Posted on 04/21/2006 10:00:52 AM PDT by Impeach98
The problem is that your solution guarantees a democratic victory. Is that going to be better? Not in my opinion.
How is it that the GOP could go weak on federal spending and growth in government? That should be the CORE of the party to which all other conservative wings are added on (social, cultural, pro-defense).
As a Californian I have the added benefit of having a party that stands for Arnold Schwarzenegger but no ideology right now.
I don't think the public will tolerate too well the rule of liberal Democrats. And I think that such rule might be necessary to revitalize the GOP and rekindle the passion for ideas that until recently had steered the party's path to power.
The Democratic party could literally destroy this country in two years - and probably will. There may be nothing left to galvanize.
Melanie Morgan and the rifts in conservatism. Penny for your thoughts.
My lips are sealed and my fingers tethered..
Eliminate moderates and wishy washy folks and then we can talk. ;-)
oops, that slipped out.
Wait a minute. I thought that was Mark Williams...or was it Eric Hogue? And who was the "Father" of the recall, Ted Costa? Howard Kaloogian? Daryl Issa? Dave Gilliard? Steve Frank?
You guys have me so confused. If I had an ego I'd claim it too.
Good article. I like the 4 categories. My beliefs fall in all four categories, 75-100%.
I think Badray summed it up pretty well:
The party that will stand for anything, in fact stands for nothing.
The only reason anyone's confused is because some people who weren't involved early on have tried to rewrite history. Here's how this one went:
* January, 2003 - Melanie Morgan and Shawn Steel are having a discussion about Gray Davis and his lies about the size of the state budget deficit. Melanie is asking what they can do about Davis and Steel suggests maybe we ought to recall him and Melanie gets excited and asks if they can really do that.
* Melanie and Steel then seriously look into this and the details and get the details wrong the first few times.
* Steel talks to a number of people about this including Ted Costa, Pat Cadell, Mark Abernathy, etc...
* Howard Kaloogian and Sal Russo have heard Melanie Morgan talking about this on the air. They realize that the GOP will never get behind this and it will only work if it's done from the outside. Russo and Kaloogian also have the whole Bill Simon network they can access and Russo talks to Democrat insiders who say "please, go for it, we'll help with it behind the scenes."
* We (Kaloogian-Russo-later Melanie Morgan) retain the website www.RecallGrayDavis.com in late January and build it in a few days. * Steel goes back to CPAC I believe to try to rally support for the fledging recall drive.
* Ted Costa has decided he will launch the recall himself. He's not very competent, his previous efforts came about because other people gave him money. But he thinks he can do this. Problem is, he doesn't have a plan that anyone thinks will work.
* The day that we launch RecallGrayDavis.com to sign up petition circulators, Costa produces Notice of Intent to Recall petition and goes on Eric Hogue show to get signatures for this initial recall document. This now officially starts the clock ticking. Costa then goes on Mark Williams Show which generates more people getting involved with Costa's recall group. And this is what generates the controversy between Hogue and Williams. Hogue was clearly ahead of Williams in jumping on board but Williams sees his station as relevant and Hogue's not relevant and so he believes his people jumping on board made the difference. I'll let everyone decide for themselves who to sympathize with on this as it's a nasty fight I don't want to be in the middle of.
* Costa goes to the media with Steel to boast about his recall drive. He has no website. No telephone number. He has his People's Advocate send out a questionnaire to his members asking "Should we launch a recall or do something else?"
* We step up our efforts and pretty soon the Recall Gray Davis Committee is seen by most people as the official recall committee. They don't realize Costa has a separate committee (it took him over a week to even reserve a recall website). People presume Kaloogian, Costa, Morgan, Hogue are all in the same group.
* Despite being called endless names by the Costa group we realize we have to bite our tongues and not have a public rift in the recall. We agree to use Costa's recall petition even though it is rejected more than 5 TIMES by the Secretary of State's office and the staff are telling us what a disaster Costa's operation is and how he can't get the basic elements of the petition right.
* We go to announce 100,000 signatures collected after we hand over 40,000 signatures to Costa's group (who we backed down to and allowed him to be the official proponent which means ONLY HE can turn in signatures... if we had done our own recall petition he had told us he would still go forward with his own separate one... the 2 separate recall petitions circulating which could not be added up together would have meant an end to the entire recall drive). We are supposed to meet Costa for the press conference and his people are supposed to bring the signatures. Costa at the last minute backs out. He says he cannot bring the 100,000 signatures, that it would be a security risk. We had wanted a UPS truck to meet us at the press conference so we could load up the boxes and have that visual of the signatures on their way to the county registrars office throughout the state. Instead Costa has us look like an idiot with empty boxes. We find out weeks later when the signatures finally arrive in TRICKLES to the registrars office that Costa never had 60,000 - he hardly ANY signatures. Since he had no website, no telephone number or separate recall committee in the early days, and no paid signature collecters, the ONLY people who had gotten signatures were the volunteer activists who in those early days signed up to www.RecallGrayDavis.com (the Kaloogian group). Costa is forced to get a website called DavisRecall.com and files papers providing notice of the launch of his political committee well after Kaloogian's Recall Gray Davis committee was up and running.
* Later Costa has the nerve to tell Darrell Issa and Dave Gilliard that we manufactured a fake press event with empty boxes and that Kaloogian can't be trusted. We are dumbfounded. But, again, we bite our tongues even after Costa is complaining he's not getting credit for the recall. Hint: Kaloogian would organize all of the Recall rallies for the campaign (the February one to launch it, the June one when it qualified, the one right before the election to get people to vote YES) and we'd collect the vast majority of the volunteer-collected signatures. Melanie Morgan recognizes Costa doesn't have his act together and begins telling her listeners to go to Kaloogian's RecallGrayDavis.com website. Soon almost every other talk radio host in the state is following suit and we put out a regular FAX/email flier called Radio Recall with updates/progress on the recall effort.
* Dave Gilliard and Darrell Issa came aboard late. But, without them there never would have been a Special Election. We couldn't have qualified that quickly. However, we would have qualified for the June primary election the next year. That would have meant it would have been harder to pass the recall (more Demo voters) but it also means McClintock would have been the GOP nominee for the replacement election.
That's your story. We (Kaloogian's group) ended up raising $900,000+ and collected over 600,000 signatures. Howard was on CNN, in George Will's column, was on Fox News Channel, MSNBC, etc.. etc...
I would have been satisfied without any progress whatsoever made in the last 5 years, but we haven't even maintained our original position, despite Republican Congresses and President.
I'll settle for a hell of a lot less than perfect. I won't settle for Medicare Part D, CFR, the huge spending increases and on and on--the hallmarks of socialist, statists. Don't attribute a false dichotomy to me. There is a huge area in between perfect conservatism and what the President and Congress have done in the last 5 years.
So...you're wrong. My post proves nothing except that the author is empty-headed.
Because if you are then you're betraying one of the few areas where conservatives have taken action.
As someone who has worked for and admired Pat Buchanan for calling out the Bush I administration I nonetheless find myself always in the strongest opposition to those who glorify 1940's isolationism that wanted us to run from the Nazi threat and that today keeps telling us the Palestinians, Hamas, Hezbollah and Al Qaeda would all be peaceful if it weren't for the fact that we sold fighter jets to Israel.
But I notice some disgruntled conservatives are rather socialistic in their criticisms of the Bush tax cuts as nothing more than corporate welfare for the rich.
That's sad because I've always agreed with George Will's observation that Middle Class Americans do not hate the rich - they want to BE the rich.
I point out Bush's tax cuts because the columnist writes that the conservative factions are not being cooperative in trying to advance the movement forward and I was noting that you will point out the bad without acknowledging the good (tax cuts and war on terrorism are 2 conservative highlights... unless you prescribe to the CNN/Air America mindset which is that these are both horrible setbacks for the U.S.)
I also note that one thing that Morgan does NOT mention in her column is the high quality Supreme Court picks we got out of Bush (once the conservative base rallied to STOP Harriet Miers).
Plenty of "libertarian" Republicans were behind Reagan, but was the Libertarian Party? Murray Rothbard certainly wasn't. At least some libertarians were ferociously anti-Cold War.
One thing about bringing together the conservative movement -- plenty of Republican and conservative voters aren't "movement" people, and too many "movement" noises may scare away the Republicans' pluralities.
First, how the economic wing has placed an idol of Commerce, in the center of the room, brought in by illegal labor --and bowed down to it like a god--national security be dashed!
Secondly, the growing boldness of the humanistic \ anti-religious wing which believes their time has come to overthrow the Christian Right as the core of the GOP base
If either of these prevail as the face of the GOP--you are looking at a long period of liberal Democrat governance...
You must have a different circle than I--I've never, ever, in 40 years of being interested in politics, heard a conservative, nominal or otherwise, disgruntled or otherwise, complain about "tax cuts for the rich." And I would certainly ask that you not--whether you did or not--imply that I would say something that economically stupid. I argue that, despite the cuts, that position is more in the Bush genes than on my side of the debate.
If you're saying Bush has done some good things, I agree with you--he's all over the lot from excellent to horrible. That's why I frequently maintain that he has no more philosophy of government or principles than Bill Clinton. Political expediency is the name of his game, in my opinion--your mileage varies a lot, I know. And that belief of mine tends to undercut my "socialist statist" categorization. But when a President can even consider those horrible things he's done, whether through political expediency or principle (like, say Franklin Roosevelt or LBJ), it is fair to categorize them that way.
One advantage they had that we don't have is that they did it at a time of occupation of the government by the Far Left.
Easier to rally people to oppose horrid liberalism than to organize coalitions for a positive and pro-active push for conservatism when the Left isn't oppressing everyone with their control of government power.
Well when it comes to illegal immigration and excessive federal spending I'm with you, and this is where the GOP and Bush are failing fiscal and cultural conservatives.
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