Posted on 04/22/2014 1:53:28 PM PDT by SoConPubbie
“Dole calls out Ted Cruz and Rand Paul specifically to say they lack the experience to run in 2016.”
Hay Bob, at least they have a pulse.
Plus by the time Cruz becomes president he will have 4 years experience as the most powerful Senator in modern history.
He's also a "one term Senator". I like them both.
Why does that exclude Paul but not Cruz? His "legal presence" in government makes no difference to me. Paul has a long time presence as a citizen and a successful businessman.
Does that mean anything?
Let’s compare that to the resume of Bob Dole.
There is no doubt that Mr. Dole served his country valiantly as an infantry officer in World War II and was grievously wounded in action. He is still feeling the effects of what happened to him on the battlefield 70 years ago, and his recovery is a testament to his personal determination and courage.
But Bob Dole is also the same man who spent most of his adult life slopping at the public trough. He touts a major expansion of the food stamp program as one of his crowning legislative achievements, and cites George McGovern (and other libs) as some of his best friends from his days in the Senate. In fact, Bob is part of the GOP leadership who would have been perfectly content to see his party remain a permanent minority, a la Bob Michel.
Along the way, Bob also dumped his first wife because he hooked up with Libby Dole. And, after losing the 1996 presidential election, Bob ran to the nearest D.C. law firm and cashed in on his political connections to become a seven-figure special counsel.
I do give Senator Dole credit for his tireless work on behalf of the World War II memorial and the honor flights that bring aging vets to D.C. In that sense, his life resembles a pair of bookends; his greatest service came at the beginning and the end, with a whopping political crap sandwich in the middle.
I seem to remember that old Bob didn’t do too well running....
Thanks for Clinton, a-hole.
Who is Dole to listen to? He lost his election with a very flaccid campaign.
In 1860, Lincoln had been an Illinois state legislator in the distant past, a one-term congressman two decades before, a failed candidate for the US Senate, and a full-time railroad lawyer for the Illinois Central.
A one-term senator should not be dismissed in times such as these.
“It could even be his wife in collaboration with others in the Republican DC liberal mafia.”
Thanks to his weak carpetbagger wife we have a Democrat Senator in North Carolina who is portrayed by the press as a “moderate” even though she votes with Obama 96% of the time. Elizabeth Dole, like her husband, is no friend of liberty.
I woke up to that a long time ago.
“I don’t think they’ve got enough experience yet.”
Yeah, like he had? Like most of the old GOPe fossils in the congress, Dole was at the top of the “it’s my turn list.” The fact that he served in the military and was injured, shouldn’t have given him entrée to politics. He wife was also worthless and she wasn’t in the army so far as I know.
good gawd.
Yes, because the question was whether or not he had government experience. He had experience on the judicial side. The title of the thread was about “experience” and the text of the thread said: “Dole calls out Ted Cruz and Rand Paul specifically to say they lack the experience to run in 2016.”
So, Paul doesn’t have government experience. Cruz does.
That’s in response to Dole
Paul is suspect because of his support for amnesty.
” all have one experience in common: losing a presidential race.”
WAIT JUST A MINUTE! You forgot one of Dole’s other credentials. He was actually on Ford’s losing ticket, as VP nominee.
So he was EXCEPTIONALLY well prepared to run his 96 race. Not many guys are on a losing ticket and can then transfer that “experience” to losing at the top of the ticket as well.
But Dole is exceptional.
"To preserve [the] independence [of the people,] we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:39
"I deem [this one of] the essential principles of our government and consequently [one] which ought to shape its administration:... The honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith." --Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural, 1801. ME 3:322
"I sincerely believe... that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale." --Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816. ME 15:23
"[With the decline of society] begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omnia [war of all against all], which some philosophers observing to be so general in this world, have mistaken it for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man. And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:40
To determine for the "qualifications" for the American presidency at this critical juncture in America's history, we might consult an excerpted portion of the 1801 Inaugural Address of Thomas Jefferson for guidance on the seriousness of the undertaking:
(Excerpt) "Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation; entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter—with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-citizens—a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.
"About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you, it is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its Administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations. Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies; the preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad; a jealous care of the right of election by the people—a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism; a well disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war, till regulars may relieve them; the supremacy of the civil over the military authority; economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burthened; the honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith; encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid; the diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason; freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety."
Now, the question is: which potential 2016 candidate possesses the intellectual qualifications and moral leadership ability to lead us to "retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety"?
Names, anyone?
Our old friend Bob needs to consider a fact of life, “his turn” has come and gone.
Thanks for the background. Now I’m a bit ashamed I did not act like a dem and vote for Cruz more than once!
But I guess Obama was just fine by Bob Dole standards?
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