to start thinking like her.
Your anti-McCain case is very meritorious, Lisa, as will be your case in your other 13 articles. However, the purview of your case is limited: A single issue at a time, and how McCain has deviated from mainstream conservative orthodoxy. All well and good. Our anti-McCain case is very strong. However, it isn’t convincing our brethren conservatives and Republicans. Their (to them) killer counter-argument is: “Yea, but both Obama and Hillary would be worse.” They essentially view anyone trying to make a case against McCain as an Ann Coulter clone. And, literally everybody knows that Ann is unhinged.
We must recognize that our case as we’ve been presenting it is ineffectual. I urge that our case be a sanitized version of Coulter’s.
Beyond the remarkable fact that I vowed to vote for Hillary before Coulter said it, I find I’m thinking along the same lines as Coulter is.
To begin, note what Ann said on Cavuto (h/t Hot Air):
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/02/13/quote-of-the-day-205/
I’ve been thinking the same way; specifically, projecting what a McCain Presidency would be like. My musings caused a 6.2 skin earthquake.
Roughly, here are the general outlines of our possible case.
The next President will fail. The fundamentals of our economy are as weak as they’ve been since Stagflation I, implying that we may already be mired in Stagflation II. There are more economic projections we can do. We can also declare our war against Iran to be a loss. For proof, read McCarthy’s outstanding and insightful article on McCain’s Kerry-type mushy multilateralism in NRO:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YjE5MDE4ZDA2OTIyYzA2NzJiNDkyNGQxNjA2YzNhYWI= McCain is a hawk on a balanced budget; hence, a President McCain would raise taxes. Certainly, the Democratic Congress won’t practice spending restraint. To balance the budget, a President McCain would grudgingly agree to raise taxes. We anti-McCainiacs know that, since 2000, McCain has allied himself closely with liberals and moderates, and given the finger to conservatives. If he continues this alliance, conservatism will lose every battle under a President McCain.
As Ann says, there’s no way that a President McCain can succeed. Republicans will lose Congressional seats in 2010, paving the way for a President Obama in 2012. He will reign with an overwhelming mandate. The electorate will say to themselves after voting for McCain after Bush: “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” The result? The Republican Party will be discredited for a long time. Progressivism will reign. When the electorate finally throws the Democrats out, the damage will be permanent. The de facto socialism that Obama and his successors implement will be impossible to expunge from the body politic.
There’s another major tack we can take. The last n years of the Bush administration have been a failure. It appears Bush was a closet Keynesian all the time. The deficit and debt have skyrocketed. Bush is not defending the dollar. Look what Condi did. Our foreign policy vis-à-vis the ME is warmed-over Oslo. Iran has won. The compromise FISA bill permanently institutionalizes a major loss of Constitutional Presidential power. Etc.
If you think about it, there are striking parallels between Bush and both Nixon and Carter. We can articulate those parallels. We can then compare Bush to McCain. imo, McCain is slightly to the left of Bush on social policy, to the left of Bush on economic policy (think CAFÉ, global warming, ‘greedy’ Wall Streeters), and about the same as Bush on national defense. This assessment is debatable. However, the differences between Bush and McCain are not major, and probably negligible. Thus, McCain would also be another Nixon or Carter.
When President McCain fails (a foregone conclusion), conservatism would be repudiated for a long time. Bottom line is this: We must trade a short-term loss (an Obama win) for a long-term win. Let Obama be the President who fails.
Naturally, this case will be rejected, too. It’s speculative, not a magic bullet, and requires a depth of knowledge and understanding that the average conservative Republican doesn’t have. Still, it might serve as a rallying cry for conservatives to keep the faith. More importantly, it might convince a good number of conservative Republicans that a vote for McCain is like treading water 2 miles off the Oregon coast when the Cascadia fault ruptures.
A President McCain will be a bigger loss to conservatives and the country than a President Obama. That’s our case.
Comment by LiveFreeDieFree | February 15, 2008
Lisa writes: "How we got here we’re not really sure"
Well, I am! Conservatives have nothing to complain about as it was completely within their capacity to shoot down the Nam POW early and they did not. Duncan Hunter got little support, and then there was Rudy and Mitt. The two candidates from liberal states were criticized for being too liberal. How the hell does anyone think they got elected in NY and Mass? Every so-called conservative out there aside from Rush and me is to blame for this mess of three Democrats running.
Comment by Ivan Ivanovich | February 17, 2008