What is your message to Elizabeth Dole supporters?
People who currently support Mrs. Dole may not completely understand her vulnerabilities.
It is a sure bet that if Mrs. Dole wins in the primary, Democrats will relentlessly exploit any weakness and it very well may give them a big victory in November 2002.
Her main weaknesses as I see them are:
1) She has not been a resident or taxpayer of North Carolina for over forty years.
2) She is neither an economic nor a social conservative.
3) She either avoids discussion of, or flip-flops on, important issues.
I understand, but challenge the decision of Washington, D.C. GOP strategists to handpick her for the Republican Senate candidacy. She is a nice lady and she has great name recognition. But I believe Party leaders intent on regaining control of the Senate have underestimated North Carolinians who will recognize her true nature as a liberal Washington insider who has reached great heights of power in both Democrat and Republican Administrations without ever being elected to public office or wavering from her liberal beliefs.
Ronald Reagan wrote: "A political party is a mechanical structure created to further a cause. The cause, not the mechanism, brings and holds the members together."
The decision of GOP leaders to back Elizabeth Dole demonstrates they are neglecting the conservative "cause" in favor of "star power". When you stray from the Cause, you divide our Party members and hand victory to our opponents.
Elizabeth Hanford (Dole) was a Democrat working in Washington, D.C. during the heyday of Lyndon B. Johnson's "Great Society" programs. She started her career working for the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1965. In 1968 she landed a job inside LBJ's White House, in the Office of Consumer Affairs. When Richard Nixon took over the White House, she switched her party affiliation from Democrat to Independent. In 1975, she switched parties again. Marrying Bob Dole, she became a Republican. She has since been a resident of Kansas until beginning her campaign to be a U.S. Senator representing North Carolina.
Dole's personal political beliefs remained a mystery to the public-at-large until she ran for President of the United States in 1999. Even while the liberal media praised her for being a "moderate" Republican, she convinced conservatives her liberal stripes had not faded during the years she wore the Republican label. That is possibly the main reason she plunged from her leading position in the polls early in the Presidential Primary campaign and another reason she won't win in North Carolina.
Michelle Malkin of the Washington Times summarized Elizabeth Dole's Senate Campaign when she wrote: "She has no ideas, no issues and no motivating principles except the eternal preservation of her political viability. Instead, she and Republican strategists in Washington are relying on her personality, chromosomes, celebrity status and ideological squishiness to vault her to victory.
On guns, she has echoed Mrs. Clinton's call for a ban on semi-automatic firearms, restrictions on ammunition and mandatory trigger locks. Mrs. Dole sides with Sarah Brady in opposing laws allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons. On abortion, she is an artful dodger. Although she has claimed (rather briskly) on a few occasions that she is "pro-life," she repeatedly evaded questions on her position during her failed presidential bid. On affirmative action, she earned cheers from the left for championing 10 percent set-aside contracts for minorities during her tenure as Ronald Reagan's Transportation secretary and for declaring a jihad against the purported "glass ceiling" for women in the corporate world while serving as the first President Bush's Labor secretary... She championed a federal ban on drinking alcohol for adults up to 24 years old. And she supported one of the biggest wastes of taxpayer dollars, the federal Job Training Partnership Act. Some members of the Republican establishment argue that Mrs. Dole's star power and "moderate" makeup make her a perfect candidate at a time when the party needs every Republican it can get in its uphill battle to recapture the Senate majority. But Mrs. Dole's Beltway backers should be careful what they wish for, lest they end up with Jim Jeffords in a skirt"
BUMP!
again!
Ahhh, if only we could get Michelle to run instead of Giddy! A genuine intellect who REALLY is conservative.