ST. PAUL, Minn. — The American Right has just died and gone to heaven.
Last night's convention address by Sarah Palin here in St. Paul has confirmed the bold decision of John McCain to choose the Alaska governor as his co-pilot and united the Republican Party as it has not been since the second term of Ronald Reagan.
A wild enthusiasm for Sarah Palin has brought conservatives home to John McCain, and GOP leaders of all hues — from Fred Thompson to Mitt Romney to Mike Huckabee to Rudy Giuliani — to the rostrum to lacerate the liberal media for their five days of feral assaults on Sister Sarah.
The war the right lives for, against the people the right truly loathes — the liberal media elite who savagely "Bork" every true conservative who gets on the path to national power — has been reignited.
Positive polarization has been achieved. The Republican Party has been united and invigorated. The enthusiasm gap with the Democratic ticket has been closed. And the issues upon which the base loves to fight — the Culture War and Right to Life — are back on the table.
Palin's beautifully crafted and delivered acceptance speech, after Rudy's gleeful excoriations of the pretensions of Obama, will rank as a night to remember in convention history.
Yet, as the familiar battle lines form up for the delicious eight-week war that lies ahead, one hears a distant thunder. And the seriousness of the hour we are in comes home.
U.S. troops have crossed into Pakistan to attack Taliban and al-Qaida units in the privileged sanctuary of the tribal areas just across the border from Afghanistan. Have we just thrown a rock into the biggest hornet's nest on earth?
How will the Pakistani government and people react to this U.S. incursion into their country to fight a war their own army has been reluctant to wage? How will the tribal peoples react? Will the weak new democratic regime, united only in its hatred of deposed President Musharraf, fall?
What is the future of this Islamic nation of 170 million, with its five-dozen nuclear weapons, that was once America's great ally in South Asia, but is now seething with anti-Americanism?
In Afghanistan, the Taliban move closer to the capital Kabul as hardly a day goes by without U.S. armed forces being charged with the accidental killing of Afghan women and children. Is this even a winnable war, after seven years of fighting? And, if so, at what cost?
While the convention hears claims of victory in Iraq and an early return of U.S.
troops, there are reports the Nouri al-Maliki regime, in collusion with Iran, wants the Americans out to settle accounts with the U.S.-sponsored Sunni militias and the Kurds over who rules in Baghdad and Kirkut.
Is the end of America's long and costly war in Mesopotamia to be an Iraq incorporated into a Shia crescent led by Tehran?
Arnaud de Borchgrave reports that Israel, having supplied Mikheil Saakashvili's army with weapons and training prior to his invasion of South Ossetia, had hoped to use Georgian airfields to fly strikes against Iran. The Russians are said to be furious and considering new military aid to Syria.
Now one reads of Dutch intelligence agents, who had infiltrated Iran's nuclear program to sabotage it, being withdrawn, as the Dutch believe a U.S. strike on Iran may be imminent.
Vice President Cheney is in Tbilisi promising $1 billion in new aid, as Prime Minister Putin of Russia is asking why, if this aid is humanitarian, it is being brought into the Black Sea in U.S. warships.
In Moscow, President Medvedev and his foreign minister are talking of a Russian sphere of influence like the one the United States has demanded for two centuries with its Monroe Doctrine — a sphere from which all foreign military blocs and foreign troops are to be excluded.
This is a direct challenge to administration and neocon plans to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO. John McCain may declare, "We are all Georgians now!" — but, are Americans, or Europeans, truly willing to go to war with a nuclear-armed Russia to keep Joseph Stalin's birthplace under a regime led by an erratic hothead who launched what may be the dumbest war in history, which he lost within 24 hours?
In June of 1914, a powerful flotilla of the Royal Navy was anchored in the German port of Kiel on a friendly visit where British naval officers visited German warships on the invitation of Adm. Von Tirpitz, and the Kaiser himself inspected the great new British battleship George V, in the uniform of a British admiral.
The festive occasion was interrupted and ended by news of the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo in the Balkans, where neither British nor Germans had vital interests.
Six weeks later, the two nations had plunged into the bloodiest war in history. Today, as Republicans celebrate the last hours of a hugely successful convention, and Democrats seethe at the hiding they took, are we as a nation drifting inexorably for new confrontations and larger and wider wars?
Who is minding the store, as we party in St. Paul?
To find out more about Patrick Buchanan, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
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5 Comments | Post Comment
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Sir; The republicans have certainly turned the table on the democrats. Now, that pit bull in lipstick can hide behind her panties and throw stones at the democrats all she wants, and they can't do nothing but say ouch. It is a wonderful day for republicans when they can gag the opposition, and keep right on with running their mouths, which we all know, is the only part of them that works. Best to ya brother. Buy a cup or keep your hand on your things. It may not be much protection; but when those hockey moms are about, it is the best you can do. And I want you to look at it, even if others do not. I want you to try to be fair, as others are not. It is not unusual for a man to sacrifice family life to political ambition. Politics is one form of relationship, and family is another, and some people cannot handle both. But this woman has shown herself willing to throw her whole family on the fire of her ambition, so she has proved herself to be a man in all but gender. She sent one son to the military. She has let one daughter sink into deliquency, and get pregnant, and she had one more retarded child than was necessary to prove herself a bonnafide right to lifer. What wouldn't she do to you if you got in her way? What wouldn't she do to the country, to the poor, and to the hopeless if they stood between her and power. I think she had it about right. She is a dog in lip stick, and the kind that always bites the hand that feeds her. Thanks.... Sweeney
Comment: #1
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Fri Sep 5, 2008 4:22 AM
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Buchanan, I've been listening to your rant for years and I still can't figure you out. Who are you? Are you a plant for some enemy power? Your words depress. Your words distort. Your words distress. Your words deflate. Your words don't ring true. They come close to historical truth, but in the end you twist to put the most vile spin you can. Who or what do you stand for? What entity, human or nation, can exist in isolation? Your whole apparent premise is flawed. Isolation. Keep to yourself America. This is hogwash. It is an impossible standard you set. But it is the only consistent theme I can find in your schtick. Your purpose seems to be to derail any forward motion, from the left, from the right, from the center, from the secular, from the religious, from the capitalistic, from the socialistic, from prolife to "postmodern" you are a grenade of confusion tossed into the public conversation. I dont' like you, Pat Buchanan. I finally know who you are. You're the shill for hopelessness. Don't misunderstand. I place no hope whatsoever in man. It is only of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed. But His mercy seeps into His people who are mercifully kept in this wicked and perverse generation. My guess is you are reprobate, having tasted that the Lord is good, you now fall to unbelief. The fruit of your unbelief is now recognizable to me. I hope, yes, I hope, God will grant you repentance that you might find rest in hoping only in God, and become a cultivator of what shards of decency occasionally shine through the mire of this world. You strip mine the body politic til what is left is barren fallow land. God can make you till the land rather than mine it til it is rendered useless.
Comment: #2
Posted by: jay
Fri Sep 5, 2008 9:52 PM
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Oh Pat. It's one step forward and three steps back for you. You need to stick to the theme of Russia and Scheuneman. It seems you can only engage in honest commentary when the subject is way over on the other side of the planet. ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Re: “the liberal media elite who savagely "Bork" every true conservative who gets on the path to national power …," you just blew it again. ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Lest a smart guy you forget some basic lessons of history, let's do a little review. First of all, you right wingers bear no resemblance to conservatives, and it astounds me that you continue to get away with hiding behind that false moniker. How could any true conservative engage in the wild love affair with spending on credit your party's engaged in every time it's had a chance to blow it on new weapons, wars, and Wall Street gimmicks? And how could any bona fide conservative not feel it his or her solemn duty to protect the beautiful environment God blessed us with and all of His beautiful creatures? You shape-shifting impostors are willing to cash it all in for whatever money you can squeeze out of it. How will you explain that to God on judgment day? ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
But I digress. Let's try to turn back a few pages in the history book you wish to rewrite Stalin style, and remember why it is you are so drawn to trashing liberals. It was the liberals who sent federal troops to the south to stop the right wing from segregating and lynching blacks. Remember? It was the liberals who established that the U.S. Constitution prohibited discrimination based on race, gender, or creed. Remember? It was horrible, horrible liberals like those in the Supreme Court who you want to replace with the Borks, Scalias, Roberts, and Alitos of the legal underworld. ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
You remember that kind of discrimination don't you? All of those different ways Republicans and right wingers of both parties found to step all over people who were different from them. The great martyr Bork pretty much didn't give a hoot about all of that--it was just not his problem. Leave the Constitution, which is just a piece of paper to be read with the facts as they were when it was written, out of it. And so too did the young Patrick Buchanan not really give a flying you know what about finding a way to make the Constitution deliver the fairness it should. And so did all the ancestors of the party from which Palin so proudly hails, until the liberals took away from them that option of indifference. ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
So now you all can't trash blacks, Jews, women, gays, etc. etc. You bet you're pissed. But it's still fair game to trash the party and its leaders who took away all of your perks, isn't it? And the tradition lives on—it's just that now you have a smaller selection of potions and poisons to work with among all the fantasies and tales born of historical amnesia you have left. ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
How quickly thankless youngsters like Ms. Palin forget the hard work of those who made it possible for her to shoot off her big mouth and take out male competitors standing in her way. She would never have made it out of the PTA in the old days. You know, those days when old liberals like me actually traveled to the south, when new laws and liberal Supreme Court decisions were robbing you and your right wing colleagues of your place on top, to fight the local thugs and cops who were trying to prevent integration with your acquiesence. Those old liberals risked their lives to do that brave work, and some were even killed for doing it. In many ways they began the tradition of community organizing you find it so enjoyable to disrespect. ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Why is it you never found it in your heart to recognize what heroes those folks were? I'm afraid the simple answer is it would hurt you in the sales department. It would also force you to value the fact that those liberals changed your life forever. They took away fate's recognition of the wise judgment you demonstrated by being born into a white family, and in those days, to be born a male as well.
Comment: #3
Posted by: Masako
Sat Sep 6, 2008 12:00 PM
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H.L. Mencken once wrote... The most dangerous person to any government is the one who is able to think things out. Pat is one of these people .sadly many of these comments come from those who cannot.
Comment: #4
Posted by: James Reinhardt
Sun Sep 7, 2008 12:23 PM
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Re: James Reinhardt: Okay, Mr. Mencken, think it through for us.
Comment: #5
Posted by: Masako
Mon Sep 8, 2008 7:01 PM
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