You don't have to like Patty Buchanan or John McLame to be dissatisfied with the GOP. Bush wants to have it both ways by appealing to the base and to RINOs. He can't do both.
Are you saying that a president shouldn't listen to ALL those who elected him?
Yes he can, and he has.
How do you think he won in 2000 and 2004?
The GOP is not just a "conservative" party. There aren't enough conservative voters to win a presidential election.
I don't think he's cynically trying to have it both ways. He just doesn't have the fire in his belly for a SC brawl. It's not Iraq.
Mark Steyn had a piece today that was excellent as usual, and he pointed out that no matter how much people are going to want to throw the repub bums out, a concomitant drive to throw the dem bums in, does not exist, and he's absolutely right.
That's a good advantage for the very right of center republicans. They were right to draw a line in the sand, and the party needed this.
Steyn also pointed out that the dems are completely out of ideas, which is irrefutable. But part of the reason they are, is that they implemented so much of their ideology over the past 40 years, that they are a product of their own success. They weren't able to put their ideas into practice because they didn't want to take the fight to someone. They did take the fight to whoever opposed them, and they won.
Harold Ickes, like him or not, lost a kidney, due to a fight that ensued during a civil rights march.
Conservatives are on the right side of the moral debates, and on the right side of history, at the moment. May they push as hard as the dems did to see their ideology prevail, and may they not lose heart when their own party thinks of them as the grassroot dagos they now have to live with.