CSotD: Yes, but Bo can’t vote
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Senator Arthur Vandenburg (R-Mich) would have fit pretty well into the current Republican party, as far as economics goes, since he was a staunch opponent of the New Deal. But I doubt the current Republicans would forgive his support of the United Nations and, in particular, they would not want to hear that the author of the phrase "Politics ends at the water's edge" actually said it as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when there was a Democrat in the White House.
I was looking up that phrase after reading today's Doonesbury because I remember back, oh, three years ago, when Republicans believed that we should all unite behind the president when talking foreign policy and particularly when talking about the War on Terror and Iraq and Afghanistan and Whatever Else We Decide.
Ah, but times change.
This week, John McCain — ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee — went over to Libya and declared that the US should recognize the rebels as the legitimate government of that country, and that they are "very good people."
Asked if some of them might be al Qaeda veterans, he replied, according to the Washington Examiner, "I'm sure that there may be some element there, but I guarantee you that they didn't rise up because they wanted to be al Qaeda fighters. They rose up because they wanted to throw off the yoke of Gadhafi, the same way that people in Egypt rose up and the same way that people in Syria are rising up."
Imagine the uproar if George Bush were still in the White House and a Democrat from the Armed Services Committee had popped over to another country and started telling the press what governments we should recognize and guaranteeing the bona fides of little-known insurgents?
Meanwhile, back on this side of the water's edge, Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla) successfully introduced an amendment to the bill extending medical benefits to 9/11 responders — a bill Republicans had previously stalled — that requires them all to be checked against the terrorist watch list.
Now, to be fair,this includes the clean-up crews as well as the firefighters and police who were on the scene during the actual attacks, but, come on, folks. Are we really supposed to throw our support unquestioningly behind the Libyan rebels while we question the loyalty of 9/11 responders?
The lack of support for a Democratic president is, indeed, a turnabout for the party which insisted we all support the president, back when the president was a member of their party.
But the Democrats and their supporters seem admirably consistent. Neither party loyalty nor subservience to the chief keeps them from questioning our foreign policy or any other policy.
This lack of party loyalty and ideological lock-step thnking may be why liberals have become such public punching bags. By liberals, I don't mean Garry Trudeau, who has picked on every president since he started "Doonesbury" 40 years ago. Despite the whining when he goes after a Republican, he's hardly a liberal.
And I don't mean the gang you might call "The anti-Tea Party," the purists for whom any compromise with their leftist ideology is poison, and who attack their allies for a perceived "sell out" with more fervor than they expend on their ideological enemies, whom they see as villains but at least not as traitors.
The problem comes when you seek blind party loyalty from the moderate people who consistently say they want a social safety net, that they support increasing taxes, that they want to see progressive policies enacted and who are wondering now why they aren't seeing the full-speed-ahead approach from Obama that they saw from Bush. Or at least the same fire-in-the-belly rhetoric they heard during the campaign.
We rarely talk politics at the dog park, but I got into such a conversation the other day with a fellow who said he really wanted Obama to succeed, and that he understood that, when you actually get into office, you find that there are things you can't do after all, or that you can't do right away. But he said he was disappointed in the degree to which Obama knuckles under to the opposition, the way he constantly looks for bipartisan solutions despite the clear proof that the other side isn't interested in any compromise. He's particularly unhappy that our government continues to spy on us and that Guantanamo remains open, two things he expected Obama to change immediately if not sooner.
This guy isn't a blogger or a political junkie of any kind. Just a regular guy, around 30, reasonably successful and well-educated and well-intentioned. And he's not going to run out in 2012 and vote for Donald Trump or Michele Bachmann or any of the other extremist clowns who are on the GOP horizon at the moment.
The question for Obama is, how many voters will go to the polls at all, if they have to hold their noses? I don't see will.i.am creating a viral video entitled, "Meh. He's Not As Bad As The Other Guy."
Obama has got to understand that "supporting the president" is not much stronger a point for his own partisans than it is for his opposition. "Brand loyalty" is nothing he can rely on, and he might as well step up and make a few enemies, because he'll have them in any case.
Harry Truman, the Democratic president for whom Sen. Vandenburg said that politics should end at the water's edge, probably gave the best advice for the current occupant of the White House: "If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog."
Which he did. But I'll bet my dog has more buddies at the dog park than Bo has in DC.
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