I appreciate the Oregonian nervously reporting* about the Washington Free Beacons’s chronicling of Senator Jeff Merkley’s knee-jerk tendency to apologize for a regime that hangs homosexuals and adulterers: I might not have gotten to it for a while otherwise. Anyway, it’s depressing how unsurprising this report is:
The senator who fronted a campaign against new sanctions on Iran earlier this year has since 1979 been advocating that the United States take a soft line on Iran due to his belief that America’s global power and influence are waning, according to a copy of the lawmaker’s 235-page college thesis obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D., Ore.) emerged in January as one of the leading Senate Democrats who massaged the press on behalf of the Obama administration and pressured his colleagues to kill new Iran sanctions that were supported by a bipartisan majority of lawmakers.
Although I will give Senator Merkley points for consistency: he’s been making excuses for the ‘revolutionaries’ who took over Iran for, what, thirty-five years now? That’s almost impressive. Another apologist might have broken under the strain by this point.
Via
Merkley spokesman Matt McNally said he was "not going to engage" the Free Beacon on its story. http://t.co/m0pWReBT7r
— Adam Kredo (@Kredo0) April 1, 2014
Moe Lane (crosspost)
PS: Look, I know that Oregon is more liberal than a lot of places, so it’s not shocking that some of the Democratic politicians in that state might be a bit too… accommodating… when it comes to foreign policy. But they hang people in Iran for being gay. They hang them from cranes. I get that this doesn’t bother Jeff Merkley, but surely it unnerves at least some of the people who normally vote for him?
*Jeff Merkley’s staff declined to repudiate the thesis. Presumably that means that the Senator remains committed to appeasing the Iranian regime.
If you believed that we were “waning” in 1979, and you maintained that belief all through the Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II years, then there is something wrong with you.
I swear Obama was the culmination of the Left’s dream of bringing this nation low.
Precisely — it’s a “prophecy” they hope to bring about. Rather like the “argument” against a given military engagement: “it’ll be another Vietnam!” It’s not about what’s likely to happen in the field, but a threat about what they’ll do on the home front.
I’m glad this didn’t come out in 08 because it probably wouldn’t have saved Bob Smith and be a dead issue now, instead this turd has plopped itself on Merkley’s lap right when he’s running for re-election and may face a tough race against Monica Wehby.
Bah. What would have saved Bob Smith? Keeping David Brownlow and the Constitution Party out of the race. Merkley won by about 3-1/2 percent … but Brownlow siphoned off 5-1/4 percent of the vote, and it’s a safe bet that just about all of those voters were conservative. The perfect is enemy of the adequate.
Oregon has two Senators from the Democratic Party. One of them has a working brain, a respect for the U.S. Constitution, and a sense of integrity. The other one is Jeff Merkley.
I say it probably wouldn’t have saved Smith, because most of those voting Constitution party 1) wouldn’t have voted for a moderate R unless the Constitution party member left the ballot and 2) probably agree with Merkly more then Smith on National Defense issues aka they were Paultards.
So yeah the only thing that would’ve saved Smith was if Brownlow wasn’t on the ballot, and there is no guarantee the Paulbots voting for Brownlow wouldn’t have voted Merkly over the “neocon” Bob Smith.
Why should they be bothered by this? After all, who are we to judge a beautiful, non-Western culture? Besides, Iran hates America so they can’t be that bad in the eyes of the average liberal.
I think this is a fairly complex issue. While things have been done by America that were wrong, our country has done a lot of good in this world as well. If you think about it, every country in this world has its share of blemishes.
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Conservatives sometimes miss the blemishes, we look at the good this country has accomplished and it fills us with pride, that isn’t a bad thing, but we all must acknowledge the mistakes our country has made in the past, so we don’t repeat those mistakes.
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Liberals look at this country with a self-loathing (which let me just say that isn’t a healthy), they seem to see nothing but the blemishes. They act as though all the evil of the world is somehow the cause of the United States, which isn’t true. Our country is an exceptional country, we’ve done things for the peoples of other countries that no other country would do. At the end of World War II, we could have kept Japan as a conquered land, we could have kept West Germany. We chose not to, that is something most other countries would not do.
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Most of all, liberals fail to see the fact that our country is an exceptional nation. For a young nation, we’ve accomplished things that far older nations never have. We were the deciding factor that put a stop to Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan’s attempt at world domination. We then were the ones that put a stop to the Soviet Union. Now liberals just want to throw that all away, and I kind of pity them. They are ashamed of the power this country has and want to do away with that power leaving a vacuum. If we turn our backs on everyone, like we did after World War I, then we will be responsible for the evil that follows, because we could have stopped that evil.