Jack Kelly on the Dhimmocrats

There is a semi-interesting piece by Jack Kelly up at Jewish World Review on the recent ejection of the GOP from control of the legislative branch. Kelly gets the best part over with early.

In a post-election poll taken for Newsweek magazine, 51 percent of respondents described the Democratic victory as "a good thing." But 69 percent said they were concerned the Democrats would keep the president "from doing what is necessary to combat terrorism," and 78 percent said they feared Democrats would seek too hasty a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. [bold added]

This would confirm to me that the GOP did indeed get itself into trouble by abandoning the cause of small government in favor of simply taking over the drivers' seat of welfare bus and (coupled with other data) driving it straight to church.

Distressingly, it is not at all clear to me, at least from this account, that the public necessarily regards what Bush did with the war as insufficient. Insofar as this war could have been more vigorously prosecuted, Bush himself has, after all, been keeping the President "from doing what is necessary to combat terrorism". I do take some comfort that the public remains concerned with terrorism and at least seems to disagree with the Dhimmocrats that we needn't confront the threat at all.

I was hoping that the outcome of this election would have spoken to that issue. Perhaps it does, and this poll simply did not ask the right questions. Time will tell.

Unfortunately, Kelly does not discuss this issue further because he, like many Republicans it seems so far, seems intent on taking nothing from this defeat. His whole message is that the Democrats are so bad that a couple of years in office should do them in. Fortunately or not, he may be right.

Much of the rest of the column focuses on the ethical shortcomings of Jack Murtha and how foolish Nancy Pelosi is to back him as Majority Leader. And on how foolish the Democrats would be to attempt to impeach Bush. The Democrats, after all, picked up seats after the Republicans impeached Bill Clinton! It reads like so much wishful thinking on the various pitfalls the Democrats could avoid, but probably will not.

In other words, Kelly reads like more like a partisan than a patriot. Even when he criticized his party in another column recently, he left it to Bill Clinton to state the real problem while he dwelt on ... pork-barrel spending and corruption.

Mr. Clinton says many things which are not true, but this was right on. The last three Republican-controlled congresses have been the biggest spenders in history. Fiscal conservatives are dismayed not just by the amounts Republicans have been spending, but by the manner in which it is being spent. Earmarks -- a soft form of corruption -- have exploded under the GOP.

And where soft corruption is not enough, GOP lawmakers like Randy Cunningham of California and Bob Ney of Ohio showed there is plenty of the traditional kind of corruption, too.

While I certainly do not condone pork-barrel spending or corruption, these issues are small potatoes compared to, say, the Bush Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit or the inability of the GOP majority to enact social security reform, let alone even discuss privatization of retirement plans altogether. Earmarks are mere fleas on the bloated rats of the welfare state. Kill the rats by disentangling the government from the economy, and the fleas will vanish as a result.

But such is the state of the right today that we're quibbling about little matters while ignoring the -- ahem -- elephant in the room.

The difference between a mere partisan and a patriot is that the partisan's primary concern after a defeat is to regain power at the next available opportunity. A patriot takes stock in the new situation and focuses on protecting his country from the threat posed by the other party first, and then on seeing how he can help his party become better able to govern his country in the way that will best protect individual rights. Seen in this light, the power of a political party is subordinate to the more important goal -- the only legitimate goal -- of protecting freedom.

One could argue that I am being too hard on Kelly here. After all, he is simply making a point about the new majority party. Perhaps, but given the fact that the Dhimmocrats are, for starters, already discussing how to make our nation less able to combat Islamofascism, planning to socialize medicine, and listening to George McGovern on the subject of what to do about Iraq, it seems strange at the very least that he finds these threats to his country less compelling to his attention than the self-destructive tendencies of that party.

These kooks can do serious damage before they self-destruct. Let their flame-out take care of itself. We have freedom -- our own hides, if you prefer -- to watch out for in the meantime.

-- CAV