This Convention's A Dud (So Far)

I was watching Joe Lieberman's speech last night when I had a (non-Obamian) epiphany: As a campaign slogan, "Country First" sucks.

What, exactly, is that phrase supposed to mean? Put country ahead of what? Liebs kept preaching putting "country before party," as in "putting aside partisan differences" and "coming together" to "do what's best for America." He cited George Washington's numerous warnings against "excessive partisanship" getting in the way of the national interest and the common good. As though "partisan differences" are universally bad, parochial, "petty," insignificant, contrived, and irrelevant.

What President Washington could not have known is that our two-party system evolved naturally from the Republic's earliest days. No, wait, I take that back; Washington himself learned the folly of high-minded, well-intentioned "bipartisanship" not very far into his second term. An idealistic Federalist, he tried to govern above it all, as though partisan divides didn't exist. However, the "Democratic-Republicans" - the forerunner of today's Democrat Party - didn't see such things the same way he did, and after repeated bouts of partisan combat, The Father Of Our Country learned the hard way that partisanship is both inevitable, unavoidable, and is in fact a healthy manifestation of democracy itself.

Why? Because there is not always consensus on what's best for the country. That has been the case far more often than not throughout our history. It's the "232-year running conversation" we've been having with ourselves that goes on to this day. It is the manifestation of the freedoms we still have. Unlike in other parts of the world, Americans can disagree without (yet) being threatened, arrested, imprisoned, tortured, or worse by their government. We can fight for what we believe in by supporting candidates who share our views, or running for elected office ourselves.

In other words, principle matters. Beliefs matter. Philosophy matters. Ideas matter. In a country as divided as the one we currently live in, faced with a party that long ago departed the American political mainstream for the malignant embrace of discredited, disastrous, hateful nostrums, led by creatures of dishonor and dishonesty who dare not prematurely tell the truth about themselves and the totalitarianisms in which they believe, and which nominates and hides behind men whose role is to deceive the masses and "put a human face" on the heinousities that it stands for, for poor ol' Joe Lieberman - or John Sith McCain - to place such an emphasis on "putting aside differences" to "get things done" begs the question of precisely what "things" will end up getting done. And, as President Washington learned so very long ago, the aforementioned party is STILL not given over to such high-minded pieties, as Joe Lieberman - who, don't forget, was denied renomination for his current senate term for his heretical bipartisanship on Iraq - should know better than anybody.

And what was with the constant throat-clearing into the mic? Did Liebs used to smoke, or does he just have an intractible case of post-nasal drip?

Suffice it to say, "Senator Lieberman, I remember your former colleague Zell Miller's keynote address four years ago at Madison Square Garden. I can almost recite his speech word for word that blew the roof off of that building. And you, sir, are no Zell Miller.

And neither is John Sith McCain any Ronald Reagan, or even George W. Bush. Lieberman's "kumbayah" address was a fitting follow up to the first day of this shindig, which featured....nothing. This because of the RINO nominee's "high-minded" decision to put his "country first" mantra into practice by, as he put it, "taking off our Republican hats and putting on our American hats" to let Hurricane Gustav, then bearing down on hapless New Orleans, have the spotlight. As though the two were somehow incompatible, and as though the Enemy Media, already frenziedly gang-raping his running mate like a human sacrifice in a pagan death ritual, would give him any credit, or even cut him any slack, for it. Indeed, turning out the lights Monday gifted the Obamanational propaganda apparatus an extra empty day in which to batter around Governor Palin like a rag doll undergoing the Klingon Rite of Ascension without convention, and almost without commercial, interruption.

All I can say is, thank God for Fred:

Some rightie naysayers of the Barracuda pointed to this "red meat" speech as reason why Lord Queeg should have selected Fred as his veep - a sentiment for which I argued last week. I say it's the reason why this man should have been our nominee instead of the backstabber whose fondness for "comity" is both chronically misdirected and being made a mockery of by his erstwhile media "buddies," and as he leaves his #2 to get beaten to death by them like a pinata.

John McCain put his country first forty years ago. Ever since then he's been putting John McCain first, and the country has been repeatedly the worse for it.

And the worst may be yet to come.

UPDATE: The natives are restless. Is Sailor listening?

UPDATE II: For your cathartic viewing pleasure, from a man who knows the Palin feeling:

UPDATE III: This is in-the-tank, bend-over-and-grab-the-ankles, Obama-ball-gargling bias. Add fair and balanced journalism to the mix. Shake, rattle, and roll well, and see what happens to this grinning sack of rat feces.