Now that I have removed the wool from Pat Powers, some of the anonymous invectives on his web site are going after him for dividing the Republican Party. This excerpt is based on the point I made with the twelve questions I confronted powers with:
I don’t disagree with your right to support who you want to support, but it’s pretty clear you are imposing a "standard of fitness" based upon Stan "turning traitor," and Sibby’s personal attacks. You have a pretty clear idea of who should, and should not be welcomed as a Republican. If Stan and his ilk want to work with the party, you tell them "no thanks" based upon their past transgressions. They are currently a part of the party, you want them to leave. That is the precise definition of creating a division in the party.
Bill Janklow said some awfully nice things about Tom Daschle, and has said some awfully not nice things about Larry Pressler and Jim Abdnor. Tony Dean has been very vocal of his support of Tim Johnosn. Are they traitors?
Pat Powers responds with this:
Part of the differentiation between my criticism of Stan and say someone like Tony, is that Tony is a private citizen, and not anyone with a relationship with the GOP at the time he supported Johnson.
The key difference is when Stan was urging his fellow GOP Senators be thrown out of office, calling others wing nuts, etcetera, Stan was a) an elected Republican officeholder, or b) announced his intentions to run as a candidate. My grumpiness is that he now wants the support of GOP after crapping all over them. It’s hard enough to elect the candidates of your party, without one of your own making it tougher.
First let me point out that Tony Dean is no more a "private citizen" than I am. And let me point out that Tony Dean did say he was running for office…AS A DEMOCRAT! This is a February 2003 excerpt from an interview that I found on Tony Dean’s web site (note that it appears to be a cut and paste job):
You're planning to run as a Democratic candidate for Congress even though you've been a longtime Republican (Dean recently announced plans to run against former Gov. Bill Janklow for the U.S. House seat Janklow won last fall). Could you talk a little bit about that decision?
I really believe that politics is nothing more than seeing windows of opportunity and deciding whether you're going to act on those opportunities. I've been blessed, I've got a good mind for research and I've got some communication skills.
I can either take my fishing boat and my guns and golf clubs and my dog and spend the rest of my life doing what I've done for a living, or take advantage of my name identification to do something that would be good for my children and grandchildren. I chose the latter. On top of it, I think I'm going to be elected.
Was the decision to switch parties difficult?
Yeah, it is. Philosophically, I'm still a Republican. My own business, I operate in a fiscally responsible manner. I don't spend money I don't have. Honestly, the major reason I'm going to switch parties is conservation. I concluded it's going to be a lot easier to talk to Democrats about guns than Republicans about conservation.
Pat Powers still defends Tony Dean, but he says this about a fellow Republican:
That’s why I consider Sibby’s invective and pokes at my conservatism (or lack thereof) the moral equivalent of farting into the wind. He’s only been a Republican for a few years. To my knowledge, he’s never held a position in the party. God knows he’s never ran for anything, and the one time he indicated he might, he became a weak sister before the contest even began, turning tail to run (away, not for office).
It’s a matter of what you might term "street cred." And as far as politics are concerned, Steve really doesn’t have much.
Well, Tony Dean never did run for that office as a Democrat or a Republican. So why doesn’t Powers give Tony hell for "turning tail to run". You can call that question thirteen Powers. Clearly Pat Powers’ "street cred" is taking a beating. Here is more from the anonymous commenter:
The problem, Pat, is that many of the things you say about Stan and Sibby are applicable to you. You just see yourself differently and think that the same kinds of rules shouldn’t apply (hubris?). The things you say sound good, but your "rules" are fudgible,depending on who you’re talking about. Tony Dean (a personal friend) can be forgiven because he’s served the party for a long time, even though has more recently supported Democrats. Stan has obviously served the party for a very long time in a variety of capacities, but in your mind he can never be forgiven for recently supporting Democrats.
Sibby is a wingnut who divides the party because he deems some Republicans too liberal. When you deem Stan and the Mainstreamers as too liberal, you’re not dividng the party, you’re standing up for "principle." When Rob or Leslee attack pro-choice Republicans, that’s fine because it’s based on "principle."
In the end, you do exactly what you accuse the others of doing — you have applied a standard of fitness, one that is so aribtrarily applied that it can only be considered goofy.
And that answers the question about why I can be trusted by those in the conservative movement, and why Pat Powers should not be trusted by conservatives. His politics is not based on principle. I have been told by a legislator that Pat Powers’ web site is more of a tabloid, while my web site is more tuned toward principles and their application to issues. And by pointing that the liberals’ principles are based on the worldview of secular humanism, I am simply defining the basis of liberal principles versus the Biblical Christian basis to conservative principles. Pat Powers says that makes me an extremist, but it is he and those liberal Republicans that he supports who are the real extremists.
And as I have said before, the Drive-by media falsely portrays the liberal Republicans as extremists, while they paint conservatives as extremists. And Pat Powers has used the Drive-By media to attack Rush Limbaugh, the principled talk radio host to the institute of advanced conservative study, and defend liberal Republicans like Tony Dean. He even included Rosie O’Donnell in the list of those he wanted to defend. How much more extreme can you get than Rosie O’Donnell?
And one more point, Pat Powers has removed me from his SD Blogosphere Update feeds for a second time as he continues to allow a web site paid for by the South Dakota Democrat Party.
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