General @ Saturday October 08, 2005 01:15 pm by Cullen
A local church, within walking distance from me, is having Oliver North speak tomorrow evening. I’m a pretty big fan. I think he’s a no-BS kind of guy. I look forward to hearing him speak.
Sean Hannity has had the retired lieutenant colonel on his show a lot lately. And he seems to be pushing North to make some kind of announcement. That has of course led to speculation about what kind of announcement that would be. I would think it pretty damn cool.
This had also got me thinking about conservatives and the current state of the Republican Party. I consider myself a Reagan Republican. In many ways, I’m even more convervative in that I want even smaller Federal influences on the states. I want an end to Federal taxation of individuals.
Just think, if the Fed could only tax states, that would force states to operate more like a business. The states with the fairest taxation would draw the most population and would give a great incentive for business to move there. Capitalism at work! It’s a pipe dream, I know, but I think it would work.
My biggest problem with my party today is just how large they’ve allowed the government to become. How much they are themselves spending and lobbying to spend. It’s ridiculous.
At what point did they forget that that’s a major party platform? At what point did they think that we would continue to support them blindly?
It’s a platform I’m looking forward to hearing from our future candidates. I want to know where they stand on spending. I want lucid, written plans. I want a true conservative.
6 Responses to “Possible President? -AND- Why has my party left me?”
“Why has my party left me?” has been a thought almost constantly on my mind of late: it was the Harrier Miers nomination that was a last straw of sorts, but it gets me to more critically and harshly looking at other earlier things in retrospect. Reagan said he didn’t leave the Democratic Party: the Party left him. I don’t want the GOP to do that to me, not only for my own sake, but for its sake, as I think it would be self-destructive. But someone else, I forget who, said that the most consistent theme of this administration has been “squandering the conservative moment,” and I can’t help but largely agree. I am coming more and more to believe that the president either cares more about his friends than his principles, or is genuinely incapable of distinguishing between the two.
Tom DeLay personifies much of this attitude as well: forgetting all the personal sleaze and counter-sleaze between him and Ronnie Earle, what made me go ballistic was him saying all the fat had already been cut from the federal budget, which is patently insulting to the intelligence even of math morons like myself. Where is the party of Reagan, or even of Newt Gingrich? Where is the party of the GOOD Texan, the man whom DeLay succeeded as Majority Leader, Dick Armey? The spirit of 1994 that got the GOP into real power for the first time in living memory isn’t just dead and buried: it’s all but forgotten. And that pisses me off.
I just read this post. Been afk all weekend. But I did make it to see Ollie North tonight and it was very inspiring. I’m still digesting it all, so I won’t comment on the content. There were a ton of people there let me tell you. My father in law actually used to have a shirt that said “Oliver North for President”. I’d vote for him in a heartbeat; but I have doubts about him ever getting the nomination.
I was there also. Where were you sitting?
How many folks do you think were there? About 3k?
I, also, had an Ollie North for Pres. shirt.
I was sitting on the floor level, extremely to the left and on the second to last row. I got there at about 5:45 and thought, man I better park wherever I can. Got parked out past the library and walked my three year old all the way up to the church and into nursery. By the time I got in they were already singing the star-spangled banner, so I think I got there just in time. I don’t know what the seating is in that church, but it was packed out.
We got there quite early, around 5:00 or so. We were on the far right, about three rows behind the “Reserved” section. So, I was about 7 rows or so back from Ollie. It was neat.
My office had a photographer there. I’ll see what photos I can get and I’ll share.
BTW, I don’t have your e-mail, so I’ll pimp my site here, I set up my own blog at http://halfapica.blogspot.com
Come check me out.
Well, I hate to be the poop-head at the love fest. While I grant you El Toro virtually shut down during his Iran-Contra testimony and we all cheered and high fived EVERY time he scored on that sleezy congressional counsel, the fact remains that his testimony made him a star and no one would have ever heard of him otherwise. But for a technicality, Ollie North would be a convicted felon and no one would have had a chance to vote for him for anything. His ’simple soldier following orders’ act falls to pieces when one considers that he knew full well those orders were illegal and he therefore had no compuction to follow them. In FACT, he had a DUTY to disobey them. (Just like the uniforms at Nuremburg, who claimed the same defence.) Yes, he’s a compelling speaker and yes, he does a lot of good things with the celebrity accorded him. I love the hell out of his War Stories and he’s absolutely fearless. But when the time came for him to honor the uniform on his back, the eagle, globe and anchors on his collar and the law of the land he was SWORN to uphold via his officer’s oath…he didn’t.