Can the Republican Party be Saved?

Recently the Republican hierarchy released their report detailing the problems the party is facing and attempting to detail the deficiencies and propose solutions. There were numerous voting blocs where they also found problems. One prime example was their losing the under thirty vote by at least a ratio of three to one. Other such blocs included single women, the less well off, almost the entirety of minority voters, and so forth. From what I saw it was possibly debatable if they even won a majority of the registered Republicans. Ok, I made that up but it was really almost that bad. They also found that they managed to receive fewer votes in every voting group over the results from four years earlier. Somehow the Republicans with candidate Romney were unable to even hold on to the McCain voters as they received fewer votes across the board in this last election. As horrible as this news was it was not as unsettling as the solutions the report provided. The main gist of the offered solution was to move the candidates and campaigns to align them closer to the Democrat message.

My bet is should they pursue this path it will lead to the death of the Republican Party. When the base voters who are the lifeblood of your political party are not getting to the polls your problem is not that you are too far removed from the other party, it is that you are not offering them anything distinctly different from the other party. The solution is not to attempt to be perceived as the Democrat Lite Party but to be the heart and soul Republican Party. Show a difference and celebrate that difference. The Republican Party has not given the feeling that they are proud, confident, or even that they believe in their party. They sound almost apologetic whenever they sound all that different from what the Democrats stand for. If you want a near perfect example of the real problem is that is cursing the Republicans all you need to do is listen to the “old guard” of the GOP during the debates on virtually any legislation where immigration reform is one of the most glaring examples. Another problem is the seeming lack of unity and cooperation between the different factions that make up the Republican Party. Sometimes it appears as if as a whole the Republicans do not stand unified for anything and are without honest and driving principles. We had a perfect example after Rand Paul’s efforts to make a serious protest over the evasiveness and apparent policy which would allow the use of drone strikes on American civilians inside the country’s borders in place of arrests and a trial if the President so deemed necessary with his thirteen hour filibuster and a number of the senior Republican Senators demeaned his efforts on the floor of the Senate. Such disagreements should never be fought out in the public square but should be discussed and resolved within the party. When was the last time you heard one Democrat Senator demean another Democrat on the floor of the Senate? Such would never happen as the Democrats have party discipline and would not stand for parading the party laundry in public.

Another problem the Republican Party needs to work on is simply getting their message out and being heard. Since the mainstream press is actually a willing partner in any Democrat candidate’s campaign, the Republicans have to find a delivery for their message which does not rely on the mainstream press. They definitely need to work on their Internet usage and make more and better use of U-tube, Twitter, Facebook, and all other forms of social media as well as blogs and the new media. There are a good number of conservative bloggers who would be anxious to support getting the republican message out if they only would be included in the campaign planning and get some assistance in coordinating with the candidate. They could offer releases to these bloggers once they had compiled an extensive list. But the most important challenge facing the Republican Party hierarchy and planners is a message around which the membership can rally and be excited over. The current state of the Republican can be summed up in two words, disjointed disarray. Until they can establish something that can be advertised as the Republican core beliefs around which every party candidate tailors their message, the Republican Party will continue to wander leaderless in the political wastelands.

Beyond the Cusp

Women in Combat, the United States Joins the World

Secretary of Defense Panetta told the press and the world that the United States ban on women in combat was to be terminated and now all military positions and MOS are now available to all regardless of gender. There were the expected gasps and exclamations predicting the end of the military as we have known it. Others congratulated the United States for finally joining the modern world and recognizing that women are equal to men and should be allowed entrance into all fields, especially those provincially thought to be the providence of men. We would like to make a bold prediction. There will be very few women lining up to enter into combat arms and of those who take that route the majority will decide it is not worth the effort demanded. There will not be an end to the world or the military as we know them and everything will continue on with barely a ripple. Oh, sure there will be a great din from the extremes still fighting the same battle over the wisdom of allowing women into combat arms, except the sides will have changed. Now it will be those who once argued against the status quo defending it and vice-versa. The only question left to answer is what will happen should the United States become involved in a war with women on the front lines?

The answer to that question has actually already been answered. Does anybody remember Jessica Lynch? Not how her story turned tragic, but the initial shock and reaction to her being taken captive in Iraq. Suddenly Jessica Lynch became the most important captive in the entire Iraq War. The rescue of Private Lynch became the highest priority for the military, the press and pretty much the entire country if not the world, or at least much of it. Special Forces went into high gear with planning and executing a plan without taking six months to do practice runs, or even six days. We heard all about the valiant Private Lynch who fought off as long as she could finally going down with serious injuries to which she finally succumbed allowing her capture. It was the makings of a Hollywood blockbuster. There was even a movie made based on the theme of her resistance and capture. Then something really terrible happened, the truth. The truth sparked outrage and hearings in Congress where Private Lynch explained she never fired her weapon or put up any resistance or even knew any of the events. It turn out she was knocked unconscious when her truck wrecked and woke up captured. The whole house of cards collapsed and the brave woman fighting as bravely just like a man or even better was borne out as the lie it was. The arguments that Private Lynch’s heroic stance was proof that women could stand in combat just as strong and steady as any man also fell apart with the rest of the myth that was sold to the public.

The United States nearly fell apart over one woman caught by the freak instance, something which could become more prevalent with women in combat roles, so what happens when such is reported regularly on the nightly news. My question is what would happen should a battle go poorly and a fair number, say four or five, women be captured. Then what will happen when the press reports this incident? The truth about women being placed on the front lines is not the real question which ever needed to be answered. The real question is how will the United States public react when women are captured or worse, come home in numbers in caskets? Are the people of the United States ready when such occurrences become a common part of future conflicts? Whether or not women can perform in a combat role has never been the question. Even what affect women fighting and possibly dying or being captured will have on their male comrades was not the question. The training and daily rigors of being in a combat unit will weed out any women not physically strong or mentally capable of thriving or even barely surviving in a combat role. Thirty mile forced marches and the other physical and mental requirements which are a part of every year’s training along with the daily runs, calisthenics, weapons training, weapons maintenance and the rest of the rigors involved with being in a front line unit will weed out those who find such to be beyond what they are willing to do.

There are reasonable questions about unit cohesion and the possibilities of relation between soldiers within units are another angle which will produce problems which will need to be addressed. Such problems will not be as difficult as those faced since the change of the policy regarding homosexuals allowing them to serve openly. Any problem that has been predicted to result from women in a combat unit are not as critical as they have been made out to be and likely already there are procedures on how to handle them which can be adopted from other units which have had women and men serving together, even in the field, for as long as we have had a standing military. The military is not where the problem will lie as the one thing the military is adept at it is solving problems and taking care of those who do not follow the rules. The military has procedures, rules, regulations, and all that any organization could ever need to cover any situation which might crop up. It’s the civilians that are the largest potential for problems as we are not under any strict regimentation and stringent codes of conduct, nor are we used to the kind of environment which the military is at its most efficient. We need not concern ourselves with how the military will operate and adjust to women serving in combat units and on the front lines as the military will take it all in stride, write a few more rules, establish some new customs, and then march off to take care of business because that is what the military does. As long as we, the civilians, can give them our support or at least stay out of their way, then the military will take care and adjust to women within their combat ranks just as they have handled every other change societies have been placing upon their shoulders since before Thermopylae. So, hopefully we can have people stop claiming that the military will have big problems when what we really mean is that many in the public will have big problems adjusting and accepting women serving in front line combat units.

Beyond the Cusp

My Big Surprise from Presidential Debate One

I watched the first Presidential Debate of the 2012 Election Cycle with low expectations and not expecting anything that might actually change my despair of the coming day I had felt I had little choice. Where I will not jump to any conclusions or dance with joy, but I now have found a glimmer of hope. It just might be that those who had tried to dispel my exasperations about Mitt Romney winning the Republican nomination may have had a valid point, though they likely did not state it as well as Candidate Romney did during the debate. This was after an even earlier piece of discouragement when John Bolton, our once recess appointed United Nations Ambassador, announced that he had no interest in running for the Republican nomination race for President. After that I had some lesser amounts of hope of which none was ever placed in Mitt Romney. Much of Romney’s record as Governor of Massachusetts did not inspire any evidence of a great conservative constitutionally guided leader. What it had shown me was a pragmatist who would lead only as far as the possible and not take on the big challenges of pushing monumental change. The one thing I believe we need right now in the United States is a monumental transformation returning us to the original intentions expressed in our founding documents, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights respectively and in that order of importance.

What I expected from the debates was Mitt Romney touting an economic plan to make an environment where businesses could flourish and people would be rewarded for choosing to invest and risk their time, treasure, and efforts in order to pursue their dreams and establish new ventures, businesses and opportunities. Well, I definitely got that performance from Mitt Romney. As far as President Barack Obama was concerned, I fully expected a better showing despite his previous problems when having to speak without his little friend the teleprompter and answer questions off the cuff or defend his positions when challenged. What I saw instead was a wondrous destruction and dismantlement of the President who appeared unprepared for any confrontation. President Obama almost appeared as if he had expected assistance from the moderator to cripple any thrusts by Romney and permit the President to give his typical long winded, delusional answers which leave people impressed despite having garnered no information or knowledge from another extensive, tendentious, overly-long, vacuous oration relatively devoid of substance. We did not even get a performance worthy of this description. Instead President Obama came across disconnected, distracted, distant, and unable to connect with the audience, the questions, or the conversation. The debate was between a prepared and on his game Mitt Romney against an unprepared, distraught and off his game President Obama. It was not a fair representation of the best of both candidates, but this too was not the surprise which rocked my view of Mitt Romney.

Those who have read Beyond the Cusp likely know the Tenth Amendment almost by heart as it is one of our favorites among all the integral documents which were written by inspired men during the events at the beginnings of the United States. We have even claimed at one point that simply by a dedicated review of every piece of legislation, every law, and every regulation with regard to the Tenth Amendment would restore the intended balance of powers between the over-bloated Federal Government and the disempowered individual State Governments and the People of the United States. When Mitt Romney mentioned the Tenth Amendment in its proper context I almost fell off my chair. He followed this up by mentioning the importance of State rights and empowerment. And then came his stating the Founding Fathers reasoning for empowering the States over the central government, that each State would be better able to serve the individual and distinct needs of their residents than any program fashioned by a distant Federal government in Washington DC. He also hit the point that by empowering the individual States to address problems we set forth fifty separate experiments with each one taking a potentially different tact to address and fill the needs and problems on any issue. Romney pointed out that through this method the individual States which were most effective, efficient, cost-efficient and versatile means of serving the public could then be copied and even refined further as other States adopted the items from all of the State efforts which proved to be the most suited and promising. This grasp and apparent affection, dare I say love, with the Tenth Amendment and his display of his full and complete understanding of all the intricacies spawned by the Tenth Amendment was close to inspiring. The remaining debates just got more interesting and likely very important. I can only hope that Mitt Romney can incorporate more of the intricacies and implications from the original intentions of those geniuses who crafted the Declarations of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and especially the Tenth Amendment. The one last particular I would like to hear out of Mitt Romney would be his dismissing Romney Care as something he did as a Governor and something allowed by the Constitution and something he would be prohibited from retaining as Obama Care as that is an offense and contradiction to the Constitution. No more repeal and replace, simply applying the Constitution and relevant limitations to remove this onerous conglomeration of obscene and illegal amassing of power by the Federal Government.

Beyond the Cusp