Posted on 04/22/2014 1:09:51 PM PDT by SoConPubbie
(CNN) - Former Republican Sen. Bob Dole argued that some of the men among the younger generation of potential GOP presidential candidates aren't quite ready to take on the White House.
"A number of the younger members, first-termers like Rand Paul, (Marco) Rubio and that extreme-right-wing guy – Ted Cruz? All running for president now," he said in an interview this week with The Wichita Eagle. "I don't think they've got enough experience yet."
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The former Republican senator from Kansas and 1996 GOP presidential nominee - who also served as a U.S. congressman as well as the GOP vice presidential nominee in 1976 - is returning to his roots this week for a nine-county tour around Kansas.
At meet-and-greet events and public discussions, the 90-year-old is sharing stories and taking questions from his former constituents.
Cruz made headlines last month for publicly criticizing Dole, as well as other failed GOP presidential nominees like John McCain and Mitt Romney. The Texas Republican said they were "good" and "decent men" but he suggested that they lacked principle and stood "for nothing," which was why they lost.
Dole told CNN at the time that "Senator Cruz needs to check the record before passing judgment."
As the former politician and World War II veteran travels around Kansas, he's emphasizing a message of bipartisanship.
"I always tried when I was the (Senate Republican Leader) leader for 10 years to of course work with my Republicans but also reach out to my friends on the other side. I found out you get more done if you sometimes have to compromise," he said Monday at an event in Olathe, Kansas.
(Excerpt) Read more at politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com ...
Eat a bag of Richards Bob. Your a loser along with your merry band of Washington, country club, elites. Nothing frightens these people more than an end to their way of doing things.
In other words they haven't been brought into line yet.
Both Bob & Libby Dole lost. Losers...go away.
"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?
Someone please tell these guys we don't care what they think and they should just go away.
What year is it?
I keep reading stories that quote Dole and Bush...
Life’s lessons, good common sense and leadership qualities are all the reasons to support Ted Cruz
By the time Dole had “his turn,” he was not only ready, he was overripe.
"Bob Dole showed us how to properly lose a race with 40.7% of the popular vote, and 29.5% of the electoral vote."
"Bob Dole showed the whole world how to run a totally unprincipled campaign against a totally degenerate Democrat, and take a butt-whupping so devastating that only John McCain and Mitt Romney would want to duplicate the experience."
"You won't be ready to run for president until you can talk about yourself in the third person, like the bonafide idiot Bob Dole."
"I'm Bob Dole, and I approve this message."
Dole was against Reagan’s tax cuts..like McCain a war hero..but a loser
Obama has been President for 6 years and he’s still not ready.
I thought he was dead/But I guess we woulda heard about it.
Bob Dole was ALWAYS ready....to lose.He has that in common with 99% of Republicans. McCain’s throw-in-the-towel-from-Day One Vs. Obama looks courageous next to Dole’s campaigns. Our political culture is pathetic. Will we have to wait until ALL these dinosaurs die off?
Read between the lines——they “don’t have enough experience yet” means “they haven’t shown enough signs to indicate they’re ready to be THOROUGHLY compromised”.
There. I fixed it.
Hey. I've got a good idea, Bob. Let's do it your way again and then you guys will pick another RINO loser who just wants to "reach across the aisle and govern instead of bicker". Then your and your GOPe buddies can continue to be the tax collectors for the Welfare State.
(Newt got that one right...)
I would agree - the problem is - it has always been a one way street. Getting things done however, should not be the only goal when getting things done.
Bob Dole’s problem was Electile Dysfunction ... and making a creepy Pepsi commercial with Britney Spears.
“They” asked him what his current opinions were because they either knew what he was going to say, and it fit right into the narrative they’re building against Cruz,et. al., or they didn’t know what he was going to say, and just HOPED it would fit into the narrative. If it didn’t, they wouldn’t have reported it-—they would’ve ignored it.(And Dole wouldn’t have minded)
When the draft-dodging, serial rapist from Arkansas defeated the Navy flyer with a mile-long government resume and a Norman Rockwell family life, we knew it was no longer going to be about experience or accomplishment.
I knew when Clinton won that this nation was all done. Now the best we can hope for is to slow down the charge to the cliff’s edge.
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