Posted on 01/31/2004 3:07:29 PM PST by Kevin Curry
Can conservatives win in November if Bush loses the White House? The easy answer is "No." The thinking answer is quite different. The easy answer overestimates the power of a Democrat president who must work with a Republican-controlled Congress. The thinking answer is that gridlock is often preferable to a government shifting into high gear regardless of whether a Republican or Democrat is at the wheel. And gridlock is always preferable to progressivism, whatever its form.
Liberal nanny state progressivism is a rouged tart wearing a high tight skirt standing on the street corner, who whispers "$20 for a good time." Compassionate conservative progressivism is the wholesome girl next door in a county fair booth that reads, "$20 for a kiss"–only the bargain is even worse, because the government forces you to pay, and someone else gets the good time or the kiss.
Neither form of progressivism is acceptable to a conservative who has better and more profitable things to do with his time and money.
The key to understanding why the thinking answer attaches such small value to a Bush win this November is to understand the paradox of unified control. Common sense suggests that conservatives are best served when Republicans have unified control over the two branches that write the checks, pay the bills, and write and enforce the laws: the executive and the legislative. That was the delirious hope of conservatives, including myself, who cheered in November 2000 as Bush won the White House by the narrowest of margins and the Republican Party won combined control of the Senate and the House in 2002.
But this delirious optimism has turned steadily to dark dismay as Bush recklessly and heedlessly cranked the conservative agenda hard left and smashed it into reefs of trillion-dollar Medicare entitlements, record deficit spending, incumbent criticism-stifling campaign finance reform, illegal alien amnesty-on-the-installment-plan, NEA budget increases and the like.
Where has the Republican co-captain –Congress–been as Bush has pursed this reckless course? Mostly sleeping or meekly assisting. Would a Republican Congress have tolerated these antics from a Democratic president? Absolutely not! Why has a Republican Congress tolerated and even assisted Bush to do this? Because he is a Republican and for no other reason.
Thus, the paradox of unified control: a president can most easily and effectively destroy or compromise the dominant agenda of his own party when his own party controls Congress. Bush has demonstrated the potency of this paradox more powerfully than any president in recent memory–although Clinton had his moments too, as when he supported welfare reform.
Does this mean conservatives should desire a Democrat president when Congress is controlled by Republicans? No. Conservatives should desire a consistently conservative Republican president who with grace and inspiration will lead a Republican-controlled Congress to enact reforms that will prove the clear superiority of the conservative, small government agenda by its fruits. Bush's tax cuts are a wonderful achievement, and have had a powerful stimulating effect on the economy. But imagine how much better the result if he had not set forces in motion to neutralize this achievement by getting his trillion dollar Medicare boondoggle enacted.
Ten steps forward and ten steps back is may be how Republicans dance the "compassionate conservative" foxtrot, but in the end it merely leads us back to the same sorry place we started. It is not an improvement.
When a Republican president compromises the conservative agenda and is enabled to do so by a Republican Congress too dispirited or disorganized to resist, the next best answer might well be for a Democrat to hold the White House. Nothing would steel the courage of a Republican Congress and enliven its spirit more than to face off against a Democrat bent on implementing a liberal agenda.
Any Democrat unfortunate enough to win the White House this year will face the most depressing and daunting task of any Democrat president ever to hold the office. The Iraq War will become his war, and he will be scorned and repudiated if he does not with grace, power, and dignity bring it to a satisfactory conclusion. That means he will have to conduct the war in much the same way that Bush is conducting it now–he will not have the latitude to do much else. If he conducts the war in the manner that Bush is conducting it, his own base will abandon him.
Any Democrat president will also have to choose between spending cuts or raising taxes. If he chooses the latter, he will see his support plummet as the economic recovery sputters and stalls. If he chooses the former, he will dispirit his base supporters. In either case he will strengthen the hand of the Republican controlled-Congress and see Republican strength enhanced in the Senate and House.
If SCOTUS vacancies open up, he will see his nominees scrutinized and resisted with a zeal that can only be expected and carried out by a Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee that has suffered through years of kidney-punches and eye-gouging in judicial appointment hearings by a Democrat minority (it would help immensely if the spineless, Kennedy-appeasing Orrin Hatch were replaced as Committee Chair).
As his frustrations grow, his support plummets, and the Republican Party adds to its numbers in Congress, a Democrat president would be viewed as opportunistic roadkill by zealots in his own party, including and especially the ice-blooded and cruelly-scheming Hillary Clinton. In the run-up to the 2008 election Democrats would be faced with the choice of continuing to support a sure loser in the incumbent or a scheming hard-left alternative in Hillary. The blood-letting in the Democratic Party through the primary season and into the convention would be grievous and appalling, committed in plain view of the American public–who could be expected to vomit both of them out.
That would leave the field open for the Republican presidential candidate to achieve a victory of historic proportions in 2008. With greater Republican strength in Congress, the opportunity would again present itself for this nation to finally achieve the dream of implementing a real and substantial conservative agenda, of actually shrinking government in a large and meaningful way.
The key to achieving that dream, of course, is to carefully select an electable conservative for 2008 who will remain true to the conservative vision and not cause conservatism to fall victim again to the paradox of unified control.
It is not too soon to start looking for that candidate.
Albeit a good point I wasn't addressing that..........yet........:o)....AWB is shallow, false, cosmetic and diversionary at best and any polidiot or presstitute who supports such is letting the public know they are the same. Shallow, liar, diversionary, money grubber, seditious, socialist , RINO etc etc etc...
Stay safe !
The thought behind it has been forming for several months, however.
The point is to encourage Bush's uncritical supporters to think beyond the knee-jerk reponse that life will somehow end if Bush is not re-elected. Of course life will continue. If conservatives prepare intelligently, the result might well be an improvement over where we are now and where Bush is taking us.
Tacking against the wind isn't easy, but sometimes it's necessary.
Truth be told, I'm not for any of the present laws currently on the books. Matter of fact, I don't think the government has the right to force me to register my firearms. That in and of itself is unconstitutional and infringes on gun owners rights, for the simple fact that through the registration process, the government can cull together a database on who's a gun owner and who isn't. We then get into privacy rights being infringed just on that aspect alone.
Truth be known, Montana doesn't require guns to be registered, whether it's a hunting rifle, or an AK-47. If you live in a state where you're required to register your firearms, I sympathize with you, and only regret to say, you've given up your right to privacy, and only have put yourself in the crosshairs of the federal and state government if/when the day comes where they decide to disarm the public at large.
Let me get this straight, you, who are parroting the DNC's talking points and in sync with them to rid us of George W.Bush and maybe open the Supreme Court up to worse than Earl Warren, are a "true Conservative" , while ,I,and others like me,who are doing our best to prevent this,among other things, and I'm a RINO?
Tell you what,you tell me what parallel universe you live in and I'll accept your otherwise fatuous accusations and nonsensical statements.
Cordially,
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For at least a decade, the Republican strategy has been to assume we would be too fearful to vote for a Democrat. Bush is the epitome of that strategy. I see an element of "Bush arrogance" in all this as well. Bush Sr. won the Gulf War and his approval ratings exceeded 90% at one point. He felt he could not lose, relaxed and said "Read my lips ..." Like father like son?
I might not have this confidence or belief if the Democrats were in control of Congress or even presented a deep threat of retaking Congress. But I am confident the Democrats are settling into the trough of the cycle of power in Congress and will remain there for at least ten years regardless of which party holds the White House. This is our opportunity as conservatives to finally destroy discredited liberal progressivism as an effective force---but we cannot and will not achieve this by simultaneously reviving and recloaking big goverment progressivism as "compassionate conservatism" on our own side!
We are not a nation ruled by kings or dictators for life. The cult of personality is not a sound foundation on which build and maintain a free society. The long term health of this nation is greater than short-term plans and "compassionate conservative" nonsense of George W. Bush and his unthinking supporters.
At the same time, I want to hold out hope that President Bush will come to his senses and turn back from the dangerous direction he has steered us. He still holds the prime and best position to see and guide our way clear to smaller government in the way that Reagan envisioned but was unable to achieve due to Democrat and Rockefeller Republican resistence to it.
It's hard, apparently, to make people see that politicians don't get reelected for obstruction.
We had divided government from 1968 to 2002, no one sees that period as one of decreased government power.
I don't think the anybody but Bush crowd will re-examine their assumptions, but at least this is a coherent and fairly polite thread. As the election nears both of those qualities will become very rare on these threads.
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