Posted on 06/22/2002 9:46:05 AM PDT by quidnunc
This summer will mark the 47th year since I took my first Republican job: as public relations director for the party in Minnesota. Since then I have rarely strayed from politics, or my party. I served as a staffer to two GOP congressmen, to a GOP governor, as a federal appointee to Richard Nixon and as a corporate executive who supported in Washington and Springfield much, if not all, of the Republican agenda.
You can describe me as a conservative. Thus I am qualified to say that although I dearly love conservatives, they tend to be querulous, disagreeable and threaten revolt when Republican office-holders don't please them. So it is now with George W. Bush. Here is a president who has surprised us all with the firmness and resolve he showed after 9/11. I must tell you I voted for him with less enthusiasm than I had for many of his predecessors. But his administration has pleased me often — most notably on two issues: defense of America and social policy.
Yet, Bush has to get re-elected in a country that is evenly divided on philosophy. Thus he must occasionally — on matters that sometimes offend conservatives — dip into the other side's ideology for support. He has done so on three notable occasions: on the issue of steel protectionism, where he departed his free-market proclamations; on the signing of a campaign finance bill tailored by his enemies, and allowing his attorney general (in the words of Libertarian Nat Hentoff in the Washington Times) "to send disguised agents into religious institutions, libraries and meetings of citizens critical of government policy without a previous complaint, or reason to believe that a crime has been committed."
In a perfect political world, where conservatives are in the majority, these things would be sufficient to encourage a boycott of the polls. Either that or a protest vote for the Democratic opposition. But we are not in a perfect world. We conservatives have a president who didn't receive a majority of the votes, and has one house of Congress against him. He must make compromises to get re-elected. Conservatives who do not understand the nature of politics ought to stay in their air-conditioned ivory towers and refrain from political activity altogether. If they cannot adjudge the stakes in this election and the difference between Bush and an Al Gore or a John Kerry (D-Mass.) or a Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.), they are foolish indeed.
-snip-
To read the remainder of this op/ed open the article via the link provided in the thread's header.
You're assuming that 75% of the GOP is just as conservative as you are? Might not be a real good bet....
I don't think anyone should be considering leaving the Republican Party to socialism without one heck of a ugly dog fight. Not to put too fine a point on it, moderates don't seem to have a dog in this fight, or want one. Nor do they intend to protest actions that if a Democrat President took would have them howling at the moon.
Some conservatives feel they do have a dog in this fight, and to many conservatives, dumping Bush in 2004 is not dumping the Republican Party it's saving it. I don't think name calling and finger pointing is called for while disinfranchized conservatives, who think eight years of Bush is more dangerous than four years of Hillary, hammer out a strategy. That comes in stages, first anger and discontent, stating why, then hopefully organizing into something more than just discontent by calling the RNC and letting them know just how they feel.
Some on this site want to air the obvious Bush failures for the conservative base and feel free to do so without having a crew of other members come buy like zoo keepers busily shoveling the truth of the matter into a wheelbarrow and carting it off. Dumping the truth is never a good idea, no matter how one justifies it.
That some members here want to stifle the free exchange of information and ideas speaks volumes about them and it ain't pretty. This is however a private site and if Jim Rob doesn't want these things discussed here then that puts a whole nother light on the matter.
Why did you omit a front runner for the title of the worst and lowest SOB to ever hold the office, the one that may have killed a president so that he could take office in 1963? His only competition for worst and lowest is FDR, and the issue of who was the worst may never be actually decided since we are unlikely to learn the truth about the assassination when Jake Ruby died. In the final analysis, socialism could not have been imposed on us were it not for FDR.
"Are you serious? All of these Bills start out in the house. Why should Bush save them from themselves."
Of course I'm serious...the House has regularly forwarded more conservative and less-expensive versions of the various bills to these Senate wherein these competing versions are hashed out in joint committees, in which Dubyuh's veto pen should be a significant factor in the negotiations. If anything, Dubyuh seems all-too-willing support the more expensive of the alternatives.
FReegards...MUD
Gosh it's great to get up on a Sunday morning, read an intelligent article and then read the kind of garbage posts like yours.
And believe me, the kids who are NOT going to be homeschooled, who ARE going to be in the public schools regardles....are the children who also believe that if Bill Clinton were still president 9/11 wouldn't have happened, that Gore really won but Jeb stole the election for GWB, and the GOP hates minorities.
I know this, because I'm in the public schools, and this is what I hear from my students. But believe me, they are NOT learning it from me, they're bringing it from home.
Regardless of what many conservatives think, government cannot successfully legislate and impose morality. It fails every time it is tried and it always imposes enormous costs to society that results in political and governmental corruption, crime, violence and a major loss of life. And it never solves the problem. At times the problem can be made worse by the government's efforts. Prohibition and the war on drugs are the two largest and best known examples. Those who would take away a woman's right to choose have not witnessed first hand as I have (retired pathologist) the horrible agonizing deaths that women are willing to risk to avoid bearing a child they don't want. I would argue that pregnancy is a medical condition. Pregnancy carries a not inconsequential risk to health and accounts for an agonizing number of deaths each and every year in the United States. I would argue that those who want to usurp and limit the rights of individuals to be responsible for their own medical care decisions are treading on very thin ice.
I will warn conservatives and pro-lifers, you are never going to succeed in eliminating abortions and are very unlikely to ever seriously affect the number that are performed by any means of legislation and force. This issue, more than any other, is why conservatives and Republicans lose elections. I am not suggesting that you abandon the fight to convince people not to have or not to want abortions. I am suggestion that you abandon the effort to embargo abortion through the power of law. And that you do so until such time as you have the numerical strength to pass a Constitutional Amendment. Roe vs Wade was decided incorrectly and will eventually be reversed. It will be much easier to reverse this decision when conservatives and Republicans make it clear that this is a state's rights issue to be decided by each state by their own legislatures. That is the proper Constitutional solution to your desires at this point in history.
When conservatives give up the desire to impose a legal ban on abortion, socialism will vanish from the United States almost overnight. The media and Democrats have been dividing and conquering conservatives and Republcians since the 30's. The socialists are well on the way to destroying the United States. It would be impossible for the Founders to recognize this as the country they gave us. In less than two decades the United States will be financially and economically bankrupted. We will fragment into a number of smaller republics and God knows what else. I don't think it is too late to restore our Constitutional Republic. Just as I despise the cheap, politically correct, symbolism of the "compassionate conservative", I despise the "passionate conservative" that would impose their judgment and limitations on others who hold differing views. Banning abortions is not conservative; it is just as tyrannical as socialism. Put your faith in the Constitution, the States and the people.
We have to find a way to prove to these people what we already know to be true, that the system is broken. To simply defund the schools, or to fight the implementation of what they all believe to be the solution to failing schools would be disastrous.
"This continuous game of Bushbot whack-a-mole is ruining your website."
--OWK
Thanks for proving his point.
Thanks for kissing his ass.
That still hasn't sunk in with some people. They've ready to hit the snooze button on 9/11.
"Well the question was who's fault was it that the voters elected Clinton twice?"
Running away from that question again? No surprise there.
"But somehow I doubt that some of the third party people posting on this thread care much one way or the other."
Thanks for proving his point a second time.
Granted the Islamic fundamentalists are going to kill some Americans and make us generally miserable. But in the big picture, we are going to eventually do whatever it takes to end their threat. Jihad is not going to end America or our freedoms. Socialism will; and soon. Sometime within the next two decades the United States will be economically and financially bankrupt thanks to socialism. Our government will collapse and we will fragment into many smaller nation states, republics and God knows what else.
We should focus on defeating the Democratic Party. It is the source of evil in the world that is most likely to do us in. When the US falls, is there anybody on this site that believes it will be the Jihad of Islamic Fundamentalism that will bring us down. Mr. Bush is satisfactorily dealing with the War on Terrorism. I suggest we applaud and let him continue getting on with it. But his approach to the domestic agenda is a loser and he needs all the help and attention we can muster. We need to get the attention of the Republican leadership. They need to understand our views. And they need to learn that we mean business. As long as they listen to the pied pipers in the media, they are leading the party down the primrose path. And our country continues unabated on the road to tyranny and decline.
Thanks for kissing his ass a second time.
Heaven knows, he doesn't get enough of that around here.
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