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.
Probably because we have a low tolerance for people that call themselves conservatives, pissing all over themselves and focusing on the warm feeling it gives them rather than the stink. The foul odor doesnt do anything to draw new voters to the conservative side.
See, you're too exclusive...you should let some of us try it sometime! ;-)
That's a bunch of hot air and you know it.
Where are the wingnuts when it comes to doing the grass -roots work in the trenches necessary to get conservatives elected?
I'll tell you, you're sitting on your keisters while others do the grunt work.
Then as soon as you detect some ideological apostasy — which, truth to tell, you've been searching for all along — you stary ululating like a bunch of Arab women at a funeral.
You carry on like howler monkeys — hooting and caterwauling and flinging crap in all directions until everyone around you is convinced that you're just plain nuts.
And after all that you're surprised and offended that politicians don't pay any attention to you and in fact avoid you like the plague.
You wonder why you don't get any respect.
Well it's all you're own fault.
Normal people simply won't vote for anybody whom they identify with the likes of you, and politicians know it.
I suppose you're much prefer that we all just sit back and let you all say whatever you want; it would be much easier for you without pesky posters questioning your motives, wouldn't it?
BTW, referring to us as BushBots isn't something we consider a slam; I'm proud to support the president of the United States, and don't intend to try to find something wrong with every single thing he does. He's doing the very best job any human being could do in the circumstances he has found himself in.
Calling us BushBots is exactly like the liberals calling us Clinton haters. It's all you have left.
GWB Is The Man !!
Freedom Is Worth Fighting For !!
Molon Labe !!
With a wonderfully wicked sharp point... ;-)
Nice work...they love it when you use your deliciously ironic and just subtle enough wit on the Dems...but if the humor gets too close to home...look out!
Don't ever lose your matchless perspective on things, my friend...I've never seen you hit a target yet that didn't need hit...and no one has better aim than you.
EV
b. Telling Isreal to end their war on terror and just die.
I guess I will have to look elsewhere for the no-spin zone. The above are perhaps the two most eggregious examples, and by listing only them, I don't mean to exclude others.
Yes Bush has been a moderate president, and it is understandable that hard line conservatives wish for something different, particularly those not attuned to political constraints. And it is right and appropriate to point that out. But the above is not constructive.
By the way, as a moderate to moderate conservative, I am by and large quite pleased with Bush. My main beef with him is the steel tariff, which I don't think was political necessary (certainly not the size of it), and the ditto for the farm bill (certainly not the size of it).
That was the whole idea, wasn't it? It has always been the strategy of the business/Park Avenue wing of the GOP: push the conservatives into a corner, and leave them no one else to vote for. Theodore White documented that political strategy going back to Wendell Willkie. Read any of his Making of the President books. The one I have is most appropriate to this topic, as it covers the 1964 campaign of Barry Goldwater. White was a liberal, and he trashed conservatives every chance he got and never, ever gave them a thing, not even their honesty and their principles, on the standard policy of a liberal.
On the other hand, he praised the Rockefeller wing of the party, because he knew they were fundamentally easier to beat, because they had no principles of their own (other than their own advantage) with which to compete with Fabian socialism.
Puh-shhhawwww...MUD
Which Party are you talking about? I know conservative activists from sea to shining sea...and they do the vast majority of the work in the Party...so much so, that these very people make up a large majority at the state and national conventions.
You're living in a dream world.
Freedom Is Worth Fighting For !!
Molon Labe !!
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