“Greater New England” refers to the parts of the Upper Midwest and Pacific Northwest that were predominantly settled by New Englanders, with noticeable effects on their political culture.
How so? Very few Dem candidates or party officials are on the left. What exactly does the party’s left wing control?
Wanting to spend less on defense and more on domestic programs is not hostility to the military.
Even more of an abomination than I thought!
“Greater New England”
Interesting. Never heard that one.
Yeah. I can remember when Republicans castigated Democrats for getting us into wars. Things like, “Woodrow Wilson got reelected on the slogan ‘He kept us out of war’ and then as soon as he was elected he got us into WWI.” And, “That damned Roosevelt isn’t going to be satisfied until he gets us into that war of theirs.” And of course, “Truman got us into Korea, just like Democrats always do.” Kennedy greatly expanded our role in Vietnam followed by Johnson.
As to cut and run, didn’t Saint Ronald send a bunch of Marines to Lebanon and then pull them out immediatly after the barracks bomb there?
Such horseshit is hardly worth replying to except that many people seem swayed by it.
Hmmm, it’s pretty hard for me to tell apart far Eastern NY from Vermont, and culturally, the same could probably be said for much of the Adirondacks and Catskills, but ISTM that the upper Midwest and Northwest have about as much to do with New England as California and the Mid-Atlantic do, i.e. somewhat more than the South on the hot political issues, but not enough to characterize them as Greater New England.
…quoth the advisor who weaseled out of serving in Vietnam. :rolleyes:
Republicans talk tough about war, but only when other people’s lives are on the line.
A soundbite almost as meanigless as Rove’s. No politician is going to put his life on the line in a war, be he Republican, Democrat, or Green since active duty military are not allowed to run for political office.
Political scientist Daniel Elazar identified three American political cultures – the “Moralist” in New England and the northern tier of states west of it; the “Individualist” in the Mid-Atlantic states; and the “Traditionalist” in the South. You may recall that the early-20th-Century Progressive movement (highly Moralist, in Elazar’s terms) had its roots in the Upper Midwest – home of “Fightin’ Bob” LaFollette.
Lind’s point was that the people of New England, and, later, the Upper Midwest and Pacific Northwest have been consistently more pacifist, Southerners more militarist, WRT any American conflict – from the Revolution to the present day.
You don’t even have to go that far back. Remember “Wag the Dog” and the constant Republican bitching about intervening in Kosovo in the late 1990’s?
But, right now we seem to have a lot of Republicans in positions of power who not only are not putting their life on the line for this particular war…but managed to wiggle out of serving in other wars that they support or at least supported at the time. This does tend to send the message, “I believe in these wars but want other people to do the fighting of them.”
P.S. - Clinton, for all the “draft-dodging” shit that he had to go through, at least had the logically-consistent position during Vietnam of not wanting to serve in the war and also not wanting others to be forced to serve in the war.
A war is etiher justified or not on its own merits. Alluding to the past military careers of politicians is simply an ad hominem. I stand by my statelemt that rjung’s comment was just about as silly and worthless as Rove’s.
Of course not. Republicans are the party of "Cut and Run."
They came up with the phrase.
They tested it in focus groups, tweaked it until it was just right, and then they used it as a bludgeon to cut off any possibility of serious debate. Just like they used the false threat of Saddam’s WMD’s to cut off any serious debate before the invasion.
They’re afraid to debate, so they cut and run from them before they even start.
Even some republicans acknowledge the sleazyness of these tactics. (vid)
The word you’re looking for is “chickenhawk.”
Yes, if you’re going for an ad hominem, you might as well skip all the explanatory crap and just use the pajorative directly.
This caught my eye.
Responsibility: Isn’t it the current Republican administration who somehow can create the most monumental fuckups, and yet it’s never THEIR fault?
Mommy state: Isn’t it also the current Republican administration who in defiance of FISA, and various court rulings the same ones who claim they’re gonna protect us (from the boogeyman) no matter what?
My current rule of thumb is to take whatver Rove says, and believe the opposite. It works pretty well so far. 
Exactly. SOME of us are opposed to the needless wasting of the lives of those in the military.
Why, yes, yes it is!
Well, I stand by my disagreement. Yes, technically speaking, a war should be decided on by its own merits. However, I think it is legitimate in helping to judge a certain situation (which one can never have such complete knowledge of simply on the basis of the facts one knows) to look at the motivations and attitudes and past historical patterns of those more intimately involved in the decision-making. If the Democrats had really tended to “cut and run” in most past historical situations, I think it would be legitimate to ask if this is just another example of them being too quick to give up. However, as this thread has noted, that fact does not seem to stand up to analysis.
By contrast, I think the fact that many of the current war boosters are “chickenhawks” does indeed stand up to analysis and again can reveal something about their tendencies that can be relevant in deciding the course of action in the absence of complete knowledge of the situation. [It also, in my view, weighs on the issue of how they should be held accountable for their actions just as certain factors are deemed relevant in the sentencing part of a trial that are not deemed relevant for determining guilt or innocence.]
We are always being told that those in authority know more than us, and that the war ( or whatever ) is justified by that knowledge. We are also supposed to trust the politician in question to actually run the war and handle the aftermath. For those reasons, the character and history of the people in question are of great importance. This refers to more than just his military career, of course.