Musings from Brian J. Noggle

Steyn: On Hewitt's Side!

As if there were any doubt, Mark Steyn is firmly on Hugh Hewitt's side and doesn't recognize the danger in which the Republican party finds itself:

The notion, for example, that poor Terri Schiavo will cost Republicans votes in a year and a half's time is ludicrous.

It's not the principled stand on life that will cost the Republicans; it's the intrusion of the Federal government into a private matter, with eleventh hour legislation to move a single case to Federal court because the party in power in the Federal legislature did not like the outcome of the state courts.

No, I would have preferred to see Schiavo's husband turn her care over to her parents (hey, and I wouldn't have even condemned him for taking a million bucks for it). I'd rather Terry Schiavo continue her hopeless existence unheralded in a Florida hospice into perpetuity, in the obscurity in which most people with functioning brains toil. But if her guardian felt she would not have wanted to wither and die over the course of decades she would never know passed, then so be it; he could end the extraordinary measures continuing her life (a feeding tube is an extraordinary measure; if you doubt it, count the number you see on an ordinary day). But you know what? I and many like me recognized it's not our business. It's not clearly, obviously murder nor is it "forced starvation" it's not forced feeding.

But the party for whom I vote most of the time on a Federal level has determined that Terri Schiavo's life and death are its business. Therein lies the disparity, the cleft which shall yield a schism in the bloc that re-elected George W. Bush and has continued to send a Republican majority to Congress. It's not a culture of life versus a culture of choice, it's the culture of my business versuse the culture of "Hey, we're in power now, so maybe it is the Federal government's business since the Federal government is ours."

Call them the pro-Federal-Business wing of the Republican party. I won't call them theocrats because that's not the issue; from whatever source they derive their beliefs, I care not. I do care that they're using the mechanisms of federal government to impose them on everyone.

Supporters of the Republican Federal Steamroller (RFS, blogosphere, if you want a nifty abbreviation) chortle and ask me if I'm going to vote for John Kerry or Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2008. No, I won't.

I will vote for the stronger foreign policy candidate for president in 2008. That's the proper role of the president; to handle foreign policy.

The real danger to your Republican hegemony comes in 2006 and 2008 for the legislative branch of government. Because quite frankly, I am so disappointed with what the Republicans are doing in Congress that I will probably vote for the Libertarian candidate, however nutso and unqualified. And if the loss of my vote leads to a Democratic Congress, perhaps the Republicans can relearn their lesson and return to small government, Contract With Americaesque stylings. At least a Republican president won't give the Democrat congress everything their socialist heart desires, so we won't be much worse off than we are now.

If the worst case scenario occurs, and I help elect a Democrat congress and the Republicans cheese off voters who don't recognize the proper role of the president to elect Clinton II (The Restoration), undoubtedly Hewitt, Steyn, et al., will blame me and my None-Of-My-Business-and-Especially-None-of-the-Federal-Government's-Business brethen for the potential disasters ahead--National Health Care, National This, National That, International Law, Loss of Sovereignity, and so forth--without recognizing the role they played as cheerleaders to the Absolutely-Corrupted-By-Absolute-Power bunch we sent to Washington in 2004.

No, all damnation will be reserved for the libertarian conservatives who just wanted the Federal government to handle national things. That the Federal government wanted to dictate what a single individual would eat--PVS or not--won't cross the minds of the small-government-conservatives-until-in-power legislators and their cheerleaders.

So be it. I cannot wait until 2006 so I can cast my vote.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:25 PM