I’m still reading through Sean Hannity’s Conservative Victory: Defeating Obama’s Radical Agenda. And one thing is clear: I think I’ve got Hannity’s plan for “defeating Obama’s radical agenda” all figured out.
It goes like this: The only way to defeat Obama’s radical agenda is, wait for it, to defeat Obama’s radical agenda.
Seriously folks, that’s about the extent of Hannity’s plan.
Oh. And Ronald Reagan was like a clone of all the Founding Fathers, with all the bad genes stripped out. You know the ones: Ben Franklin’s propensity to be a man whore, Thomas Jefferson’s desire to bed down with the help, and George Washington’s love of kind bud.
Actually, Hannity does outline a bit of a plan in Chapter 10, and it involves worshiping the U.S. military and bowing down before the flag (heck, even as a lapsed Baptist that makes me shudder), plus building border fences, banning gay marriage, ending affirmative action, drilling Sarah Palin. OK, I joke about that last one. That’s at the top of my personal platform.
Now, I don’t know if I would call those plans necessarily. They’re more or less a reiteration of the status quo GOP platform. There’s nothing new here, but that’s to be expected from Hannity. He’s still living like it’s the summer of 1984, and the U.S. is cleaning house at the Olympics because the Soviets didn’t bother to show up. Good times.
And that’s a shame. The Republican Party lost it’s way during the Bush II years, and it’s not quite sure how to get it back. Hannity’s book was supposed to accomplish that.
In fact, it does just the opposite by shitting on the one thing that looks to define the future of the GOP, the one thing that will return the GOP to its fiscally conservative modern-day roots, and that’s the Tea Party.
Yes, I realize I brought up this point the other day in a post, but it’s worth repeating. Sean Hannity has nothing but disdain for the Tea Party’s true goal, to vote all the bums out. See, Hannity wants to keep those bums in power. (Well, except for Ron Paul. Hannity and the rest of the GOP establishment would prefer if it Paul just went back to his home in Texas and stayed the hell out of D.C.)
Here’s a snippet on what Hannity calls the “Third Party,” which we all know is the Tea Party:
Though Obama — helped along by his liberal media — has craftily concealed some of the inevitable pain his legislation will bring, the American people have started catching on, in numbers far larger than even the impressive Tea Party protests would indicate. And they’ve begun actively opposing his agenda.
But opposition alone — without direction and without organization — could end up playing into Obama’s hands. If we’re not careful, our grassroots energy could be channeled in ways that could ultimately benefit Obama’s cause.
Take, for example, the talk of starting the third party.
It’s an understandable impulse: Conservative Americans have been frustrated for years by the Republican establishment’s inability to get the country — and Washington — moving in the right direction.
But if all this anger should result in the formation of a third party, the conservative vote could splinter so badly that the White House ends up being delivered back to Obama, however unpopular he has become and however clearly his policies have failed. Yes, the leadership of the Republican Party has often been disappointing — spending too much when out of power, and failing to oppose Democrats effectively when out of power. But we all agree that Republican leadership is vastly superior to the disastrous Democratic policies of we’ve seen in just this first year of Obama’s presidency. The differences between the parties are differences in kind, not just degree. And, while the GOP needs to improve its performance, we cannot lose sight of our first priority — to direct the party back to its conservative roots.
Hmm. Back to its conservative roots, eh. Funny, I don’t think if we elect all the Republican incumbents and establishment GOP candidates we’ll be giving the Republicans any incentive to return to the conservative roots they abandoned. Nope. They’ll just keep on carrying on the way they have for eight-plus years now.
If that’s sounds like a good idea to you, go for it. Obama win again 2012. (We all know the Dems are going to be marginally spanked in 2010.)
If that sounds like a bad idea to you, then Obama wins again in 2012 … but the Republican Party will return very soon after, stronger and more conservative than ever, with the ideas of Ron Paul and the Tea Party leading the way.
And that’s a good thing.
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