David

Karki

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February 4, 2008

John McCain’s Triumph Leaves No Left or Lefter, Just Up Or Down

Barring a huge surprise on Super Tuesday, which occurs the day after this writing, Sen. John McCain will have all but wrapped up the Republican presidential nomination. For a great many conservatives, present company very much included, this is our worst nightmare come true: A phony “choice” between liberal and even more liberal, between socialism and communism.

How did we come to such an awful place? The answer is fairly simple. If I may paraphrase former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, you run for a party nomination with the candidates you have, not the ones you wish you had. In other words, there never was a viable conservative in the race in the first place. The closest hope we creatures of the right had was Fred Thompson, and for several reasons – the other candidates' insanely early entry into the race, Fred's rightful disdain of a thoroughly screwed-up process, and his total marginalization by the drive-by media – he never caught fire.

Why weren't there any other viable conservatives running? I believe it's because the current selection process works in such a way as to dissuade them from doing so, by forcing them to do that which they both oppose in principle and personally dislike in order to win. Think about it – if your goal is to ensure to the maximum extent possible that a conservative cannot win the presidency, then designing a selection process that strongly discourages them from ever running for it in the first place will get you 90 percent of the way to that goal before it even begins.

After all, only power-hungry egomaniacs (e.g. Hillary Clinton/McCain), or nanny-state control freaks (e.g. Barack Obama/John Edwards/Mike Huckabee), or flip-flopping opportunists (Mitt Romney) are going to want to run the gauntlet of endless fund-raising and shallow, substance-free debates for two full years. That the ranks are therefore filled with senators, who by definition are arrogant, pompous windbags and blowhards is no surprise at all.

And that brings us to where we are – left with three possible choices for president, all of which are equally frightening to those of us who think the Constitution should mean something and be followed by those who swear an oath to uphold it, that government must be small and its powers limited, and that the only one who should be and is responsible for your life and all it encompasses is you.

Somehow, I'm supposed to determine which of the following is best:

•  A senator who has trashed the First Amendment (McCain-Feingold), offered amnesty to illegal aliens (McCain-Kennedy), supported granting terrorists due-process rights (McCain-ACLU), opposed the Bush tax cuts using left-wing class warfare rhetoric and led the Gang of 14, which undermined conservative judicial nominees and perpetuated the unconstitutional use of filibusters against them.

•  A senator who is a totally inexperienced extreme liberal, who combines Jimmy Carter's naiveté with Bill Clinton's enemy-butt-kissing, and running a campaign utterly bereft of any substance, driven entirely by emotion and the ignorance of youth.

• Hillary. Enough said. Do I really have to explain this one?

This is the equivalent of having to choose between strychnine, arsenic and cyanide. There simply is no best choice, and really no substantial difference between them. Or the parties they ostensibly represent.

This almost feels like the “Terminator” movies – Judgment Day is coming soon, and on November 4, 2008, SkyNet will become self-aware, the political machine (which, ironically, includes Arnold Schwarzenegger himself) firing nuclear missiles upon its enemy, the people. And right now, there is no John Connor to lead the resistance.

You may think I'm overstating it, but misguided actions have bad consequences. One would think that four years of Jimmy Carter's stagflation, gasoline lines and Iranian hostages would be lesson enough. Or the body bag count from Bill Clinton's unconscionable dereliction regarding Islamic terror. But we seem determined to repeat the same mistake yet again, and once more risk killing the goose that lays the golden eggs based on the erroneous belief that it is somehow immortal. 

Ronald Reagan nailed the real stakes in his seminal “A Time For Choosing” address, given some 44 years ago:

“If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. 

You and I are told increasingly that we have to choose between a left or right, but I would like to suggest that there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down – up to a man's age-old dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order – or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism, and regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.”

Amen, Ronnie. I'm sorry that after all you did it seems we've chosen the downward course, full steam ahead.  

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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