Owning slaves, exploiting weaker people, bullying others so that oil prices decrease, taking a loan from the future generation, and things like that, suek.

You’d be surprised by how many Americans love those goals and ideals.

What ideal? what goal?

This will be difficult to do when Senator McCain is so firmly against drilling in ANWR (why?) and off the continental shelf (To woo Florida voters… really?)

And Thomas is absolutely correct: It will not be enough, not this year, to simply be anti-liberal.

Senator McCain seems to be incapable or unwilling to effectively defend himself in the media. For the life of me I can’t understand it. He’s been phenomenally ineffective.

When The Surge was just a gleam in the eye of a few military/political thinkers, he adopted it and advocated for it, going to so far as to get President Bush on board. Without McCain, there would be no surge. If Senator McCain can’t make that point, all of his surrogates and all of the Republicans in the House and Senate could. Yet they aren’t, not really.

If this is the kind of ineffective campaigning we’re going to see through the remainder of this year, it truly is going to be a defeat of epic proportions.

If something doesn’t come along and change the equation, I think the Democrats are going to win the Presidency AND Congress. I think the Republicans are too complacent going into this election and I think they are about as articulate as a tongue-tied platypus.

I think Newt Gingrich is onto something with his petition drive for drilling offshore and in ANWAR. If the Republicans are smart, they won’t just be anti-liberal. That’s just a recipe for a slaughter come November.

The country wants to move in a new direction, and I don’t see why the core ethics that created America won’t resonate in the 21st century. You take those ethics as a guiding compass and you boldly pronounce where you want this country to go.

But to do that, Republicans have to shed themselves of this anti-Everything-Obama-Gore-Pelosi says. They may, indeed, by silly people with trite sophomoric solutions, but they are presenting the American people with an ideal, a goal, however suicidal it may be.

What directions do the Republicans want us to go? What are their ideals? National security, border control and money are important things, but what are the governing ethics guiding these decisions?

The Democrats are clear in their goal of “Unity”, “Hope” and “Peace”… all of which resonate with a large sector of the American people, even though they are not substantive and are full of smoke and mirrors.

Is it too late for the Republicans to offer this response to demands for “Peace”:

Gentlemen may cry, Peace, peace! But there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

-Patrick Henry

This is the so-called “Old America” that Peggy Noonan wrote about today. Why is it “Old”? I wonder. I haven’t seen such ideas spoken aloud in my lifetime, and so, in that sense, it would be very new to me.