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Matt Continetti joins the podcast to talk about Kevin McCarthy’s horrible day and what that day portends for the Republican party over the next days, weeks, and years. Give a listen.
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Strawman arguments galore.
You claim you don’t know what they want. Well what is the flip side of that, what is it that you want and why?
Never mind what the MAGAs or conservatives want; what is it that the “Republicans” want to do and why do you want it so badly? Why is the party itself more important than the principles?
From my perspective, it seems like things are getting worse, and it isn’t the conservatives or the MAGAs. They are just pointing at the PROBLEMS that the Republican party has aided the Democrats in creating. Examples: unsustainable budget, gov overreach, frivolous spending.
The revolting (literally) wing sound like Prof. Wagstaff in the Marx Brothers “Horse Feathers”:
I don’t know what they have to say
It makes no difference anyway
Whatever it is, I’m against it
No matter what it is or who commenced it
I’m against it
This is a fine reply if you are okay with, but not limited to, the following:
– unsustainable budget
– gov overreach
– frivolous spending
– current application of the administrative state
– 1a encroachment
– 2a encroachment
– attack on separation of church and state
If you’re reaction is something like “well that’s how it is”, then this is quite close to a breaking point towards some kind of civil war OR totalitarian take over of the “revolting” as in removing them and replacing them with squishy uniparty representatives. I think I speak for most everyone that neither of these remedies are particularly attractive for obvious reasons.
If you believe these are issues, well, the current Republican party has not created a genuine path of return to some of our more fundamental founding principles that the “revolting” would like to see. Many of these principles would solve the disputes over the list of issues; and keep your beloved Republican party intact. Why the Republicans cant create this genuine path? Honestly I don’t know, pick your favorite conspiracy.
So now we are stuck with people criticizing and poopooing the “revolting” and building them into strawmen.
You aren’t engaging in honest discord, just playing by the same rules the left does by saying “the argument is over, stop being crazy, we are the government here to help you”
I generally like the Commentary podcast but one of the infuriating themes is their characterization of anyone questioning our involvement in the Ukrainian war as “isolationist”. I have serious doubts about our involvement and our national interest in backing Ukraine. My doubt doesn’t stem from isolationism but from a review of the previous 20 year history of our military and foreign policy. I was hung-ho Afghanistan and Iraq. I took 10 years of military leave from my commercial airline to fly C-17 missions to both countries. My wife was a flight nurse and did 8 deployments to the mideast carrying thousands of wounded service members to Europe and the US. I retired after 26 years as a colonel and did all of the Air Force’s foreign & military policy courses. What did I learn?
Ukraine-Sad story but we’ve got a lot of problems to solve before we can solve theirs. The wide and bipartisan consensus was Ukraine was a hotbed of corruption until the military/industrial/media complex decided we needed another war. For 30 years we’ve been warned that expanding NATO would result in Russian blowback but we ignored it. Now that complex is feigning surprise when Biden makes NATO invites to Ukraine and Russia responds.
We almost went to war over Russian nukes in Cuba but somehow we’re befuddled that Russia doesn’t want NATO troops, arms & nukes on their Ukrainian border? We’ve known this for 30 years, multiple US presidents, NATO generals, European leaders have promised Russia that NATO wouldn’t expand East and now we’re surprised that they’ve reacted! Please excuse the French but these God darned, rat bustard, motha fricken “leaders” knew what they were doing when they decided to fight the Russians until they run out of Ukrainians.
We’ve had 6 years of anti-Russian hysteria built on the lie that Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election. That lie served Democrats but there is absolutely no accountability or analysis of the ramifications of that lie on foreign policy. Russia & Putin are bad actors, they put no value on human rights, liberty, economic freedom etc. Sad for Russia, but I’m not going to let the Democrat’s political corruption justify a nuclear war or US casualties until politicians put forth a rational argument on why US casualties should be spent on Ukraine.
Conclusion: I can only speak for myself, but I want some accountability for our 20 years of military failure before I support more military action for a nebulous foreign policy objective. You can call me an isolationist or Russian stooge, I don’t care. Until you’re carried a C-17 full of coffins or wounded heroes, you owe me a justification, a plan and a goal for the use of our military, and that includes our taxpayer dollars that can drag us into a conflict.
My conclusion is, as smart and educated as Commentary cast is, they are somewhere paid off to push uniparty/globalist agendas, while keeping us semi interested with snarky and relatively obvious jabs at the ridiculous cultural absurdities of the left.
I’m not asking for them to all put on tinfoil hats and join the InfoWars network… Just a little more honesty while exploring policy and general politics would go a long way.