03 Dec 2005

Entering the Nixon Zone

,

Scott Johnson of Power-Line quotes Peter Mulherin on the political circumstances of the president’s opponents:

The Democrat Party has just entered the McGovern Zone. The nation is at war against deadly enemies and the Democrats are going into an election committed to capitulation. They are gambling everything on failure in Iraq. If, in six months, successful elections have been held in Iraq and we have begun reducing our troop levels there, only a few hardcore nutjobs will still cling to the idea that Iraq is a hopeless quagmire. That idea is all the Democrats have to offer and when it dies the Democrat Party itself will be teetering on the edge of extinction.

and recommends statesmanship:

After entering the McGovern Zone in 1972, however, the Democrats had a field day courtesy of Watergate in 1974. The recurring CIA leaks, pseudo-scandals and media hostility undermining the Bush administration are also reminiscent of the forces with which Nixon contended following his landslide reelection. Under the circumstances, it seems to me that the statesmanship of President Bush’s Naval Academy speech represents the best course for him to take and to persist in.

We disagree. In political contests, as in war, either you are on the offensive, or you are on the defensive. If President Bush is going to avoid repeating the history of Nixon’s second term, if he is going to avoid being reduced to impotence, and possibly even destroyed, by an endless series of leaks, opportunistic charges, and trumped-up prosecutions, fanned by the opposition media sooner or later successfully into a major scandal, what he needs to do is to pursue not the way of the statesman, but –as we previously suggested– the Chicago Way. What he needs to do is to take to heart the advice provided by Sean Connery’s Jim Malone to Kevin Costner’s Elliot Ness in Brian de Palma’s The Untouchables (1987):

Connery: lf you open the ball on these people, you must be prepared to go all the way. Because they won’t give up the fight until one of you is dead.

Costner: l want to get Capone. l don’t know how.

Connery: Here’s how you get Capone: he pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to hospital, you send one of his to the morgue! That’s the Chicago way! And that’s how you get Capone. Now, do you want to do that? Are you ready to do that?

The way to avoid being destroyed by leaks and pseudo-scandals in endless succession is to prosecute the leakers, to identify the organized campaign against the administration by disaffected active and retired government employees as the scandal and criminal conspiracy it is, to fight it in the public debate arena, and to identify laws which have been broken and prosecute the guilty parties.

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15 Feedbacks on "Entering the Nixon Zone"

Thaddeus Stevens

If you want Bush to be Nixon, your advice is right on. And it will end the same way: with a coalition of American patriots–mainstream Republicans, Democrats, and the public–ending the cancer on the Presidency by demanding impeachment. But by all means, start up your enemies list and attack the public servants who reject Bush’s crony dominated government and its failed war. After all, 30% approval ratings really are too high.



Jim,MtnView,CA,USA

Disagree with young Thad above: the war is going well and that will become obvious to even stupid people within 6 months. And take the Flame kerfuffle as an example, the way is clear to investigate and prosecute leaks. No one will stand behind reporters (who elected them? why should they have rights the rest of us don’t have?)
Not fighting back hurt this President and destroyed Arnold.



Joe Macklin

“Many advocating an artificial timetable for withdrawing our troops are sincere…”

This is an affront to one’s sensibilities. We are either in a war for survival or not. 9/11 tells us we are. Islamofacist terrorists are the enemy or they or not. Our own eyes tell us they are.

Well the Rosenburgs were sincere. Alger Hiss was sincere. Aldrich Ames too. Tokyo Rose, Axis Sally, and Hanoi Jane were sincere.

For years the cynics have been sincerely braying; “..wrong war, wrong place, wrong time.”

Okay. Where is the right war, the right place, and when is the right time? The question is rhetorical of course. For the cynics there is no such war, no such place, and no such time. And this is meant sincerely. The arguments of the spoiled children of the 60s who now dominate the Democratic Party are just reminders of the guilt ridden attempts to be perceived as worldly that they effused so many years ago as radicalized, unwashed university sophomores.

That Bush patronizes them as sincere borders on cynicism itself. And therein lies the problem. Bush is no cynic. He has the beliefs of a Commander In Chief. He is a believer in conservative principals. He is single-minded in purpose. But he has the leadership skills of a Bank Branch Manager. He has demonstrated little if any propensity for being able to bend others to his will. He is Rodney Kingesque in his desire to “Can’t we all get along?”

The cynics have demonstrated since the 60s that we cannot get along. This is not your grandfather’s Democratic Party. Our founders gave us an adversary political system for a reason. We do not have to get along with them. We have a war to win. Sincerely.



Robin Waldvogel

Thaddeus Stevens….Impeachment??? Now that is funny, I think I detect BDS.
If you have enemies, make a list.
If publc servants choose to break the law, prosecute them.
Sitting back and according high motives to your enemies is certain disaster.
After all, there are plenty of little Thads on the left. Engage and defeat their naive rhetoric.



glenn c smith

It is tiresome to read the MSM and their attempts to stiffle all that is good about our progress in Iraq. The President should stop being nice to the Left and pound them down in speech after speech. Hit them where it hurts. The Left will not ever give the President an inch of credit but they will give him a mile of grief over the slightest misgiving. Get down to business in Iraq and mop-up this group of criminals/terrorists in Iraq, Syria, Iran and Afghansitan. We will never have a Jeffersonian Democracy in Iraq. We should pull out in 2006 after the new elections are certified and Saddam is put to death.



Scott

Well, George Bush is a Texan. And in Texas, we have an attitude. We do everything big. When we win, we win big. And when we lose, we lose spectacularly.

We remember the Alamo. That was a spectacular loss, a military defeat of epic proportions. And Texas took that loss and turned it into a tourist destination that generates millions of dollars a year. That’s what I’m talking about.

George Bush may appear to be losing now, but that’s when Texans win the biggest. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to see him parlay his recent drop in the polls into an electoral landslide that buries the Democrats for a generation. Forget Chicago, that’s the Texas way.

We play to win. We certainly don’t sit on the beach, sucking our thumbs and reminiscing about a fraudulent victory 30 years ago, like some clown in California.

Losing inspires winners and defeats losers. That is what separates the two. George Bush is a winner. The Democrats are defeatists to begin with, so by definition they are losers.



Neuro-conservative

Always give your best
Never get discouraged
Never be petty
Always remember:

Others may hate you
But those who hate you
Don’t win
Unless you hate them
And then
You destroy yourself



PierreM

Exactly. And why not also go after the new media organizations (AP, Reuters, CBS) who are hiring terrorists in Iraq as ‘journalists’.

Giving money to terrorists is a crime: follow the cash back up the corporate ladder to the news execs and start some indictments and impounding corporate accounts and see how fast the you-know-what hits the fan in the newsroom.



Thaddeus Stevens

“We remember the Alamo. That was a spectacular loss, a military defeat of epic proportions. And Texas took that loss and turned it into a tourist destination that generates millions of dollars a year. That’s what I’m talking about.”

So after we lose the war for global hegemony with the Chinese because of our idiot Texan leader, the U.S. can be a theme park? Now you’re really thinking.



Don

Politics is War that destroys people and institutions. Dems have never played nice like those nice House Republicans prior to the Gingrich crowd.

No quarter is expected and believe me none shall be given.



Don

And the Dems are fighting for their lives. Presidency gone, Legislative Branch gone, Judiciary is teetering with the Assasin Alito inches from the court. Dems will filibuster and the bomb will be dropped on the Dems clearing the way for total overwhelming of the federal judiciary by conservatives. Then we will pillage and destroy all we know of the liberal Democratic party. Ahhhh.



Vet2222

Perhaps Thad could explain somethings I just don’t understand.

Why are leaks about CIA desk jockey’s investigated while leaks about on going CIA operations are not?

Also, how does a second rate ambassador/clown get hired by the CIA to go to africa and not sign a confidentiality agreement?

By the way. when we have the war you mentioned with China, in the moments before I am incinerated, I will curse Bill Clinton for giving them the technology. Oh, that wasn’t investigated either.



Scott

Texas did not lose the war with Santa Anna. We took the loss at the Alamo as motivation to victory at San Jacinto. And out of the loss at the Alamo we created a monument to heroism and self-sacrifice that serves as an inspiration to people from all over the world. And we make good money from it.

This is obvious to even the most simple-minded.



JDZ

The management is happy to see an all-time record (in our one month of existence) set for debate in the comments section of a single post. And I’m also glad to see that the newly-installed anti-spam filter seems to be causing no problems in posting, and actually so far seems to succeed in keeping Cialis prescription offers out of here.



Tom

When I worked in Egypt, the thing that struck me was how well guarded the TV and Radio Stations were, both the content and physical structures. The reason for this is Mubarak knew that the first strike against his presidency would come when insurgents would take control of them and declare a coup. He knew this because that’s what happened to his predecessor.

As long as the MSM is liberal, the coup will continue here. Since it is unlikely that the MSM can be dislodged of its liberal bias, the only option is to change what constitutes main stream media. With falling numbers of newspaper circulation and TV viewership, it seems that the process has started. The liberals are starting to sense this and are, for the moment, pooh-poohing the blogsphere. In time, they will start to take it more seriously. This is happening to a degree with the introduction of legislative efforts to curb its growth. In the end, it has to fail. For the first time in the history, Americans truly have free speech without the cumbersome startup costs and legal requirements of starting a TV station or printing press. It is good to see that this site and ones like it are slowly taking back the public consciousness and opening up the debate.



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