Tag Archives: Bill Greener

The Election: Looking Back, Looking Forward

BY BILL GREENER

The Democratic/liberal narrative for what is about to happen in the mid-term election next Tuesday is becoming clearer. 

 First, President Obama and the Democrats attempted not only to do good things, but to reach across the aisle and get Republican support for these wonderful ideas (stimulus package, healthcare reform, cap and trade, etc.).  Republicans, however,  refused to cooperate and. cynically, opposed everything.  Never mind that Democrats hardly proved themselves to be the models of cooperation when they were in the minority.  That would confuse the narrative.

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Sestak Saga Not Easily Dismissed

BY BILL GREENER

The White House, in one form or another, offered Joe Sestak some sort of political deal to get him to refrain from running against Arlen Specter in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania.  The first time I heard this, I thought to myself, why would this surprise or upset anyone?  Yet, the longer the story stuck around, the more I have come to conclude it is both a story and worthy of being harshly criticized.  Inasmuch as most of my adult life has been spent in politics, in the abstract, it bothers me not that politics are involved in solving a political problem.  However, what this White House has done is wrong pure and simple.  There are four big reasons I am now upset.

 President Obama promised during the course of his campaign that, if elected, everything would suddenly be different in Washington, D.C.  Politics as usual would come to a screeching halt.  Political deals would become a thing of the past.  After all, stopping the seas from rising was not the sort of thing that ever would be associated with tawdry and ordinary politics.  No matter what else can be said about the Sestak affair, it seems to me that you have to acknowledge this is, indeed, politics as usual.  That accounts for the giant yawn we see on the part of most of the media and many Americans.  When a conservative is caught engaging in behavior inconsistent with adherence to family values, we are told that is news because it not only shows hypocrisy, but because it also is contrary to the basic candidacy of the individual.  How is what Obama has done and tolerated any less hypocritical or less central to his candidacy?  Why isn’t it news that, after promising to be so very different, that Obama (and those around him) truly represent old style Chicago politics?

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Doing the Dance of the Double-Standard

BY BILL GREENER

 Something that frustrates me most as a conservative and a Republican is my inability to ever, and I mean ever, “win” an argument with a liberal.  Just when I think they are ready to cry “Uncle,” the rules always seem to change.

 Want some examples?  Go to a recent “dateline” in the Sunday Washington Post magazine.  Two young Capitol Hill staffers are put together.  Both happen to be Jewish.  They each say their faith is important to them and that they want to focus their dating among only Jews inasmuch as they have already decided whoever they eventually marry will be of their faith.  The young man also says he is a liberal so it would be difficult for him to marry a “right winger.”  As a person of faith myself, I actually very much respect them making this as important as they seemingly have.  However, I ask you what sort of reaction we might anticipate if all that changed was that the youngsters were Evangelical Christians and that the man indicated only a person of a conservative political ideology would be a candidate for marriage?  Do we think these two might be portrayed as and/or perceived to be “intolerant and close minded?”  How can it be just fine for those of one faith to be “exclusive” and wrong for another faith?

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