"Spare me the bi-partisan, reaching out talk"

Posted by guest blogger NickS.

Randall Hoven has been published in The American Thinker, The New York Post and the Alton  Telegraph.  His pieces have been cited, discussed and praised by Rush Limbaugh, David Limbaugh, Mark Steyn, The American Spectator and Donald Rumsfeld.   Randall retired from the Boeing Company in 2008 as a Technical Fellow, where he had worked since 1982.  In 2005 he won the Boeing Special Invention Award.  For the last few years he has been an adjunct professor in the Engineering School of Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville.

Prior to joining McDonnell Douglas he worked at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory from 1979 to 1982.  He was also an enlistee in the U.S. Navy from 1972 to 1975, serving on the USS Wichita including a brief stint in Vietnam combat waters.

He writes this in the American Thinker.

OK, the GOP convention ended and I was pumped to vote Republican.  Sort of.  Many themes of the convention were actually pretty irritating.

One theme was actually a non-theme, and its name was George W. Bush, the great unmentionable at the convention.  I have said before that President Bush has a completely defendable record .  But OK, his approval rating is low so we want to distance ourselves from him for political reasons.  Then why didn't the convention speakers go after the Democrat-run Congress, whose approval rating makes Bush's look like Sarah Palin's?  Who is it we're talking about who has not been putting country first?  Because President Bush is the poster-boy of putting country first.

But the really irritating theme to me was the idea that we need to work together with Democrats more.  As if that has been the problem.  Let us review the last eight years and see how often we did work with the Democrats and how that worked out for us.

He then discusses Prescription coverage under Medicare, No Child Left Behind, Campaign Finance Reform AmeriCorps, International Aid, Ethanol, Iraq War and finishes with ...

In 2003, Dick Gephardt (D-MO), Minority Leader of the House and presidential candidate at the time, said this: "This is a Republican bill.  Therefore it's a bad bill."

Why do Republicans keep thinking their problem is not cooperating enough with Democrats?  Name one thing Democrats have been willing to support in the last 40 years that did not increase the size, scope and intrusiveness of the federal government.

I will mirror Gephardt's admonition.  If Democrats support it, it can't be good.  Just as Groucho Marx would not be a member of a club that would have him as a member, Republicans should not support legislation that has significant Democratic support.

There's a joke where the husband wants a dog and his wife wants a cat, so they compromise and get a cat.  With Democrats, every "compromise" is a cat.  A bloated budget, bureaucratic, cat.

Read it all here.

Comments

[Leslie]

I'm starting to hear whisperings of this sentiment all over the place and I find it encouraging.

Conservatism in every facet of life (politics, church etc) somehow has bought the lie that it needs to proceed apologetically, namely, move more to the centre.

I think a good new strategy to try would be for conservative groups everywhere to decide who they are, how they want to be and then be it.

I gotta be me.

The results might be surprising.

[Mommynator]

I agree, Leslie.

I'm not backing down, although sometimes I try to be polite.

But when people keep repeating the same stupidities, I get hot. I cannot abide deliberate, blinders-on stupidity.

I will repeat facts. I will keep repeating them. If someone doesn't like it, they can cease to be in my presence. Period.

And when they won't listen any more, I won't argue with them any more, considering the wise counsel of Proverbs about not arguing with fools.

I will also act. I haven't figured out exactly what that's going to look like, but it isn't going to mean smiling, simpering and shutting up.

Mommynator indeed.