Posted on 03/28/2006 9:38:48 PM PST by Aussie Dasher
On the day that longtime White House Chief of Staff Andy Card took a bullet for an incompetent White House operation – more on that in a moment – another former White House staffer has also departed.
Lyn Nofziger, longtime aide to Ronald Reagan and a personal friend and adviser of mine, died of bladder cancer Monday at the age of 81.
Lyn had been a newspaper reporter when then-candidate Ronald Reagan's kitchen cabinet asked him in the 1966 race for governor to become press secretary to the campaign. From that day forward – with a few temporary postings elsewhere – Lyn was one of Dutch's closest and most loyal aides.
I had the privilege of working for Lyn in 1974, when he oversaw the campaign of Leo K. Thorsness, a just-returned U.S. POW in North Vietnam, who was running for the U.S. Senate against George McGovern in South Dakota. I was the National Finance Chairman and moved to Sioux Falls in June 1974. It was there that I met Lyn and immediately became a Nofziger disciple.
(It was the same week that I first talked to John McCain, a one-time cellmate of Leo Thorsness in a Hanoi prison camp. McCain, I would learn, is one mean, rotten fellow – not the jovial personality he uses to enthrall the gullible mainstream media lapdogs who feel guilty about their own use of college deferments to stay out of Vietnam.)
Lyn Nozfiger was by that time a campaign consultant who oversaw a campaign and worked with the candidate and the campaign manager to run the entire enterprise.
Four years later, when I ran for the House, I hired Lyn as my consultant. A few months later he left my paltry little campaign to rejoin his destiny: Ronald Reagan's campaign. A year later the best president of our lifetime was elected and, on that same wonderful night, I was elected as a proud Reagan loyalist in the House. In the next two years I had the strongest pro-Reagan voting record of any congressman from New York state (tied with Jack Kemp).
Lyn Nofziger was the political director in the early years of the Reagan White House and he never changed. In 1982 he brought me down to the Oval Office to be lobbied on the TEFRA bill – Tax Equification and Fairness in Reporting Act. (What a memory I have if I can remember that bill 24 years later!) As the president and I sat on those two famous chairs in front of the fireplace in the Oval Office, Lyn Nofziger – tie never properly tied and hanging loose – was lying down on the sofa in his stockinged feet as if he were watching the NFL on a Sunday afternoon! In the Oval Office!!!
Lyn was funny, clever – a great punster, which can come only from a quick mind and great vocabulary – and a loyal Reaganite and a true-blue libertarian conservative.
We will all miss him.
Andy Card's departure today will do nothing to change the downward spiral of G.W. Bush's presidency. Why not? Because the problem in this administration is not the staff; it is that the president and the vice president have bad judgment. Period.
Instead of listening to other opinions, they think they know best. Iraq is the perfect example, where they have been wrong about virtually every single pronouncement and statement they have made – and yet they never admit they were wrong and never adjust.
This arrogance is destroying the Bush presidency – and may be ripping apart the GOP, too.
What a contrast with Ronald Reagan – and to Lyn Nofziger. Reagan and his staff were not arrogant; they treated us on the Hill as the co-equals we were in the government. Team Bush walks all over their own supporters on the Hill – and the result now is that the pent-up anger over that treatment is coming back to haunt the administration.
Andy Card is not to blame. He is a loyal Bush aide but not the architect of the now-failing policies in Iraq, Dubai ports, immigration and Katrina; he was merely following Bush's orders.
The fish rots from the head down. And in this White House the orders indeed come from the Oval Office.
The author is drunk
Somebody is!
Any time someone dumps on the Bush's for Katrina business it means their brains are on automatic pilot--or they're just a democrat--which means they operate off of really bad data.
Oh, for a thousand Lyn Nofzigers in positions of power in the GOP.
But dang, there was only one of him...
I wonder what the reunion was like...
From Lyn's blog:
Conservatives are fearful that Harriet
Will be George Bush’s Iscariot.
They have little doubt
That she’d sell them out
For a ride in a liberal’s chariot.
Lyn Nofziger, during his last holiday season:
Nov. 23, 2005—Happy Thanksgiving, one and all. I hope you have much to be thankful for. As for me, I’m thankful to be alive and to have family gathered around for this special day. I am thankful that I was born in and live in the land of the free with all that that implies.
I am thankful that there is a God, a Creator to whom I can be thankful.
Thanksgiving, of course, is a religious holiday, whether or not one wants to admit it. Giving thanks implies that there is a superior Someone to be thankful to for the blessings one has received during the year. If God does not exis then who does one thank? His lucky stars?
I feel sorry for athiests. Who do they turn to in their hour of need or their time of joy? I have no idea. But I know who I turn to and in His name I again wish all who read this a happy Thanksgiving and much to be thankful for in the year ahead.
Like everyone else, including the lady herself, I don’t have the vaguest idea what kind of a supreme court justice Harriet Miers will make—if, indeed the president hangs tough and she eventually is confirmed.
But I do know one thing: The president made a first class political blunder when he picked her, kind of like his daddy raising taxes a couple of weeks before the 1990 congressional elections. This was a typical Bush family blunder—completely unnecessary and hurtful not just to the president’s relations with his party but more important, to the party itself. That drool you see on the sidewalks these days comes from the Dems slobbering all over themselves with glee. The blood you see is the result of the president sticking sharp sticks in his supporters’ eyes.
One thing you can bet: a lot of Republican politicians will be distancing themselves from the white house in the weeks ahead, figuring it’s more important to hold on to their constituents than it is to hold onto their relations with the president.
And it’s all so unnecessary. On the one hand the president didn’t need to appoint Ms. Miers and thus aggravate his base and on the other, conservatives might have given the lady a chance. But neither event happened.
I suspect the uproar from his base caught George W. completely by surprise. After naming John Roberts as chief justice I suspect he thought conservatives would not question who his next appointee would be. Boy, was he wrong.
Conservatives remember too well David Souter and Tony Kennedy and Sandra O’Connor and a multitude of other justices picked by Republican presidents who drifted leftward to show the liberal Washington elites that they had “grown” in the job. They are not willing to take a chance on a complete unknown whose only apparent qualification is her friendship with the president.
Having said all of this, the odds are good that Ms. Miers will be confirmed. The Democrats will see to it, just for the fun of it. The odds are not so good that she will turn out to be a bright and shining star on the historical record of her mentor and benefactor.
Sept. 30, 2005--The lead editorial in today’s Washington Times, in referring to Tom DeLay’s legal troubles, notes that that has been a “trying week” for Republicans. Actaully that’s not quite right. For DeLay it’s been an indicting week. The trying comes later.
Aug. 12, 2005--When they come to write the story of the rise of the New Right as part of the growth of the conservative movement in the last half of the 20th century one of the names that will be writ large is Paul weyrich. I have not always agreed with Paul. I am part of the libertarian fringe of the conservative movement. Paul is not. I am a Reaganite. Paul is not. You think I am sot in my ways and beliefs? Meet Paul Weyrich.
Everybody has a right to be wrong and Paul has taken full advantage of that fact.
And yet I say without hesitation that few men have been as important to the growth of modern-day conservatism as Paul Weyrich. Without him there would be no Heritage Foundation. Without him the New Right likely would have floundered before it ever got off the ground.
Weyrich is one of those who puts principle before politics. On the surface that sounds great, but politics is a way of getting something done and unless you figure out a way to convert principle into action it (principle) ceases to have much meaning.
As a matter of principle Weyrich once decided Ronald Reagan was unfit to be president and he and a few others of like mind decided to find a more dedicted conservative to be the Republican presidential nominee. Their man was Indiana Rep. Philip Crain who foolishly seized the bait, lost big and quickly and and hasn’t been heard from since. Worse, after Reagan was elected ,Weyrich and his mates were left sitting on the outside looking in.
In a way that was too bad. In another way it wasn’t all that bad; it left Paul owing Reagan nothing and free to second guess and criticize, the importance of which cannot be minimized.
Paul is one of those essential persons who operates better and more effectively on the outside.
A while back Paul had a nasty accident that left him crippled and in constant pain. Doctors decided that the only way to alleviate the pain was to amputate his legs. That was to be done this week.
If you can spare one, lift a prayer to the Lord on Paul’s behalf. He is a brave man, a principled man and a man who has fought most of his life to make this a better country.
------
To borrow the great Lyn Nofziger's words about Paul Weyrich:
If you can spare one, lift a prayer to the Lord on Lyn's family's behalf.
He was a brave man, a principled man and a man who has fought most of his life to make this a better country.
God rest your soul, sir!
-------
There was a time we thought the fort
Defending freedom was the court
That sits on high and reigns supreme.
But now we know ‘twas but a dream.
The highest court in all our land
No longer seems to understand
The constitution’s full intent
Or that the founding fathers meant
For it to keep our country free
And to insure man’s liberty.
But liberty no longer seems
To be the thing this court esteems.
It rules instead that governments
In general takes precedence
And we who once had liberty
Now must bow down to tyranny.
Or stand and fight for freedom’s ground.
It worked before, the Redcoats found.
by Joy Skilmer (aka Lyn Nofziger)
Exactly! Throw in the Dubai ports deal and you end up with a knee-jerk, finger-to-the-wind has-been named John LeBoutillier bashing Bush for failing to properly kowtow to the cowards on the Hill.
The thought that the Republicans have a 10-vote edge in the United States senate is a snare and an illusion. Yes, there are 55 senators who call themselves Republicans and who were elected as Republicans but what is often overlooked is that half a dozen of them are genuine, certified, dyed-in-the-wool RINOs (Republicans in name only) and several more view themselves as above-partisanship statesmen. This means there are somewhere around 10 Republicans who in a pinch cannot be counted on, at least five of whom at any one time can be counted on to vote with the Democrats.
Let me name them: Lincoln Chaffee, R.I.; Susan Collins and Olympia Snow, Maine; Arlen Specter, Pa.; John Warner, Va.; John McCain, Ariz.; Chuck Hagle, Neb., George Voinovich and Mike deWine, Ohio; Lindsey Graham, S.C.
These ten and perhaps one or two others time after time leave the Republican leadership scrambling for votes and just as often assure the Democrats the votes they need to block administration proposals, appointees and policies.
Such is life under the capitol dome. And such will it ever be until Republican leadership finally figure out that they are going to have to beat some of these people in primaries and quit supporting them for re-election just because they have an R after their names.
May 19, 2005--Third political parties in the United States are notoriously unsuccessful. They don’t win important elections, although from time to time one may garneer enough votes to give one of the two major parties a victory it might otherwise not win. In l992, for example, Ross Perot’s third party may have prevented the reelection of President George H.W. Bush.
Likewise, Theodore Roosevelt’s Bull Moose party caused the defeat of President Taft and gave the presidency to Woodrow Wilson. And Democrats like to blame Al Gore’s loss in 2000 on the votes siphoned off by third party candidate Ralph Nader.
Nevertheless, despite a record of failures, the law of averages says that one day a third party will have the right issue(s) and the right candidate to win the presidency.
And right at this moment, far fetched as it seems, that that day might arrive as soon as the presidential election of 2008.
I’m beginning to believe the issue is there and what is needed now is charismatic candidate to rally Americans in support of that issue.
The issue: open borders and illegal immigration.
Currently both major parties are pretty much indifferent to it. Or rather, they show no desire to fix the situation by shutting down the border between the United States and Mexico. President Bush’s proposal is little more than an amnesty program for ten to twenty million illegals already here. As far as the Democrats are concerned the problem is hardly more than a blip on their radar screen.
Efforts by civilians to slow the flow of illegals across the border. far from being appreciated by President Bush, instead have unfortunately resulted in his calling them “vigilantes.”
Leaders in both parties appear to be indifferent to the growing problem, which is especially prickly in the southwest where illegals threaten to become a majority and where they are making no attempt to integrate into the American culture. Neither do they appear to be paying any attention to Mexico’s overt efforts to solve its economic problems by abetting the flow of illegals across the border.
Among other things the ease illegals have in entering the United States means its borders are also open to potential terrorists and to drug smugglers.
Unless the president and/or the congress take action in the next couple of years the situation will only get worse.
If the day comes when terrorists launch another successful attack within the U.S. and it is found that the terrorists walked across the border from Mexico how will the president explain it? How will congress defend its refusal to act?
The actutal launching or even the potential threat of a terrorist attack, along with the continuing influx of undocumented aliens, if properly exploited by a third party candidate, could well bring about a serious backlash against the two major do-nothing parties not only in the presidential race but also in the congressional races.
It seems obvious at this moment that both parties have become complacent about the problem. And in politics complacency, as the Democrats learned in the Republican sweep of l994, is the sure road to defeat.
Lyn Nofziger
I disagree on a couple of the names: Lindsey Graham and Mike DeWine can be obstinate and fickle but will usually come through when the chips are down. The only total scumbag on the list is Chafee. A few of the others are dangerous cowards, a few are dangerously unreliable, and two are simply crazy. Don't get me wrong - - that's the right list - - but on any given day, half of them will come through on any given issue. Flip a coin.
Yeah, and then you get the guy who sells you out when you don't expect it...like Sam Brownback did in the Judiciary Committee on immigration.
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