Staff Sgt. Talbert Reese performs preflight checks on a KC-10A Extender. Sergeant Reese is a flight engineer with the 9th Air Refueling Squadron.
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Desperation in the GOP
By: Michael Hill | Submitted on: 05/01/07EDITORIAL - The only desperation I can see from the GOP candidates is the same desperation coming from the Democrat candidates - that is, the desperation to be the President.
Long gone for both parties are the days where one puts forth the positive things one intends to accomplish, or even to ask Congress to help them accomplish, to provide voters with a valid, good reason to choose him or her over another candidate. These days, it is simply poo-flinging at your opponents within your own party and then at the opponent from the other party. All you need for a platform is your opponents' mistakes, a microphone, and a TV camera.
Neither side has shown me a candidate who offers anything but criticism of each other, the President, and some failed policy that they do not intend to fix, just that it is a failure and who among their opposition they feel bears responsibility.
Which candidate in either party has put forth a concrete idea for ending the war? Joe Biden is the only one so far with the stones to actually present an entire plan, right or wrong, that one can reach out and actually touch and read. He is the only one who has journeyed beyond the bumper sticker platitude and provided something tangible. Every other Dem is mugging the cameras, yelling at their opponents, and trying to be voted Miss Congeniality. So I give Biden my props, even if I disagree with his stance. At least he has something other than "why that guy over there sucks worse than me."
Same for the GOP. Fred Thompson isn't even running, and he's the only person who writes anything substantial relating to policy. They all keep bleating about one issue or another, but never offer anything tangible. Vaporware planks in the imaginary platform of negative campaigning – that is all.
So that "desperation" that I see is the desperation borne from having no reason to be elected into office, but being desperate that you'll vote for them anyway before you figure out why you shouldn't have.
Go ahead and get all tingly that the Dems will win in 2008, but remember that US politics goes in cycles in regards to party, and the only constant is that the government grows larger, more powerful, less effective, and more costly every year, regardless of who is in power.
Long gone for both parties are the days where one puts forth the positive things one intends to accomplish, or even to ask Congress to help them accomplish, to provide voters with a valid, good reason to choose him or her over another candidate. These days, it is simply poo-flinging at your opponents within your own party and then at the opponent from the other party. All you need for a platform is your opponents' mistakes, a microphone, and a TV camera.
Neither side has shown me a candidate who offers anything but criticism of each other, the President, and some failed policy that they do not intend to fix, just that it is a failure and who among their opposition they feel bears responsibility.
Which candidate in either party has put forth a concrete idea for ending the war? Joe Biden is the only one so far with the stones to actually present an entire plan, right or wrong, that one can reach out and actually touch and read. He is the only one who has journeyed beyond the bumper sticker platitude and provided something tangible. Every other Dem is mugging the cameras, yelling at their opponents, and trying to be voted Miss Congeniality. So I give Biden my props, even if I disagree with his stance. At least he has something other than "why that guy over there sucks worse than me."
Same for the GOP. Fred Thompson isn't even running, and he's the only person who writes anything substantial relating to policy. They all keep bleating about one issue or another, but never offer anything tangible. Vaporware planks in the imaginary platform of negative campaigning – that is all.
So that "desperation" that I see is the desperation borne from having no reason to be elected into office, but being desperate that you'll vote for them anyway before you figure out why you shouldn't have.
Go ahead and get all tingly that the Dems will win in 2008, but remember that US politics goes in cycles in regards to party, and the only constant is that the government grows larger, more powerful, less effective, and more costly every year, regardless of who is in power.
Michael Hill is a professional software system developer and amateur politcal pundit/writer. He is also a veteran of Desert Storm and the NATO operations in the Balkans. He considers himself a conservative in the Buckley-Reagan mold, a staunch advocate of the Jeffersonian concept that the government that governs best is the one that governs the least, and firm believer that the free market and individuals operating within it will accomplish anything the government can economically, just faster, cheaper, and more reliably.
