Sorry, not enough exclamation points!!!!!
Nice try, but your sincerity is questionable. You are now on the list.
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.
Me too. Although I did stoop to 'nihilist' today... ;-)
"They are pushing for an 'ignore' button...after all, their vision of FR is to make it a pep rally, instead of what it has always been; a place to promote conservative ideals."
Well,there's a fine example of a conservative ideal,
does it come with a 'buddy list',too?
Oh,I see there are many options,that's nice...so,when does this new version of chatty kathy's clique wars launch? Not that there's anything wrong with that.< /sarc>
SHEEESH, blackie...acknowledging that conservatism is getting the short shrift from a man we worked sooooo hard to get into power does not make one a "sniveler." Seems to me, Dubyuh's willingness to enact the Left's Agenda for the last nine months has solidified his "Compassionate" bona fides, how 'bout we concentrate our time between now and November proving Bush's "Conservatism"?!
FReegards...MUD
Two complete different terms.
"Moderate" implies that there is some thought process involved, faulty as it may be.
It's so easy to pontificate when you're never been in a position to have to do anything at all.
GWB Is The Man !!
Freedom Is Worth Fighting For !!
Molon Labe !!
I'm sorry, but that's a cheap shot.
Conservative discuss issues on the merits of the issues and what's best for the country as far as they can see it. To trash them like that is just unfair.
In foreign policy, Reagan accomplished the evisceration of the great Communist threat. He was the architect of the peace we have enjoyed, and the main reason why we don't wonder any more if we'll be crisped in our sleep by incoming Soviet warheads.
In domestic policy, Reagan sounded a number of themes like welfare reform that have come to pass thanks to the efforts, not of the self-satisfied Bush/Rockefeller/white-shoe Wall Street Wing of the GOP, but of conservative Congressional strivers like Newt Gingrich and the Class of '94 that forced the pen of the Great Defiler to sign a welfare-reform bill such as Reagan was vilified for envisioning. Reagan had to compromise with the opposition on occasion -- but he didn't compromise himself first, which is what business-wing Republicans always do. In fact, they have a mentality that is pre-compromised, and the Democrats always know to discount their every position and initiative, because in political bargaining, they're basically a bunch of chumps even when they do care!
Such IGNORANT comments are beneath you, Duke...MUD
We seem to read off the same page on this subject!
Very well reasoned. Bump for common sense.
We're not talking about conservatives. We're talking about EXTREME right wingers. You know, the two percenters.
Sorry, not enough exclamation points!!!!!
Nice try, but your sincerity is questionable. You are now on the list.
I knew I'd eventually be on the list.
Of course we are. We all are.
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