First of all, for the record, I think what David Letterman’s comments about Sarah Palin and her daughter was neither funny nor appropriate. Furthermore, he should be justly condemned and his sponsors boycotted. On this, I agree with a good many people here.

But what I think is silly (and sorry for the harsh word but the best word I can think of is “silly”) that somehow conservatives will gain benefit or political capital from this episode. For those who think otherwise, can someone please explain to me, How?

And seriously, would his comments have been any less tasteless if they were made against Michelle Obama and her daughters?

Hopefully, I trust the members of this forum would be as outraged if such “jokes” were made about them. Indeed, I do believe that most members of this forum would be outraged if such “jokes” were made about Michelle Obama and his daughters: despite our feelings about Michelle Obama and her husband.

(And trust me, some of the anti-Obama and anti-Michelle postings my wife would see during the campaign on “Southern heritage” conservative listservs she belonged to rivaled Letterman’s “joke” about Sarah Palin. So yes, things like that do happen from our side, too.)

The thing is, us thinking we can gain political capital from this makes even less sense than liberals who think they can gain political capital from going after Rush Limbaugh. Both are entertainers, not politicians: at least Limbaugh is considered a “political” entertainer. We will write front page stories about how silly it is for liberals to burn so many cycles going after Limbaugh but we don’t seem to recognize that it is at least as silly for us to burn so many cycles going after Letterman. Unless David Letterman himself decides to run for political office, most people couldn’t give a rat’s arse about his political leanings. They simply look at this and say that it was a tasteless comment by an entertainer. Meanwhile, Obama and the Democrats (and a few Republicans, too, but that is probably a different subject) go about their merry business destroying America’s constitution, economy and our place in the world. Some of us seem more upset Letterman’s joke than they are about that.

Yes, we need to defend “our own” but on this one, even NOW condemns Letterman’s comments. We can be putting our time and energy into better and more politically profitable endeavors.

So can we just decide to boycott David Letterman and his sponsors and get on with the business of presenting and fighting for a conservative alternative to what’s going on in this country?

A very interesting article was just put out by the Associated Press: Afghanistan Taliban leader was at Gitmo.

And yes, that is the actual title of the article. Here are the first two paragraphs of the article:

The Taliban’s new top operations officer in southern Afghanistan had been a prisoner at the Guantanamo Bay detention center, the latest example of a freed detainee who took a militant leadership role and a potential complication for the Obama administration’s efforts to close the prison. U.S. authorities handed over the detainee to the Afghan government, which in turn released him, according to Pentagon and CIA officials.

Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul, formerly Guantanamo prisoner No. 008, was among 13 Afghan prisoners released to the Afghan government in December 2007. Rasoul is now known as Mullah Abdullah Zakir, a nom de guerre that Pentagon and intelligence officials say is used by a Taliban leader who is in charge of operations against U.S. and Afghan forces in southern Afghanistan.

I know that a diary should have much more than a quote from an article but, really, I just can’t think of anything to add. The Associated Press article says it all. In fact, the title to the Associated Press article says it all.

I honestly cannot think of anything else to add.

Except … Wow!

I ran across the following essay by New Gingrich in the February 11, 2009 issue of The Washington Times. It offers a very succinct yet practical — and in my opinion, except for a lack of mention of the social issues, a very correct view — of Where Does the Conservative Movement Go from here?

His advise basically is summed up in three steps he outlines:

1. Advocate first principles with courage, clarity, persistence and cheerfulness.

2. Insist on developing solutions based on those principles and insist on measuring other proposals against those principles.

3. Be prepared to oppose Republicans when they are wrong and side with Democrats when they are right, but always make the decision to support or oppose a matter of first principles and the application of those principles.

In all, I think he is quite correct.

But what I personally find most refreshing is that Gingrich — quite correctly, in my opinion — links the current Obama Administration with the previous Bush Administration.

The Bush-Obama big government, big bureaucracy, politician-empowering, high-tax, high-inflation and high-interest-rate system continues to grow and to place the country in greater and greater danger from inflation, bureaucratic control of the economy, political interference in every aspect of our lives and massive debt.

The first job of the conservative movement is simply to tell the truth about how bad these Bush-Obama proposals are. The 2008 $180 billion stimulus program in the spring failed. The 2008 summer $345 billion housing bailout failed. The 2008 fall $700 billion Wall Street bailout failed. That was the first $1.2 trillion, and it was on former President George W. Bush’s watch, but all three passed with then Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s “yes” vote.

Now President Obama represents continuity rather than change. The new spending bill (as the president called it in his Williamsburg speech last week) is more of the Bush-Obama continuity and represents more of the same instead of “change you can believe in.”

Notice how many times Gingrich writes “Bush-Obama”?

And in all of this, I think Newt Gingrich is absolutely correct: as Michelle Malkin has said, “George W. Bush ‘pre-socialized’ America for Obama.” Furthermore, I think Newt Gingrich is right to emphasize that the fact that George W. Bush was not a conservative. “Compassionate conservatism” is just another name for “big government liberalism” and as we — conservatives as well as all Americans — should have known, “big government liberalism” fails.

And yes, in many ways, George W. Bush was a failure. A liberal and a failure (but I repeat myself). Personally, I do not think conservatism can move on until it admits that. For until conservatives do, the general American population is perfectly justified in thinking that the failures of the supposedly Bush Administration are the failures of conservatism. They are not and we conservatives should and must be bold and honest enough to say so!

Conservatism has not failed. Conservatives have failed because we (with but few exceptions) have allowed ourselves to be identified with and defined by the failed liberal policies of the Republicans!

I came across a couple of columns on the Internet that explain what happened last night. One is from Hot Air and the other is from the American Issues project.

They both say things so well that I really cannot think of much to add to them. In the interest of fair use, I cannot post them in their entirety but I STRONGLY urge everyone to follow the links and read them for themselves.

But just to wet your appetites, here are excerpts:

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We conservatives lost this election seven, six and five years ago because we did not stand up and fight for our principles when the Republican President and the then-Republican-majority Congress presided over the largest increase in the size of the Federal government since FDR’s New Deal.

We lost when we denounced opposition to the way the GWOT was being conducted as opposition as being unpatriotic. Even with all of his domestic policy heresies, if George Bush had initiated a “surge” strategy in 2005 or even sooner (interestingly enough, like John McCain wanted), I think the Republicans still would have prevailed this year. But instead, we “loyally” followed a failed strategy that allowed the Left to argue that America had lost and could not win.

We lost because nearly everytime our Republican President and our Repubican Congressmen violated a conservative principle — from “No Child Left Behind” to this Administration’s plan for the Federal government to purchase equity positions in (erstwhile) private enterprises — we conservatives were silent. Indeed, we often actively supported them.

Can we blame the American public for not believing conservatism works when for the last eight years, whenever this Administration initiated another big-government liberal — excuse me, “compassionate conservative” but I repeat myself — program doomed to failure, very few if any conservatives stood up to say that Bush’s programs were not conservative and because they were not conservative they were doomed to failure?

Can we truly blame the American public for not being afraid of Obama’s Marxism when for the last eight years we have already begun experiencing the slow drift to socialism under the guise of a “conservative” Administration (and a “conservative” Congress for the first six years of that)?

Even now, I do not think many of us can admit that Bush’s is a failed Presidency and that he was never a conservative.

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As many of you know, I have decided to sit out this election. No need to go into the details now but c17wife has written a post or two trying to convince me that this election is too important and that I should vote.

Well, she found a perhaps unlikely ally in her quest to convince me to vote this year.

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It’s not so much that I think the RedState Directors have a better knowledge than the rest of us on this issue but that they seem to be the only ones who can access the RedState servers consistently and reliably enough to make detailed and cogent arguments in support of their disparate opinions.

Besides, in fairness to all of them, they have all made very cogent and compelling arguments regarding the current credit crisis and whether or not the Federal government should bailout the market. And I say this even as I strongly disagree with some of the arguments (even some of the arguments of those whose position I ultimately agree with).

Please, how about a REDSTATE ROUNDTABLE on this and soon?

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Although you could joke that the endorsement of a Rothschild (by marriage) who lives in both London and New York is somewhat “elitist.”

Maybe that could be the new ad line: “Even the elites now prefer McCain.”

Here is the link.

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By now, everyone here probably knows that I seriously question Governor Palin’s ability to step in “on day one” and be President if necessary. Although I think she is a very intelligent person, I still don’t think she has the experience necessary.

Perhaps we can all just agree to disagree on that.

But the thing is, Senator Obama is no more qualified than Palin to be President. Yet no one in the Press is willing to question him on that.

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Literally the only thing bad about Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech was her assertion that “when the Federal government offered her the money. she said, “[T]hanks but no thanks.” Quite frankly, that is not true.

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In case you have not heard, the latest Gallup poll has McCain up by 3%!

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Everyone here knows about my concerns about Sarah Palin’s readiness to take over the “big chair” if necessary and, quite frankly, a great speech — and her acceptance speech last night was GREAT — does not change my opinion. If great speeches are the qualifications for being great Presidents and Vice Presidents, then let’s just do what the MSM wants us to do and just proclaim Obama President now.

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Here’s are excerpts of a letter from Sarah Palin to Harry Reid that I thought you may find interesting. I found it on the Townhall website. In fact, I am a little surprised someone did not post these before.

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It’s not so much the fact that John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate. For the record, I still think that was a bad choice on his part but that is not the reason I think this place is “Bizarro RedState.”

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First “we all” thought it was going to be Tim Pawlenty and it turns out it will (probably) not be him.

Then “most of us” thought it would be Mitt Romney and evidently it will (probably) not be him.

And next up was Sarah Palin but, if ABC News can be believed, she is still in Alaska and it (probably) will not be her.

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I am in the middle of a big company re-org and I cannot dedicate the time I would like to dedicate to RedState. But I do come back and post every now and then and lately, I have seen a lot of interest in McCain nominating a woman VP to (quote) “get the woman’s vote” or to “get Hillary’s disheartened supporters.” And especially has the talk turned to Sarah Palin — a Republican I personally like but who is less than a one-term governor of a state with a population of less than the neighborhood I grew up in and who is currently embroiled in a possible scandal involving her former brother-in-law.

I’m for Sarah Palin in 2016 (or possibly even 2012 if McCain fails) but definitely not now.

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