This morning, walking the dog, I listened to "Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me," on NPR, the news quiz/comedy show and to my surprise, they had on air a Republican United States Senator, Ben Sasse. This is NPR, after all, and when they have Republicans on it's usually to skewer them, but they were very friendly and the biggest surprise was how funny, self deprecating and all around wonderful this guy sounded.
They mentioned he had grown up in Nebraska, gone to Harvard where he was on the wrestling team, to which he added, "I didn't go to Harvard for the academics; I went there because their athletics were crappy enough that I could make the team."
They also mentioned this Republican had opposed Trump as a Republican senator. He attacked Trump for refusing to decry the Ku Klux Klan. Sounds like a good guy, right? But how can a good guy be a Republican?
So now, I was all on Google to find out more about this good Republican senator.
Reality slammed home: "One abortion is too many," the man says. He has a top rating from the NRA and he was a determined foe of Obamacare saying, "If Obamacare lives, then America, as we know it, dies." His children are home schooled. Oh, my.
His background is almost entirely academic: After Harvard, and a year at Oxford, he got his PhD at Yale, in history, became, at age 37, the president of a small Luthern College and served George W. Bush as an advisor on Homeland Security and healthcare isssues. Like so many of the most effective Right Wingers, he has spent years in bastions of liberal thought, Harvard, Yale, Oxford and he took the time to learn their positions, to dissect out the weaknesses and to learn how to attack. Patton, after all, read Rommel's textbooks on tank warfare.
The United States Senate is his first elected office, having won his seat in 2014, he's due up for re election in 2020.
This is exactly the sort of Republican who, once Trump is gone, in 2024, could ascend to the Presidency. And that is a dismal prospect.
Funny, impeccably intelligent and well educated, he is some of what Trump is (funny and good on media) but he is a conservative with deep convictions about conservative issues, like abortion, killing government involvement in healthcare, defending the rights of every child to have a gun.
Republicans are growing their own replacements right now, their Lebensborn. You remember Lebensborn, which means, "from the font" and was the name for the children who the Nazis cultivated, bringing together blonde, Aryan looking SS officers and blonde, blue eyed women to breed and produce the really Master Race.
While Republicans take their time, think, refine their responses to controversial issues, Democrats continue doing what they have done time and time before, i.e. train to lose.
We simply do not sit around a room and argue positions enough. Even Deaglan McEachern, who is a lot like Sasse in terms of education, still could not answer a straightforward question about abortion. He had his well rehearsed sentence, but he could not really expand on his position. He said there is a rhetorical risk to saying too much about abortion. He wanted to say only something most people could agree with: Women should have the right to control their own bodies. But when pressed: Well, does that men you can meet the baby on the way down the birth canal with a scalpel? he was flummoxed.
Republicans are all about expanding on positions. Just listen to Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones and you hear the product of think tanks.
Democrats are afraid of offending anyone, and everyone can hear that fear in their parsed answers. Democrats have to be willing to offend, to sound sincere and not slippery. You can say, "I am against infanticide. I am willing to permit abortion. The line between the two is where you get into fights. I might draw it earlier than Roe v Wade, but I think Justice Blackmun provided the right approach. I will say one thing: I am deeply offended by those who claim to have God's private cell phone number, who have been told by God that a two cell zygote is a fully en-souled human being and that I am an accomplice to murder if I agree to allow that zygote to be destroyed. Disagree with me. Debate me. But call me a murderer? That's where all discussion ends."
And all like that.
 |
| Ben Sasse: Trump's Replacement? |
They mentioned he had grown up in Nebraska, gone to Harvard where he was on the wrestling team, to which he added, "I didn't go to Harvard for the academics; I went there because their athletics were crappy enough that I could make the team."
They also mentioned this Republican had opposed Trump as a Republican senator. He attacked Trump for refusing to decry the Ku Klux Klan. Sounds like a good guy, right? But how can a good guy be a Republican?
 |
| Lebensborn |
So now, I was all on Google to find out more about this good Republican senator.
Reality slammed home: "One abortion is too many," the man says. He has a top rating from the NRA and he was a determined foe of Obamacare saying, "If Obamacare lives, then America, as we know it, dies." His children are home schooled. Oh, my.
His background is almost entirely academic: After Harvard, and a year at Oxford, he got his PhD at Yale, in history, became, at age 37, the president of a small Luthern College and served George W. Bush as an advisor on Homeland Security and healthcare isssues. Like so many of the most effective Right Wingers, he has spent years in bastions of liberal thought, Harvard, Yale, Oxford and he took the time to learn their positions, to dissect out the weaknesses and to learn how to attack. Patton, after all, read Rommel's textbooks on tank warfare.
The United States Senate is his first elected office, having won his seat in 2014, he's due up for re election in 2020.
This is exactly the sort of Republican who, once Trump is gone, in 2024, could ascend to the Presidency. And that is a dismal prospect.
Funny, impeccably intelligent and well educated, he is some of what Trump is (funny and good on media) but he is a conservative with deep convictions about conservative issues, like abortion, killing government involvement in healthcare, defending the rights of every child to have a gun.
Republicans are growing their own replacements right now, their Lebensborn. You remember Lebensborn, which means, "from the font" and was the name for the children who the Nazis cultivated, bringing together blonde, Aryan looking SS officers and blonde, blue eyed women to breed and produce the really Master Race.
While Republicans take their time, think, refine their responses to controversial issues, Democrats continue doing what they have done time and time before, i.e. train to lose.
 |
| Lots of Blue Eyed Blonde Master Race |
We simply do not sit around a room and argue positions enough. Even Deaglan McEachern, who is a lot like Sasse in terms of education, still could not answer a straightforward question about abortion. He had his well rehearsed sentence, but he could not really expand on his position. He said there is a rhetorical risk to saying too much about abortion. He wanted to say only something most people could agree with: Women should have the right to control their own bodies. But when pressed: Well, does that men you can meet the baby on the way down the birth canal with a scalpel? he was flummoxed.
 |
| Deaglan McEachern |
 |
| O'Rourke: Still Thinking |
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| Captain Terence O'Rourke |
Democrats are afraid of offending anyone, and everyone can hear that fear in their parsed answers. Democrats have to be willing to offend, to sound sincere and not slippery. You can say, "I am against infanticide. I am willing to permit abortion. The line between the two is where you get into fights. I might draw it earlier than Roe v Wade, but I think Justice Blackmun provided the right approach. I will say one thing: I am deeply offended by those who claim to have God's private cell phone number, who have been told by God that a two cell zygote is a fully en-souled human being and that I am an accomplice to murder if I agree to allow that zygote to be destroyed. Disagree with me. Debate me. But call me a murderer? That's where all discussion ends."
And all like that.
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