Posted on 01/31/2004 12:41:27 PM PST by jimkress
Had dinner with an old friend last night, a long-time Republican political operative who – in 1981 – talked me into taking a sabbatical from journalism and going to Washington as a press secretary to Congressman Paul Findley.
He’s been a Republican all his life. Grew up in a GOP family. Served more than one term as a county chairman as well as a Republican National Committeeman.
So it surprised me when he opened the dinner table conversation with: “I’m not going to vote for George W. Bush in November. I may vote for John Kerry if he’s the Democratic nominee.”
Strange things can happen in this world. Joe Gibbs can come out of retirement to coach the Washington Redskins one more time. Hell, the Carolina Panthers might even win the Super Bowl. But when a lifelong Republican tells me he might vote for John Kerry, I wait for a voice to start saying “you’re entering another dimension…next stop – The Twilight Zone.”
“I’m a Republican because I believe in less government, of letting states make the decisions that affect our lives,” he said. “I believe in a balanced budget. But my party no longer believes in any of these things. I can’t be a part of what I think is destroying this country.”
His comments echo what I have been hearing after three weeks on the campaign trail. Republicans are fed up with an administration that has created the largest federal bureaucracy ever, with record deficits and with increasing federal power and control over our lives.
But they’re not just fed up with George W. Bush, they’re fed up with a Republican-controlled Congress that passed the largest, most pork-laden transportation bill in history, that abandoned its promise to impose term limits and that broke most of the promises of the 1994 “Contract With America” that gave them control of Capitol Hill in the first place.
My friend’s theory: “You know the old bromide that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely? Well, my party has taken it step further. Absolute power leads to madness. It makes me, a Republican, long for Democrats back in control. That is pure madness but I can’t help it.”
I’ve been around politics as a journalist or an operative for nearly 40 years and the dissension within the GOP is the worst I’ve ever seen. At a Republican caucus earlier this week, California Republican Congressman Chris Cox headed a group of conservative members who told Speaker of the House Denny Hastert that a GOP Congress was being undermined by Bush's actions in the White House. One member reportedly said a GOP Congress could deal more effectively with a Democrat in the White House than they can with Bush.
“At least we know what to expect from a Democratic President,” he said.
Let me see. I give a list of more than a dozen Bush accomplishments for truly conservative causes, and you dismiss them as "bones".
But you find a couple of things you don't agree with as a conservative, one which (the "guest worker program") will NEVER HAPPEN anyway, and you predict "truly disasterous results" for America.
This is typical of the the overly emotional reactions I have seen from the conservatives who say they will NOT vote for Bush over this or that.
I find it irrational.
Look something has to give. If it means things get so bad that maybe we reach some type of boiling point--so be it. We can't keep operating where we are. Especially with the courts, the fifth column, a liberal party and a more liberal party. This simply is not sustainable.
you're gonna write in someones name who has already said he is voting for Bush make you look like a juvenile... so be it.
So instead of being the broken record you are around here.. and who is the broken record? ...That is rich..
Gee, dare we call it what it really is??
A scam to instantly co-op a HUGE bloc of voters. Or so the GOP thinks...
And it does "fix" something -- the GOP's power base in California and the southwest.
Price?? The integrity of the Presidency, the Constitution, and the faith of anyone who was a Republican before all this in-your-face pandering nonsense
Nope, just a dangerously big spender -- bigger than Clinton (because the GOP Congress wouldn't let Clinton spend so much). Sorry, but the fact that Bush isn't being serviced by an intern doesn't make his socialistic spending any more affordable for me, my children and their children. The bill will come due - in higher taxes that we can't afford. He calls himself a Republican, but he spends like a left-wing Democrat. Sorry friend, but facts are facts.
Principles are important. Truth, justice, integrity, loyalty, faithfulness, trustworthiness are all principles crucial to what is needed in a president of this nation to restore and maintain unity in this country.
As for caring about the interests of this country, it is George W. Bush who we demand to have enough care and concern for our nation to alleviate any and all doubt as to what his intentions are for Americans, our border with Mexico, and the resolution of at least ten million illegal migrants living off the citizens of this country..
He was hired to look out for our interests first and foremost, not those of Mexico, South America, Canada, or even Iraq.
Again, I pose these questions to all here to answer if you can, but mainly to someone who should really care, George W. Bush. If he really cares, he will tell us the truth.
President George Bush - stand before the people of this nation and tell us Cochise County is the sovereign territory of the United States of America and is not under foreign invasion.
President George Bush - stand before the people of this nation and tell us you are using all means within your power to ensure Cochise County is free from illegal migrant invasion.
President George Bush - stand before the people of this nation and tell us the national, social, political, and economic interests of this nation come before any other nation, including Canada and Mexico. And including special interest groups who under the table continue to sponsor illegal immigration by hiring illegal migrants.
President George Bush - stand before the people of this nation and tell us we mean more to you than the migrant invasion coming across our borders.
President George Bush - stand before the people of this nation and tell us the truth.
So it's "purist" to object when a "Republican" president spends on the level of a left-wing Democrat? You're not a purist, you're a blind partisan - because if a Dem were in the white house and spending like Bush, I'm sure you'd be raising the roof with complaints. The fact that Bush is a Republican apparently makes his destructive spending policies alright with you. Sorry, but I'm neither a purist nor a blind partisan --- just a patriot who's frightened by the socialistic spending and the huge bills that Washington is saddling onto our kids and grandkids.
But then one realizes how dirty a game politics really is, right? And gets over it.
A vote for the Constitution party, or the Libertarian party, or the Sooper-dooper-independence-redwhiteandblue-flagwavin'-bootstompin'-patriotic party, is a vote for the dems as far as I'm concerned. Sure the big tent has alot of shaky poles in it but the lesser evil and all that...
Shameful indeed.
Was Nakita Kruchev prophetic? Have we have been defeated without even a single shot being fired?
Has an army of migrants been able to achieve what the mightiest of armies were unable to do?
Has the corrupt and greedy aristocracy won?
While America slept, democracy was hijacked by an elite aristocracy. Unless drastic measures are vigorously and immediately taken, their mission to ultimately relegate the middle class of America to a footnote in history will succeed.
Bye bye Miss American Pie.
Glance over the definition of the word - you will recognize the characters it applies to in both political parties of the United States - Democrats and Republicans.
One entry found for aristocracy.
hmmmmmm....like say a WTC redux, with a Kerry in the WH... sorry. i am not in favor of any BOILING POINTS. not when it comes to packing the Court with pro-death judges or allowing our country to be attacked. There is way too much at stake to sit out and pout about principles, hoping that SOME LESSON WILL BE LEARNED. at what cost? annihilation of our nation?
Great news there...
"This could have been a major, major victory for Bush and could have easily carried him over the hump this November....Why on earth Bush went over to the tool shed, pulled out the heaviest monkey wrench and threw it into the machine nine months before the election will be a question asked for decades to come."
It defies reason. But didn't his father blow a 91% approval rating himself months before the '92 election?
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