Time for a new Boston Tea Party

Town Hall ^ | November 23, 2003 | Pat Buchanan

[CMClay]

I'm a huge Pat Buchanan fan.
having said that, he needs to brush up on his history:

Conventional wisdom has it that the 1773 Tea Act - a tax law passed in London that led to the Boston Tea Party - was simply an increase in the taxes on tea paid by American colonists. In reality, however, the Tea Act gave the world’s largest transnational corporation - The East India Company - full and unlimited access to the American tea trade, and exempted the Company from having to pay taxes to Britain on tea exported to the American colonies. It even gave the Company a tax refund on millions of pounds of tea they were unable to sell and holding in inventory.
Tea Party Protest

[TradicalRC]

The republican who is single-handedly responsible for the eight years of Clinton is George Bush I.
Read my lips.

[Brian Allen]

<< The republican who is single-handedly responsible for the eight years of Clinton is former president George Herbert Walker Bush. >>

He was there, for sure -- but was on our side. Buchanan's idiotic un-and-anti Republican Party ranting and raving aided abetted and asisted only Democrats -- and slid the awful Arkansas aberration in on the votes of 16% of the electorate -- including massive electoral fraud.

[Quix]

I agree.

[TradicalRC]

George Bush Sr. who said no new taxes and lied is on our side? What side is that exactly?
Folks love to sneer at the extremists when the "far left" and the "far right" share some common ground, but how about liberal republicans and liberal democrats? When was the last time government got smaller? And I mean overall, anyone can point to the elimination of this or that program but overall the government has gotten bigger under EVERY president since Calvin Coolidge.
I was for republicans when it seemed that they were for less government, George Bush Sr. disabused me of that notion, not Pat Buchanan.

[Theodore R.]

Pat Buchanan "campaigned" actively for the senior George Bush after the 1992 primaries. Buchanan's speech at the Houston convention will be long remembered for its clarion call to fight and prevail in the ongoing "cultural war." Immediately after that speech, the Bush-Quayle ticket enjoyed its last resurgence in the opinion polls.

Pat Buchanan was a symptom of the first Bush's political problems. He did not contribute to Bush's defeat. Most of the Perotistas of 1992 were NOT Buchananites. Perot, for instance, refused to support Buchanan as the "Reform" Party candidate in 2000. The Buchanan people stood loyally behind Bush-Quayle. We did nothing to aid Clinton-Gore.

[Theodore R.]

"Boston Tea Party" has become a synonym of opposition to tyrannical government. Pat was not specifically referring to the issue of tea in 1770-75. John Adams called that "tea party" the "grandest event which has yet occurred since the controversy with Britain opened." It was a step along the way to freedom.

Similarly, we could not say that runaway federal judges are far more tyrannical today than were the British king, Parliament, and bureaucrats of 1775.

[Brian Allen]

"George Bush Sr?"

And you wish to be taken seriously?

Good luck.

[Brian Allen]

<< .... [Mr] Buchanan "campaigned" actively for [President] George [Herbert Walker] Bush after the 1992 primaries. >>

You already put it in quotes and saved me the trouble. Thanks.

Mr Buchanan's speech on that occasion was the best political I have ever heard. But he had already done maximum damage to President Bush -- and in any case 70% of voters thought his convention address was John-Birch-esque. The effect of the Buchanan speech was extremely negative insofar as the Republican Party was concerned.

And every political move Mr Buchanan has made from the minute he left the podium after that great speech has been sillier, more desperate, less honest, more grasping, more totalitarian and more trade-Luddite-esque than the move before.

Mr Buchanan, in short, should have quit when he was only [WAY!] behind.

In 1992.

[Theodore R.]

The reason I put the word "campaigned" in quotes is that Pat did what the national party would permit him to do after the Houston convention. He was given a prime speaking spot and reaffirmed his part of the bargain.

To blame Pat for GHWB's defeat would be no different from blaming William Scranton for Goldwater's debacle or Eugene J. McCarthy for the failure of Hubert Humphrey in 1968. Why is Pat blamed for GHWB's defeat?

[Theodore R.]

Also, does anyone blame Reagan for Ford's defeat in 1976, or does anyone hold Gary Hart for Mondale's failure to unseat Reagan in 1984?

[TradicalRC]

And now thanks to George Bush II and the Republican congress passing the Medicare bill, the torch has passed.
We're all big government conservatives now, to paraphrase Richard Nixon.
We outdid the Democrats at their own game, but hey, at least Republicans are getting elected.
And no, do not take me or 20 million voters like me seriously and then by all means blame us when Republicans lose elections.

[Brian Allen]

Being a Republican is not what one says.

It is what one does.

And part of what one does must include that one understands that politics is an art and not a science and is not a zero sum game but is the art of achieving the achievable.

As Mr Buchanan's quixotic political degeneration illustrates, dead martyrs are only dead -- and the Republican Party's ideas live on only in those of us who are quick enough of mind, of foot and of hand to stay a step ahead of our enemies, foreign AND domestic.

And to paraphrase our Republican President, you are either with us or you are with the enemy.

In 1992, Mr Buchanan, like it or not -- and as effectively as if it had been his intention -- joined the enemy.

What will you do? Stay with the dead enemy?

Or, instead, join us in celebrating that our party, for the first time since 1928, has captured the levers of power and the machinery of government so comprehensively that even the embedded "DemocRATic"potty activists in the permenant bureaucracy are being rooted?

And in celebrating that by the close of President Rice's Administration, in 2017, every one of Our Nation's judicial benches will be occupied by a strict constructionist -- and Our Beloved FRaternal Republic's Founding Law -- as laid out in the American Declaration of Independence and in our Constitution and Bill of Rights will have been restored to its preeminence?

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm?

Blessings -- Brian

[Brian Allen]

<< Also, does anyone blame Reagan for Ford's defeat in 1976 ...? >>

Yep. I do. Mr Reagan, by running against a Republican President, both contributed enormously to his being defeated -- and made possible the awful "presidency" of the un-and-anti-American traitor, Carter -- the effects of whose treachery will be with us for many decades yet!

As for Mr Buchanan? See #33.

[Theodore R.]

I had not heard anyone blaming Reagan for Ford's defeat. Reagan campaigned for Ford in the fall, as did Buchanan for Bush I. Rockefeller, on the other hand, did no campaigning for Goldwater other than a routine appearance in NY State. Yet, I have never heard anyone say that Rockefeller was responsible for LBJ's election.

Nor have I heard anyone accuse Al Gore, Jr., of causing Dukakis' defeat by Bush I though it was Gore who came up with the Willie Horton ads.

[Theodore R.]

What makes you think that Miss Rice is a "conservative"? My understanding is that she is more in the Rockefeller tradition than the Reagan tradition.

[Brian Allen]

<< I had not heard anyone blaming Mr Reagan for then President Ford's defeat. >>

You have now. And Mr Reagan could likely still have won in 1980 and have saved us from Carter's World War Four.

The war, that is, in which we are now engaged -- and in which we are likely to be engaged for decades to come. Which war started as the direct consequence of the traitor, Carter's, failure to respond to the Iranians acts of war against us in 1979. And which will be made very much more difficult to win by his treasonous handing over of America's canal, in Panama -- and by control of that vital asset having been subsequently lost to Peking's predatory psychopaths.

<< What makes you think that Miss Rice is a "conservative"? My understanding is that she is more in the Rockefeller tradition than the Reagan tradition. >>

I do not think Ms Rice is a "conservative" and in any case hold "conservatives" in pretty much the contempt I reserve for [Lunatic-left-wing-fringe-dwelling] "liberals."

I believe, though, that Ms Rice is both a patriotic American and a fiercely-loyal Republican.

And that she is a strict Jeffersonian Constitutionalist.

Like me!

Best ones -- Brian

[Little Bill]

This could end up in Federal Court, the Mass Constitution reserves matters conserning marrage to the General Court and the Governor, this could get interesting, though I doubt it.

[hunter112]

There's a tiny possibility that a Federal Court might tell the MA Supreme Court how to interpret the MA Constitution, but no one should hold their breath waiting for it. The only question left to resolve is, will civil union be offered up, and will the Court accept it as being sufficient?

[Theodore R.]

And that she is a strict Jeffersonian Constitutionalist

I am afraid this could be wishful thinking. There are so few constitutionalists around these days that it is hard to find someone who could pass a basic survey test on the Constitution, much less one who actually believes its original contents.