Dude! Shut up! They might hear you!

David:

It isn't illogical that we won't vote to tax other Americans. Too many of us remember bracket creep.

I meant to praise your previous post advocating the "Cohen Rule" on Roe v Wade. You're absolutely right, if Democrats abandon the imperial judiciary they'll become competitive for 10% of the Republican vote in one blow.

While they're figuring this out, the Republicans need to implement reforms that move people off government dependency.

My plan for them:

(1) Dump Hollywood as a surrogate spokesperson, yeah you can still raise money from them, but criticize them often.

(2) Stop treating Christians, etc. as if they were the political/philosophical equivalent of smokers.

(3) Take personal responsibility and accountability and make them their own issues. Demand that businesses and govt be accountable to people. Demand that people take responsibility for themselves and say that the govt will help those who are willing to.

Souvenirs! We want souvenirs!

Plus lots and lots of pizza.

Tote bags. I know that I, if given a totebag that said "I'm a Demmycrat and I'm not a nut!" would vote for Zombie Stalin for president.

Zombie Stalin is elegible for the Presidency because he was reanimated in the US. Just to clarify.

David:

The Religious Right--along with the black community--is motivated by the possibility of school vouchers too--and Democrats can never yield on that.

OJ: All true, but:

1. Vouchers are a done deal. NCLB requires that, by 2014, all students, including whites, blacks, immigrants, ESL, special needs, etc., test at proficient levels on state-wide testing. All schools will fail. That failure will then require school choice and will lead, ultimately, to vouchers. That is, after all, the ticking time bomb that the President inserted into NCLB that made it worth passing.

2. The Democrats' black voter problem is insolluble. Relatively soon, blacks voting patterns will be within 10% of similarly-situated white voting patterns. Republicans will be getting 35-40% of the black vote. Unless Democrats can find votes to substitute for the missing black bloc, they're done for anyway.

3. Vouchers, too, should be a state level issue.

The Democrats need to:

1. Moderate on abortion. End the death grip on the party by NARAL and Planned Parenthood. Let some pro-life Democrats become leaders in the party. Look at Dennis Kuchinich, the guy was goofy but he was pro-life forever. Then he decides to run for President and in a heart-beat he all-of-the-sudden is pro-choice. WTF?

2. Stop nominating senators from Massachusetts and the Northeast. Stop nominating liberals from New England and the Northeast, it tends to alienate Southern voters as well as other regular folks in the rest of the country.

3. Nominate someone with some executive branch experience from the Midwest or even the South (although I'm not sure if there are any left). Don't nominate anyone from the Northeast, New England, California or the Pacfic Northwest.

4. Become religion-friendly (especially Christians) and really mean it. Adopt some social issues that don't alienate people of faith.

5. Purge the party of America-haters like Michael Moore, George Soros, et al. Get rid on Nancy Pelosi.

I personally think the Democratic party is incapable of #1, #4 & #5. However, if they do this they will lose the radical leftists in the party, but they will gain those middle of the road people.

Democrats— you've controlled the Left Coast for years now. Why is the only person from that area who might command a national following Arnold? Why didn't you cultivate and push someone like Gary Locke? Is part of the problem because you are locked in with 5 Senators-for-Life from that region? (7 if you include Hawaii.)

(I know about Gary's faults, but image what it might mean for '008 if he'd just won a Senate seat instead of Patty the Dummy ...)

The fact that nobody thought to mention the guns is ominous. Why didn't anybody thing to include guns? Could it be that they don't think guns are important? Just think about apostacizing on this issue and you'll find out.

One big problem with the Democrats and the left in general is a confusion of ends and means. They say they want to (e.g.) help the poor, but the only solutions they see involve the federal government. They believe in education, but this translates into blind support of the teacher's unions. Etc. The means turn out not to work well or at all, but they seem more attached to them than to the supposed ends.

It's the Islam, stupid.

Even the voucher schools in New York City are going to perform below national norms after an atom bomb goes off.

I've said some of this elsewhere, but:

1. Learn the relationship between cost and price

2. Repeat 1,000,000 times: Thou shalt stop trying to repeal the law of supply and demand. Then repeat it another 1,000,000 times, because the first go could not possibly be nearly enough.

3. Understand group politics does not work with an individualistic citizenry.

4. Study moral hazard, and be very wary thereof.

Of course, if they did that and succeeded, they'd be manning Republican phone banks to get out the vote.

Harry: Taking the war seriously is necessary, but not sufficient. John Kerry's attempts to out war the President were just pathetic.

And who you calling "stupid"?

Very funny. Maybe David's list and the fine, fine suggestions above comprise much of what the Democrats should do, but we all know the Democrats cannot and will not do any of it.

My guess is that (unfortunately for me) the Democrats will the minority party at the national level until either:

1. The pendulum swings back towards social liberalism sometime in the next 20 to 200 years (that's a long wait for those of us lacking inhuman impatience).

2. The Democratic party really, really implodes, for example taking less than 30% of the vote in a presidential election or dropping to less than 20 seats in the Senate. Then they may disappear completely and a new party may rise from their ashes (though I have no idea what ideology the new party will have); or

3. There is a significant nuclear terrorist attack in the U.S. Of course, at that point all bets are off for the survival of all 6 billion people on the planet, so whether or not the Democrats are in power would be completely meaningless from our current perspective.

As far as the second item: Pat Buchanan cost Bush more electora votes in 2000 than Nader did Gore. If you assume all of Buchanan's votes would have gone to Bush then he would have won Wisconsin(11), Iowa(7), New Mexico(5) and maybe Oregon(7). They almost cost him New Hampshire(4) and Florida(25), the only 2 state that Nader cost Gore.

The DemonRATs dropping gun control makes too much sense, they will never do it. I could never understand why the lefties don't go in for serious gun activities, like worker militias, neightborhood self defense groups, etc. If they really believe that Ashcroft is planning to terrorize them with the Patriot Act, wouldn't the logical response be to arm themselves??

> guns ... souvenirs ...

Ummm, all those AK-47's they're picking up in Iraq? Wouldn't those be twofers? OK, you Democrats, let's get busy with a new Civilian Marksmanship Program for a New Century. The "free" part is just icing on the cake.

Why didn't you cultivate and push someone like Gary Locke?

Perhaps because Gary is a bureacratic nonentity who would require a lot more than just "pushing" to be inspiring to anybody? Did he accomplish anything significant during his years as governer?

Perhaps because Gary is a bureacratic nonentity who would require a lot more than just "pushing" to be inspiring to anybody? Did he accomplish anything significant during his years as governer?

Exactly my point. A little image enhancement, and getting him to do one or two things that might be considered "significant", and the party would have someone they who would at a minimum be more "electable" that the pair they just had go down in flames. Put a Locke with such a record on the bottom of the ticket with St.Hillary, and you've got a winning combo.

So, look at what they put up this year-- more of the same in the form of Chris(tine) Gregoire, who's probably going to be the next gov. (Don't worry, in this "good government" state, the Dems always seem to find ways to win these close elections decided by late mail-in ballots on the last possible day.) Put her in a room with our two Senators, and you can do an all-female Three Stooges remake.

Free guns is a good idea. The Federal Governmdent used to give out not-quite-free guns under the old DCM program. You could get a arsenal-reworked military rifle for what was supposed to be the overhead cost of the program. When I got my M-1, the cost was about $90.00. The FMV of the piece I got was about five times that figure.

I don't use the M-1 that much for competition anymore, favoring an M-14 clone. I fire from the left shoulder, and the M-1 is not southpaw-friendly. But the political effect of my having received this tangible expression of support and trust from my government is profound.

The Democrats hated the DCM program, for they believed, I think correctly, that it was financing the gun culture whose neck they wanted to wring like a chicken (Some chicken! Some neck!) So the program was shut down for a few years. Reagan reinstated it. When The big carton arrived and I took out the Garand, my young sons, NRA life members now, asked me, "Dad, who sent you the gun?' I told them, "Ronald Reagan."

The Army doesn't run the program anymore, but shooters can still get suplus rifles through a private corporation chosen to administer it.

David, remember the 'premature antifascists'? I'm a premature antiIslamist.

Pretty lonely now, but once the bomb goes off, everybody will pretend they were with me all along, except that me and my sort will be blamed for it.

And I'm not calling you stupid, certainly. It was Clinton's trope, recall?

But, in general, the refusal of both parties to think about where the threat really arises is, if not stupid, shortsighted.