Only God is perfect. Nothing of men ever is. Demanding perfect purity in Politics is a sure prescription for political irrelevance. This is why the Libertarian wing of the Conservative movement has been so completely ineffective for the last 20 years. This is why you people always lose to the RINOS. They all keep wasting all their time making the perfect the enemy of the good. They are so busying spending all their time worrying about the dogmatic purity in their political allies they never have any time, or energy left to fight the Leftists on anything.
They are so busy factionalizing their political base into competing interest groups, they have nothing left to ever fight the progressives. No wonder they continually kick the conservatives asses in election after election.
As one famous Conservative leader said " A man who agrees with me 80% of the time is a trusted friend and ally, not a 20% traitor"
Curious what these sort of ideological purist would of said about a President who presided over a worse recession then this current one, appointed a Liberal to the Supreme Court, Raised taxes 6 times, doubled the size of the Fed Budget in 8 years. Spent, prior to this regime, record deficits. Ran away from a Muslim terrorist threat. Signed an illegal Alien Amnesty. Lost control of the US Senate to the Democrats on his watch.
What would you say about that? Using the sort of purist dogma exposed on this thread, and every other possible thread daily, I suspect, the 100%er crowd would be screaming "RINO" at that former President and assigning him to rank down there with Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, U.S. Grant, and Warren Harding as one of America’s worst Presidents because he did not pass their personal ideological purity test.
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That President was Ronald Reagan. Probably the greatest President of the 20th Century.
Reagan had words for your sort of ideological 100%er.
By Ronald Reagan in his autobiography An American Life “When I began entering into the give and take of legislative bargaining in Sacramento, a lot of the most radical conservatives who had supported me during the election didn’t like it. “Compromise” was a dirty word to them and they wouldn’t face the fact that we couldn’t get all of what we wanted today. They wanted all or nothing and they wanted it all at once. If you don’t get it all, some said, don’t take anything. I’d learned while negotiating union contracts that you seldom got everything you asked for. And I agreed with FDR, who said in 1933: ‘I have no expectations of making a hit every time I come to bat. What I seek is the highest possible batting average.’ If you got seventy-five or eighty percent of what you were asking for, I say, you take it and fight for the rest later, and that’s what I told these radical conservatives who never got used to it.”
Um, in case you haven't noticed, I'm supporting J.D. Hayworth, a man with whom I do have disagreement, based on his record in Congress.
Yet you once again break out your tired accusations of my being a "purist."
Fool.
Have you even read my posts lately?
I want McCain gone, so we don't end up with 2+ years of an unholy Graham-McCain-Obama trifecta fragging conservatives at every opportunity.
If Hayworth doesn't win the Arizona primary, then conservative Arizonans (or should I say, residents of Aztlan, should McCain have his way) might as well vote for the Democrat in the general election, since either way, a liberal Democrat is going to win, barring a strong third-party challenge (highly unlikely).
Reagan or no, I'm going to have to disagree with you. Since 2000, McCain has been one of the most consistently anti-conservative "Republicans" in the Senate. He has done everything within his power to not only promote anti-conservative positions (CFR, amnesty, fiscal profligacy, etc.) that are destructive both to his own Party in the long run, but also to the long-term health of America's middle class, conservative foundation.
Why has he done so? Because of his grudge against conservatives who helped hand SC to Bush in 2000, shooting down his presidential aspirations ten years ago.
On the basis of that vindictiveness alone, the ideological leftism not withstanding, he deserves to be removed from office.
Even to this day, McCain is pushing the effort to completely undue all the advances that conservatives have made within the Republican Party, trying to return/keep the GOP headed towards the "moderate" direction that has, so far, only served to destroy the Party's standing with its own base, and handed us electoral defeats. Any true conservative Republican should want to see McCain become a footnote in history, post haste.
The sooner the better, AFAIAC.
You cite Reagan, but the John McCain that Reagan worked with when the Senator was in the House was not the same John McCain we see today. Back then, he actually was conservative. Today, McCain is just a vindictive, left-leaning jerk who needs to be in a nursing home, not the US Senate.
I've butted heads with rabscuttle before, but this time, I'm totally with him, 100%. McCain needs to go, and Hayworth needs to take his place - regardless of what compromisers and Party elitists and insiders think about it.
Thank you for your efforts with the lost pur sang people.
I work with one, a regular conservative in most ways except very few elected pols meet his standards. None that have held office for long.
Too much fluoridation of the water¿?
Excellent post! Bears repeating but I am afraid you are wasting your time. I have been trying to say this for years. I have been called a RINO, appeaser, butt kisser, etc. and thats some of the nicer names.
You are right in that the lessons have NOT sunk in -- but then again, we are not talking about the same lessons.
It's crazy when "the perfect becomes the enemy of the good" -- but my question is, "Where's the good?" The only thing about McCain that could qualify as "good" is the "R" after his name, -- and in fact that is actually more of a liability, given who he is and what he does, than an asset. Better a Leftist Liberal try to bring the bizarre kind of immigration and campaign "reform" than McCain, a powerful Republican!
If McCain had a "D" next to his name (which is more accurate), there isn't a person on this board who wouldn't be tearing him a new one, but because he has an "R", he'll get his followers here, defending him.
McCain should be shown to the door while we still have time to reorganize and turn this country around, because McCain represents -- at least as much as Obama -- everything that is wrong with Washington!
McCain is not only impure, he's a democrat whore (politically). McCain needs to be thrown out with Arlen, Olympia, any Bush who even thinks of running for an office, et al. They have ruined our party and are used against us by leftists all the time (such as, "Well, even Bush supported high spending and TARP...." and, "Well, even Republicans such as McCain and Snowe supported.....") I'm tired of apologizing for my own.
What list of stances are you contending adds up to 80%?
That being said, it's really dumb of us not to support Mccain in the general if he wins the primary. Getting 60-70% of what we want is far better than rubber stamping the radical left agenda. McCain has been good on some things, as opposed to what all the democrat senators have shown. A new democrat would be a disaster.