SEATTLE – Sen. John F. Kerry told state legislators Friday the Democratic Party doesn’t need to undergo an extreme makeover, saying “the last thing America needs is a second Republican Party.”
After blistering Republicans on everything from Iraq to health care, Kerry said Democrats have an opportunity to rebuild nationally by simply addressing the concerns that affect people’s daily lives — energy, transportation, health care and security.
“We have to go out and fight for the real issues that make a difference in the lives of the American people and we don’t need some great lurch to the right or lurch to the left or redefinition of the Democratic Party,” the Massachusetts Democrat said. “The last thing America needs is a second Republican Party.”
Senator Kerry is right. We don’t need another Republican party. But we do need an opposition party that has ideas of its own outside of knee-jerk obstruction and opposition to everything the Republicans do.
We need an opposition party that is truly interested in reducing pork-barrel government spending. We need an opposition party that takes the illegal immigration problem seriously. We need an opposition party that is interested in reducing government’s role in the day-to-day lives of American citizens. We need an opposition party that is for fewer entitlements.
Today’s GOP may not be many of these things (at least not in practice, anyway) but the Democrats certainly don’t fit the bill for voters interested in the things I described above. If Democrats could morph themselves into a party that takes the Republicans on in these issues I think they’d find themselves having more success than they’re having now. Because I think Americans want the things I’ve described.
Sadly, from the comments made by people like Sen. Kerry and DNC Chairman Howard Dean, it appears as though the Democrats have no interest in being that sort of party.
By Rob Port of Say Anything.
Lurch comments on “lurches.”
“Sadly, from the comments made by people like Sen. Kerry and DNC Chairman Howard Dean, it appears as though the Democrats have no interest in being that sort of party.”
Yep. And until they see the error in that line of thinking, they’ll continue to lose, no matter how badly the GOP f’s up on issues like immigration, etc…..
And we are paying attention to anything Herman Munster’s evil twin brother says because…?
Man, if the Dem party ever adopted the platform Rob just laid out, I’d be seriously tempted to bolt.
And I quote:
“The last thing America needs is a second Republican Party.”
Of course that’s the last thing the “current” democrats want. Then they’d be bludgeoned from the left and the right sides at the same time.
“After blistering Republicans on everything from Iraq to health care, Kerry said Democrats have an opportunity to rebuild nationally by simply addressing the concerns that affect people’s daily lives — energy, transportation, health care and security.”
Lets not forget to make everyone pay for it through higher taxes. Oh yeah, and we might as well nix the military on top of that, cause you know, all those liberal democrats are peace loving folks, and nothing bad could ever happen….
In all honesty, there is a party out there that I feel is making headways. It’s called the Libertarian party, I think we’ll be seeing a lot more of these guys in the near future.
damn right we dont need two republican parties, one is doing enough to properly fuck up this country….two would send it back to the stone age faster than we are going already
John Kerry…..John Kerry…..where have I heard that name before?
Oh yeah, the gin-soaked raisin woman’s husband, isn’t he?
Didn’t he serve in Vietnam as well?
We need another party that patriotic Americans can be proud to belond to and as M. Medved would say, the Losertarian Party is not it.
I guess the boss lady needs to give her gigalo a talking to. He’s running off at the mouth again. Just exactly which party supporters block all the oil/gas drilling, block all of the power plant construction (Nuc and Conventional), block all new mining, block timber cutting, etc. If anyone payed any attention to the dim-wits we would be living in the stone ages right now. Na, we would be back past the stone ages, we wouldn’t be allowed to own a sharp instrument, burn anything to stay warm, kill anything to eat, catch a poor fish with feelings, build a dam- some mussle or other unknown mammal might live in the water. I seem to remember an energy bill submitted in the early nineties that went no where until we got rid of Dead End Dachele. Given time we may even recover from the disasterous nineties. It’ll still take years to get any confidence in the leaders of industry due to all of the thiefs that thrived in the 90’s. Damn it would take a week to provide the facts to slam the idiot three line post by the leftie and he would still be stupid.
The order of what Kerry calls our ‘concerns’ is disturbing.
‘Energy, health care, transportation and security’.
That should strike fear in the hearts of all sane voters.
Even the marginal moonbats.
He proved he can name some problems but didn’t offer any solutions. Welcome back to the John Kerry 2004 presidential campaign. I guess summer is the season for reruns, but why rerun a show that flopped?
I’d be fine with the libertarian party if they could actually bother to focus on reasonable civil liberties, like, say, right to privacy, right to land ownership, right to bear arms, as opposed to putting near their full attention to legalizing drugs. There’s some good arguements to legalizing drugs, but it’s neither the first step to creating a reasonable solution, nor is it a feasible platform. Oh, and putting forward a candidate that WASN’T a tool for once would be good too… but no party is good at that one.
On a more related to the topic note, I think Steel’s finding should be repeated. It’s not good when Dems put transportation over security in this day and age.
I can’t say what other libertarians have been up too, but the ones that I’ve heard speaking have all been talking about upholding the constitution, returning things to the way the founding fathers meant them to be. That could just be the local guys, I don’t know what others in the party have been saying.
“Kerry said Bush and the Republicans have used the terrorism issue to divert attention from issues that favored the Democrats.”
and
“”We have to go out and fight for the real issues that make a difference in the lives of the American people”
So close John, you nearly had it there….
Someone remind these plebs that Terrorism is a real issue, and it is important to Americans, the sane ones at least.
You know, we get the whole ‘opposition’ thing, but could you at least try and oppose the president in ways which don’t spur on our enemies and don’t create a danger to the very people that elected you (there are still some dems elected somehwere isn’t there?).
How about pointing out the Bush should be deporting radical clerics, or tightening borders? You get to pick on Bush and make good policy too. Who knows it might even win you a few votes instead of whining because a guy trying to kill US troops got a hangnail at gitmo.
When Kerry said he’d like for terrorism to be merely a nuisance, he meant it should be something the Democrats could talk about but which wouldn’t cost them elections.
You know, just like before 9/11.
In all honesty, there is a party out there that I feel is making headways. It’s called the Libertarian party, I think we’ll be seeing a lot more of these guys in the near future.
Yeah, I’ve been hearing this for 30 years now, and I’m still waiting to see them get more than the three or four percent they usually get in any election.
Kerry’s list of priorities from the top has always consisted of entitlements; not what the country needs, but what those who embrace the “I’m a victim” mentality want at the cost to everyone but themselves. If Kerry and his bretheren actually supported the idea of offering opportunity rather than charity they WOULD be Republicans.
Another Democrat fallacy is the transportation bill. Democrats are screaming about Bush’s big spending on that bill. Yet, only 12 people between the House AND Senate opposed it. How many of those twelve were Democrats? Anyone know?
I do know that three of the four Senators who opposed it were Republican.
Kerry’s new slogan should be, “Wah! I’m increasingly irrelevant!” (Much thanx to my friend, Pavel, for that quote. Hope he doesn’t mind me using it.)