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View Full Version : Peggy Noonan Finally Writes A Column I Agree With



Kathianne
02-18-2011, 05:41 AM
She's just beginning to come back:

http://peggynoonan.com/




...Both Mr. Daniels, who spoke Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, and Chris Christie of New Jersey, who spoke Wednesday at the American Enterprise Institute, were critical of both parties and put forward the same message: Wake up. We are in crisis. We must save our country, and we can. But if we don’t move now, we will lose it. This isn’t rhetoric, it’s real...

Mr. Daniels began with first principles—the role and purpose of government—and went to what he has done to keep his state’s books in the black in spite of “the recent unpleasantness.” He turned to the challenge of our era: catastrophic spending, the red ink that is becoming “the red menace.” He said: “No enterprise, small or large, public or private, can remain self-governing, let alone successful, so deeply in hock to others as we are about to be.” If a foreign army invaded, we would set aside all secondary disputes and run to the ramparts. We must bring that air of urgency to the spending crisis. It is “our generational assignment. . . . Forgive the pun when I call it our ‘raison debt.’“

He argued for cuts and sunsetting, for new arrangements and “compacts” with the young. What followed has become controversial with a few conservatives, though it was the single most obvious thing Daniels said: “We have learned in Indiana, big change requires big majorities. We will need people who never tune in to Rush or Glenn or Laura or Sean,” who don’t fall asleep at night to C-Span, who are not necessarily engaged or aligned...

...As Mr. Chrisie recounted it: “You can imagine how that was received by 7,500 firefighters. As I walked into the room and was introduced. I was booed lustily. I made my way up to the stage, they booed some more. . . . So I said, ‘Come on, you can do better than that,’ and they did!”

He crumpled up his prepared remarks and threw them on the floor. He told them, “Here’s the deal: I understand you’re angry, and I understand you’re frustrated, and I understand you feel deceived and betrayed.” And, he said, they were right: “For 20 years, governors have come into this room and lied to you, promised you benefits that they had no way of paying for, making promises they knew they couldn’t keep, and just hoping that they wouldn’t be the man or women left holding the bag. I understand why you feel angry and betrayed and deceived by those people. Here’s what I don’t understand. Why are you booing the first guy who came in here and told you the truth?”...

Little-Acorn
02-18-2011, 11:19 AM
She is certainly right, as were Christie and Daniels.

When they said,' “We have learned in Indiana, big change requires big majorities. We will need people who never tune in to Rush or Glenn or Laura or Sean,” who don’t fall asleep at night to C-Span, who are not necessarily engaged or aligned...' ...what they meant was, the Rush listeners already agree with us. But there are a lot of people who haven't been paying attention, who now must start. And when they do, they will mostly agree with us too, and we need them as much as we need the Rush listeners.

In a way, we should thank the Obamanites, who managed to do the difficult job of awakening the large majority who hadn't been paying attention. Now they are paying attention, they don't like what they have found, and they do agree with the Rush listeners: This liberal government is for the birds. We need sane government, small government, and government that stays within the bounds they were assigned. Not huge government that tries to do more and more, spends more and more, and charges us more and more in taxes while piling more and more restrictions and regulations on us.

Hopefully those same Obamanites will misinterpret Noonan's column as they misinterpret most everything. "See? Noonan says we don't need the Rush listeners!" ... without listening to what she actually meant. The we can keep ambushing the big-govt liberals and driving them to keep shooting themselves in the foot with more big-govt policies, thus alienating even more of the newly-awakened huge majority Noonan was referring to.