The Conservative Soldier

It is therapeutic, indeed, amid the countdown to Obamanation to know there are credible voices beyond the predictable dinosaur media. Because I care about the future, and about all of you, I dig deep into print and electronic media to shed light on these authoritative voices, even while striving to join their ranks.

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Dick Morris, 11/14/08: “Is Barack Obama seriously considering appointing Hillary Clinton as his Secretary of State?

Obama would do well to remember the history of Harry Truman and Jimmy Byrnes in 1944.  Byrnes, known as the “assistant president” in FDR’s third term, was widely thought to be Roosevelt’s choice to replace Henry Wallace as his running mate on the 1944 ticket.  At the last minute, FDR re-considered and decided Byrnes, a South Carolinian, was too conservative and went with Truman instead.  But the Democratic Party establishment clearly was disappointed.  While they wanted to get rid of the almost-Communist Wallace, they wanted Byrnes not Truman.  (Just like the party establishment really wanted Hillary, not Obama, to be the presidential nominee).

So Truman named Byrnes to be his Secretary of State after he took office on Roosevelt’s death in 1945.  Byrnes, who thought he should have been president, proceeded to make his own foreign policy.  He flew to a meeting in Europe with the allied foreign ministers and barely kept President Truman posted on the deliberations.  He became a loose cannon who thought he was the president.  After a year of this nonsense, Truman fired him and brought in George Marshall to take the job.”

Christopher Hitchens, 11/15/08: “I might possibly have voted for (McCain-Palin) all the same, clothes pin clamped over my nose in the voting booth, if only because of the crucial struggle for a free Iraq and an autonomous Kurdistan. And, in such a case, I would have been very annoyed at the suggestion that my vote was a racist one. ‘Historic,’ yelled the very headline across the top of my morning newspaper. (Just the news, please, if you would be so kind.) Would the letters have been so big for the first female vice president? And isn’t it already historic that millions of white Christians voted, win or lose, for a man with one Kenyan parent, that parent having been raised as a Muslim?”

More Hitchens, from the same 11/15/08 rendering: “More worrying still, there are vicious enemies and rogue states in increasing positions of influence throughout the world, yet many Obama voters appear to believe that the mere charm and aspect of their new president will act as an emollient influence on these unwelcome facts and these hostile forces. I can’t make myself perform this act of faith, and I won’t put up with any innuendo about my inability to do so.”

Rush Limbaugh, writing in the subscribers-only Limbaugh Letter, Nov. 2008: “Using government power to allocate ‘wealth’ — by first confiscating it from the producers — has failed every time it’s been tried. The socialist doctrine has an unalloyed record of catastrophe : impoverishing every society it has shackled, spreading nothing around but misery, scarcity and want.”

And, finally, I direct you to the latest assault on our intelligence by a Beltway pundit, the finger wagging Clarence Page of the formerly great Chicago Tribune. Click here to read his Sunday column. The Kool-Aid is really talking in this one. Below, my retort:

There is a reason why talk radio, cable television and the blogosphere thrive today. These are sources of intelligent insight and commentary. We no longer find these in dying newspapers like the Tribune. Clarence still believes that an old Beltway pundit can get away with publishing complete misstatements of fact, if not blatantly erroneous arguments. His dramatic crescendo in today’s column references the Iraq war going “sour”; Afghanistan re-erupting; Hurricane Katrina (yes, that’s still Bush’s fault); and, my favorite, Congressional Republicans “plagued with individual scandals.”

Let us examine these in the context of reality, not Beltway soapboxing.

The United States has WON the war in Iraq. We are no longer winning. We have won. That’s a “W” for “W”.

The war on terror is ongoing. Yes, it will re-erupt in a lot of places, including Afghanistan. We must fight terrorist groups wherever they emerge. (How we will do this when Obama slashes military spending is a question for another day).

Katrina? That unpreventable natural disaster is blamed on the Bush Administration when, in fact, the state and local governments responsible for a swift first response completely and tragically failed thousands of people. These victims had bought into the “change” that a Mayor such as Ray Nagin pledged to bring the downtrodden of New Orleans. He did not care about them, as it turned out. New Orleans’ decades old denial that it would ever be hit by a massive hurricane did not change until it was too late.

If you want to shed light on Congressional scandal, look not to individuals’ human frailties, look to the the biggest scandal in recent American history — the blind eye turned by mainly Democrat lawmakers to uncontrolled lending fueled by the bloated Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. These Democrat Congressmen (Barney Frank, et al) cheered from the sidelines as millions of Americans took on huge debt (easy home loans) they would never be able to repay, or even pay incrementally.

When I decide not to renew my subscription to the “re-designed” (unreadable) Tribune, it will not be because I detest the silly new multi-font tabloid look, it will be because Clarence Page and other fellow dinosaurs have lost touch with American core values in their lust to discredit President Bush and elevate a pretender named Obama, their hometown hero.

If elected President of the United States, Sen. Barack Obama will, in reality, become a Chief Executive Officer with one all-encompassing mandate.

He will not have time to consider the will of the American people or the security of the homeland. Obama will be serving the whims of a wealthy, powerful and often corrupt Board of Directors. In these seats of ultimate but invisible power will be mentors William Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Rashid Khalidi, Father Michael Pfleger, Antoin Rezko, George Soros, Oprah Winfrey and Rev. Jeremiah Wright, among others.

This might prove to be less an election than a bloodless coup. By rejecting federal campaign funds that he’d pledged to accept before his advisers got involved, Sen. Obama will outspend Sen. John McCain by at least $250 million. The origin of millions of these dollars are undocumented.

This is less about democracy than subversion. Obama has not provided something as basic as proof of citizenship — his. And the citizenship status of countless, mystery internet donors also remains unknown and uninvestigated.

Our smitten media stands by, watching, as the United States and its Constitution takes on the ultimate supreme council of Obama fund raisers, operatives, religious zealots and community organizers. The community, in this case, has a population of about 305 million.

The author David Freddoso in his landmark book, The Case Against Barack Obama, gives Obama far greater benefit of the doubt than some will about the Senator’s radical ties, but raises the central, numbing question that must be asked.

“Barack Obama has many ties to radicals — some violent, some intriguing, and some just odd,” he writes in the 2008 book. “… Obama is not a Marxist or a radical. He is certainly not a terrorist-sympathizer. Yet it is clear that radicals have influenced his judgement. … Should he become president, will he entrust such men and women with executive power?”

When Sen. McCain says he is an American and, as such, chooses to stand up and fight, he is not spewing campaign slogans to inspire crowds.

He is enunciating what the stakes are and what patriotic Americans must do.

When our country is threatened, we fight. I stand with Sen. McCain.

The current political season has intensified my love for a country that is revered by some and reviled by others. I can not be convinced, even amid the drumbeat of “change”, that America no longer is a shining city on a hill.

Our nation certainly is not invulnerable to internal conflict, as we learned so painfully in the mid-19th century. It is not immune to catastrophic economic downturns (1930s), or to severe economic bubbles (1907, 2008). It is not always on guard when enemies visit (1941, 2001).

The strength of this union will be tested again on Tuesday on an election day that is historic by any measure.

Sen. Barack Obama’s candidacy for President represents a serious crossroads for the United States. If he is elected, the power Obama will inherit and how he wields it poses a serious, long term threat to the economic and physical security of our nation.

Opposition to Obama has drawn sharp criticism, evidenced by the vitriolic posts to this site. Predictably, many left wings citizens, and neighbors, assume that concern voiced openly about Obama’s candidacy equates to racism. This illogical leap was, sadly, inevitable.

I am not, to quote comedian Dennis Miller, worried about the color of Obama’s skin. I am worried about the thinness of it. I am not concerned by his blood lines. But I am gravely concerned about Obama’s blood oaths (Ayers, Khalidi, Rezko, Wright, et al).

Some say Obama has turned the race for the White House into American Idol. I fear more his idle, empty social welfare rhetoric, and ideologically cluttered foreign policy vision.

Sen. John McCain prepared to become President of the United States by living, serving and persevering. Sen. Obama prepared by endearing himself to powerful and wealthy mentors, memorizing every page of the Democrat playbook and reciting it to the adoring masses with undeniable eloquence.

Before you vote on Tuesday, and if you are at all undecided, consider the eloquence of commentator Charles Krauthammer, who offers the most concise description of the Obama phenomenon I have read (below). Most of all remember that, while we are strong and resilient as a nation, we are not invulnerable, even to trifling, ambitious, unqualified political candidates.

Krauthammer, August 2008:
“Barack Obama is an immensely talented man whose talents have been largely devoted to crafting, and chronicling, his own life. Not things. Not ideas. Not institutions. But himself.

“Nothing wrong or even terribly odd about that, except that he is laying claim to the job of crafting the coming history of the United States. A leap of such audacity is odd. The air of unease at the Democratic convention … was not just a result of the Clinton psychodrama. The deeper anxiety was that the party was nominating a man of many gifts but precious few accomplishments – bearing even fewer witnesses.”