Dennis Prager: Why I Now Vote Party, Not Individual

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In a election day Townhall.com op-ed, Dennis Prager explains why he now votes for the party, not the person:

For better or for worse, the notion of voting for the candidate rather than the party is now mostly naive idealism. The Democratic Party is now fully left-wing, and is simply the American version of any European Social Democratic party. It is the party of ever-expanding government. (The Republican Party, in contrast, is -- at long last -- the party of small government.)

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This is my response to the liberal media, which have portrayed virtually every popular conservative in my lifetime as a mediocrity at best, a dummy at worst. In not one case -- from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush to Sarah Palin -- was the media's depiction accurate. To give but one example, George W. Bush can probably run rings around Vice President Joseph Biden in his understanding and knowledge of history and of the world.

But even if the media's depictions were accurate, it wouldn't matter to me. I will take common sense and values over intellect any day and in any election. Left-wing intellectuals have abysmal track records when it comes to confronting great evil in the world. Their willingness to fight tyrants and despots is one of consistent and abject moral failure.

Take the left's favorite Republican to depict as a dummy, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

This country would be in considerably better shape if Palin were either vice president or president. Palin would have confronted Iran rather than place her faith in negotiations and the United Nations. She would not have sought to impose a peace on Israel (as if peace can ever be imposed by outsiders on any countries, let alone upon those in which one of the parties seeks to annihilate the other). She would not have bought into Keynesian economics and spent nearly a trillion dollars largely to keep overpaid and overcompensated government workers voting Democrat. She would not have expanded the number of government agencies and "czars" to the point that this country may well be governed for the next two years not by congressional laws but by unelected and unaccountable federal agencies. She would not have declared a date by which America will leave Afghanistan and thereby ensured that fewer and fewer Afghans fight alongside America. She would not have signed a 2,000-page bill about anything, let alone health care. She would have expanded oil drilling in America so that we can actually begin the long journey to energy independence, not the imaginary journey to windmills and solar panels. She would never have considered taxing energy, the engine of our economy, on the increasingly absurd claims that human carbon dioxide emissions will bring the planet to ruin.

So, it is time for us Americans to realize that the old days of choosing the better candidate are gone. The Democrats have, at least in this way, achieved their goal of rendering us more European -- we will have to vote by party.

[More]

- JP

Gov. Palin rallies crowd of 6,000 in Denver (Updated)

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Sarah Palin rallied a crowd of thousands to their feet in Denver Saturday night with a "red meat" speech criticizing President Obama and Congressional Democrats:

But Palin didn't mention any of Colorado's testy political fights.

In a speech to about 6,000 at the University of Denver, Palin criticized President Barack Obama and sounded classic conservative themes of smaller government and a stronger national defense.

What the outspoken conservative favorite didn't do was take sides or even mention politics in Colorado, where she's listed two House Democrats as targets for defeat, Reps. John Salazar and Betsy Markey.

Gov. Palin proved false the rumors being pushed by The Huffington Post that during her speech she would endorse Jane Norton over Ken Buck in Colorado's GOP primary race for the Senate:

Both Norton and Buck attended Palin's speech, but neither was on stage nor got a mention in Palin's remarks. Norton met privately with Palin before the speech.

Palin confined her remarks to national politics. She defended Arizona's immigration law. She said Obama's foreign policy was too weak against nuclear threats posed by North Korea and Iran. And she criticized the health care reform law and warned of peril caused by federal spending deficits.

"It's time for an awakening in America," Palin said.

The 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate was joined on state by Salem media talk show hosts Dennis Prager and Hugh Hewitt, who also spoke. The three participated in a brief question and answer session after the governor's address.

Here's how Fox 31 (KDVR) covered the event:



Update:In a published story on its webstite, KDVR listed three quotes ostensibly from the governor's Denver speech. But after reviewing a video of the address at The Right Scoop, it seems that two of them were taken from or paraphrased from other Palin speeches. Only the "America got snookered" quote was actually part of Gov. Palin's Denver speech. Thanks to the Palin staff's R.A. Mansour for being the first to catch that. And shame on KDVR for, as Gov. Palin says, "making things up."

More coverage from KUSA and the Denver Post.

- JP