Posted on 02/12/2004 7:32:47 AM PST by quidnunc
Let's just be blunt: The North Koreans would love to see John Kerry win the election. The mullahs of Iran would love it. The Syrian Baathists would sigh with relief. Every enemy of America would take great satisfaction if the electorate rejects the Bush doctrine and scuttles back to hide under the U.N. Security Council's table. It's a hard question, but the right one: Which candidate does our enemy want to lose? George W. Bush.
And some conservatives will be happy to help, it seems.
Woe and gloom have befallen some on the right. Bush has failed to act according to The Reagan Ideal.
The actual Reagan may have issued an amnesty for illegals, but the Ideal Reagan would have done no such thing. So unless Bush packs freight cars full of gardeners and dishwashers and dumps them off at the Mexican border, some voters will just sit this one out.
The Ideal Reagan would have eliminated the National Endowment for the Arts; the actual Reagan proposed a $1 million increase in his final budget. But Bush increased NEA funding. So angry conservatives might just sit this one out.
And if a Democrat takes office, and the Michael Moores and Rob Reiners and Martin Sheens crowd the airwaves on Nov. 3 to shout their howls of vindication? If the inevitable renaissance of Iraq happens on Kerry's watch, and the economy truly picks up steam in the first few years before the business cycle and Kerry's tax hikes kick in? If emboldened Islamist terrorists smell blood and strike again? Fine. Maybe the next Republican president will do everything they want.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at nola.com ...
Yep, they are. Some folks are conservative because its the intelligent choice given so many valuable planks of the right-wing to individuals, society and America...... and because the right has overall moral coherency threaded throughout.
And then there are conservatives who seem as if they were simply lucky enough to have been born to a conservative family but are just as stupid, arrogant and with a sense of entitlement about their OWN pet causes as the rabid lefties. And they'll happily sink the entire right if their OWN pet causes aren't pandered to enough. Morons.
I seem to remember Joseph Sobran using it very early on.
I dunno. Maybe I'll think of something when something like that actually happens.
Stated with such certitude. But you KNOW this how, exactly? The facts are that Pres. Reagan DID promote and sign the first-ever bona fide amnesty for illegal aliens in American history. He did. You can't run from it. You can't hide from it. Signing the Immigration and Naturalization Reform Act of 1986 was a major blunder by a conservative president. It was the crack that broke the dam and transformed what had been a comparative trickle into a flood. It also set a precedent. The way our system works, once a precedent is set, it can be used as an excuse to do the same thing over and over again. This is one of the negative parts of Pres. Reagan's otherwise sterling legacy.
Despite what those who have been screeching about this issue claim, what Pres. Bush proposed is NOT an amnesty. It is somewhat of a return to the old Bracero program, and an attempt — a flawed one in my opinion, but nevertheless an attempt — to find a way to identify and track the illegals currently in this country. It's flaw, again in my opinion, is that the bill fails to provide for a serious effort to control our borders.
Nevertheless, the President has focused attention on a very difficult and important issue. He did so knowing the screaming he'd get from the right. He also did so knowing the issue has to be confronted because it's a matter of national security. Anyone who has an opinion on this issue has the opportunity to influence any legislation that makes its way through Congress.
I urge anyone opposed to this legislation to use their time more productively than just huffing and puffing all over the internet. Either join or form a coalition to defeat it outright, or to modifiy it so that it becomes a beneficial piece of legislation. Anyone who spouts off passionately about this or any issue on the internet, but who otherwise refuses to get of his or her butt and work on influencing the legislation, is a phony warrior.
I guess you forgot to put the IN MY OPINION in there, right?
The truth, as you see it, looks mighty circumspect to a lot of us.
Isn't it odd how the "principled" conservatives aren't content with just not voting for President Bush ? If they mean the President no harm why don't they just speak their minds and then drop it ? But, noooooo, they're here everyday, peevishly repeating themselves ad naseaum. Obviously, the validation they'd hoped to receive for their "principled" conservative position isn't happening. If I were a skeptical person, I might think its really about them instead of ther "principles".
Frankly, I don't see a dime's worth of difference in democrats like Kerry, McAuliffe, Gore, Clinton and the 'principled' conservatives. They all proclaim their "patriotism" out of one side of their mouth while deliberately distorting the President's every action out of the other side. Should one or both succeed the end result is the same... a democrat in the White House and an open invitaton to every murdering, bloodthirsty terrorist around the world. So there is zero difference.
This is what I did in 2002 when I served as Assistant Campaign Manager for the Jim Behnke for Congress campaign in his primary challenge against RINO Jim Kolbe. This is also what I'm going to do when I serve on the campaign of the, as yet, unannounced campaign in another primary challenge against RINO Jim Kolbe in 2004.
In the meantime, I'm going to exert whatever pressure I can to support the good and stop the bad policies of President Bush and the Republicans in Congress. These are the guys in charge right now. What am I going to do when a bad bill gets passed and signed into law by the President? Blame the Democrats!? Is it the Democrats' fault that the government has been spending like a drunken sailor? I expect more from Republican representatives and that is why when they screw up they tend to get the brunt of my dissatisfaction.
Some of us are working all the time on this issue. See my previous post.
Seriously bush is a moderate who wants the left to love him, so he drastically increases spending, gives out the biggest entitlement (prescription drugs) in my life time (Yet something else I will eventually have to pay for), and he has done little to nothing to enforce states rights or the second amendment. I have never seen anyone here dispute that if Clinton tried to do half the stuff Bush has the Republicans in Congress would shut him down..
Lileks-Nails-It-Once-Again BUMP! :)
Perhaps he's one of these organic freaks who think everyone should have a garden.
Possibly a member of PETA also. They're big on veggies.
Because of NAFTA and cheap Mexican migrant pickers we have great veggies in the grocery stores in Texas.
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