Why Democrats should register Republican and support me

If Democrats truly want the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Pakistan to end, then Democrats who live in Nevada's 3rd Congressional District should re-register as Republicans and support my candidacy.  Of course, Republicans should support me as well.  If my fellow Republicans recognize that President Bush's economic policies were not conservative, why should they believe his foreign policy was?  As a Republican since I was in high school (see picture below), even I recognized that a policy of promiscuous foreign intervention is not a conservative policy.  President Bush's foreign policy was crafted by the neoconservatives, who came out of the far left wing of the Democratic Party.

Certificate from the GOP received 1994, while I was still in high school.  I only post this to demonstrate to my fellow Republicans that I am not coming out of "nowhere" - nor am I some "military-hating lefty" (I served on active duty in the Marine Corps infantry) - to pursue the Republican Party nomination for self-serving, political interests.  My credentials as a supporter of Republican candidates goes back years. 

 Why should Democrats support me for Congress?  Because the Democrats in Congress have no intention of ending the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Pakistan.  Several months ago, Speaker Pelosi explicitly said that the United States will have a "Korean-like presence in perpetuity" in Iraq (she says it at about 6:30 into this video).  That should have came as no surprise to anybody, since the Democrats did vote to appropriate the funding for the largest U.S. embassy in the world to be built in Iraq.  

Does anybody even remember that?  I kept this newspaper copy precisely because I knew when I first read that we would be able to look back years from then and see what a lie it was.

It is important to understand that the contrast between the leadership of the Democratic and Republican parties is purposefully embellished in order to create a fiction of choice.  Neither major party has an interest in admitting that it is not much different than the other.  If Democrats admitted that they agreed with a foreign policy of intervention, they would give rank-and-file Democrats little compelling reason to vote for them.  If Republicans admitted that they agreed with big spending (domestically or on foreign policy), they would give rank-and-file Republicans little compelling reason to vote for them.

The parlance used by both sides is designed to crossdress positions and issues, to camouflage the agenda.  When the Democrats took control of the House and Senate a few years ago, I immediately detected that the Democrats had no intention of ending the wars.  I wrote about this in 2007, with this commentary: Withdrawal Hoax.  I wrote a follow-up commentary shortly after: Defusing opposition through misdirection.  How did I detect this?  The arguments used exposed the faux debate Democrats and Republicans were having.

The Democrats' defense was that they didn't have sixty votes in the Senate.  Gentle reader, if you understood what that meant, you would have known that it wasn't that they couldn't end the war, but that they wouldn't end the war.  That exact sentiment was echoed with this salient commentary and this one.   

The beauty about our Constitution is that it has embedded within itself a plurality of checks on tyranny.  Whether it be the enumerated powers of the President to veto legislation, the House to override the veto, the jury system, or the long-established Senate rules that allow the filibuster, they are all important checks on power.  The beauty of our system is that it was designed so that nominal minorities could stop an agenda from being steamrolled.

It takes one Senator to start a filibuster.  It takes forty-one Senators to sustain a filibuster, since sixty Senators can invoke cloture.  So, it may have been true that if Republicans all voted together, then the Republicans could have blocked legislation.  But the Democrats' argument implied that they needed a supermajority - i.e., a veto-proof majority in the House and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate - in order to stop the war.  That was and is a lie.  (Not only that, but supermajorities are dangerous.) The argument rested on the fallacy that the executive is entitled to all of the money it wants for anything.   

When it comes to war, the issue is funding.  The way to have the government stop doing something is for the Congress, which has the real power since it has the power of the purse, to cut off the funding, i.e., blocking legislation.  If nominal minorities can block legislation, as the Democrats even conceded, and the Republicans had the numbers to block legislation, then certainly the Democrats could have blocked any legislation they wanted, including the war funding.  But the Democrats and Republicans never debated war funding.  It was all Shakespearean theater.  Instead, they presented us with a fake debate between which war funding bill we would get - a "clean" one, or one with non-binding calls for pseudo-withdrawals.

President Barack Obama and former Senator Hillary Clinton voted for all of the war funding supplemental appropriations bills, as did most of the Democrats.  President Barack Obama voted to re-authorize the USA PATRIOT Act, and for many other draconian pieces of legislation that came out of the Bush White House. 

The Democrats now have a supermajority, a completely homogeneous government, and the wars are not only not being brought to an end, but are creeping into other countries such as Pakistan.  We are involved in nation-building on the other side of the globe, while our economy is going broke.  There is no finite enemy to destroy.  It is war on a tactic.  It would be like trying to wage war on sin.  With no clear objective, this is a calculus for never-ending wars and financial ruin.

As a former Marine who spent a year on Okinawa, and also having done some training in Korea, I would also propose that it is time we cut back on this spending orgy by starting with these bases all over the world.  Why should Americans be the first to die if other countries get attacked?  Why can't South Korea defend herself?  Why don't we let the Japanese do the same?

If you are tired of the ongoing bipartisan sellout of our liberties and the continued wars that are bankrupting this country, then I am the candidate you should support.  If you are tired of the sliding withdrawal dates given for the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Pakistan, then I am your candidate.  Republicans, the only way to truly oppose the policies of Clinton & Obama is to run from the Bush-Cheney neoconservative legacy of big government at home and interventionism abroad.  Democrats, the only way to truly oppose the policies of neoconservative Republicans and stop the war is to vote against Democrats.  Whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, if you are interested in liberty and peace, then I am your candidate.