RWN Q&A Friday

John Hawkins of Right Wing News received the following question on Q&A Friday last week:

Will The Democrats And Republicans Ever Put Partisanship Away?

I felt the need to answer the question in the comments there, and then to repost it here...as to why this is my first post in four months, suffice it to say our computer died and has now (finally) been replaced. Further, there are no holidays or parties in the immediate future for me to use as and excuse to shun the computer...it helps that there are no more football games that I will be forced to watch as the Bears' and Broncos' seasons are now at an end...sniff. There's always next year [hopefully]!


Will The Democrats And Republicans Ever Put Partisanship Away?

No. Never. We think and make decisions in completely different ways and can either compliment each other when working on the same team, or be the most bitter adversaries (like now) when we see things in fundamentally different ways.

For example, I can't understand the Democrat's point of view on Iraq. I don't see how leaving Iraq will reduce the violence. I don't see how our "strategic withdrawal from Somalia" prevented or helped solve anything! After all, our failure to respond to the Khobar Tower bombing, the attack on the USS Cole, and WT1 bombing all happened prior to 9/11. Withdrawals and limited responses have led to the escalation of our enemies' attacks in scope and destruction. It seems obvious retreating and appeasing only emboldens terrorists. Coincidentally (or not), it didn't work with the brutal dictator-to-be Hitler when he was being courted by Neville Chamberlain. I know I'm not a history scholar, but it seems there is a pretty clear pattern when dealing with power hungry men and cultures and religions...What am I missing?

At the very least, Republicans/Conservatives and Democrats/Liberals have completely different world views and different ways of coming at the same issue. Republicans tend to be logical (even to a fault) whereas liberals go with their gut and how they feel about an issue. Whoopi Goldberg said it straight out on the O'Reilly Factor the other night:

O'REILLY: And I respect that point of view. But if you're going to go out and say to millions of people we got to get out of there now, then, I'm going come in and say, "Well, what happens if we do that? Do we put America in more danger?" And it doesn't matter how you feel, you need to — you need to think about that.

GOLDBERG: If you are asking my opinion...

O'REILLY: Yes.

GOLDBERG: Then it does matter how I feel.

O'REILLY: No, you need to think about it.

GOLDBERG: No, Bill. You need to think about it. That's how you do it. I don't do it that way.

O'REILLY: So you don't have a responsibility to back up how you feel?

GOLDBERG: No. I have a responsibility to answer your question.

The full transcript is here so you can see the whole thing in context. She bases her opinion on how she feels. Forming your opinion based solely upon how you feel is a sure fire way to create some serious and deadly unintended consequences (like pulling out of Vietnam and cutting off funding to our allies we left behind).

I "feel" McCain thinks more like the typical Democrat than the typical Republican. I can't for the life of me understand his bench-mark proposal. It gives our enemies - the enemies of Democracy and civilization; our time-line so they can coordinate their attacks to do the most damage and and make the largest impact. They only need to look at the Tet Offensive for a historical example of American winning a battle, losing the war. All our enemies have to do is plan a major attack or series of attacks during our planned withdrawal to steal a victory. Al Qaida's propaganda machine and their helpers in our own media will be sure to show the grisly scenes as they unfold as our troops retreat having not accomplished our stated goal...the portrayal of a complete rout will be insured with opportunistic al Jazeera capturing the mass celebrations of our enemies and the casual murder of our allies. Don't worry, though, we won't see the mass cleansing of the Sunni...that kind of t.v. might lead to liberal guilt and people regretting the decision to abandon a cause because it was too hard.

When examining the Democratic position on Iraq and the WoT in general, I have to believe that they are a) naive; b) pursuing policy for personal gain or power with no regard to consequences; c)generally un(mis)informed; or d) evil and simply want America fail in general. I would like to believe it's mostly a combination of 'a' and 'c' considering the average attention span of the American public and general lack of understanding and general knowledge of world events, but that is not the excuse of those in power in the Democrat party. They have access to all of the information available and have an obligation to know and understand the situation. Therefore, they should be coming to the conclusion: Jihadists want us to die. Just ask any Israeli what they face on a day to day basis...Islamic schools teach and preach to hate and blame the Israeli's and they preach to hate and blame Americans. It doesn't matter whether you sympathize with them or if you actively hate them. They want you dead either way. They hate our hedonism and our decadence- what we call being free...