What Conservatives Crave
November 23rd, 2009
If you watched the recent series on the History Channel about WWII in color and HD, one thing you came away with was the enormity of the challenge. In comparison, Iraq and Afghanistan wouldn’t be much more than backwater skirmishes to be settled quickly. So, what is the difference in then and now?
The difference lies in the constitution of our leadership. What it takes to win a war is a man (or woman) with ruthlessness at their core.
Sure, FDR was the consummate schmoozer with the American people, but when it came to winning the war, as he had to, their wasn’t one ounce of pity for the enemy. He had it in mind to take care of business and bring the guys home, even if his strategery guaranteed that a lot of them weren’t coming back. In hindsight, if we had lain off the beaches on some of those Pacific islands for an extra week, a lot of the enemy would have died of thirst. But that wasn’t the policy.
Boldness has limits. Boldness that leads to stupidity is not a noble trait.
With that said, weakness has its limits as well. Bush went into office with the idea of working with the liberals. That policy didn’t last but a year or so. Bush’s plan B was to ignore them for his last 7 years. That didn’t work very well, did it? Much like lax discipline with naughty children, his politeness, niceness, and weakness emboldened them. When a clever and self destructive juvenile sets a match to the house, he manages to put everyone on the street.
Conservatives crave leadership, and bold leadership at that. They want a leader who doesn’t ignore the foolishness of the left.
When the left does dumb things, as they must, conservatives want their leadership to call them on it, and in the most public way….
They want their leaders to take up for themselves. Is that too much to ask? Diplomacy be damned. Sometimes the left is a little thick.
The man or woman who demonstrates leadership and the ability to not ignore the left wins in a landslide every time.