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.
There's ALWAYS room for a MONKEY!
Sex, sex, sex, sex.
One can only hope that he is defeated in the primary because Senator Scottish LAw as Chairman of the judiciary committee is one scary thought.
Absolutely.
I'm actually for pistols in vending machines at airports and high schools.
Why would you say that to somebody trying to earn a living?
You lose.
Honeygrl,the people whom you seem to think are those terrible moderates are conservatives, me included.We may not be red meat enough, but most of us have had a life and have watched what happens when true believers ,and god knows, they are important, forget that sometimes, true belief has to wait for the rest of the world to catch up.Look at the Left; they did not do anything overnight, did they?Slowly,imperceptibility, conditioning took place. Had they been as strident then, they'd have gotten nothing.Now that they control a huge chunk of media and academia, they are outing themselves, Unfortunately, the middle folks are nowhere near as motivated,as are we. I assure you the DNC is and they lap up the"I'll stay home" or the "I'll vote third party "stuff. How do you think it gets into the NY,WP or LAT so quickly? I believe you when you tell us you're irritated and frustrated;all of us are.
I think you raised some good points.I love your passion and conviction. I am glad you can express them well.I am also glad you can think prejudicial, which is not always what we want, but something we have to do.
In all, you have handled yourself well, and I for one, am pleased you did.
Cordially,
The drunk monkey is crucial, gotta keep it. :- )
This is of course not recent news.
This article U.N. influence in U.S. schools {Henry Lamb; More NGOs} was posted about a week ago.
One excerpt:
In one of its first efforts in 1949, the UNESCO textbook, titled "Toward World Understanding," used to teach teachers what to teach, said:
"As long as the child breathes the poisoned air of nationalism, education in world-mindedness can produce only rather precarious results. As we have pointed out, it is frequently the family that infects the child with extreme nationalism."
In the 1960s, Dr. Robert Muller, U.N. deputy secretary-general, prepared a "World Core Curriculum." Its first goal:
"Assisting the child in becoming an integrated individual who can deal with personal experience while seeing himself as a part of 'the greater whole.' In other words, promote growth of the group idea, so that group good, group understanding, group interrelations and group goodwill replace all limited, self-centered objectives, leading to group consciousness."
Group group group...slight change from clinton: Grope grope grope
Destroy individualizm and Nationalizm.
OK, one more:
"We're living on a planet that is becoming exhausted," says George Walker, IB's director-general in Geneva. "The program remains committed to changing children's values so they think globally, rather than in parochial national terms from their own country's viewpoint."
Personally, I like our country's viewpoint. Especially the way it was and hopefully will be in the near future.
Ok!!!!
Who is the snitch????
Okay, you're back in.
(what a pushover I am)
Since you've only been around for two years, let me tell you that you're only seeing that the way you want to see it.
You weren't here before the 2000 election -- so you couldn't possibly know that we BushBots have been told for the last five years that WE are the lowest of the low, unprincipled, and have no morals.
We've NEVER been "true" or "real" enough for the unappeasables on this site.
From you OWN post:
The moderates and left leaning Republicans are hijacking your forum.
I rest my case.
You can continue to whine, as you do on every thread you're on, about how people are attacking your personally.
..... she says, attacking honeygrl personally....
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