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Edited on Thu Oct-27-05 01:50 AM by calimary
in the White House now." Because what's in the White House now is a WINNER.
Unfortunately, nice guys finish LAST in politics.
Yes. I DO want to be just like them. Because - you know what they are? They're WINNERS. The shit they pull - WINS ELECTIONS. And, unfortunately, in politics, WINNING IS EVERYTHING. Nice gets you baking cookies for church socials. Which I'm not putting down, mind you. But nice doesn't win elections. And if you don't WIN, you don't GOVERN. You don't LEAD. You don't SET THE AGENDA. You don't SET THE TONE OF THE NATIONAL DIALOGUE. You don't own the bully pulpit from which you can CALL THE SHOTS. You don't get to DETERMINE POLICY and FRAME THE DEBATE and you don't get to place YOUR HANDS on the steering wheel, and steer the nation in the direction you think best - which might well include bringing back niceness and civility to politics.
Mean, nasty, shitty, ruthless, stop-at-nothing is what wins. Sad to say, but it's the hard, mean, nasty, shitty, ruthless, stop-at-nothing truth. Even the public opinion surveys prove it - people will say, over and over and over and over and over and over and over that they hate negative campaigning, character assassination, cheap shots and cheap tricks. But, dammit, ALL those things win, every time. Just ask John McCain about the 2000 South Carolina primary. Ask Max Cleland and Michael Dukakis. As anyone who's been up against kkkarl rove and company. People want fighters - mean, nasty, bad-ass fighters who won't get rolled by anybody. That's why the fair-weather-friend mentality of cozying up to whoever's the biggest big cheese always will prevail. America may route for David the underdog, but America seems to like to vote for Goliath, give or take a few fixed elections.
I hate it. I KNOW you hate it. And yes, it's utterly a hateful state of affairs. But it's what we need to do to WIN. And I want to win. I'm SICK TO DEATH of losing. So, it doesn't bother me a bit to be accused of willingly wallowing in the mud and filth. That's what it takes to WIN, and I want to WIN.
Once you WIN, THEN, and ONLY THEN, can you start readjusting the national psyche. When you WIN, then you can say God anointed YOU. And because you WIN, that alone gives you cred, and more people will believe it.
FIRST, LAST, and ONLY, we have to WIN.
Besides, wasn't it Rudy Giuliani who said something about how he'd rather ask for forgiveness later than ask for permission now - when it came to getting things done? After we WIN, and only once we've won, we can ask for forgiveness.
It's the ol' dilemma about taking a knife to a gunfight. What our noble nice guys have been doing is going to gunfights armed with feather dusters. THAT HAS TO STOP. YESTERDAY.
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