Try again.

ed.

No problems mate. My biggest point is that I don’t have a problem with ’spending’ per se as long as it is done is a somewhat reasonable and responsible manner. What constitutes reasonable and responsible? We will all forever debate, discuss and argue for what we personally favor and believe and that again is a good thing. The spending currently in favor amongst the political and consumer classes goes so beyond what could be considered reasonable and responsible that I find it truly frightful. I hope this house of cards we’ve created doesn’t come tumbling down, but it’s going to take a very steady hand to deconstruct it back to the point of manageability and sustainability. Yes the past eight years have been terrible in many ways, but so far all I see from the current administration is a blind, mad dash to break every spending record possible in the shortest time possible.

I regret any aspersion I may have cast upon drunken sailors.

It may interest you to know that my father, a career Army man, was a sailor — LCM, LCU, the army yacht, an ocean-going tug. Although he was a relatively sober sailor.

It’s time republicans admitted that they were in the driver’s seat for the past eight years, not the democrats.

Finally, about Rush Limbaugh: Aside from Rush Limbaugh, when was the last time you let a narcotics addict speak for you?

Would you please leave us poor drunken sailors out of the equation? That metaphor so poorly describes our current economic situation and it is being completely overused by all the talking heads, both left and right. Having been one for over 10 years, I know what of I speak. The drunken sailor has been and always will be limited by the cash he or she has in their pocket. Once spent, it’s back to the ship to eagerly await the next payday to repeat the cycle yet again. The drunken sailor is about foolish spending choices (which does to apply to our current situation), but has never been about insane indebtedness and mortgaging our economic future and phantom fortunes. Although the drunken sailor may turn to their shipmates with the ever-classic request of “If you loan me $20 today, I’ll pay you back $40 on payday”, but they always make good on their debts or are held supremely accountable by their peers. And there’s the real kicker … accountability. Something so completely lacking in such a large part of our society today.

Rick Moran and Allahpundit are more entertaining and interesting because they don’t adhere so much to the party line.

The contrast between the way that you and Ed Morrissey (my other favorite right-of-center blogger) covered CPAC speaks volumes. More than ever, Ed seems afraid of losing his franchise — or his radio show or something — because he managed to make it all the way through the conference without once writing about or taking issue with Limbaugh, Coulter and Company or calling the phony baloney tea parties for what they were.

While you did pull some punches, you had no such compunction to play it safe. You can be an important voice in creating the “groundswell” of which Manning speaks in the previous comment.

Go for it.

My thought on catharsis is for individual conservatives to look into what the party did over the last administration, to identify the sins that were committed, to understand the why of them, and to resolve not to repeat them or not elect representatives that would repeat the sins.

I did not identify any sins in particular; that is a decision for each of us. I happen to believe that all of the breast-thumping, and pouring of ashes on our collective heads is absolutely useless. Perhaps it is even worse than that, because it hands our very vocal and opportunistic opposition a full and admitted list of the party’s sins.

Now what do you think the Democrats would do with that list? Use it as a club over our heads at every election for the next 10 years or more. So confessing our sins will get us exactly the reverse of what many here have claimed as necessary for us to regain credibility.

No, you can only regain credibility by proposing and championing a program of forceful, accurate, and sensible legislation, showing how it does have the right provisions that would correct past flaws(sins), without making a sorry case for how it came about, and then making sure it gets wide exposure, and eventually, signing into law. We must create a groundswell of people that believe only we can fix what is wrong, right the ship, and get ahead on the economy, thus driving more people to vote for our men for Congress. We cetainly do not achieve all of that by re-airing our sins at every opportunity for the Democrats to use against us.

This amounts, I think, to tacit admission of some “process flaws” that will be forcefully corrected by our programs, but no personal vendettas or witch hunts. We are tired of mea culpas when they are only ammunition for the opposition.