Tony Cenicola/The New York Times
I wonder if this might be President Bush's greatest achievement, i.e. making the dems go nuts and over the cliff!
Posted on 08/13/2006 10:32:43 AM PDT by neverdem
A few days before Joe Lieberman, who was very nearly vice president of the United States, was effectively vanquished from his party by Ned Lamont, an affable cable executive who once played a minor role in governing the town of Greenwich, Conn., I happened to talk with Jeffrey Bell. A political consultant who is as cordial a man as you will find in Washington, Bell isn't as famous as some of his fellow Republicans, but he owns a storied place in the history of the conservative movement. A young aide to Ronald Reagan during his 1976 insurgency, Bell went on to challenge a sitting Republican senator, Clifford Case of New Jersey, in 1978. He stunned the political world by winning that race. And though he lost handily to the basketball legend Bill Bradley in the general election, just two years later Reagan ascended to the White House. If anyone was in a position, then, to assess the significance of the Connecticut rebellion, it was Bell, whose small but noteworthy victory over his party's confused establishment presaged a historic political realignment. ''It's tempting for us to underrate Dailykos and Moveon.org,'' Bell told me, referring to the Web pioneers who launched Lamont's improbable campaign. ''It's easy for us to say these guys are nuts. But the truth is, they're on the rise, and I think they're very impressive.''
There are, in fact, some compelling parallels between this moment in Democratic politics and the one that saw the ideological cleansing of the Republican ranks three decades ago. In ''Reagan's Revolution,'' an inside account of Reagan's failed 1976 campaign, Craig Shirley notes that aides to President Gerald Ford warned that they were ''in real danger of being outorganized by a small number of highly motivated right-wing nuts.'' Those so-called nuts, meanwhile, waged war on...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I wonder if this might be President Bush's greatest achievement, i.e. making the dems go nuts and over the cliff!
That's why the 2008 election will be so critical. It's interesting how many FReepers support Giuliani and how his nomination/election could change/undo what conservatives have worked so hard to achieve.
What Are the Lieberman Foes For?Power.
What exactly would Giuliani undo? It's not as if, domestically, the current administration could fairly be described as conservative, and on the war he would be better for us than our PC-hogtied executive.
And look what those dary wing nuts did. Elected 2 times the greatest President this country has ever had AND totally destroyed a 40 year plus Democrat lock on the Congress and pretty much pushed all the NY Slimes heros of the American Democrat Socialists party to the verge of political irrelevency.
We have just one message for you darn old wing nuts.
DANG fine work. Many thanks for liberating the USA!
That's easy they're "for" the media to be able to say liberal Democrats are centrists...
That's what they're "for".
Leftism is just the idea that criticism and second guessing - cheap talk and evasion of any discipline from a bottom line - controls the government. And should.Leftists have a pecking order in which journalists and other celebrities who espouse the arrogant criticism of producers are at the top, poor and minorities who know their place are in the middle, and people who actually do things - police and military, businessmen and white people, the middle class at large - are at the bottom of the pecking order.
The VP candidacy and presidential aspirations of Jack Kemp were shattered when Gore flattered Kemp in a way that criticized the middle class, and Kemp said nothing to defend the base of the Republican Party. It was exactly the wrong position for a Republican VP candidate to take, and it destroyed Kemp's leadership in the party.
The winner of the '08 Republican nomination must either personally or via his VP proxy pin down big journalism by making its negativity, superficiality, arrogance and cynicism issues in the campaign. Otherwise IMHO it will be practically impossible to defeat the "throw the bums out" impulse in 2008.
Do you mean "mainstream" like Chuck?
Gee Funny how all the "Reagan Conservatives" with their pissing and moaning about "Bush's Spending" perpetually forget the size of the Federal Govt doubled in Reagan's 8 years. He also signed a REAL Illegal Amnesty and two tax HIKES. Guess that makes Reagan not a "Real Conservative" either.
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