October 15, 2006

The Lizardarian Manifesto

Hatched by Dafydd

In the face of electoral adversity, I will be courageous, steadfast, loyal, honest, graceful, and optimistic. To wit:

I will not be a craven.

Regardless of media threats, I will not be cowed or silenced; I will not be shamed or frightened. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. I will not be made to feel guilty for being a partisan Republican. If they don't like it, they can jolly well get stuffed.

I will not be a doomhawker.

Despite adverse polls, I will not cringe. I will push forward, conceding nothing, yielding no land, handing no freebies to the Democrats. I will not roll over. I will not concede defeat before the votes are even cast, let alone counted. I will contest every contest until the last possible moment. While I may allocate scarce resources where they will do the most good, I will never start a sentence with "after we lose, we'll have to...."

Elections are like sunrises: you always know when they'll come, but you never know what they'll look like until they arrive.

I will not be a sore winner.

Where Republicans prevail, I will not engage in schoolyard taunts, no matter how disguised. I will never imply that winning makes us better people than the Democrats: we may be better, we may be worse, but neither is determined by who won the election.

I will not be a sore loser.

Where Republicans lose, I will not idly charge electoral fraud: that charge is a powerful explosive that must only be used when (1) the evidence is absolutely overwhelming, and (2) the fraud determined the electoral result, and (3) the fraud is reversible.

And even then, I will think three times before opening my yap... is this trip to the courthouse really necessary? Is it in the best interest of the party, or is it just my own rage at having lost? We're not a bunch of damned Democrats, for God's sake.

I will never tempt other Republicans to despair.

We get quite sufficient invitation to that state from the media, thank you. We don't need to do it to ourselves!

I will never argue that "the best way to win is by losing."

When we lose an election, that means we lost, you dolt. Nobody ever wins by losing; that's the loser's way of gloating over his own ineptitude, as if it were a plus instead of a big minus.

Finally, I will never use setback as my excuse for despair.

The first rule of Life 101 is that nobody always wins: even Douglas MacArthur was defeated and driven out of the Philippines. Even Ronald Reagan didn't get everything he wanted... his pick for Secretary of Education never managed to make himself unemployed, and we still have that department today.

Adversity is a given in this vale of tears. Take it like a man, even if you're a woman. Suck it up, fix your problems, and charge into the next election with courage, grace, and optimism.

We may lose a contest, but the Democrats can never defeat us; only we can do that to ourselves.

But if we pull up our pants with courage and vigor and step out bravely, sword in hand, even after being sent reeling;
If we never say die;
If we never recognize final defeat;
If we never give up;
If we stand ever ready to give the last full measure of our devotion;
If we have faith;
If we adopt the credo of the Spartans at Thermopylae, death before dishonor;
Then in the end, we shall prevail, ourselves or those who follow... and even the grandchildren of our adversaries shall have cause to remember our names.

And that is no mean thing.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 15, 2006, at the time of 10:27 AM

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Tracked on October 16, 2006 2:11 PM

Comments

The following hissed in response by: Imagodei

Can you start a religion, so I can convert to it? 'Cause I'm inspired, sir.

The above hissed in response by: Imagodei [TypeKey Profile Page] at October 15, 2006 11:31 AM

The following hissed in response by: RattlerGator

Bravo. In a time when surrender monkeys have a disproportionate influence on the left wing, it is remarkable to see so many of the National Review crowd and others feigning or feeling actual panic.

The above hissed in response by: RattlerGator [TypeKey Profile Page] at October 15, 2006 12:25 PM

The following hissed in response by: Bill Faith

Excellent, Dafydd. I excerpted and linked.

The above hissed in response by: Bill Faith [TypeKey Profile Page] at October 15, 2006 3:44 PM

The following hissed in response by: Mr. Michael

Every Right Wing commentator should be made to repeat this pledge before every appearance and every post. I agree with almost every line, yet...

I will be numbered. Number me on election day, and number me well. ;)

The above hissed in response by: Mr. Michael [TypeKey Profile Page] at October 15, 2006 4:10 PM

The following hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh

Mr. Michael:

I will be numbered. Number me on election day, and number me well. ;)

It's a quotation. One doesn't fiddle about with Number Six, as many Number Twos found out to their chagrin!

Dafydd

The above hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh [TypeKey Profile Page] at October 15, 2006 5:20 PM

The following hissed in response by: RBMN

Just losing the House or the Senate is not nearly as disappointing, or depressing, as the whole process by which it happens nowadays, where truth comes in so many different flavors, like ice cream--everybody has their favorite. Maybe I'm idealizing the past, but I seem to remember when truth was more like a peanut butter that came two ways--creamy or chunky. Chunky truth, if you could handle chunky....

The above hissed in response by: RBMN [TypeKey Profile Page] at October 15, 2006 6:03 PM

The following hissed in response by: nk

Very good post, Dafydd. Reminiscent of Deteriorata a spoof of Desiderata. Or vice versa. To a discriminating mind with a sense of humor it is difficult to see which is the straight piece and which the spoof.

In the same spirit: If I remember my Herodotus correctly, Leonidas kept only the old married men with children and sent away the young, unmarried ones. So the Spartan credo at Thermopylae was probably more like: "... so what, exactly, would we be going back to?"

The above hissed in response by: nk [TypeKey Profile Page] at October 15, 2006 6:38 PM

The following hissed in response by: Terrye

Dafydd:


Me too.

And I just might add that I am getting fed up with a lot of center right bloggers out there. They are far more interested in doing the "if only they had listened to me" nonsense than they are in winning. It is all about them.... them.... them.

For instance, Glenn Reynolds did his little pre mortum {after all Glenn is numero uno so he is the expert on everything and he should know, right?}

And what is on that list but crap like Terri Schiavo {who btw is dead} Harriet Miers and Dubai Ports.

Well you know they got their way on Harriet Miers, she and the president were publicly humiliated, state universities were insulted and Alito was nominated and confirmed. So why bitch about that? We have people out there who would like nothing better than to lob off our heads and dance about our mutilated carcasses screeching God is Great in Arabic and these people are still bitching about Harriet Miers???

Besides Genn is a professor at a state university and we all know that makes him less than top drawer. Now if he taught at Yale or Princeton or Harvard he might be in a position to pass judgment on Miers, right?

And Dubai? Well if I remember right bloggers like Malkin etc jumped in there without really doing their homework claiming that Bush was going to sell all our ports to terrorists so that they could kill us all or something. That was just stupid. And by the time it became apparent just how stupid it was the damage was done.

In other words certain bloggers on the right have from time been every bit as pushy and full of it as have the bloggers on the left, and every bit as helpful to their party as well.

Recently Kaus has been doing his best to get people all freaked out about the whole immigration thing again. Pardon me, but Kaus supported Kerry in the last election and I don't care how many times Instapundit of the famous heh and indeed link to him I still question the timing. They will get their fence, just like they got rid of Dubai and Miers. And then they will complain about someone else being ham fisted.

Puhleaze. Rove does not seem to be worried. Maybe he is whistling past the graveyard, or maybe he knows something that some of these other guys do not.

Will the Republicans win? I think they have a chance to hang onto the majority. Reynolds etc say that the base does not like to be taken for granted. Well who is the base? I consider myself part of the base and someimes I get the feeling that some right wing commentators take the rest of us for granted in fact they take their majority for granted.

The above hissed in response by: Terrye [TypeKey Profile Page] at October 16, 2006 3:36 AM

The following hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh

Terrye:

I'll tell you what I'm sick of: I'm sick of listening to Democrats cheer and yuck it up as we Republicans form our traditional, pre-election, circular firing squad.

What do you do in a tight game, when the two-minute warning blows? You go all-out, hard as you can, exerting every last erg of energy to score just one more time -- anything! -- for the next 2.5 minutes (the .5 is for follow-through).

I don't watch football often. Well, make that virtually never. I'm not even positive what a football looks like... why did I even bring this up? But even so, I have seen games turned around in the last minute by a spectacular run, pass, or field goal.

The two-minute warning has sounded, so it's time for maximal effort through November 10th (follow through, remember?)

No slacking. No victory laps. And definitely no dejected foot shuffling allowed during the last 120 seconds.

Dafydd

The above hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh [TypeKey Profile Page] at October 16, 2006 4:08 AM

The following hissed in response by: Terrye

Dafydd:

No kidding. I will say one thing for Democrats when they circle the wagons it is to defend themselves while the Republicans seem to circle the wagons just to make it easier to shoot at each other.

The above hissed in response by: Terrye [TypeKey Profile Page] at October 16, 2006 6:21 AM

The following hissed in response by: Steelhand

I admire your tenacity. If we all do our part, voting at every election and advising others to do so, we should come out okay. Can Dems win by shouting, "We're not them?" If so, we get what we deserve. The various Rep fiascos pale in significance to what we may get.

Cheerleading for the firing squad pointed at us, to borrow your metaphor, makes the outcome more likely. Would you rather be right or protect the nation? Just repeat the following mantra:

Speaker Pelosi. Speaker Pelosi. Speaker Pelosi.

To eliminate the chills up your spine alone, it should be worth the effort to succeed.

The above hissed in response by: Steelhand [TypeKey Profile Page] at October 16, 2006 8:27 AM

The following hissed in response by: tomlynk

Well hissed, Dafyyd! What a breath of fresh air. With your kind permission I would like to post this in its entirety on other forums, with a link of course.

The above hissed in response by: tomlynk [TypeKey Profile Page] at October 16, 2006 8:59 AM

The following hissed in response by: Rovin

I have seen games turned around in the last minute by a spectacular run, pass, or field goal.

Ask the St Louis Rams how they feel when victory was snatched from them on Sunday by a 50+ yrd field goal with 4 seconds left.

Ask Elway what it felt like when his team took the lead, and the looked up at the clock and saw 1:26 left for Montana to work his magic.

Good teams win in wanning moments of loosing because the never give up 'till the clock strikes 00.00.

The Seahawks were down 21-7 at the half. And they won!

We (the republicans) may be down, but there's still a lot of game left.

Victory is still in the voters hands.

GET OUT AND VOTE!

The above hissed in response by: Rovin [TypeKey Profile Page] at October 16, 2006 9:00 AM

The following hissed in response by: Jim,MtnViewCA,USA

btw, the immigration thing has been resolved. the high price of gas, too. got this solution from the Internet:
My mailbox is being flooded with mail concerning gas prices and illegal immigrants. I am urged either to boycott oil companies or not; to provide amnesty to illegal immigrants or not, etc. Most of them want money for their cause or their re-election.

Since I have become jaded to the various solutions proposed by the Republicans, Democrats, Sierra Club, ACLU, etc, I have elected to solve these problems as they affect me. It solves both my gas and illegal immigrant problems.

I have hired illegal immigrants to push my car. They're plentiful and cheaper than buying gas. Then I pay them in pesos so they have to go home to spend it.

I love it when a plan comes together.

The above hissed in response by: Jim,MtnViewCA,USA [TypeKey Profile Page] at October 16, 2006 11:15 AM

The following hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh

Tomlynk:

With your kind permission I would like to post this in its entirety on other forums, with a link of course.

Actually, I would prefer you post a short excerpt plus the link, not the whole thing. Thanks!

Dafydd

The above hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh [TypeKey Profile Page] at October 16, 2006 1:46 PM

The following hissed in response by: BusterDBear

Thank you, I do not have to say "Stop with those negative waves."

It will not be the Democrats who win, it will be the Republicans who quit...just because of what pollsters have said...

The above hissed in response by: BusterDBear [TypeKey Profile Page] at October 16, 2006 3:59 PM

The following hissed in response by: Thanos

Yea verily ye doth speak truth. Na' like those Democrats whose mums slept o'erlong in the kennels.

Enjoyable place you have here, you are definitely getting a sidebar link from Noblesse.

The above hissed in response by: Thanos [TypeKey Profile Page] at October 16, 2006 5:55 PM

The following hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh

Thanos:

...you are definitely getting a sidebar link from Noblesse.

Obliged!

Dafydd

The above hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh [TypeKey Profile Page] at October 16, 2006 6:02 PM

The following hissed in response by: Patrick Chester

This article by the Anchoress seems a bit appropriate in light of all the "We're DOOMED" predictions this month.

Blog Meltdowns

The above hissed in response by: Patrick Chester [TypeKey Profile Page] at October 16, 2006 9:31 PM

The following hissed in response by: Brooklyn

Outstanding...

The above hissed in response by: Brooklyn [TypeKey Profile Page] at October 17, 2006 8:58 AM

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