I remember when I was a little kid, going to parades on Jamestown’s main street. The highlight of the show for me was the national guard guys with all their cool gear.

I remember – as probably a six or seven year old – watching a couple of the “older” guys, probably in their late thirties and early forties, and even talking with them. I talked about my proudest possession – my dad’s old book of WWII airplanes.

I remember one of the guys, probably a senior NCO (I remember a bunch of stripes and rockers on his sleeve) smiling. “I was in that war”.

I’ve thought about that guy often over the past 35 years, as the WWII generation has gone from being Dad to Grandpa, from “the establishment” to “the greatest generation”.

And I thought about them when I read that this may be the final Pearl Harbor Survivors’ Association meeting:

The survivors in Honolulu this week, many hunched, some in wheelchairs, men deeply wrinkled yet still trying to trade a history lesson for a quick kiss on the cheek, collectively know one thing: They defied death 65 years ago, but the inevitable is creeping up on them. They know this from the pain in their backs and hips. They know this as their eyesight fades and their hearing fails. And they know this because every five years, when they return to Pearl Harbor and find that their old buddies are not there, it’s a reminder that their friends either couldn’t endure the arduous Hawaii flight or died within the last few years.

“At our little happy hours each night you see the guys sitting alone who don’t have any old shipmates to speak with because they’ve all died,” said Debbie Marks, 35, who became involved in the survivors association because of her late grandfather. “I just spend the night walking around trying to get the ones who are alone to start talking to each other instead.”

This one killed me:

Donald Robinett came directly to the sign-in area for Pearl Harbor survivors when he arrived here this week.

“I am trying to find my shipmates,” the 89-year-old veteran announced excitedly. “I want to see which ones are here.”

A volunteer at the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association, one of the groups organizing a massive reunion to mark the 65th anniversary of the Japanese attack on U.S. forces here, began flipping through a log book until she came to Robinett’s ship, the USS Tracy, a small mine-laying vessel that had been in port that infamous day. “Sir,” she said sadly, patting the old sailor on his shoulder, “you’re the only one here.”

There’s nothing I could possibly write here that wouldn’t sound stupid.

Have you never noticed that when hispanics, blacks or asians cross party lines and vote Republican – as they have in the last few elections in numbers that would have astounded people ten or fifteen years ago – nary a word from the media?

But let a couple of evangelical ministers break with the GOP, and suddenly, if you’re EJ Dionne, it’s a trend?

When Rick Warren, one of the nation’s most popular evangelical pastors, faced down right-wing pressure and invited Sen. Barack Obama to speak at a gathering at his Saddleback Valley Community Church about the AIDS crisis, he sent a signal: A significant group of theologically conservative Christians no longer wants to be treated as a cog in the Republican political machine.

Rick Warren is famous for his book The Purpose-Driven Life. He’s famous for donating a lot of money to AIDS research. He’s not famous as an especially conservative evangelical.

But EJ Dionne either doesn’t know that (do they all look the same to him?) or assumes his audience doesn’t.

Another fact; while the left is hopping up and down like monkeys flinging poo because some evangelicals flaked away from the GOP this past election, the numbers are a tad more sobering than that. In 2004, 22% of evanglicals voted Democrat. Last month? 30%.

And they’ve been fickle before. In 2000, when the issues on the table didn’t especially excite evangelicals, they stayed home in droves; some pollsters estimated that Bush would have won the popular vote as well as the electoral college had evangelicals turned out in the same force they had in ’94, ’02 and ’04.

Finally – ’08 is another whole campaign. And the Democrat party at its highest level – once you get past the blandishments of Barack Obama, who is not exactly the favorite candidate of the Democrat inner circle – is intrinsically hostile to evangelical beliefs. They may run hot and cold on the GOP itself, but the fact that evangelicans have never been in the Democrat camp (not in recent memory,anyway) should tell you something; that, Rick Warren notwithstanding, Democrat evangelicals are a situational aberration, not a trend. EJ: get back to me in ’08 or ’10.
Mr. Dionne; I’ve met Mac Hammond, and Rick Warren is no Mac Hammond.

Barack Obama meets with George Soros
, hoping to tap into some of the magic the government-toppling currency speculator has brought tot he world of leftyblogs:

Senator Barack Obama treaded onto Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s home turf last night to meet with prominent Democratic donors and feel out those who might prefer the sound of President Obama to President Clinton (as in Hillary, not Bill).

Amid intensifying presidential musings by Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama met with George Soros, the liberal billionaire philanthropist, and then some other donors last night at Mr. Soros’s offices…Mr. Soros, an early supporter, was the host of a fund-raiser during Mr. Obama’s campaign for the Senate in 2004, but he has not publicly committed to any candidate for the 2008 race, said Michael Vachon, an aide to Mr. Soros.

Maybe Soros will undercut the dollar in ’08 to get a Democrat into office.

The retroactive spin in GOP circles has begun; some of the people who laid out the losing side’s strategies this past campaign have been backing and filling and trying to phumpher their way out of the realization that while the GOP got smacked on election night, conservatism fared better.

Sisyphus tries to dispel Nih[i]list in Golf Pants’ ongoing shame by poking a big hole in that theory. 

In the House, the Republicans in the more fiscally conservative half saw their margin of victory diminish by an average of 2.6 percentage points from the 2004 election. The RINO half saw their margin decline by nearly twice that, 4.9 percentage points. In the Senate the effect was even a little more pronounced with the fiscal conservative Republicans losing 5.4 and the more RINO Republicans losing 12.

He’s got tables and everything.  Read it.

I read Lori Sturdevant’s piece on Betty “Rubble” McCollum’s waxing political fortunes.  It was the sort of paeon Sturdevant always writes for DFLers who aren’t being perp-walked:

On it, a list-maker was jotting names of — what else? — potential candidates to challenge Republican Norm Coleman for his U.S. Senate seat in 2008.

It was laughably early but irresistible…At the top of the list was the name “Betty McCollum.”I don’t know if she’d leave the House,” I overheard. “But if she wants it” — meaning the DFL’s blessing for a run at Coleman — “she’s our best candidate.”

Possible.

But it was the part I replaced above with the ellipsis that caught my attention:

…I leaned in, looked and listened…

Does anyone seriously believe that Lori Sturdevant – the most reliable DFL flak among the Strib’s columnists – had to “lean in” like some sort of spy to get the story?

Deroy Murdock on Giuliani’s shot at winning the GOP base in time for the ’98 race:

Surveys consistently demonstrate that Giuliani, not Arizona Senator John McCain, is this race’s frontrunner. It’s not even close…Among likely Republican voters polled in Michigan, McCain beat Giuliani 33 percent to 25. Rudy romped elsewhere in Strategic Vision’s November 6 survey. Giuliani outran McCain by nine points in Georgia (33 percent to 24); 19 in Florida (46 percent to 27) and Washington State (42 percent to 23); 22 in New Jersey (47 percent to 25); and 23 points in Pennsylvania (47 percent to 24). Governor Mitt Romney (R., Mass.) scored, at best, a distant third in these states…Some argue that Giuliani’s prominence in this and other polls merely reflects his high name ID. But this notion shatters beside McCain and both Clintons — three household names.

Most conservatives have their troubles with Giuliani. I do.

But they’re solveable problems – to me, anyway.

Question for conservatives; given that Rudy seems to have immense legs and that he’s right on so many conservative issues (while being dead-wrong on a few), what would it take for Rudy to make nice enough for you to vote for him in a primary?

And if he was the one that got out of the convention with the nomination, would you vote for him?

The Strib Editorial board yesterday cried crocodile tears about the tone of this state and nation’s political debate, in the form of a paeon to the healing power of Thanksgiving. The piece starts out well, as far as it goes:

The platters circled and tensions rose until some word or gesture or foregone rejoinder — invisible even afterward! — made possible a turning point, and it all turned out all right.

Remember what Tolstoy said about happy families being all alike? We might suggest that picture-book Thanksgivings are all the same, while each stress-tested celebration that ends well is a triumph of unique circumstances, proving anew the wide possibilities of peacemaking.

Indeed – what a wonderful sentiment!

And then it makes a turn that makes one wonder – Did the Strib farm this editorial out to one of their regular writers’ wives? Or does the Strib really believe this stuff?

In today’s America the distinctive flavor of political life is bitterness. It is not the depth of our differences that distinguishes this era so much as the rancor of our arguments, a thoroughgoing disrespect for opposing ideas and the people who hold them, for the weight of facts and the worth of pluralism.

But we who fashion this page want to believe that if families and friends can heal their long-nursed hostilities with the help of roast turkey and root vegetables, then there is hope for bridging the merely political disputes among the players in our newly redivided government — and among the partisans who put them there.

We want to believe that the elections just past have created the possibility of a turning point, a chance to change not only the course of the nation but the tone of its conversations.

We want to believe that people who can shelve seething resentment for the sake of getting through a holiday meal with their families can do the same in service of healing for our country. Don’t you?

Year after difficult year, the lesson of Thanksgiving is that all of us bring our faults and imperfections, our personal burdens of blame, to the feast table. If we behave ourselves and give others the benefit of our doubts, we may just leave it with a helping of grace.

Ah.  So we can expect the Strib to take a step back and recognize that conservative Republicans believe what we do for a reason, and quit referrring to every conservative as a “divisive” “extremist”?

We can expect the Strib to report the whole story, even if telling the whole truth exonerates Republicans?

Sorry, Strib editors.  I don’t believe a word of it.

I’ve been wondering; if Rudy Giuliani made some sort of amend to the base for his anti-gun, pro-choice history, would he have a shot?

Jay Reding thinks so:

I’m quite convinced that the CW on Giuliani is wrong. He can win in the primaries by focusing on his stance on illegal immigration and national defense. The American people trust Giuliani right now, despite his sometimes checkered past. He’s one of the few candidates who can reach beyond the 49-51% divide between the political parties and attract voters on both sides of the aisle. There’s a whole lot to be said for a politician in that position, and only a few are capable of pulling that off.

More later.

In the world of business, when an executive wants to get his subordinates onto the “same sheet of music” he’s on, he holds a “come to Jesus meeting”, where he/she exhorts, cajoles, bullies or otherwise convinces everyone to get with the program, whatever the program might be.

The GOP needs to do this, and desperately.

Ed and I had a bit of a Come to Reagan meeting Saturday on the NARN show. The subject – what does the GOP need to do to regain its worthiness to govern?

We, and most of the callers, agreed it came down to “first principles”. Of course, deciding what those “First Principles” are can get pretty dicey.

For example, Gay Marriage and Abortion are two issues where it’s possible not only for conservatives to disagree with liberals, but indeed with other conservatives, purely on conservative grounds. Banning either on a national basis would turn the Tenth Amendment on its head – so even as most conservatives are revolted by abortion and oppose gay marriage in and of themselves, they differ with social conservatives on government’s role in either issue. And both sides are conservatives.

As far as I’m concerned (and Ed was more or less on board with this as well), the big principles on which the GOP needs to model itself are:

• Strong defense (not just in a military sense, either; securing the border is vital)
• Limiting government – both in bread and butter terms (taxes) and higher principles (like restraining judicial activism). Constitutional Constructionism generally goes along with this.

With that understood – that the party is a big tent, but the tent is built on those two key overarching ideals – I have some questions for Republicans:

1. Assuming you’re a Republican (Democrats can abstain from this one; I gave you your own post last week, with generally dismal results), do you agree? On what principles should the GOP base itself?
2. Who, given your principles, should the GOP support for President? VP? If you’re in Minnesota, for Senate in ’06 and Governor in ’10
3. John McCain and Rudy Giuliani have both violated a number of these first principles (McCain sponsored Campaign Finance Reform, a gross inflation of government power, and chaired the Gang of 14; Giuliani is quite anti-Second-Amendment, likewise a big government power grab (and also political suicide for anyone, much less a Republican, these days). Both are “pro-choice”, which means either/both that they support abortion (a no-no among social conservatives) and they abrogate the state’s Tenth Amendment right to decide an issue that the constitution, but for the fairly ludicrously-written Roe decision, would seem to have been reserved for the states. So – if either of them made amends on these issues, given that both of them would be very strong on defense and generally useful on other conservative issues, then would you, as a conservative/Republican, support them?

I don’t have the answers – I’m thinking about it, too. But I fully intend to do whatever is in my (dubious) power to hold the party’s feet in the fire about this.

UPDATE: Thorley Winston has a new blog – OK, a blog that’s been around a bit, but Thor’s been a bit busy for much updating – and a response to this post.

OK. So now what are you going to do?

Seriously – yesterday, one of my commenters echoed what I’ve heard from more prominent Democrats; the Dems will “withdraw from Iraq with victory”.

Really?

And how do you plan on doing that?

Because I’ve heard a number of plans from Democrats…:

1. Leaving in six or twelve or whatever months flat
2. Pulling the troops back to Kuwait/Okinawa/”Afghanistan”, and, if the situation goes south, going back in and retaking the country
3. Reinstituting the draft and sending a huge draftee army forth to win the situation.
4. Negotiating with the terrorists.
5. “Fighting smarter”.

Of course, 1 and 2 have nothing to do with victory (and are only “victory” in the most cynical possible sense of the term). 3, history (assuming Democrats bother reading any) shows, is the worst possible approach to fighting a counterinsurgency war, 4 is the kind of lunacy only a Democrat could say with a straight face, and 5 (like 4) is a campaign-trail platitude that only fools the terminally dim.

But by all means, Democrats, convince me. How is it you plan to get both “withdrawal” and “victory”?

Seriously. Dad gave you the keys to the car. Impress me.

From my comment section:

Now that we have subpoena power, we have the ability to critically examine every move you guys made for the last 6 years and believe me, we’re going to do it.

Oh, please. Please please please. Go for it.

I mean it. Subpoena everyone from Karl Rove down to Learned Foot. Bog the Congress down in endless retribution for your (plural) lunatic obsessions! Try to tie every “scandal” to have oozed from your fetid imaginations to any available Republican! Turn Congress into a venue for the Stalinist show trials so many of you have been panting about for so long!
Show the nation your true colors in time for 2008!

Show this nation what the Democrats are really made of.

It’ll be the best two years we Republicans could ask for.