James Joyner Challenges the Right - Start Thinking!

Cop pulls over a guy with a McCain/Palin bumper sticker on the Dan Ryan Expressway in Chicago. The Cop walks up to the McCainiac's window, 'Got any I.D.?'

The slack jawed patriot replies, ''Bou Wha'?'

Looky here, Rubes -A War Hero was beaten by a Community Activist - think about it. A man with a resume featuring decades of distinguished service to his country was beaten by a first-term, back bencher whose Illinois Senate record was distinguished by votes of 'Present' - think about it. A grassroots army of unemployed and unemployable voter registration clipboard artists, wiped out the broad GOP coalition of cultural conservatives - think about it.

The conservative movement so vital in the late 1980's quit thinking when Old Dutch took the oath of office. Democrats became Liberals and Republicans became real Americans.

The Democratic Party is thick with patriots and thinkers. The GOP is thick with Air-waves loudmouths and snotty snipers.

James Joyner is calling on conservatives -not GOP swan-singers, or Democrats to think.

Part of the reason I’m drawn to the center-left blogs, including those cited above, Kevin Drum, Steve Benen, and others despite disagreeing with them while finding it increasingly difficult to find center-right blogs worth my time is that the former are much more likely to get beyond the debates of the 1980 election. There’s almost no serious analysis of health care reform, urban planning, education, and many other issues that regularly crop up on the best lefty blogs on their conservative counterparts. If we read about those issues at all, they’re framed as if Ronald Reagan were still aspiring to high office: Say No to socialism! Abolish the Department of Education! Government IS the problem!

While traditionalist grand theory is still valuable and worth discussion, it doesn’t work as a blanket response to micro-level issues. And defining conservatism solely by “What would Reagan do?” is a political non-starter in a world that simply looks much different than in did twenty-eight years ago. It would be as if Reagan constantly droned on about the evils of Harry Truman. Time marches on. Debates must, too, in order to be interesting.

So, where are the right-of-center counterparts to Yglesias, Klein, and company? Perhaps the ever-moving James Poulus (now with a mixed bag of co-bloggers)? Pejman Yousefzadeh, perhaps, but his writings are not handily consolidated. All the others who come to mind are my age or older.

Good thinking, Mr. Joyner. Get to thinking.

John McCain: 20% of the 19thWard and McCain Wins the White House and America Benefits

Many, if not most, of my neighbors in the Morgan Park Neighborhood of the powerful Democratic 19th Ward would describe themselves or be described as Reagan Democrats:

Reagan Democrat is an American political term used by political analysts to denote traditionally Democratic voters, especially white working-class Northerners, who defected from their party to support Republican President Ronald Reagan in both the 1980 and 1984 elections. It is also used to refer to the smaller but still substantial number of Democrats who voted for George H. W. Bush in the 1988 election. The term can also be used to describe moderate Democrats who are more conservative than liberal on certain issues like national security and immigration.

The work of Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg is a classic study of Reagan Democrats. Greenberg analyzed white ethnic voters (largely unionized auto workers) in Macomb County, Michigan, just north of Detroit. The county voted 63 percent for John F. Kennedy in 1960, but 66 percent for Reagan in 1984. He concluded that "Reagan Democrats" no longer saw Democrats as champions of their middle-class aspirations, but instead saw them as working primarily for the benefit of others: the very poor, the unemployed, African Americans, and other political pressure groups. In addition, Reagan Democrats enjoyed gains during the period of economic prosperity that coincided with the Reagan administration following the "malaise" of the Carter administration. They also supported Reagan's strong stance on national security and opposed the 1980s Democratic Party on such issues as pornography, crime, and taxes.

Wikpedia

FULL DISCLOSURE: THE AUTHOR IS NOT AN OFFICAL OF THE 19TH WARD REGULAR DEMOCRATIC PARTY - HE IS DEMOCRAT OF THE 19TH WARD, BUT IN NO WAY SPEAKS TO OR FOR THE 19TH WARD ORGANIZATION.( Well I speak to members of the organization you know,'Hi, Guys!' Hey, Hickey - howsitgoing? Still having the night terrors about the possums in your garage? 'No, thanks for asking though. You guys have been great. Mrs. Bolger now says that the trains keep the noise of my screams down.')


John McCain could very well take 20% or more of the 19th Ward in the November 2008 Presidential Election. This same 19th Ward was a powerful force in getting Senator Barck Obama elected to the United States Senate. We know and like Senator Obama. I will not vote for Senator Obama, because John McCain is and will be much more effective as President. Barack Obama has left the effective political associations far behind him and is closer in world view to Prof. Billy Ayers than he would be to Det.Billy Higgins,CPD (ret.). That is a huge problem for Obama.

McCain will get many Democrats to vote for him over Senator Barack Obama, because John McCain is more like them.

Senator Barack Obama is impressive, but audaciously flawed in his judgment. Senator Barack Obama chose Pastor Wright and identified the insulated and well-heeled domestic terrorist Billy Ayers in his step up into Progressive Democratic Politics.

Obama eschewed the political gradus of Latino,black and white ethnic Democratic politicians and public servants. Regular Democratic elected officials rarely, if ever, get much notice in the media, because like most of us they are too busy being good at their jobs to hold press conferences or shill for Senate seats on MSNBC. They are, like their neighbors, working stiffs. The Media likes glitzy and edgy - posed photos and puff piece journalism.

Obama was born to the political purple and has the exotic resume to go along with the launch of his national political thrill ride. Obama worked closely with very smart and effective Democratic public servants in the Illinois House and later the Illinois Senate, but when he needed to move on to the national scene - those associations melted away - except on Election Days. Obama no longer cared much for neighbors who vote.

Rather, Senator Obama nested with the Progressive Democrats - the people whom the media plump up as 'really effective,' but who, in reality, couldn't get passes to the slides at Kennedy Park for a constituent - or rather couldn't be bothered: Jan Schakowsky, Toni Preckwinckle, Joe Moore, and Mike Quigley leap to mind. These elected officials run by dint of labelling because their constituents tend to be more transient than neighborhood dwellers, while real public servants return to office again and again because they deliver services and representation to people who remember them and vote accordingly. Progressive Democrats depend upon erased memory or at least very, very short-term memory.
The Progressive Democrat generally make jackasses of themselves with goofy ordinances, dubious associations, sometimes criminal activities and always get bailed out of their jam by their pals in the media. The Universities - usually University of Chicago ( which think-tanked Mayor Daley into his current tax-and-spend jackpot - CTA smart guys, the Blue Ribbon Police Haters & the dysfunctional and homicide ridden Chicago Public Schools)and Northwestern University the security blanket of Chicago Progressivism. Progressives worry more about the hypothetical 'rights' of a sexual predator's freedom to look at Kiddie Porn at Mount Greenwood Library, than with actually providing adequate police patrols around schools and playgrounds. Position papers concerning 'systemic racism and brutality' mean more to Progessives than supporting Beat Patrols in Chicago's neighborhoods, let alone treating Police Officers with respect.

The vast majority of Chicagoans and Americans are more like John McCain. McCain is a no-nonsense guy who genuinely loves his work. He does not suffer fools or foolishness gladly; McCain takes criticism for his failings, but absolutely no guff from artificial loudmouths. McCain is a Reagan Democrat. He is very much like my neighbors. I think that he get many of our votes. He has mine and two of my kids.

Two out of ten of us in 19th Ward - the 19th Ward all over America - should do the job and allow McCain to the big job.



Click my post title for article from News Room America about John McCain's wooing of Democratic Voters, following Rudy Clay's Magical Election Returns in Lake County, Indiana and Senator Barack Obama's open sprint to the nomination.


http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/