On Saturday, February 4, 2023 at 3:01:00 AM UTC+8, ltlee1 wrote:
The following from a WSJ article written by a long time Beltway insider.
"The Democrats need normality; the Republicans need coherence. They both need to pull themselves out of the 20th century.
A look, from 30,000 feet, at both parties:
The Democrats are making a historic mistake. With the fraught issue of abortion devolving to the states and moving, in the next few years, toward local settlement, the national party is free to understand itself, and present itself to the public, in a
different way. For half a century Democrats enjoyed the electoral and political benefits of their pro-choice stand—they were for women’s rights, reproductive freedom. But that stand also came with a stigma—it was the party of heartless absolutism,
of slippery-slope support for late-term abortion. There could be no gradations, every demand was maximalist. This stopped a lot of people from feeling they could join the party or support it, because support felt like complicity.
Now, in a national sense, the great agitating question is being taken off the board. The Democrats are free to be a normal party again, standing for things that are the normal concerns of parties (economics, war and peace). More voters would feel free
to join.
Instead of seeing this they’ve replaced one stigma with another. Since at least 2020 they have aligned with or allowed themselves to be associated with another deeply agitating cultural question, the identity politics-wokeness regime. (It’s amazing
we still don’t have an agreed upon word or phrase that fully captures this program.) Michael Lind, in a piece in the Tablet, sees it as composed of three parts, all falsely presented. The “Quota Project” uses anti-racism to pursue “social
reconstruction.” The “Androgyny Project” goes beyond civil rights and ignores gay rights to “redefine all male and female human beings as generic, androgynous humanoids whose sex is a matter of subjective self-definition.” The “Green Project
uses climate change as an excuse to “radically restructure the society of the U.S. and other advanced industrial democracies.”
These movements are of, from and driven by the left. The Democrats are the party of the left. Progressive pathologies morph into Democratic ideologies, tagging the party as radical. Why do the Democrats allow this to continue? Why don’t they push
back, hard—as a party? Most of their elected officials aren’t really on board with this stuff; many hate it. They know it limits their political prospects. America as it is currently constituted will never accept the regime, never be at peace with it,
because Americans see it as a threat to their children and an insult to their sense of reality and fairness.
Arguments over wokeness—in the schools, in legislation, in our public life as a nation—will continue a long time. Democrats are on the wrong side, and making a historic mistake in not publicly and regularly beating back their fringe.
The Republicans—where to start? They’re riven by policy disagreements, some of which stem from philosophical disagreements regarding what conservatism is and must be in the 21st century. Weirdly, since politics is a word business, their Washington
leadership can’t find the words to talk about this. They don’t know how to talk about public policy. In the debt-ceiling debate, if that’s the right word, they’re allowing themselves to be tagged as the Axe the Entitlements party, or at least as
people who’d secretly like to do it but can’t admit it, but when they’re in power they’ll try.
If they do that they will never win national power, or at least presidential power, again. Which they kind of know. But they do it anyway. Because they haven’t decided if they’re a “limited government” party or a party that accepts, as it
should, that the federal government will never be small in our lifetimes, and being mature means seeing that and turning the party’s focus toward the pursuit of more conservative ends, such as . . . helping families? Police the government, don’t
spend like nuts, aim for growth, encourage dynamism, think long term.
In any case they should stop saying “limited” government. People think the federal government is already limited, as in slow and stupid. They’d like it to be able and efficient. Maybe lean into a government that doesn’t push us around,
demanding more than it’s due. Everybody wants that.
From 30,000 feet it’s obvious that an attendant problem is that the GOP hasn’t been able, on the national level, to present itself as a governing party—a serious political entity into whose steady hands the American people can entrust their
government. We saw this on the floor of the House during the vote for Speaker.
Both parties are missing something big. For the Democrats it’s an inability to accept a gift from history and become a normal party again. For the Republicans, it’s an inability to agree on what they stand for in this century, and an inability to
talk about the meaning of things.
I want to finish with George Santos. Really, in every way I want us to finish with him. History will notice his little story.
Again: It is a mistake to let him be a member of Congress. Speaker Kevin McCarthy says the people have spoken. He repeated it Tuesday: “The voters have elected him. He’ll have a voice here in Congress,” while investigations play out.
This is deeply stupid.
George Santos was never elected to Congress. No one in New York’s Third Congressional District voted for him.
This is who they voted for: A nice young man, 34-years old, a conservative who’d struggled against the odds—the son of immigrants, born in some want, an ethnic minority whose grandparents fled the Holocaust. He rose to be educated at one of New
York’s greatest private schools, to be a star athlete at a great college, earned a masters in business administration, forged on to become an impressive figure in finance, with positions at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. He came to own mansions on Long
Island. Only in America. But it wasn’t all material success, the guy had a heart: He devoted his private time to animal rescue. And he’d suffered: His mother died on 9/11.
That’s who was elected. That’s who won by 8 points.
But that man didn’t exist.
This is who existed: A guy lately going by George Santos who previously went by aliases, who once worked for what the SEC says became a ponzi scheme, never went to the schools, never worked at the banks, and no one fled the holocaust or died in the
Twin Towers. He allegedly shook down smalltime investors in what one target told the Washington Post was like a scene in “Goodfellas.” He was wanted in Brazil for fraud. The animal rescue? An impoverished veteran says Mr. Santos ran off with money he
claimed to be raising for the man’s sick dog, who later died. (Mr. Santos denies this.)
He’s not some pathetic, fabulist mook. Did you see the interview this week on One America News Network? Interviewer Caitlin Sinclair noted he seemed angry, not remorseful. “I’ve said I was sorry many times. I’ve behaved as if I’m sorry,” he
said. “If you want to compare emotions, people show emotions differently.” He painted himself as an object of sympathy. Of the “abject poverty” he faced as a child in Queens, “People like me aren’t supposed to do big things in life and when
we do it disrupts the system.” He’s Meghan Markle now.
He’s a street-wise conman whose latest mark was NY-3. Where, a Newsday/Siena College poll out this week tells us, almost 80% of the voters want him thrown out of Congress.
Congress, show a little respect for his victims. And for yourselves."
No reform needed between them if they confine to nuking themselves available to them. They should not to externalize them to other countries. They should abstain from interfering other countries in whatever they are doing. they should mind their own
business and to address their own problems, instead.
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