"Hillary, no matter which of us wins Washington will be united under a common purpose, compassion with $$$$ .
Posted on 02/11/2008 9:38:00 AM PST by Starman417
The commonly held belief amongst self-described Reagan footsoldiers, is that John McCain is a conservative apostate, who enjoys sticking his thumb in the eye of conservatives. Maybe he does enjoy his "maverick" reputation a little too much; maybe his 5 1/2 years as a POW knocked a few screws loose and instilled a certain "mean-spiritedness" in him. Maybe he was born this way.
But a conservative apostate?!
He may not be the conservative we like; nor the kind of conservative we can all trust, on all issues; yet, conservative he is, and the conservative we are all stuck with.
I do not get this need for conservatives to "disown" each other. Who is to say who a true conservative is? According to the Ron Paul Reverists, we are all conservative apostates and betrayers of the original intent of our Founding Fathers if we don't heed the whinings of their Constitutional Pied Piper. Then there are the self-proclaimed Reagan conservatives, who romanticize this notion that they are the caretakers of "true conservatism" and "Reaganism". Today, they criticize those conservatives who aren't sufficiently pure, be it Huckabee, Giuliani, McCain, and even Romney. By their impossible standards, Ronald Reagan would not be Reagan enough. Some of the bandwagon jumpers are the same conservatives who criticized Reagan before America's 40th president was deified. I'm also finding that rather than merely disagreeing with fellow conservatives that were rather well-respected prior to expressing support (Michael Medved) or sympathy (Victor Davis Hanson) for McCain, a lot of emotional, angry conservatives have renounced those conservatives as well.
One has to wonder-before Romney suspended his campaign and before McCain appears to have all but wrapped up the GOP nomination: How is it that at least 17 prominent, staunch conservative Senators have thrown their support to John McCain? How is it, that over 100 Admirals and generals along with Norman Schwarzkopf have endorsed the Senator from the great state of Arizona? They couldn't all be RINOs, could they? How is it that 100 individuals who served in the Reagan Administration have endorsed John McCain?
Many leaders of the Reagan Revolution – Jack Kemp, Senator Phil Gramm, Senator Dan Coats, General Alexander Haig, George Shultz and many more – proudly back Senator McCain. The conservative Senators who know McCain best – John Kyl, Tom Coburn, Sam Brownback, Lindsey Graham, Trent Lott – support his presidential campaign after working with him in the Senate for years and seeing his commitment to Reaganism. During the six years he served in Congress under President Reagan, McCain supported the administration as one of its most effective “foot soldiers.” Unlike many of his critics, McCain echoes the Reagan approach – not the Buchanan approach – to free trade and immigration reform.How does one reconcile with the fact that Nancy Reagan privately endorsed McCain, as well? One begins to ask oneself, "Who would Reagan endorse?" And the reality of the response should be, "No one knows." And it's dishonest for anyone to presume to speak for Reagan, and channel his vibes to validate their own personal political views.
If John McCain is not a "true" conservative then how does one explain the fact that his ACU lifetime ranking is 82.3% (for you Fredheads, Fred Thompson's lifetime average is 86%- with his support of campaign finance reform apparently knocking off anywhere from 4%-12% from his rating)? In 2006, yes it was 65%. Putting him in 47th place among Senators, for that year. But for his quarter century service in the Senate, how can people claim he has not been conservative? Maybe not the kind of conservative we wish him to be, but a conservative, nonetheless.
(Excerpt) Read more at Flopping Aces ...
Best article that’s been posted in weeks. Unfortunately, it will be lost on the more conservative than thou crowd.
Gang of 14.
Keating 5.
Amnesty for Illegals.
McCain-Feingold.
McCain-Kennedy.
McCain-Lieberman.
Pro-Abortion (can’t claim to be pro-life when supporting embryonic stem cell research).
Anti-Second Amendment.
This guy isn’t a Republican or a Conservative. He’s nothing but Hillary with an ‘R’ by his name.
How do McCainbots explain their obfuscation in referring to this highly misleading number that covers McCain entire career and not McCain's current 65 rating from the ACU?
I have a hard time believing that there even ARE seventeen staunch conservatives in the Senate... the later reference to Lindsey Graham and Trent Lott is hardly supportive.
Your list shows exactly why conservatives cannot vote for this guy.
To vote for McCain is to simply ignore the fact of his record.
No way.
Hillary Clinton's best campaigners are the McCainiacs who are repeatedly posting these YASGUASMisms. (You are stupid grow up and support McCain)
While the author is trying to poke his thumb in our eyes, many of us conservatives are busy waving our middle fingers in the face of the RINO establishment. We aren’t going to just “get over it” and accept a sleaze ball like McCain.
Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas has endorsed McCain. So Has George Allen Jr.
Perhaps the GOP "moderates" will finally get the message they failed to hear in 2006: Give us conservative candidates, or get lost.
"Hillary, no matter which of us wins Washington will be united under a common purpose, compassion with $$$$ .
The ACU has jumped the GOP shark. Any organization that willingly accepts a liberal candidate to speak at their conference and allows him to bus in a thousand McCraziacs for sound effect, yet shoves a conservative like Ann Coulter to speak from a side room does not want me for a member. Their rating of anything conservative rings hollow.
McCain, on the other hand, didn’t try to squelch political speech or undermine our borders or oppose Alaskan oil drilling because of constituent demands. He did it to thumb his nose at us and to earn accolades from the liberal media. He’s worked with Kennedy and Feingold and other lefties for the explicit purpose of screwing the party base and of building himself up as a favorite of the news media.
Even conservative senators have to play the game, or no pork for their states if McCain wins, and hillary or Obama in the White House if he loses. Naturally all politicans prefer to be on the winning side.
Everyone figures that McCain is the winner, so everyone jumps on board. Politicians. Even the few pretty good conservatives among this list of mostly faux conservatives.
Flopping Aces isn’t a bad web site, but this guy doesn’t have a clue.
The guy that wrote this article is obviously no true conservative.
/sarc
P.S. What does this make? Ten thousand articles pimping for McCain in two or three days, and every one of them filled with lies and misrepresentations? It’s getting pretty tiresome.
Your argument perhaps had some merit a few years ago before we learned that a liberal Republican is still just a lib.
Think about this - if McCain, by some weird harmonic convergence, manages to postpone his mental breakdown and actually win, he will have shown the way to victory is by backstabbing and lying to your conservative base.
If that’s the way to win, expect it to become the norm in the Republican party. Of course, that may be the plan.
You cannot have it both ways. If Sen. John Cornyn had come out against McCain, then it would be significate, yet when he endorses McCain, it’s bribary.
It will take a few more years, work on purging the RINO’s from the US House and Senate, but, the conservatives of America will recapture the Republican party, and elect a true conservative as President of the United States of America.
You continue to ask the conservatives to make concessions, and get behind Juan McAmnesty, but, the RINO’s never want to make concessions and get behind the conservative party. Maybe if the RINO’s lose enough elections, they will understand the American conservative are not going to compromise any more of their principles.
We that can't afford a lot of pork and are loyal to conservatism instead of party, see what is going on .
Gee why didn’t you say so, after all if a great conservative thinker like Nancy Reagan endorses Juan McCain, we should all fall in line. No disrespect to Ms. Reagan, but in the words of Ann Coulter, “We loved Nancy because she loved Ronald Reagan, not for her political philosophy. But hey, if 100 out of thousands of people that worked in the Reagan administration endorsed him, he must be a conservative. And if that wasn’t enought to convince me, the fact that professional politicans, fall in line behind the nominee is surely enough to make me understand that the fault is with me, I’m just not smart enough to understand that conservativism has been redefined.
Well, I’m not buying it. McCain Feingold, McCain Lieberman, McCain Kennedy, McCain Edwards, Gang of 14, Class Warfare, “Hillary would make a good president.” Do I really need to go on.
I don’t care how much sugar you put in the Kool Aid, I ain’t drinking it.
We could take the article’s same argument and apply it to McCain for the last 10 years. If it was good enough for him to abandon the party, it’s good enough for me.
Just following John’s example of leadership.
We could take the article’s same argument and apply it to McCain for the last 10 years. If it was good enough for him to abandon the party, it’s good enough for me.
Just following John’s example of leadership.
Yes, indeed!
We do have a choice, just not one that elects an R for president. This, FRiends, is tribal politics. Or "plantation" politics, if you prefer.
Each voter will have to examine his or her conscience before deciding whether they belong on the plantation or not.
As for me, I don't think I can stay on the plantation any longer.
“True conservatives” had better come to the realization that they simply don’t have the numbers to elect anyone, they are basically a vestigial demographic from the Christian America paradigm, a paradigm that is under massive cultural attack, a paradigm with no defense against that attack.
If “true conservatives” withhold their vote from McCain in November, they become as traitorious as any commie and have succumbed to the commie divide and conquer pseudo-”diversity” grand strategy. What is absolutely necessary, if the nation is to be preserved before the onslaught of globalism (both right and left variants), is a tight meshed unity in which the contributions of all right of center forces are recognized and made relevant.
The battle is against globalism and the artificial withering away of the nation state. Anyone of any race, creed or religion who wants to preserve the United States as an independent entity (as well as the independence of other nations) so that no one single global policy can descend into a cruel dark age environmental idiocy, are my brothers and sisters from rattlesnake handling Appalachian armageddonites to gay Episcopalian priests, from sea to shining sea, d%ds.
The problem is the alternative is a lot worse. Isn’t it better to work within power structure. If we lose to Hilabama, the damage that she/he could do could last a generation. That’s not me talking, that’s what Gary Bauer said.
To say that I am unhappy at McCain is an understatement. But to say there is no difference between Hilabam and McCain is insanity.
If McCain promises to put John Bolton in his cabinet..preferably as Sec. of State...and other conservatives in the rest of his cabinet, I will vote for him.
How I read that blather .... a man was a serial murderer for the last two years but for his first 30 years, he was a clean upstanding citizen. So on average, he was a pretty good guy!!
I don't care who McCain was. I care about who he is and he is a liberal.
Ann Coulter doesn’t speak for me. If AC were so opposed to liberalism then why is dating one?
I’m not “more conservative than thou” or anyone else. I just look at McCain’s record, and see no reason to vote for him. The Republican Party is sure trying to shove this turkey down our throats.
Lets just watch and see if you RINO’s can get your Juan McAmnesty elected without the conservative party. That alone should be very funny!
BTW- Juan McCain is one of the biggest globalists around. Just ask his campaign financier, George Soros.
No thanks, you eat the sh-t sandwich, don’t ask us to!
So let’s see if I have this correct....“True conservatives” (as opposed to folks who merely think themselves conservative I guess) need to abandon any sense of principle and integrity and mindlessly pull the lever in order to support someone who has demonstrated time and again that he won’t support us.
Good luck with that...
I’m not voting for either one so which is worse isn’t an issue for me. I would love to be a part of the GOP getting back to it’s roots but it may be to late.
McCain would be wise to pick a staunch conservative as his running mate. If McCain chooses a liberal or even a moderate as his VP choice, he'll seal his own fate.
"Calm Down."
If I am a commie for not voting. I don’t care. I come from a military family and my father would be doing 180’s in his grave if I even think of voting for a slime like McCain. He believed that we should hold to our principles because basically that is all that anyone really has. Just because McCain is the Repub nominee. I do not have to vote for him. I can choose to stay with my principles and be in the minority. That’s fine by me!
You think the leftist steamroller is going to miss you, right? In what sort of nation do we have sexual perversion taught in grammar schools? I’ll tell you- in a nation so decadent it’s ready to VOTE in a marxist dark age.
Yah, my soapbox is glossilallic. So take your pick, someone you have leverage against or someone you don’t
Your personal integrity had better be capable of strategic analysis.
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