Allen's Base Longs for a Webb Win

Face it, while conservatism may sound nice in theory, in all practical terms it has fully failed America.  In Iraq, New Orleans, and Washington, the Bush Administration and hapless lackeys like George Allen have put the political, economic, moral, and military future of the great American nation in dire jeopardy.

Now, deep in the third quarter of The Year of Republican Malaise, conservative voices like the Washington Monthly, and conservative stalwarts  Christopher Buckley, Bruce Bartlett, Joe Scarborough, William A. Niskanen, Bruce Fein, Jeffrey Hart, Richard A. Viguerie are all calling for a Democratic takeover in the House and Senate.

When even your most ardent supporters start suggesting you should pack it in, maybe it's time to listen...

Choice quotes below the fold:
Time For Us To Go, Atlantic Monthly:

With Republicans controlling Congress and the White House, conservatives these days ought to be happy, but most aren+óGé¼Gäót. They see expanding government, runaway spending, Middle East entanglements, and government corruption, and they wonder why, exactly, the country should be grateful for Republican dominance. Some accuse Bush and the Republicans today of not being true conservatives. Others see a grab bag of stated policies and wonder how they cohere. Everyone thinks some thing's got to change.

Let's quit while we're behind By Christopher Buckley

Who knew, in 2000, that +óGé¼+ôcompassionate conservatism+óGé¼-¥ meant bigger government, unrestricted government spending, government intrusion in personal matters, government ineptitude, and cronyism in disaster relief? Who knew, in 2000, that the only bill the president would veto, six years later, would be one on funding stem-cell research?

A more accurate term for Mr. Bush+óGé¼Gäós political philosophy might be incontinent conservatism.

Bring on Pelosi By Bruce Bartlett

As a conservative who+óGé¼Gäós interested in the long-term health of both my country and the Republican Party, I have a suggestion for the GOP in 2006: lose.

And we thought Clinton had no self-control By Joe Scarborough

After six years of Republican recklessness at home and abroad, I seriously doubt Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid or the aforementioned Bourbon Street hookers could spend this country any deeper into debt than my Republican Party. With any luck, Democrats will launch destructive investigations, a new era of bad feelings will break out, and George W. Bush will stop using his veto pen to fill in Rangers+óGé¼Gäó box scores and instead start using it like a conservative president should.

Give divided government a chance By William A. Niskanen

American voters, in their unarticulated collective wisdom, seem to grasp the benefits of divided government, and that+óGé¼Gäós how they+óGé¼Gäóve voted for most of the past 50 years. To be sure, divided government is not the stuff of which political legends are made, but, in real life, most of us would take good legislation over good legends. As a life-long Republican and occasional federal official, I must acknowledge a hard truth: I don+óGé¼Gäót much care how a divided government is next realized. And, in 2006, there+óGé¼Gäós only one way that+óGé¼Gäós going to happen.

Restrain this White House By Bruce Fein

The most conservative principle of the Founding Fathers was distrust of unchecked power. Centuries of experience substantiated that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Men are not angels. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition to avert abuses or tyranny. The Constitution embraced a separation of powers to keep the legislative, executive, and judicial branches in equilibrium. As Edward Gibbon wrote in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: +óGé¼+ôThe principles of a free constitution are irrevocably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive.+óGé¼-¥

But a Republican Congress has done nothing to thwart President George W. Bush+óGé¼Gäós alarming usurpations of legislative prerogatives. Instead, it has largely functioned as an echo chamber of the White House.

Id+â-¬ologie has taken over
By Jeffrey Hart

William F. Buckley once summed up Burke+óGé¼Gäós outlook when he called conservatism the +óGé¼+ôpolitics of reality.+óGé¼-¥ 

But that was then. Today, the standard-bearer of +óGé¼+ôconservatism+óGé¼-¥ in the United States is George W. Bush, a man who has taken the positions of an unshakable ideologue: on supply-side economics, on privatization, on Social Security, on the Terri Schiavo case, and, most disastrously, on Iraq. Never before has a United States president consistently adhered to beliefs so disconnected from actuality.

Bush+óGé¼Gäós party has followed him on this course. It has approved Bush+óGé¼Gäós prescription-drug plan, an incomprehensible and ruinously expensive piece of legislation. It has steadfastly backed the war in Iraq, even though the notion of nation-building was once anathema to the GOP. And it has helped run up federal indebtedness to unprecedented heights, leaving China to finance the debt.

The show must not go on By Richard A. Viguerie

With their record over the past few years, the Big Government Republicans in Washington do not merit the support of conservatives. They have busted the federal budget for generations to come with the prescription-drug benefit and the creation and expansion of other programs. They have brought forth a limitless flow of pork for the sole, immoral purpose of holding onto office. They have expanded government regulation into every aspect of our lives and refused to deal seriously with mounting domestic problems such as illegal immigration. They have spent more time seeking the favors of K Street lobbyists than listening to the conservatives who brought them to power. And they have sunk us into the very sort of nation-building war that candidate George W. Bush promised to avoid, while ignoring rising threats such as communist China and the oil-rich +óGé¼+ônew Castro,+óGé¼-¥ Hugo Chavez.

Conservatives are as angry as I have seen them in my nearly five decades in politics. Right now, I would guess that 40 percent of conservatives are ambivalent about the November election or want the Republicans to lose.

There's no more independent voice, no one better suited to check the power of the Presidency than Jim Webb. Let's not let these fine commentators down.  It's time to put the House and Senate in the hands of Democrats.  It's time to hold the unchecked power of this imperium Administration accountable.

Hattip to antibush. 

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