republican response

What Is The Military To The GOP? Props

Rob Diamond, a Navy veteran and Fellow with the Truman National Security Project, noticed something interesting with the Republican response to the State of the Union address:

Notice who is sitting directly behind McDonnell on his right side? You have an Army Staff Sergeant in full dress uniform. As Rob points out:

Slight problem, you see. That is probably against the law.

Look it up for yourself right here in the Department of Defense (DoD) Directive entitled "Political Activities by Members of the Armed Forces." The purpose of this DoD Directive is to mirror the Hatch Act, which prohibits government employees from engaging in partisan political activity in an official capacity. Since a DoD Directive is considered to be in the same category as an order or regulation, and military personnel violating its provisions can be considered in violation of Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, our Republican friends may have just caused this brave young soldier to break the law. Thank you for that, Governor McDonnell.

Democrats Still Haven’t Learned To Control The Message

It seems like I am just doing one really long post today, but broken up. I can’t help it, my mind is really going on this and I want to touch on something else from my on going posts about the RNC and Bobby Jindal.

I said in my previous post that Bobby Jindal shouldn’t be given all the blame for the Republican response, but the Republican’s should be given just as much, if not more. After all, Jindal was just the messenger boy for the Republican beliefs. Yet the media and Republicans have successfully painted Jindal as the fall guy on this. The left wing blogs and even talking heads have also followed suit. Well this is wrong.

When it comes to message control, the Republicans have constantly beat the Democrats hands down. It’s happening again. What the Democrats, politicians, pundits and blogs, all need to do is hammer the message home that what Bobby Jindal said wasn’t only what Bobby Jindal believes, but rather what the GOP believes.

Imagine for a minute that the Democrats picked Mike Gravel to give a response to one of Bush’s state of the union addresses. Would we be hearing and reading how “that Mike Gravel has some really wonky ideas”? No. Instead we would be hearing such things as “wow the Democrats have really became a fringe party”. This bias in media analysis has been proven time and time again. So we need our side of the blogosphere and aisle to start hammering that the message given Tuesday night wasn’t Bobby Jindal’s message, but rather the GOP’s message.

Remember – it was the Republican response, not Bobby Jindal’s response.

Defending Bobby – A Survival Guide For The GOP

Again, I am writing this as a life long Democrat, but a Democrat who cherishes our need for opposing ideas in order to provide the best for our nation.

Part of the Republicans biggest problem is their ego, which I mentioned in my previous post.

I think another example of this can be seen in Bobby Jindal. So much attention has been given to him for the response Tuesday night that we seem to have forgotten the simple fact that it is the Republican response, not the Bobby Jindal response. He was just the messenger. Now we see Republicans and conservatives throwing Bobby under the bus for delivering the message of the RNC.

Perhaps that should send up the warning flags. You take away the big crowds and enthusiastic speaker, you are pretty much left with nothing. That’s what the voters have seen for the past four years and why the Republicans have been getting slammed at the polls.

I too have been lost in the “laugh at Bobby” mentality engulfing our country, but then I realized that it isn’t just Bobby, but the GOP as a whole. Perhaps that’s why Rush Limbaugh went on a rampage yesterday against any Republican criticizing Jindal.

So what should the Republicans do now? Well first off they need to declare war – a war on people like Limbaugh. It doesn’t have to be nasty, but these people need to realize that if the Republican Party is to survive that they need to entertain a wider range of ideas and philosophies. Destroying their own party because some people don’t agree with them isn’t the answer to regaining majority status, but rather the prescription for denying it. If they don’t do this then the GOP is no longer a party, but rather a special interest group.

Wesley Clarke On Real Time

This past Friday, General Wesley Clarke had a discussion about the current climate in D.C. and what we need to do to change it this November. He highlighted some very good points including the Democrats National Security plan, which was muted by the President changing a press conference time to coincide with the Democrats press conference time.

CLARK: At the right time. And there's a real art to this, because it's not that the Democrats don't have a message. We've got lots of messages and we've got lots of messengers. What we don't have is the pure forum to do that when we need to do it.

I was in a conference on the 30th of March, where we announced our national security agenda. And just to show you kind of the way this works, we had all of the House and Senate Democrats at Union Station. We had Senator Reid and Congresswoman Pelosi there, Madeleine Albright, myself, a couple of other people. We gave the Democratic position.

When President Bush heard we were going to do it, he scheduled his own briefing on Iraq at a competing forum. He started his briefing ten minutes before ours, and he had 100% network coverage. And it's a game.

Of course the typical Republican response has still been "The Democrats have no plan".

What Is The Military To The GOP? Props

Democrats Still Haven’t Learned To Control The Message

Defending Bobby – A Survival Guide For The GOP

Wesley Clarke On Real Time

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