Balkinization  

Saturday, July 23, 2005

Cheney v. McCain for the Soul of the Republican Party?

Marty Lederman

Here's Andrew Sullivan today on the impasse between the Vice President and Senators McCain/Graham/Warner, which I discuss below:

It's going to be a battle of wills—between decent conservatism and the lawless, government-knows-best policies of Cheney and Bush. . . .

It beggars belief that, after Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Gitmo and the dozens of deaths in interrogation that the administration wouldn't want some way out of its own impasse. But no: as so often, it sticks its heels in, and refuses to acknowledge an obvious and terrible mistake in the war. I look forward to the hard right describing McCain as a leftist or unpatriotic because he wants to restore America's reputation as a country that acts ferociously but always humanely in its own defense.

Comments:

Pity McCain ALSO wants to establish once and for all that you can't say squat about incumbants when a voter might be listening....
 

Marty is right and it can't be a stretch to call this entire affair "Faustian" in the extreme.

In a sense this matter reflects the moral collapse of a wing of the Republican party and a sharp disconnect with the party's history. The public dialogue seems to have forgotten that international humanitarian law began with Abraham Lincoln, by many counts. Elihu Root, who was Teddy Roosevelt's secretary of state and then a GOP senator, called the Hague Conventions on Land Warfare, with their important humanitarian protections, the finest achievement of the McKinley-Roosevelt period - almost certainly a correct assertion. Now Bush and Cheney work to systematically destroy it. What tradition do they represent, exactly? McCain, Warner and Lindsey Graham have placed themselves firmly in the tradition of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Eisenhower. It's a gratifying fact to note that something of the GOP's roots have survived.
 

Now Bush and Cheney work to systematically destroy it. What tradition do they represent, exactly?

An old one, as least as old as Thrasymachus in Plato's Republic.
 

If you thinks right the right things, then the right thinks will make the things right.
Agen Judi Online Terpercaya
 

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