[sinanju]

I've been trying to join the movement for years but no one will teach me the secret handshake...

[Euro-American Scum]

The late Wall Street Journal editor Robert Bartley contends that deficits are not what we should look at when deciding what we can afford.

Yeah, well p!$$ on the Robert Bartley. He seems to forget the connection between Lyndon Johnson's guns and butter policy of the 60s and the inflation/recession scenario of the mid-to-late 70s.

Handing out welfare checks to deadbeats and malingerers in the Great Society while funding the war in Vietnam on borrowed money had its consequences then, just as similar policies today will have their consequences in the future.

Either way, there's no free lunch.

[mc6809e]

It's Baroness Thatcher!

[SteveMcKing]

All of politics is to achieve the goal of uniting moderates and ideologues within the party. This is far more important than actually defeating the opposing party, in many ways.

It's a battle to keep those who say "woa- I'm all for this idea, but these people are NUTS!" from disengaging, or worse, deserting to the other side.

Bush is excellent at keeping those people. Unfortunately, the natural price is to alienate the "true" members of your party (the ideologues). The universal solution, then, is to run someone who appears moderate, but will govern radically.

Whether Bush fits that pattern is basically a matter of opinion. I like to think he has cards up his sleave, and every "liberal" thing he does is actually calculated to infuriate everyone from FReepers to moderates, which lights a candle under our @sses and motivates our political activities to fight harder for conservative causes.

[dervish]

Nice things to say about Thatcher and Blair. If you keep up posts like this you will undo your image as a Brit basher. Where is the UK contingent when you want them?