| | | I sat down here to attempt to share a small handful of the experiences that my husband and I had in South Carolina these past few days, and to catch up on what has been going on on the board, and came across this comment here from honey_bee.
In my opinion, this board has some outstanding people on it. But it also has some who will attack you in various ways if you do not stay in lock-step with them and their "simple" board princess. And no one has the nerve to defend you if this happens.
I have posted on quite a few conservative websites over the past almost twenty years, including FreeRepublic, where many noted conservatives (including the late Andrew Breitbart) voice their personal opinions about current events, under their anonymous screen names, interacting with the rest of us ‘ordinary citizens'.
In one lengthy discussion I once had with Breitbart, in early 2004, he gave me some powerful advice that I attempt to adhere to still today. He told me that, when debating with someone, no matter how powerful, or interesting, or long-lasting, your debate might be, once your opponent abandons rational, fact-based arguments and instead resorts to personal attack … walk away.
Even the PfC poster who placed Mulholland Drive on ignore did not attack her personally. He simply stated that her gloating after Trump’s win last night was undignified. We have all done undignified things during our lives. My list would fill a small book, and I wish I could take each and every one of them back … past, present and future.
But intimating that some of the posters here on PfC are mindless lemmings, marching in ‘lock step’ with me (or anyone else on this board), is a personal attack of the worst kind.
The posters on this board are every bit as independent thinkers as anyone I, personally, have met on any other conservative forum. And, over the past four years, I have learned at least as much here as I have learned anywhere else on the forum internet. Before leaving for the airport on Tuesday, I printed out dozens of papers, in the hopes of being able to hand them out during my door-to-door experience in South Carolina. Many of those papers included printouts of invaluable links that were posted here on PfC. In addition, many of the ‘talking points’ that I used when speaking with people were ideas and arguments that were offered by posters right here on PfC and that I intended to use (and wound up doing so dozens of times) when discussing the candidates. (Apologies for the verbal plagiarism.) :)
So the accusation that some on this board are marching in ‘lock step’ with someone else (much less with me) are so beyond ludicrous as to be off the charts surreal.
As for Donald Trump’s win yesterday, it was indeed a big one. I believe Ted Cruz’s campaign has been dealt a major blow. If he surrendered half of the evangelical Christian vote to Donald Trump in South Carolina, that voter segment will, in all likelihood, be split similarly elsewhere. And the majority of Jeb Bush’s supporters will fall in line behind Marco Rubio, probably leaving Cruz a distant third when the final electoral tally is calculated (if he stays in the race that long).
That does not mean that I will stop speaking out, at every opportunity, in his behalf. And, if his campaign survives long enough to be viable here in Pennsylvania on April 26th, I will wear out much more shoe leather, and make many more phone calls, in his behalf than I did this week in South Carolina. :) Even though I believe Cruz’s chances of success are much dimmer than they were twenty-four hours ago, I truly believe that he represents our last best hope of being blessed with another Reagan-esque leader, and the fact that we may turn our backs on him could prove to be a tragedy beyond imagination.
When I think about the fact that, had Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative been followed through to fruition, the nuclear threats now posed by Iran and North Korea would be miniscule, if not non-existent … not to mention that those threats would not have developed in the first place, had we continued down the ‘peace through strength’ path Reagan blazed for us, rather than the ‘lead from behind’ nonsense of the last seven years, and the treading water policies of the previous administrations. I am so angry at our leadership of the past almost thirty years, who allowed almost all of Reagan’s achievements to turn to dust.
I pray every day that the citizens of this republic will search the hearts of every candidate, and that they will be moved to vote for that candidate (whoever he may be) who genuinely has the best interests of our republic as the centerpiece of his beliefs. If Donald Trump does wind up winning the republican nomination, I pray that the faith and confidence that honey_bee, and his other ardent supporters, are placing in him do indeed turn out to be justified, because the idea of a Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders presidency is abhorrent beyond words. |
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