Conservative Wanderer

“A troubled and afflicted mankind looks to us, pleading for us to keep our rendezvous with destiny; that we will uphold the principles of self-reliance, self-discipline, morality, and, above all, responsible liberty for every individual that we will become that shining city on a hill.” — Ronald Wilson Reagan

Daily Archives: 10 January 2009

Illinois Supreme Court Says Senate Can Seat Burris

Oops, there goes one of Reid’s excuses:

Roland Burris won his certification battle before the Illinois Supreme Court on Friday, but Senate leaders say the ruling only strengthens their opposition to seating him in their chamber.

Burris was handed an apparent victory when the court ruled that Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White does not have to sign the certification paperwork by Gov. Rod Blagojevich, meaning Burris’s appointment to the Senate last month is valid.

White had vowed not to sign the papers because of the corruption charges against Blagojevich, who is accused of trying to sell President-elect Obama’s former seat.

“Under the Secretary of State Act, the Secretary’s sole responsibility was to register the appointment, which he did,” wrote Judge Lloyd Karmeier in a nine-page opinion. “No further action is required by the secretary of state or any other official to make the governor’s appointment of Roland Burris to the United States Senate valid under Illinois law.”

Of course, Reid is continuing to stonewall.

But Senate leaders say just the court’s ruling means just the opposite. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) have said Burris won’t be seated without such certification, and a senior Senate aide said the court ruling bolsters that claim since White now cannot be forced to sign the paperwork.

Now, this is gonna cause problems with seating Al Franken, which Reid wants to do, because Franken won’t have a signed certification until after Norm Coleman’s lawsuits are handled.

But, hey, Reid and the rest of the Senate Democrats shouldn’t have any problem with that double-standard. They sure have plenty of others.

Update and bump: If you want a good, solid explanation of why Reid’s assertions of Senate Rules don’t hold any water, see this post on NRO’s Bench Memos.

The New Republic Gets One Right

I never thought I’d write this, but The New Republic has posted an article that I actually agree with. In it, Michael Walzer takes on the concept of “proportionality,” specifically as related to the latest Israel-Hamas fighting:

Because proportionality arguments are forward-looking, and because we don’t have positive, but only speculative, knowledge about the future, we need to be very cautious in using this justification. The commentators and critics using it today, however, are not being cautious at all; they are not making any kind of measured judgment, not even a speculative kind. “Disproportionate” violence for them is simply violence they don’t like, or it is violence committed by people they don’t like.

Indeed.

So Israel’s Gaza war was called “disproportionate” on day one, before anyone knew very much about how many people had been killed or who they were. The standard proportionality argument, looking ahead as these arguments rightly do, would come from the other side. Before the six months of cease-fire (when the fire never ceased), Hamas had only primitive and home-made rockets that could hit nearby small towns in Israel. By the end of the six months, they had far more advanced rockets, no longer home-made, that can hit cities 30 or 40 kilometers away. Another six months of the same kind of cease-fire, which is what many nations at the UN demanded, and Hamas would have rockets capable of hitting Tel Aviv. And this is an organization explicitly committed to the destruction of Israel. How many civilian casualties are “not disproportionate to” the value of avoiding the rocketing of Tel Aviv? How many civilian casualties would America’s leaders think were “not disproportionate to” the value of avoiding the rocketing of New York?

Very good questions, and questions that should be asked before the rubric of “proportionality” is brought out to condemn a nation that is only trying to protect itself from groups that have sworn to destroy it.

Not that many Israel-bashers on either left or right will pay any attention to those questions. They’re too blinded by hatred.

Hat tip: Contentions.

Why Some Republicans Hate Palin

Robert Stacy McCain (The Other McCain) has some good thoughts:

You see? The fear and loathing of Sarah Palin among (some) conservative intellectuals is a subconscious reaction to their belated recognition of Bush’s weaknesses. The liberals who bashed Bush as being “in a bubble” and “out of touch” had a point. Since 1999, Bush really has been encased in a hermetic capsule of expert advisers. And this capsule was purposely constructed with the eager assent of the conservative intellectuals because, deep down, they never really believed he had it.

However, I honestly don’t think Mr. McCain goes far enough in his analysis.

The three people whose opprobrium for Sarah he singles out–Peggy Noonan, Christopher Buckley, and David Frum–are all former speechwriters for a Bush (41, 41, and 43, respectively), but they are also part and parcel of the northeastern NY-DC lefty corridor, and even the Gipper would have had trouble maintaining his conservatism in such surroundings. In fact, a quick perusal of their positions will show clearly that all three could quite plausibly be considered Rockefeller Republicans… by which I mean liberal, northeastern Republicans (think Olympia Snowe).

Considering all of the above, it’s hard to see how Palin could have earned their admiration… she is, quite literally, everything she is not, and they are everything she is not. Noonan, Buckley, and Frum see becoming “Democrat-Lite” as the only path to victory for the GOP; Palin sees a return to Reaganism, which is to say Goldwater Republicanism, as the way forward.

There is truly nothing new under the sun. The NoonanBuckleyFrum-Palin fracas is nothing more than a resurgence of the old Rockefeller Republican-Goldwater Republican feud. Unfortunately for the Rockefeller crowd, their way has always led to electoral defeat, while Goldwater’s way is what led Reagan and the GOP to victory.