JAB replies:

Your Czarness,

Thanks for showing restraint and not banning me from the Castle bar, at least not yet.

Your post “The Enemy of the Good” provides excellent reasons for voting for anyone but Obama. However, you completely misjudge me if you think I’m silly enough to believe that I could manage to “…send a clear message to the GOP to tighten up their game.” Outside the friendly confines of the Trailer- Park-at-the-Edge-of-Town, my influence would be, as you rightly say, “comedically small.” Your four points, particularly #4 regarding potential Obama Supreme Court justices, serve up a heapin’ helpin’ of Smack-down. Had you been less charitable you might have justly entitled your post “JAB, You Ignorant Slut!“

I reckon Mr. Borepatch can defend his position himself, but my objection to Newt is NOT that I find his ideas, policies and positions less than perfect. Some of them are quite good in my opinion, though certainly not all. No, Your Czarness, my reason for donning the Shepherd Fairy t-shirt and planting the Doublewide’s expansive lawns with OBAMA 2012 signs for all the dogs to piddle on, is that I feel that Newt is a very dangerous person to put anywhere near the power of the Presidency.

You know who a person is by how they live their lives. People, like tigers, cannot change their stripes. Just as an alcoholic may manage to get sober, he remains an alcoholic.

Newt had power once, and he wants it back. Throughout his adult life he has shown he cannot trusted. I think Obama could win the blue ribbon for arrogance at any one of our 57 (so I hear) state fairs. But he would be a rank amateur vs. Newt. Adultery is ugly enough on its own, but Newt deluded himself into believing that he could get away with it. No matter his prominent role in impeaching a sitting President for lying under oath about ….er… “sexual relations” with someone other than his wife. No matter that he held an office that is 3rd in the Constitutional line-of-succession. Did he have no concern about foreign governments discovering his actions and using this knowledge for their own ends???? That is evidence of astonishingly awful judgement and an amazing capacity for self-delusion. It’s not that he had no care for his then-wife and whatever marriage vows he took. Newt had no care for the nation nor for the Constitution that he took an oath to serve. You don’t get a do-over for that.

If it’s Romney, I think I’ll be fine with doing just as you say. I’ll hold my nose and vote for Mitt-with two- T’s. But not Newt. He’s just no good.

Yours from the Doublewide, JAB

A trio of comments in reply:

1. Borepatch has indeed replied, most brilliantly in an evolving thread not to be missed by the likes of the Czar. And no, there is little with which we can disagree. He makes a good point that four more years of Obama might be a necessary humilation for the Progressive agenda—that it might take that long to focus Americans’ realizations that Republican Progressivism is no better. We could yet survive. Please read what he has to say: his Sun Tzu analogy is apt.
2. Mark Steyn refers us all to a tightly written essay on why Romney and Gingrich are both bad choices. Read the second link, as it goes into great details that Steyn only quotes. It should make JAB and Borepatch agree with the other. And that is troubling when those two start working together.
3. So what to do? Interestingly, a premise has arisen that could work for Americans regardless of whether Obama, Romney, or Gingrich becomes president: you punish the hell out of the Congress, starting with the House, until they start thinking for themselves. We proved, almost accidentally, we could do it in 2010. Once candidates start seeing that they will be rewarded with employment if they start voting with America instead of merely for themselves, attitudes will change quick. Hey, Barney Frank already got the message. And then this moves to the Senate: start weeding out the Reids and Durbins for the Bachmanns and Pauls and DeMints. Turn the tide from Congress, but start in the House—like we did it in the 1820s. Except we can start right now, in our primaries!

In all, an excellent melding of ideas.

By the way, the Czar got to meet Sun Tzu, thanks to the Volgi, and is sorry to say old Sun was a major jerk. He also was wrong about a lot of stuff but took criticism very poorly. But Borepatch is one of the very few people who quotes Sun Tzu and understands him. Most rare; the Czar finds most people quoting Sun Tzu miss the point by a mile. Borepatch, of course, is not a jerk. The Czar might introduce him to Sun Tzu one day to see what the old boy was really like; the screed which Borepatch would write after the encounter would be hilarious.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.