What percentage of the vote did Harry Browne get? What percentage did Pat Buchanan get? What percentage did Alan Keyes get? How about Howard Phillips?
According to posters here, these are the "true conservatives". IIRC, all of them combined didn't get more than 5% of the total vote.
What this says to me is that, even though we on FR want a more conservative federal government, the American people as a whole do not - in fact, they were about evenly divided on whether they favored Bush's moderate views or Gore's liberal views.
George W. Bush seems to be about as conservative as a politician can be at this time and still be elected.
Ridiculing and tearing down our President - even if he's not as conservative as some of us would like - is not constructive, IMO. Instead we need to be changing the hearts and minds of our neighbors and our young people, so that more conservative politicians have a chance of being elected. We also need to be helping conservative candidates at lower levels of government - because those are the foundations of our government, and because national politicians usually begin as local politicians.
Ridiculing and tearing down our President - even if he's not as conservative as some of us would like - is not constructive, IMO. Instead we need to be changing the hearts and minds of our neighbors and our young people, so that more conservative politicians have a chance of being elected. We also need to be helping conservative candidates at lower levels of government - because those are the foundations of our government, and because national politicians usually begin as local politicians.
So right on! I actually was in a petty flame war earlier (wrong of me) trying to argue this point about Davis vs. Simon but couldn't explain it properly. I wish I had read this first..
That's what they want you to believe.
In the past 20 years, conservatives have had 4 landslides. Moderates have had zero. Liberals have had zero.
Only eight years ago, Republicans, led by Newt Gingrich (who was deemed "unelectable" by the elites) won a massive electoral victory. Veteran democrats were defeated, including committee chairman (deemed "unbeatable" by the pundits). Even the Speaker of the House went down in defeat.
Now what were the Republicans talking about back then? It wasn't "setting a new tone", or opening our borders , or setting up a police state. They spoke about the Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence. They talked about abolishing 4 cabinet agencies. They spoke of implementing a flat tax or even abolishing the income tax altogether. They promised a massive devolution of power back to the people.
Yet, they still won. It was only when they abandonded those principles (i.e., folding to Clinton over the gov't shutdown and nominating Bob Dole) that they started losing.
Despite what the "experts" tell you, most of America, when presented the facts, is still pretty conservative. Of course, that's all changing thanks to the treasonous immigration policies of our "leaders".