WE are America's premier online conservative group.
Posted on 06/04/2006 8:09:25 AM PDT by rdmartinjd
The talk of a Republican apocalypse this fall is likely premature, but very well earned. A White House that can't seem to communicate its way out of a paper bag surely can't lead. A Senate which forgets it was elected to cut spending, reduce waste and change Washington should expect to be sent home. This is just reality.
But there's more to this story than meets most eyes. There's also a real chance for redemption.
Republicans in 2004 won an historic victory, on the wave of an overwhelming coalition of fiscal, defense and social conservatives representing a large majority of all Americans. Record turn-out and organization of Evangelical Christians was key, as this group historically has not voted anywhere near its potential strength.
A hostile, global press decried their involvement, but these Christians are no fire-breathing mullahs: they are America's core, regular folks who go to work, raise families, and pursue the American dream. They mostly want government to get out of their way, stop putting burdens on faith, stop kowtowing to the “Blame America First” crowd, and stop selling out traditional values.
This appalls the glitterati, but it's hardly a radical agenda. Indeed, if 2004 is any indication, for most Americans it's just common sense.
But that “most” thing is a two-edged sword: you win by pleasing it, you betray it -- or let it think you've betrayed it -- to your doom.
Republicans have represented their broad coalition's values better than one might think.
The President took America out of the ABM Treaty -- something even Ronald Reagan would not do -- and deployed a real missile defense.
Congress cut the capital gains and dividends taxes -- and overcame strong opposition to extending those cuts just last month -- sparking a supply-side, middle class-investment boom and the lowest unemployment rates in three decades.
President Bush campaigned and fought for a new, improved, free market Social Security -- one which would have increased the average Social Security check by thousands of dollars per month while exploding U.S. economic growth rates to East Asian levels.
The President actually passed his free market Health Savings Account plan -- giving every American access to tax-exempt, low cost, fully portable health insurance -- which is slowly but surely transforming U.S. health care.
A Republican Justice Department re-recognized the Second Amendment's guarantee of an individual right to keep and bear arms, something no Administration has done for forty years.
The President also appointed slews of outstanding judges to the bench, including two tremendous Supreme Court justices, solid on economic, constitutional and social issues as well.
And don't forget the obvious: the President has kept al Qaeda on the run, removed the Taliban from power, locked Saddam in a cage, encouraged democratic, free market revolutions from Ukraine to Lebanon, and incorporated the entire Libyan nuclear program into the Oak Ridge museum collection. And oh by the way, he is now presiding over one of the strongest economic booms on record, despite the business disaster following 9/11 and the pre-existing Clinton recession. Not one of these things would have happened if Democrats had had their way.
Yet conservatives remain rightly annoyed. They don't remember this astonishing laundry list of achievement, because no one's bothered to remind them. At the same time, Congress's spending binge and the complete failure of border security are thoroughly inexcusable. And even if they weren't, these are the things conservatives hear about, all day every day.
We do stand at a crossroads. The Republican Party in power is far from perfect, but adding a few more conservative Senators -- and a few more Tony Snows -- would fix that. But an angry conservative base sitting home will hand Congress to the Democrats, undoing all which has been achieved and taking us starkly the wrong direction.
Republicans can stave off disaster if they show -- not just say -- they're for real. Passing the tax cut extensions was vital. Next week they have two chances to shine (or bomb): the Federal Marriage Protection Amendment vote this Wednesday, and permanent Death Tax repeal on Thursday. Quickly confirming the President's judges is vital too, and vital to talk about, a lot. Standing strong -- win or lose (but it needs to be win) -- will show conservatives who they are.
The White House usually gets this. House Republicans almost always do. But a Republican Senate is busily throwing everything away. This coming week, it better stop the hemorrhaging, or the patient may very well die.
-- Rod D. Martin is Founder and Chairman of TheVanguard.Org, America's premier online conservative group. A noted author and speaker, former policy director to Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Special Counsel to PayPal.com Founder Peter Thiel, he is a member of the Arlington Group and of the Council for National Policy's Board of Governors, and he serves as Executive Vice President of the National Federation of Republican Assemblies (NFRA), “the Republican Wing of the Republican Party”.
I'm an FR Bush Bot. Ended up joining a couple years ago because I needed a refuge from the Bush bashing in the MSM.
Now I find myself fighting the Bush bashing here.
How the world does go round...
Nice try at deflection when the real issue is immigration.
To the Democrats' horror, this fall's elections will turn on illegal immigration.
In his foreign policy Bush has done a good job: he did what was needed, he invaded Iraq and put the world's number one supporter of terrorism out of business. Not that the MSM would ever give him credit for it.
Where he has screwed up is with immigration. He's allowed his administration to be bullied by the Big TV Networks and the Dems, who desperately need more Dem voters, into supporting amnesty. Ten million new Latino voters to support income redistrubution is just what the Dems need.
Now, the question is, can the GOP majority in congress survive this amnesty give away? We'll see in November.
WE are America's premier online conservative group.
The problem this term has been the Congress. It wasn't so obvious the first term, when the Congress wanted to ride Bush's coat tails. But now that they don't need him, they're doing their darndest to get away with as much as they can at his expense.
Kerry was caught in a lie and Bush has been exposed in a dereliction of duty. Kerry lied to gain personal power and Bush declined to fulfill his oath to see that the (immigration) laws were faithfully enforced in order to conform America to his vision of the future and to preserve his legacy as being on the right side of history.
Whatever good Bush may have accomplished has been completed negated by his sell out of the American people on the issue of illegal immigration. He is putting their rights before the rights of American citizens. (Can I pick which years taxes I'll pay?) My father, an 85 yr old WWII vet, said that Bush may as well have delcared that all of the Greatest Generation's sacrifices were made in vain.
And they had better not forget it!!!
BUILD THE WALL!!!!
THE ILLEGALS ARE NOT YOUR VOTING BASE, REPUBLICANS!!
There, that's better.
The Bush bashing is getting old. Its really getting old in Internet and Blog land.
"Republicans can stave off disaster if they show -- not just say -- they're for real. Passing the tax cut extensions was vital. Next week they have two chances to shine (or bomb): the Federal Marriage Protection Amendment vote this Wednesday, and permanent Death Tax repeal on Thursday. Quickly confirming the President's judges is vital too, and vital to talk about, a lot. Standing strong -- win or lose (but it needs to be win) -- will show conservatives who they are."
These diversions, and that's exactly what they are, won't matter in the least to me. If at Bush's insistence anything remotely similar to S2611 gets passed, this country is going to have much more to worry about than judges, tax repeals and who the heck is marrying whom.
They THINK they don't need him.
Thank your father for his service, but he ought to know better than to say something like that.
A silly, stupid, dumb and outright lie of a post.
It qualifies for the "Dumbest Post of the Day" by a wide margin.
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