One of my favorite songs of all time is “Stand”; by Sly and the Family Stone! I don’t know Sly’s politics, although Sly may be a degenerate of the highest order, in Stand he raised universal, even Biblical truths!
If I were head of the RNC, this would be the song I would play before every rally! One of “Stand’s” copious, steeped in wisdom lyrics, reads:
“Stand,
You've been sitting much too long,
There's a permanent crease in your right and wrong”
Last week the President declared his candidacy for the 2012 election, which will be perhaps the most critical one in the 21st. Century. I believe it will set the tone for America’s moral course and philosophy for the next hundred years.
It is imperative that as Conservatives we “Stand” for what we know is “right” and in opposition of what we certainly know is “wrong”! The courts again will be a major issue. We cannot allow the left to win again. There is too much at stake! Conservatives cannot afford to have the Supreme Court loaded with youthful, liberal justices primed to serve on the bench for decades.
The left is pulling out all of the stops. This election really needs to be about morality and principles without compromise. In fact, I am beginning to hate the word, “compromise”!
Compromise may have begun life as a concept nobly, but in modern America it has since warped into acquiescence.
Acquiescence is what happens when one of the compromising parties seems consistently to be the only one making concessions. This is surely the case in American politics today.
At no time has this sad truth been more easily recognizable than in the recent battle to pass a Federal budget for the nation’s fiscal year. To begin with, Republicans asked for a drop in the bucket and even that was reduced by the Democrats to a moist smudge.
Republicans couldn’t even manage to take a stand for the social riders they had placed in the budget. As a nation, if we’re getting basics like the right to life wrong, how on earth can we get anything else right? How long will we “Stand” for compromising on life?
The narrative during the budget debate was completely controlled by the media and the right lay down passively and took it. We who call ourselves conservatives are again allowing the media to shape our actions and thinking. Even on the grass roots level.
The amount of adjustment made to the budget was so infinitesimal, it could be claimed pyrrhic. To paraphrase the eponymous King Pyrrhus: “ ‘One more such victory would utterly undo’ the country!”
Ironically, if this woefully inadequate and largely symbolic gesture towards fiscal responsibility had not been passed, we would not have had the money to pay the troops necessary to even have (God forbid) such a victory as Pyrrhus had at Heraclea against the Romans.
The Republicans lack the confidence in the American people’s support to properly wage this battle for the nation’s soul. We are too easily distracted! The left understands this and they use it to their advantage.
This is why the left, in truth, loves the question of the President’s eligibility to hold the office. There is legitimacy in questioning Mr. Obama’s reticence in sharing his credentials and records, but, this is a marginalizing issue. It is meat for the Conservative base and it should be of concern to the whole nation, but... it is not.
We on the right claim to understand how tragically and blindly supportive the left is when it comes to President Obama. That may indeed be the case when it comes to the liberal voting base. However, it is not true of the media or the political and economic powers behind the Democrats and Mr. Obama. This group knows exactly what Obama is!
It is the powers behind the Democrats, who convinced the conservatives John McCain was the offering to be placed in sacrifice before the Obama machine in 2008. It is happening again.
We keep seeing these brand name media straw polls coming out touting Mitt Romney as the Republican frontrunner. Meanwhile, no one we know ever talks about Romney except to say; “We don’t want him.”
Every straw poll conducted on conservative grassroots sites like the ones here on Digital Publius or Freedom Torch all suggest a decidedly different narrative than the one conveyed in the mainstream media.
Polls on all the grassroots sites show conservatives desiring to back candidates that express the values and perspective that reflects their worldview... candidates who are proven conservatives. Not wishy washy politicians who follow the political climate.
This is what nags at me about the blossoming Tea Party support for Donald Trump! I have to admit I find it amusing that Trump makes so many leftist talking heads appear to squirm. Trump is saying all of the right things right now, but after a period of sober minded reflection, I am not comfortable with Trump.
In the back of my mind I keep thinking about the Donald Trump that appeared so often on “Don Imus In The Morning” reveling in Bush bashing a few years ago. The Trump who was so tragically short sighted when it came to the war in Iraq, and who was was pro-”choice”. This Donald Trump:
Contrast that video with this more recent appearance by “The Donald”!
It seems The Donald has merely transposed George W. Bush’s name with Barack H. Obama’s. The most telling thing, the thing we should be paying closest attention too, is the attitude of the media-figures Trump talks to.
If we were going strictly by the leftist talking points In the first video, it would be impossible to tell Trump from Ed Schultz, Rachel Maddow or even Keith Olbermann and that was just a few years ago mind you.
Donnie Deutsch was only too eager to feed into The Donald’s all too frequent anti-Bush diatribes. This really looks no different from the way Matt Lauer and David Gregory supported Chuck Schumer and Steny Hoyer last week on the morning shows as they presented the DNC’s talking points and a singular unopposed perspective on the budget battle.
In the second video, we again see Trump being interviewed by Donnie Deutsch--This time we are treated to Deutsch and the rest of the panel smirking and derisively dismissing Trump as he spouts so called “birther” arguments! Arguments long since dismissed by people who have been fighting this battle since Obama came on the scene.
Fringe arguments like the President’s “Grandmother in Kenya”, long abandoned for their lack of strong evidential integrity. He is bringing up issues that have all been dealt with by the left, whether you find the answers credible should not be your bone of contention. It is a question of advancing persuasive arguments to the American people.
Anyone on the left worth their beans, who is prepared, could take Trump apart as we saw when he appeared on CNN, Suzanne Malveaux ate his lunch. The most powerful question that can be put in play when it comes to this issue is: Why is the President fighting so hard and committing so much money to suppressing his credentials? Why?
This is the question that no one ever answers. Trump has brought it up in a few interviews, but Donald never presses for an answer. He was so thoroughly handled by Malveaux that he never even asked that most pivotal question. The bottom line is this: This is not an issue you can win new votes with. It plays great with the base, but not the independents.
I refuse to believe Trump is unaware of this, or the seemingly reasonable apologetics forwarded by Obama’s supporters on the weaker “birther” arguments. Trump is too smart! Or perhaps I give him too much credit.
I do not believe that Trump is a true conservative. I think Trump is nothing more than a complicit distraction to draw people away from the candidates we really need to support, who are true, longstanding conservatives. I don’t necessarily mean long time politicians, I mean clear, consistent and unwavering conservative voices.
Trump is a media creation--A left wing media creation! His show the “Apprentice” airs on NBC, while his network’s boss, Jeffrey Immelt is President Obama’s appointed head of the Jobs and Competitiveness Council (whatever that is) for goodness sake.
Trump’s bid for conservative support is nothing more than theater! Liberal stagecraft at it’s finest and most deceptive. Do not be fooled! “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark” It seems almost like the birth certificate issue is a faint.
You let the whole “birther” issue hit a fevered pitch as advanced by perhaps the nation’s greatest “pitch” man. Make him the champion of the issue, he secures conservative support and then “boom goes the dynamite”, the President finally submits and releases the long form birth certificate, conservatives look foolish and petty and Obama wins a second term.
A far more likely scenario sees the right marginalized even further so that we are forced to nominate the common since candidate the media really wants us to choose. So, again we offer a sacrifice like the feckless and unelectable Mitt Romney instead of a true conservative.
Sly’s song ends:
Stand
Don't you know that you are free
Well at least in your mind if you want to be
Everybody
Stand, stand, stand
Free your minds of the media’s manipulation this time around. Let’s not buy into the newly conservative Trumps or the chimerical Romneys. Let’s get real and support a conservative who has always been a conservative.
As always, I am reminded of Holy Scripture, specifically, Paul sharing the Gospel with the pagans in Athens at Mars Hill. The Holy Bible relates:
(For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.) Acts 17:21
Let’s not be like the Athenian pagans always in pursuit of some “new thing”! The essence of conservatism is conserving those things we know are true and real! Donald Trump I am afraid is neither!
Digital Publius
