Posted on 09/29/2005 10:13:02 PM PDT by jla
I was first eligible to vote in a Presidential election when two men of stark, contrasting ideologies faced off - James Earl Carter and Ronald Wilson Reagan.
Back then it was commonplace to hear the Republicans charging their opponents with profligate spending of taxpayer money and a burgeoning federal bureaucracy. Nowadays, it's the Conservatives leveling these charges against the Grand Ol' Party's Presidential-Elect.
Only recently, our sitting President included Ronald Reagan amongst Mssrs. Carter and Clinton as being responsible for enabling and emboldening terrorists worldwide. Obviously, nobody reminded Dubya that those 44 American hostages in Iran had Reagan to thank for their being released upon his change-of-address. And if Mr. Rove wasn't too busy being a "genius" he could've told his superior that it would be a pretty safe bet that Muammar al-Qaddafi did not think RR soft on terrorism, or even lacking courage or character.
Should Rove ever start feeling manly he could remind President W that President RR was resonsible for slaying the grand terrorist dragon...the USSR. That is, if W and HW aren't on the putting greens with Ma Bush's "son", WJ.
Un-declared but oft-mentioned 2008 POTUS candidate Mike Pence of Indiana was just recently rebuked by G.O.P. House leaders Tom DeLay and Dennis Hastert.
What was Pence's transgression? Why he had the nerve to expect W to live up to his proclamation of being a "conservative". Pence, and some other conservatives, thought offsetting W's spending spree might save American taxpayers some money. One could just hear the snickers emanating from the White House at that ridiculous suggestion!
for the other side of the argument, see http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1493712/posts
Remarks at the 1976 Republican Convention
Ronald Reagan ran against Gerald Ford for the 1976 Republican Presidential nomination, and lost a close race. At the close of the convention, President Ford asked Governor Reagan to make some impromptu remarks.
(Truth is, Ford thought he had put RR on the spot by asking him to speak off the cuff. Little did Ford realize, RR's eloquence wan't borne from a prepared speech, but because he spoke from his heart, speaking of his unabashed love for America, freedom and liberty. --- jla)
Thank you very much. Mr. President, Mrs. Ford, Mr. Vice President, Mr. Vice President to be -- the distinguished guests here, and you ladies and gentlemen: I am going to say fellow Republicans here, but also those who are watching from a distance, all of those millions of Democrats and Independents who I know are looking for a cause around which to rally and which I believe we can give them.
Mr. President, before you arrived tonight, these wonderful people here when we came in gave Nancy and myself a welcome. That, plus this, and plus your kindness and generosity in honoring us by bringing us down here will give us a memory that will live in our hearts forever.
Watching on television these last few nights, and I have seen you also with the warmth that you greeted Nancy, and you also filled my heart with joy when you did that.
May I just say some words. There are cynics who say that a party platform is something that no one bothers to read and it doesn't very often amount to much.
Whether it is different this time than it has ever been before, I believe the Republican Party has a platform that is a banner of bold, unmistakable colors, with no pastel shades.
We have just heard a call to arms based on that platform, and a call to us to really be successful in communicating and reveal to the American people the difference between this platform and the platform of the opposing party, which is nothing but a revamp and a reissue and a running of a late, late show of the thing that we have been hearing from them for the last 40 years.
If I could just take a moment; I had an assignment the other day. Someone asked me to write a letter for a time capsule that is going to be opened in Los Angeles a hundred years from now, on our Tricentennial.
It sounded like an easy assignment. They suggested I write something about the problems and the issues today. I set out to do so, riding down the coast in an automobile, looking at the blue Pacific out on one side and the Santa Ynez Mountains on the other, and I couldn't help but wonder if it was going to be that beautiful a hundred years from now as it was on that summer day.
Then as I tried to write -- let your own minds turn to that task. You are going to write for people a hundred years from now, who know all about us. We know nothing about them. We don't know what kind of a world they will be living in.
And suddenly I thought to myself if I write of the problems, they will be the domestic problems the President spoke of here tonight; the challenges confronting us, the erosion of freedom that has taken place under Democratic rule in this country, the invasion of private rights, the controls and restrictions on the vitality of the great free economy that we enjoy. These are our challenges that we must meet.
And then again there is that challenge of which he spoke that we live in a world in which the great powers have poised and aimed at each other horrible missiles of destruction, nuclear weapons that can in a matter of minutes arrive at each other's country and destroy, virtually, the civilized world we live in.
And suddenly it dawned on me, those who would read this letter a hundred years from now will know whether those missiles were fired. They will know whether we met our challenge. Whether they have the freedoms that we have known up until now will depend on what we do here.
Will they look back with appreciation and say, "Thank God for those people in 1976 who headed off that loss of freedom, who kept us now 100 years later free, who kept our world from nuclear destruction"?
And if we failed, they probably won't get to read the letter at all because it spoke of individual freedom, and they won't be allowed to talk of that or read of it.
This is our challenge; and this is why here in this hall tonight, better than we have ever done before, we have got to quit talking to each other and about each other and go out and communicate to the world that we may be fewer in numbers than we have ever been, but we carry the message they are waiting for.
We must go forth from here united, determined that what a great general said a few years ago is true: There is no substitute for victory, Mr. President.
Great speech. But we now know from the printed page that he had been reflecting on such matters for twenty years when he spoke. I remember thinking: WHY didn't we nominate this guy!
Hence, from his heart. Not some spur of the moment poll-pleasing BS.
I remember thinking: WHY didn't we nominate this guy!
From all I've read, many convention delegates shared your opinion.
I hope the same mistake isn't made in '08.
fyi
Ford was Nixon joke on the Republican Party. He didn't want a VP who was an obvious alternative to a wounded Nixon. I suspect that one reason why the Democrats so strongly backed Clinton was that they knew, even better than we, that his VP was a damn fool.
2008 WILL be 76 and 64 all over again.Will conservatives reclaim the party and proclaim a banner of bold colors? or will it be the status quo?
Ugh, gipp, conservative MEANS status quo.. "same ol, same ol" like that.. It will take radical changes to get the U.S. back on track.. In that sense Bush "IS" conservative.. I am not.. The 2008 candidate for Prez WILL be conservative.. running against the radical Hillary.. Radical goes both ways..
I hate to say this, but it won't be the status quo--I believe that things are gonna get WORSE. The GOP will become even more internationalist, & even more of a big-government party than it now is (& that in itself is saying a LOT!).
Nope, the Barry Goldwater days of the GOP are long over, & those who think the Republicans have any rerspect for the limitations that the Constitution places on the federal government are either lying or are kidding themselves.
To paraphrase President Clinton, THE ERA OF BIG GOVERNMENT IS JUST BEGINNING!
bttt
Why don't we hash it out and draw up the platform WE'D like to see.
Let's give 'em some concise input.
Issue no. 1: Finish what we started in Iraq and elsewhere.
Issue No. 2: Secure our borders.
That is my $.02
Feel free to add to the list.
Pretty good start....my $0.02 is a lil too radical, even for most of the folks on FR:
--eliminate EVERY federal Department, Agency, & bureaucracy that has no constitution al leg to stand on;
--after eliminating these vast federal offices, keep the current tax system in place UNTIL the entire national debt (about $8 TRILLION now, isn't it?) has been paid off, then find out if the 16th Amendment was properly ratified: if not, admit it & get rid of the income tax altogether; if it was ratified properly, pass another constitutional amendment to repeal it;
--bring our troops home from abroad & use them to patrol our borders;
--eliminate paper $ & do what is constitutionally required by going back to gold & silver coin;
--GET US OUT of the UN & kick them out of the US;
--have Congress use its impeachment power against activist judges & President Bush (he refuses to do his constitutional duty of protecting our nation from invasion via the illegal immigration explosion, for starters);
--give ALL federal crime fighting efforts back to the states where they belong, (for example, let the states decide their own drug laws, where one can be as strict or another can be as lenient as the people so desire);
That would be a nice beginning for a return to a constitutionally-limited government.
I actually like the Federal Parks and Land.
It's nice to know that something won't be destroyed uless we need to use the resources in an emergency.
Drug laws would remain the purview of the states.
Another, as long as we can wish, is the elimination of Gun Control laws back through the NFA of '34.
think RR soft on terrorism, or even lacking courage or character.
I think he went soft when we lost 200+ Marines in Lebanon and turned tail and ran. A huge mistake on our part.
Should Rove ever start feeling manly he could remind President W that President RR was resonsible for slaying the grand terrorist dragon...the USSR
Yea all by himself. No Lech Welesa, no Polish unions, no John Paul II, no Maggie Thacher, no Pershings in Europe, no treadheads at Fulda, no squibs in subs, no capitalism driving the US engine ......
"Yea all by himself. No Lech Welesa, no Polish unions, no John Paul II, no Maggie Thacher, no Pershings in Europe, no treadheads at Fulda, no squibs in subs, no capitalism driving the US engine ......"
YES!!! Reagan did it all by himself!Thatcher refused to quit trading with the REDS,ever heard of Black Friday?
I've heard of all kinds of things, apparently you have not.
That is a responsibility of the STATE governments to decide upon. The Constitution doesn't give the federal government the authority to use its power for that purpose. As matter of fact, it clearly spells out the rules for which it can buy & use property--& wilderness preservation, parks, & saving resources aren't among them.
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