FrankRep
02-10-2011, 11:22 AM
http://thenewamerican.com/images/stories2011/11aFebruary/swebb-ap.001.jpg
Senator James Webb, the conservative Democrat who defeated incumbent moderate Republican Senator George Allen in 2006, has announced his retirement from the Senate.
Is Senator James Webb Too Conservative for the Democrats? (http://thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/politics/6256-is-webb-too-conservative-for-the-democrats)
R. Cort Kirkwood | The New American (http://thenewamerican.com/)
10 February 2011
Senator James Webb (http://www.webb.senate.gov/), the conservative Democrat who defeated incumbent moderate Republican Senator George Allen (http://www.georgeallen.com/) in 2006, has announced (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110209/ap_on_go_ot/us_webb_retirement/print) his retirement from the Senate. Retirement may not be the right word, given that Webb served just one term. But he is leaving elective politics nonetheless.
Webb won't run again, he says (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110209/ap_on_go_ot/us_webb_retirement/print), and plans to return to the private sector. Beyond that, he didn't offer much explanation for his decision.
His departure will leave the seat open for Allen, who lost the election to Webb because he unwisely called (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/14/AR2006081400589_pf.html) a Democrat spy at a campaign event (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r90z0PMnKwI) a "macaca," a racial term (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macaca_(slur)) in his mother's country, Tunisia. He spent the remainder of the campaign apologizing to no avail. It didn't much matter. Allen is a typical Republican conservative whose principal concern is the economy and money. Webb is a visceral, cultural conservative.
Webb's leaving also doesn't help (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/senate/jim-webbs-retirement-and-what.html) the Democrats’ chances in the Senate in 2012 beyond the obvious opening for Allen. Two other top Democrat Senators, Joe Lieberman (http://www.lieberman.senate.gov/) (I-Conn.) and Kent Conrad (http://www.conrad.senate.gov/) (D-S.D.) will not run, which could turn the Senate over to the Republicans. If they retain the U.S. House in 2012, President Barack Obama, if he wins a second term, is in for an interesting four years.
Why He's Retiring
The reason Webb wants to leave, most likely, is that a man with his sense of honor could not abide swimming in the cesspool of Capitol Hill. A Naval Academy graduate and Marine Corps officer in Vietnam, Webb received (http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2006/09/jim_webbs_navy_.html) the Navy Cross (http://www.history.navy.mil/medals/navcross.htm) for bravery in action. He speaks his mind bluntly.
Examining Webb’s beliefs and writings (http://www.jameswebb.com/index.html) sheds some light on his decision.
Webb is, as Andrew Ferguson wrote (http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/873pxnoi.asp) in the Weekly Standard during his campaign, a "blood-and-soil conservative." Reprising a few lines from Webb's book, Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0767916883?ie=UTF8&tag=libert0f-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0767916883), Ferguson explains how conservative Webb really is:
The culture so dramatically symbolized by the Southern redneck [is] the greatest inhibitor of the plans of the activist Left and the cultural Marxists for a new kind of society altogether.
From the perspective of the activist Left, [rednecks] are the greatest obstacles to what might be called the collectivist taming of America, symbolized by the edicts of political correctness. And for the last fifty years the Left has been doing everything in its power to sue them, legislate against their interests, mock them in the media, isolate them as idiosyncratic, and publicly humiliate their traditions in order to make them, at best, irrelevant to America's future growth.
The people Webb refers to in that passage are Southern whites such as himself, and the "activist Left" is the coterie of crazies who have controlled the Democrat Party for the last 30 years: Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, etc.
Indeed, Ferguson noted (http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/873pxnoi.asp), the Democrats who sought Webb for a candidate because he rightly opposed the war in Iraq likely didn't know what they were getting. Webb is also pro-gun, for instance, a fact that left Ferguson's interlocutors at a campaign event for Webb in leftist Arlington, Va., struggling to explain their support.
...
Full Story:
http://thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/politics/6256-is-webb-too-conservative-for-the-democrats
Senator James Webb, the conservative Democrat who defeated incumbent moderate Republican Senator George Allen in 2006, has announced his retirement from the Senate.
Is Senator James Webb Too Conservative for the Democrats? (http://thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/politics/6256-is-webb-too-conservative-for-the-democrats)
R. Cort Kirkwood | The New American (http://thenewamerican.com/)
10 February 2011
Senator James Webb (http://www.webb.senate.gov/), the conservative Democrat who defeated incumbent moderate Republican Senator George Allen (http://www.georgeallen.com/) in 2006, has announced (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110209/ap_on_go_ot/us_webb_retirement/print) his retirement from the Senate. Retirement may not be the right word, given that Webb served just one term. But he is leaving elective politics nonetheless.
Webb won't run again, he says (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110209/ap_on_go_ot/us_webb_retirement/print), and plans to return to the private sector. Beyond that, he didn't offer much explanation for his decision.
His departure will leave the seat open for Allen, who lost the election to Webb because he unwisely called (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/14/AR2006081400589_pf.html) a Democrat spy at a campaign event (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r90z0PMnKwI) a "macaca," a racial term (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macaca_(slur)) in his mother's country, Tunisia. He spent the remainder of the campaign apologizing to no avail. It didn't much matter. Allen is a typical Republican conservative whose principal concern is the economy and money. Webb is a visceral, cultural conservative.
Webb's leaving also doesn't help (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/senate/jim-webbs-retirement-and-what.html) the Democrats’ chances in the Senate in 2012 beyond the obvious opening for Allen. Two other top Democrat Senators, Joe Lieberman (http://www.lieberman.senate.gov/) (I-Conn.) and Kent Conrad (http://www.conrad.senate.gov/) (D-S.D.) will not run, which could turn the Senate over to the Republicans. If they retain the U.S. House in 2012, President Barack Obama, if he wins a second term, is in for an interesting four years.
Why He's Retiring
The reason Webb wants to leave, most likely, is that a man with his sense of honor could not abide swimming in the cesspool of Capitol Hill. A Naval Academy graduate and Marine Corps officer in Vietnam, Webb received (http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2006/09/jim_webbs_navy_.html) the Navy Cross (http://www.history.navy.mil/medals/navcross.htm) for bravery in action. He speaks his mind bluntly.
Examining Webb’s beliefs and writings (http://www.jameswebb.com/index.html) sheds some light on his decision.
Webb is, as Andrew Ferguson wrote (http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/873pxnoi.asp) in the Weekly Standard during his campaign, a "blood-and-soil conservative." Reprising a few lines from Webb's book, Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0767916883?ie=UTF8&tag=libert0f-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0767916883), Ferguson explains how conservative Webb really is:
The culture so dramatically symbolized by the Southern redneck [is] the greatest inhibitor of the plans of the activist Left and the cultural Marxists for a new kind of society altogether.
From the perspective of the activist Left, [rednecks] are the greatest obstacles to what might be called the collectivist taming of America, symbolized by the edicts of political correctness. And for the last fifty years the Left has been doing everything in its power to sue them, legislate against their interests, mock them in the media, isolate them as idiosyncratic, and publicly humiliate their traditions in order to make them, at best, irrelevant to America's future growth.
The people Webb refers to in that passage are Southern whites such as himself, and the "activist Left" is the coterie of crazies who have controlled the Democrat Party for the last 30 years: Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, etc.
Indeed, Ferguson noted (http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/873pxnoi.asp), the Democrats who sought Webb for a candidate because he rightly opposed the war in Iraq likely didn't know what they were getting. Webb is also pro-gun, for instance, a fact that left Ferguson's interlocutors at a campaign event for Webb in leftist Arlington, Va., struggling to explain their support.
...
Full Story:
http://thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/politics/6256-is-webb-too-conservative-for-the-democrats