Posted on 05/04/2006 8:59:18 AM PDT by MNJohnnie
RUSH: There are Republicans planning to abandon George W. Bush in droves, particularly during this election year. Bush has had it, a 36%, 33% approval rating. The guy's an albatross around their neck. "We've got to get out of there! We don't want Bush doing anything but raising money for this," blah, blah, blah, blah. There's precedent for this. By the way, a couple of pollsters saying it's a bad move for the Republicans. You know, Republicans, I'll just give you some advice right now. All of you Republicans in Congress -- including you, Chuck Hagel and Olympia Snowe and all the rest of them, McCain -- you want to win reelection in this year, if you're up?
You want the Republicans to hold the House? Unify behind George W. Bush. Just do it. Just do it. Don't try to please moderate or Democrat voters by showing your independence. Just go out there and unify and support the president on a number of issues that you can. Fred Barnes, who at the time was a senior editor of the New Republic, posted a piece in the LA Times December 9th, 1986, Ronald Reagan's sixth year. Conservatives in '86 were abandoning Reagan, the most important conservative in the history of the movement in America.
"A dozen or so conservative leaders met privately at a Washington hotel last week to discuss the future of their political movement. Edward Feulner of the Heritage Foundation was there. So were New Right strategist Paul Weyrich, several fund-raisers, two officials of the Reagan Administration and a few Capitol Hill aides. Not surprisingly, the conversation turned to President Reagan and the Iran arms scandal. Forget Reagan, they agreed. The President's a goner, his influence shattered forever. We've got to decide how to press our agenda without him. Only William Kristol, a top official of the Department of Education, dissented, insisting that Reagan should be defended.
"Thus, the Iran scandal has achieved what Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, the 1981-82 recession and the Marines debacle in Lebanon couldn't. It has caused the disintegration of the Reagan coalition, that blend of conservatives from fundamentalist Christians to libertarians that held together as the most unified single bloc in American politics for a decade. And even if the coalition is revived on an issue or two -- aid to the Nicaraguan contras, say, or funding the Strategic Defense Initiative -- as Reagan serves out his final two years in the White House, it won't be the dominant political force anymore.
"The matter can be put quite succinctly: Without Reagan the conservatives lack a popular leader, and without the conservatives Reagan lacks a broad ideological base. Both wind up losers, and the political balance of power tilts away from them. Sure, the conservatives are still sentimentally attached to Reagan, but he's no longer the same rallying point. Worse, there's no replacement in sight. Conservatives are fragmented on who should be the Republican presidential nominee in 1988. The gravity of the split is only now dawning on Reagan and his allies. Last Tuesday, Secretary of Education William J. Bennett denounced conservatives for ingratitude and political stupidity in abandoning Reagan.
"'There is no conservative agenda without Ronald Reagan,' Bennett said. 'He is the man who made whatever good has happened to this Administration happen, and people should be mindful of that.' Patrick J. Buchanan, the White House communications director, is even more blunt. 'There's an old saying that the major failing of American conservatives is they don't retrieve their wounded,' he said. 'Now's the time you take an inventory of your friends.' Not too many friends are turning up, however. Human Events, the weekly conservative publication that Reagan reads faithfully, has only half-heartedly defended him on the Iran arms deal.
"Linda Chavez, a White House aide until last winter, published a column in the Washington Post denouncing Lt. Col. Oliver North, the ousted National Security Council official blamed for diverting profits from the Iranian arms sales to the contras; she said that he was not a 'true conservative.' Bennett, who got Chavez her first job in the Administration, was so mad about this that he quickly spread the word that he was sorry he'd ever sponsored her. Why are conservatives so wary of supporting Reagan in his moment of greatest need?
"'Nobody believes in the issue, giving arms to Iran,' says Allan Ryskind, the editor of Human Events. 'Nobody's persuaded by the arguments. And while conservatives love the contras, they think that aiding them has now been jeopardized.' (Military aid was only narrowly approved by Congress this year, and the scandal over diverted funds makes renewal of aid less than likely.) Another source of wariness by most conservatives was the firing of North. 'Was North scapegoated or did he deserve to be fired?' asks Jeffrey Bell, an adviser to Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.). 'Until conservatives know that, they'll be on hold. They love North.' And though many conservatives may be inclined to stand with Reagan, they're unsure where to do that. With new revelations in the Iran scandal occurring daily, 'they don't know what ground to stand on,' says Bell.
"Complains Howard Phillips of the Conservative Caucus: 'The nature of the issue keeps changing.' Finally, there are conservatives like Phillips who always regarded Reagan as too moderate for their taste. 'We wish the best for him, but we're going to focus more on the 1988 presidential race than on helping his cause,' Phillips says. 'Reagan has turned over the substance of policy to people in fundamental disagreement with the policies he's rhetorically espoused.' Phillips is resistant to lobbying. His friend Buchanan pleaded with him over dinner last Wednesday to come to the President's defense. Afterwards, Phillips went on ABC-TV's 'Nightline' and trashed Reagan."
Is it not interesting? It seems like history is repeating. Now, I know Bush is no Reagan (don't misunderstand) in the sense of leading a movement, and I've been the first to say this. But what's interesting is they just want to abandon him, and I'll tell you, there is something in here that's really true: Conservatives do not retrieve their "wounded" from the battlefield; they abandon them. There is so much -- especially more so today than ever before, there's so much -- competition out there. Conservatism has gotten so big; it has so many people who want to claim to be the leader, claim to be the definers, that if anybody takes a hit, they're happy to let them fade away because of the competition.
You know, conservatives do have competitors within the ranks. When the competitors bite the bullet, bite the dust, they're only too willing to let them, some of them them are, just fade away. There is not a whole lot of public defense, including of the president. Now, it's true the president is not defending himself, either. But I'll tell you something, I remember this period. I was working in Sacramento at the time, and I was wondering during this whole Iran Contra stuff, where's Reagan? He was being trashed every day in the media. "Where's Reagan? Why didn't he get up there and answer this stuff?"
Some people were saying, "Because he can't! Because he can't. Because it's true," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They say the same thing about Bush. "Why doesn't he go out there and defend himself?" Well Bush's answer is he doesn't care. He's got his job to do and he doesn't think it's PR spin. It's the same thing with Cheney. Cheney's got a piece coming out in Vanity Fair, I guess, or an interview with him, and they ask him (summarized): "What about your horrible public image?" He said, "I'm not in the public image business. I guess I could improve it if I went out there and tried to improve it, but that's not what my job is. My job is not public spin. My job is not my public image," and so it's amazing, these parallels.
Yet when Ronald Reagan died, all these people who abandoned him (those still around) were muscling trying to get in the front row, trying to make sure they were all over the place to be seen as loyal, never-wavering supporters. The '86 midterm elections, you know, these defections, and people who said, "We can't run with Reagan! Why, Reagan is destroying us." There's always been this tendency on the conservative side to, when there's trouble, split the scene and run away -- and, you know, Reagan did some things to irritate conservatives. While he cut taxes he also raised them at times. You know, abandoning Lebanon after the Marine barracks was hit, that wasn't popular with people. But look how time changes things. When you go back and you look at the totality of a period of time, I don't remember during the funeral week of Ronald Reagan, other than his son and maybe a couple Democrats, but even they were pretty quiet. I don't remember any of these conservatives stepping forward to remind everybody how effectiveless and worthless and pointless the last two or three years of Reagan's term were, do you?
END TRANSCRIPT
What the??... I am simply telling you why I'm sitting this one out. Read the tag line.
What do you call them? You don't sound too upbeat, nic.
I commented on it purely for gratuitous reasons. So sue me.
Some things one just can't resist.
(it is like shooting fish in a barrel, he thinks to himself)
Maybe? Sorry, maybe isn't good enough. After 40+ years of liberal courts and now starting to to bring Conservatives back on the bench and you sit there and say Maybe? 4 years could put the courts right back where they were.
j
Respecting 214, this one I agree with you on.
No, the point here is, the GOP doesn't sound too upbeat...they caused so much fracturing they're in a quandry. The GOP is full of gloom and doom.
Pointing out what the GOP did wrong and continues to do wrong (i.e., the catalyst to their quandry) are the cold hard facts.
I'm going to start awarding the "Arator" prize to the poster with the longest face. You're today's winner.
Here are some of Arator's words, from early 2002:
What many still fail to appreciate is that Clinton constituted Poppy's second and third term. Dubya is his fourth. The Bush-Clinton-Bush era is one uncut strand of globalism, spooky corruption, evisceration of conservatism, and trashing the constitution. We are now beginning our fourteenth year of this political poison. We have at least three more to go. If we last that long, that is.
When posters begin to emulate Arator, even unknowingly, I begin to wonder if the conspiracy theorists aren't right, after all.
The population of Cuba also goes to a lot of baseball games. Life there sucks.
Does life in America suck as bad as life in Cuba?
Thats fine with me but I'm not long faced. I'm royally and righteously PISSED!
Oh, yeah, that'll show 'em. Folks will just love to give you your way after you've cost 'em an election.
I'll grant you that Bush appears to have appointed two good men to SCOTUS. The spineless ones in the senate still wont go nuke on the rotten Dems over the rest of the nominations. They are spineless and stupid on this issue like so many others. Its not only Bush. Its the whole Republican majority. They have acted like they were still the minority since the day they took both houses. I don't want "Bipartisan"; I want the conservative agenda that we sent them there to deliver.
I don't care what they think. At the idiotic rate their going they're going to cost me my country!
If we let old GWB have his way we'll be there before you know it.
IMO, it's not just SCOTUS Justices that are important but the Justices in all federal courts. Bush and the Senate have made real changes even though the Dems have been kicking and screaming to prevent his appointments.
j
These suckers have violated so many laws just to save a few bucks. And where
the litigation will stop, nobody knows. It's gonna make their collective heads spin.
I'm not running from Bush because his approval numbers are low; his approval numbers are low because he's running from me
If somebody agrees with me 70-80% of the time, that's a person I can work with.
My-way-or-the-highway ain't my style.
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