Republicans keep careening toward a disaster they are unwilling to avoid

John of Powerline gives a powerful example of how the man he backs, McCain, is crippling the Republican party. As Powerline showed last week in a remarkable list of Republican versus Democratic congressional votes on key energy bills over the last several decades, the Republicans are the party that has stood for expanding America’s energy sources, while the Democrats have consistently opposed that. But, John writes, since McCain has signed onto the manmade global warming ideology, the Republicans, following their new leader, have been deprived of any argument on ways to increase our energy supplies, robbing them of an important issue to use against the Democrats in the fall campaign and making a big Democratic victory even more likely.

None of this will, of course, prevent Powerline from loyally continuing to support McCain.

The Powerline guys don’t see the obvious conclusion to which their own argument points, which is that the only hope for the country and for the Republicans is that the congressional Republicans separate themselves from McCain’s liberal positions and run as a conservative party. Let the liberal albatross McCain go down and sink like lead into the sea, but keep Republican/conservative numbers in the Congress high enough to prevent Obama from passing his radical left program.

I made the same argument in 2006, that the Republicans in the House of Representatives should explicitly run as the party which courageously stopped Bush’s amnesty from going through, and promise that they would continue stopping amnesty if reelected as the majority in the next Congress. But the Republicans did not follow that wise course, and so lost control of the Congress. And now once again, due to their unwillingness to separate themselves from a liberal Republican president or presidential candidate, they are facing the prospect of being reduced, not just to minority status, but to complete impotence, which in turn will allow Obama free rein, as he threateningly pledged last week, to “remake” America.

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Terry Morris writes:

“…as he threateningly pledged last week, to “remake” America.”

You’ve obviously taken Obama’s pledge all wrong. A god-like figure such as Obama does not “threateningly” pledge to do anything. Consider:

And Obama said, Let there be an expansion in the midst of America, and let it divide America from America.

And Obama made the expansion, and divided America which was before the expansion from America that was after the expansion: and it was so.

And Obama called the expansion Heaven.

And Obama said, Let the America which was before the expansion be gathered together unto one deplorable racist earth-destroying history, and let the purged land appear, and it was so.

And Obama called the purged land New America; and the gathering of its unfulfilled principles to their proper places called he righteousness. And Obama saw that it was very good.

LA replies:

I was stopped a little at first by “expansion” instead of “expanse,” for “firmament.” But it makes sense. The liberals are always expanding America—more cultures, more inclusion, more diversity, etc. But this very expansion changes American identity radically, cuts Ameirca off from what it used to be. So “expansion” really works well. Instead of an “expanse,” or firmament, dividing the waters that are below the expanse from the waters that are above the expanse, there is an “expansion,” which divides the America which was before the expansion from the America which came after the expansion.

Terry Morris replies:

Thanks. Yes, I tried “expanse” for “firmament”, but it seemed too illiberal a translation. (As Kristor noted the other day: “liberals hate and abhor the limit.”) Expansion seemed to work better for this purpose and was thus chosen over expanse. I only wish I had replaced the word “Heaven” with something more befitting liberalism, but I couldn’t think of anything.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 08, 2008 05:50 PM | Send