Posted on 05/12/2003 12:14:59 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Edited on 07/12/2004 4:03:12 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
"The most critical improvement" to the federal "assault weapon" ban, according to the Violence Policy Center, "is to ensure that the term 'assault weapon' includes all guns that are, in fact, assault weapons." Don't think about that assertion too much; it might cause your head to explode.
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
More distraction, this time by personally denigrating me. It's a simple question: Do you know if the Speaker of the House is in favor or opposed to the Assault Weapon Ban?
What is your objective?
To see the AWB die?
Or to have Bush et al beat their chests and bellow "Constitution... Second Amendment... Founding Fathers?"
You can't have both.
Once Bush et al show their hand the DemoncRATS have a clear field of fire.
All that has to happen for the AWB to die is for the House to ignore it. Considering the thousands of bills introduced each session and the small number that actually pass, it ain't rocket science to figure out that most bills shrivel up and blow away.
If you notice, the New York Times hasn't mentioned that Delay is going to block it.
They want to get dim-witted conservatives riled up, and they are succeeding.
Knowing Hastert he has probably said something like whatever Bush's SPOKESMAN said for political purposes, but that does not mean he is going to bring the bill up.
Have you noticed the the mainstream press has not breathed a word about Delay blocing AWB? They want to get dim-witted "conservatives" like you riled up so they can divide-and-conquer. They sure have your number.
More personal attacks against a person you've never met. The civility of those shielded by the anonymity the internet provides never ceases to amaze me. You could have saved yourself a lot of consternation by simply telling me you didn't know if the Speaker of the House supports the bill.
No consternation. I know enough about politics to know that you don't pay any attention to what people SAY, you pay attention to what they DO. If you weren't so busy beating your chest like an apeman you might figure that out yourself.
You don't know anything about me, pretending otherwise is foolish. Apeman? Another ad hominem, keep'em coming, I don't care they make you look silly, not me. What politicians do matters more than what they say. Don't think so? Read GHWB's lips.
From the link you kindly provided early: "Rove took my arm and literally got in my face, using the old drill sergeant intimidation trick of speaking through clenched teeth with his nose an inch from mine. It didn't work, because I'm taller (and older, and uglier) than he is, and I took HIS arm in turn. He told me that Bush was sticking to his position, but that Congress would never pass the legislation. I told him that there were a lot of us, that we were dead serious, and that if Bush let the ban get renewed he'd lose the election, because freedom is more important than politics."
Alienate that constituency at your peril, as the Democratic controlled Congress learned...
You'd better hope so. Right now IMHO the president's failure to make a stand is encouraging the dims to try and EXPAND the AWB. I'd just like to see a guy that is riding high in the polls make a principled stand on an issue that is very important to his base.
Okay, I will try one more time.
When he signed the AWB, did Bill Clinton say "This is a great day in the advancement toward a totalitarian peoples' paradase?"
No, because that would have alarmed the brain-dead third of voters who know so little they can swing one way or the other depending upon which episode of Howdy Doody they watched this morning.
In like manner, if Bush says "We must bury the AWB in the name of the Constitution, the Second Amendment and Patrick Henry," the same brain-dead one-third of the American electorate will flee in the opposite direction in abject terror.
DemoncRATS pass stealth legislation to get their way. We can stealthily let the AWB die, or we can give the DemoncRATS an issue they can use to stir up the brain-dead masses to vote for Hillary in 2004.
Can you guess what kind of replacement for the AWB Hillary will come up with?
I have made an honest attempt to explain how the process works and why you cannot always tip your hand by making pious prounouncements. The goal here is to sunset the AWB, and that can happen easy as pie because Tom Delay can be trusted to do his job, UNLESS the AWB pops up on Joe Brain-Dead's radar screen because knee-jerk "conservatives" demanded that Bush make a pious, "principled stand on an issue that is very important to his base."
If you still don't get it, please just leave me alone.
If you want to work quietly behind the scenes to kill something thats fine. Just do it quietly. Making the front page of the NYT in support of it doesn't qualify as "stealth" to me. Now Maloney et al are going to push towards their next objective.
Bush didn't say anything. Ari Fleischer floated a cover statement to the effect that the President supported renewing AWB. That's the way it's done. The statement defuses the situation for the President by removing him as a target. Bush has not and will not lobby for Congress to send him a bill.
All that has to happen is for the House to ignore Feinstein's renewal bill and the job is done. Everybody knows that the Republican tsunami of 1994 was a direct result of passage of the original AWB. The House was especially hard hit, if you remember. The House is not going to touch this bill. They know all too well the consequences of doing so, especially the DemoncRATS.
Do you ever watch Jay Leno's "man-on-the-street" segments where people don't even know who the vice-president is or how many states there are in the United States? It is astounding how stupid the average person is, even ones who are supposedly educated. Those people vote, and there are so many of them that it is they who determine the results of national elections, not the broken-glass Republicans and DemoncRATS. Strong rhetoric and real issues confuse and frighten these people. If you are careful not to trouble their tiny little minds you can get their vote, but if you shake them up they will run in the opposite direction. We are trying not to frighten these people. That is the name of the game.
The New York Times is trying to cause division in Republican ranks. They decide what to put on their front page, not Bush.
If you notice, they haven't mentioned the fact the Tom Delay says the AWB renewal is DOA, have they? They don't want knee-jerk Republicans to calm down. They want them to be riled up and bolt to the Libertarian Party or vote for Ross Perot or anything that allows Hillary to win in 2004.
Not much. Sam Adams was the master of a mob and considered pretty low by the rest of his family. He probably instigated the Boston Massacre, and was responsible for a good deal of counterproductive mob violence. His only purpose was to act as the "bad cop" for the voices of reason like his cousin John and the other thoughtful patriots of Boston.
Patrick Henry - as is not well known - after his famous outburst in the House of Burgesses apologized abjectly because he was afraid he was going to be charged with treason.
The firebrands provided the oratory, but it was the nuts and bolts workers like Adams and Washington and Morris and Hamilton and Madison that actually put the show together.
Something of the same sort is going on here. Ideological purity makes for grand flights of rhetoric, but clear thinking gets the goal accomplished. And the goal here is getting rid of the "AW"B.
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