Posted on 09/15/2002 5:27:02 AM PDT by GailA
Edited on 05/07/2004 9:20:06 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
The keen national interest in Tennessee's up-for-grabs U.S. Senate seat will be highlighted this week by scheduled stops by President Bush and his father to raise money for Republican candidate Lamar Alexander.
A third event to benefit the Alexander campaign, scheduled for Sept. 26, will feature Vice President Dick Cheney.
(Excerpt) Read more at tennessean.com ...
Don't you go imagining that this has anything to do with cuts in the taxes extorted from people of modest incomes, or protecting babies from the savagery of the abortion mills, or protecting gun rights. That's all over with now. This is not Ronald Reagan's party any more. It belongs to moderate Republicans from East Tennessee (who used to be the liberals in Southern politics) and liked to call themselves "progressive."
Gail, you deserved better than this. But, at least, the Van Hilleary is worth electing as governor and Sunsquish will soon be no more.
RINO's will vote for a Republican majority leader, which would hopefully be Nickles from Oklahoma.
If you think there is no difference in whom you vote for, you are failing to see the big picture.
Frist may step down after his term is over and open the door for Ed Bryant. Who was my FIRST choice and the BEST conservative choice as senator. lamar at best is a moderate, more of the howard baker ilk.
The only area we have to really fear him on is education, there he is a socialist deluxe. After all he gave us goals 2000.
Liberal Roy's definition of a moderate Republican in this statement is one that opposes segregation. Liberals will never understand that Democrats put blacks in their place in the South, not Republicans. The news media will never hold accountable liberals who insist that Southern Republicans were or are racists.
Dole replaces Helms....
Lamar! replaces Thompson....
Lets say for sake of argument that the gop takes over the senate....
I see nothing from the gop that would suggest even a whiff of conservatism resulting from judicial nominations.
A sad time for the USA
If the conservative movement would be restored as an ideological NON-PARTY-dependent developer of young people as an intellectual strike force, building a disciplined political cadre and a grass-roots political machinery, maybe we would not be exploited election after election by the ongoing ever-present "crisis" that unless we elect the latest set of brainless Muffies and Skippers thrown up by clueless and wholly owned party leaders, the republic will be dead. If you get a GOP majority, then many of these spineless wimps, as Senators, will discover that their "principles" will allow them to support only "progressive" and "modern" Republican judges who do not threaten little Muffy's need for her fourth abortion and little Skipper's desire to marry Bruce and have us all regard that as normal, judges who will not disturb the peace of the accumulation of leftist detritus enforced by stare decisis (my grandaddy was an idiot, my daddy was an idiot and I am an idiot by inheritance, seems to be their common quality and why they love precedent).
There are even some fish smart enough not to go for bait again and again if they had a close call with a hook. But, in the background, we can hear the progressive lobbyists, their party hack marionettes, and the old Rockefeller crowd cooing: Well, after we buy the primaries, the conservatives can whine all they want but they HAVE to vote for us or its the Democrats. Heh, heh, heh!
Giddy Dole and LAMAR!!! would be more credible in a nursing home than as freshmen senators. We won't even be able to pressure them on policy at their age. After all, how many terms will they seek? Besides, they will be too busy attending all the verrrrry fashionable cocktail parties to pay any attention to mere mortals.
These "progressive" clowns vote for Nickles??? More likely for one of their own like Chafee, Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, or just maybe, if he can be bought by election as "Republican" leader, Judas Jeffords could be wooed and won? Judas was so noble, so progressive sooooo Goals 2000, so women's rights to kill, sooooo gay rights from the gay state! How could the GOP have let those horrible reactionaries drive an ancestral Republican (one of US!!!) from his own party with their unfashionable and narrow-minded views???? Oh Muffy, oh Skipper, it was just awful what they did to that poor Judas! We must never allow anything like that to happen again. LAMAR!!!! will help us. So will giddy and Cornyn too! What time is the polo match?
We do not have TIME to raise a cadre of clear-thinking young conservatives! We need to work on getting as many conservatives as we can into positions in the party, but MEANWHILE we need to take back the Senate so that we can get more conservatives into the judiciary. Why is this so hard for you to understand?
I am not particularly fond of Lamar Alexander, whom I consider a weasel and marginally oily. BUT, the Republicians of Tennessee chose him as the candidate, and I would rather have Alexander filling that slot than a democrat who would vote for Daschle as majority leader. PLUS I WANT THE DEMOCRATS NO LONGER TO HEAD THE COMMITTEES!
I fail to understand why conservatives rant and rail about the lack of support for people like Schundler and Simon, and then turn around and do the exact same thing to moderate candidates. Both sides refusiing to help a candidate that they don't agree with 100% idealogically is what is hurting the party. Both sides need to bury the hatchet and work for a common goal, which is to take back the Senate and keep the House. There is no time for holding out for ideological purity, lest we wind up pure but out of power, watching as the Rats wreck the country.
Many, indeed, most Southern Republicans at this stage of history are more liklely descendants, literally and ideologically of Southern Democrats, the Bourbon Democrats (Rhett Butler entrepeneur types wiped out by literally socialist and obviously racist Klan leaders like Pitchfork Ben Tillman) and from some old redneck Democrats as well. If you recall the novel and movie To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and the lead character: attorney Atticus Finch (patterned on her own Democrat/Lawyer legislator father of Monroeville, Alabama), you ought to concede that tyhere were also Democrats who could be quite conservative in their daily lives and quite generously inclined toward blacks in the face of Klan thuggery. I light of such people as Sam Rayburn, Lyndon Johnson, Harry Truman and many others who stood up to the Klan and made the case for civil rights from the most persuasive podium of its dominant party you might amend your statement to say that SOME Democrats "put blacks in their place" in the South. Don't imagine it was much different in many Democrat machine-controlled areas of the north.
It was George Wallace in 1972 who came up, with the formulation which described best the difference between the North and South on race relations. Leftist media types in Massachusetts, horrified by polls suggesting that Wallace might carry the Massachusetts presidential primary in 1972 (you could look it up), hastily assembled an hour-long statewide TV interview that kicked off with the question: Governor Wallace, how can the man who stood in the schoolhouse door defying John and Robert Kennedy have the nerve to even run in much less be leading the Massachusetts primary field?"
Wallace, pausing for dramatic effect, asked the questioners what town each lived in. The responses were fashinable Boston bedroom communities of extreme affluence: Wellesley, Sharon, Framingham, Natick, etc. Wallace replied: I've heard of all those very wealthy towns but I bet you haven't heard of my hometown which is Cleo, Alabama where I still live. It is in Barbour County which you also have probably not heard of. In the state of Alabama, our population is 45% black, in Barbour County 40% black, in Cleo 60% black and on the street where I live 50% black. I wonder which of y'all could say the same thing? Idn't it true, gentlemen, that the difference between North and South is that down South, we don't care how close they get so long as they don't get too big and up north you don't care how big they get so long as they don't get too close. Who are you to lecture us?"
There are Southern Republican racists but they are not very common, regardless of ideology. Republicans are more comfortable accepting the civil rights laws that Republican legislators passed and then moving on to make a more prosperous community for everyone. LAMAR!!!!'s kind of Republican, however, is more akin to the Republicans like the late Alabama US District Court Judge Frank Johnson, once Wallace's closest friend at the University of Alabama Law School and later Wallace's worst enemy as a federal judge. Descended from hillbilly Republicans of the Civil War era including a grandfather/sheriff who hanged Klan memebrs without trial (an interesting datum in that lynching Klansmen may have been poetic justice but a tad inconsistent with the sworn duties of public officials), Frank Johnson soon fell to threatening to send all prisoners home unless Wallace would spend more on prisons and other schemes to judicially order the spending of public money.
The wealthy have long practiced a tactic of divide and conquer in order to overcome their substantial numerical disadvantage at the polls. If blacks and whites can be induced to struggle racially for the scraps, while the folks up in the counting house use their financial power to influence legislators to serve their interests, that is an advantage to them. In fairness, that is not LAMAR!!!!'s ancestral situation. He is basically a progressive hustler from East Tennessee hillbilly stock who has so pleased his progressive patrons in DC with his willingness to serve them at the expense of ordinary Tennesseans and Americans and the future of the children of both, with his willingness for ambition to serve as a trained seal for those just dying to move the party leftward, with his Goals 2000, etc., that they are willing to make him a doddering freshman United States senator.
Tennessee can elect LAMAR!!!! or it can elect Frank Clement (his granddaddy was a crook, his daddy was a crook and he.....well, you know!). No difference to speak of as to ideology and the GOP lurches leftward. The really amazing thing is that this putz got nominated even after Tennessee Republicans suffered through eight years of Taxquist who makes Lamar look like Thomas Jefferson, John Wayne and John Paul II all rolled into one. [For progressive Republicans, that was meant as a comparative compliment to LAMAR!!!!]
One is not surprised that the Arkansas Antichrist took LAMAR!!!!'s ideas as to government indoctrination and moved them a smidgeon leftward to call the policy his own. That is the kind of tiny nuance that means so much to "progressive" Republicans and other clueless national and even local party hacks while they miss the big picture of the ongoing degeneration of the GOP. I do vote Republican but it gets harder and harder.
Whether Clinton's program or LAMAR!!!!'s (have plaid shirt and piano lessons, will travel) plan, the intended result was the same: Homogenized clueless drones for an American future without jobs. (Most kids in government indoctrination centers). Train up a handful of the children of the connected to really rule the ignorant. That was their common goal. Now that New Hampshire has demonstrated its developing soft-core Repuboicanism, should we move the "First in the Nation" primary to a state more congenial to principle?
We made the mistake years ago of thinking that electing Ronald Reagan meant that we had reached Nirvana especially coupled with the slaughter of leftist senators that occurred in that 1980 election. The conservative movement promptly dropped dead and stopped training young people. The reason that we are now harvesting weeds like LAMAR!!!!, Giddy Dole, et al., is that in the absence of anything vaguely resembling an informed ideological resistance to the ongoing march of the left in society and in the GOP, money will rule. Why else would anyone imagine electing these clueless jerks as Republicans.
I have a confession to make: I would vote for either of them over their opponents: largely because they will do no long term damage, having one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. Freshman GOP senators should be 35 or 40-year old ideological firebrands not tired out old social butterflys qualified only by their bank accounts and by being utterly devoid of principles or ideas. If that is class envy, then make the most of it. I don't think that wealth is a qualification for wisdom as to public policy. As the son of factory workers, I am not ashamed to stick up for the interests of working people. Neither was Jesse Helms, BTW, who was criticized here for trying to save the jobs of textile workers in North Carolina. He was once re-elected by the votes of black fundamentalists who gave him 15% of the black vote that year because he worked their churches on the pro-life issue. Giddy (or is that Muffy, the liberal Demonrat who went to work at LBJ's White House in her youthful zeal for the Great Society) is going to find out that North Carolina is about more than her trust funds or the Junior League.
We have no choice but to develop a cadre of young conservatives. Otherwise we are condemned to live forever in crisis and to have to elect second and third rate shabby goods like LAMAR!!!! and Giddy to the US Senate lest the republic collapse. The sky is falling, the sky is falling!
Those who revile this trash as GOP nominees while railing against the slime who undercut Schundler and Simon have good reason. Schundler and Simon are Republicans of the Reagan tradition. Giddy and LAMAR!!!! are not. If you are willing to accept the ongoing ideological dsgeneration of the party, don't complain about the ongoing degeneration of public policy. It is moderate to accept the notion that the liberals win but more slowly than they wish. It is conservative, as an early conservative editorial in National Review had it to "stand athwart the tides of history yelling STOP!"
A 1961 editorial in the New Guard which was Young Americans for Freedom's magazine observed as to a conservative youth movement born in 1960: "Twenty years ago, this movement would not have been thought of. Thirty years ago, it would not have been possible. Forty years ago, it would not have been necessary." Fast forward ten years to 2011 and that editorial position may occur to some conservative youth movement without knowledge of the precedent and looking upon the 1980 election as the sort of golden age that the 1920 election resembled to early YAF.
I have a grip, thank you. I remember that Republicans joined in torpedoing Robert Bork's nomination and others, that Clarence Thomas was subjected to, as he correctly and colorfully described it: "A high-tech lynching". These fiascos were partially attributed to the high-minded polo-playing type of GOP senator. Again, if that's class warfare, too bad! Actually, I will happily support wealthy candidates whose agendas and voting records serve us all. I am really d=fed up with the constant Chicken Little act that says we must put up with whatever stooges are nominated because otherwise it will be the end of coivilization. I really don't aspire to live in fear as a way of life.
As to Republican judges, quality control is somewhat deficient when Gerald Ford names John Paul Stevens, Reagan names Sandra Day O'Connor, and Bush the Elder (under the influence of Sununu the Elder) named Queen Souter. Nixon named Herod Blackmun, etc.
The business about who runs the committees is certainly a consideration but it is really the entire raison d'etre of the clueless career of Trent Lott. Politics, even power politics, ought to have nobler goals than sheer thug control. As Ambrose Bierce noted, "It is almost the definition of a fanatic to say that he is one who, having forgotten his original goals, redoubles his efforts." That was a very good description of those who engage in necessary activism without caring why or even knowing why. No purpose is served by turning conservatism into a decapitated political movement: No brains, no thought, but the aimless corpse still runs around energetically knocking things over. If that's class warfare (I cannot bring myself to envy the materialism of those who, blessed with much in the way of resources, understand nothing), make the most of it.
If, as even you concede, you vote to elect oily weasels like LAMAR!!!!, where does this all end? What are we trying to achieve? The kinds of arguments you make were made in Connecticut by Barry Goldwater and Orrin Hatch when they came in vain to tell enraged Connecticut conservatives to please, please, puhleeeze, send Lowell Weicker back to the Senate in 1988. Trust me. Even Loserman is better than Weicker and he isn't OUR embarassment. On Iraq, he supports Dubya and you could NEVER accuse Weicker of supporting GOP foreign policy. Hell, even Slick Willie..... (well, no sense getting carried away).
That is a short-term goal. Long-term, we should be working on getting good conservative candidates. However, when you have not had the presidency for 8 years, many people tend to look elsewhere for their ambitions, like the private sector. People need to be attracted to politics, and that means that they need to feel that their careers will not be ruined by one wing of the party or another in a primary, and that if they become candidates they won't have to worry about stabs in the back from people who don't like them on ever issue.
Your example of Weicker is an excellent illustration. Weicker couldn't be counted on for very many conservative votes. However, his vote was always for a Republican majority leader. Now that you have Lieberman, you have Daschle. Good job, Connecticut!
Zell Miller is quite conservative, but when he votes for majority leader, and when his party affiliation is tabulated for determining committees, the RATS get his vote. That is why they put up with him. They KNOW they need his vote for Daschle to stay in power.
I understand the frustration about liberal Republicans, but I would rather have them with us than on the other side of the aisle as moderate democrats.
So, indeed we should be recruiting people every way we can. But we should also realize that we have a lot of ground to cover to reach our goal, which cannot be done in one election. The Rats know this, I assure you, and that is why they are constantly chipping away, a little here, a little there.
I refuse to accept that a vote for a democrat is acceptable, period.
And you DID bring up polo, you know.
But our high-minded members of the coupon-clipping (from bonds, that is) caucus of GOP Senators often get the heebie-jeebies confirming any nominee to the high court (courts, nowadays) who does not regard abortion-on-demand and gay "marriage" and other feminazi proposals as Holy Writ.
Did that fox-hunting child of privilege, John Warner, do anything to advance the GOP in Virginia or did he personally cause Oliver North to be defeated? Or wasn't that class warfare?
You want Daschle gone from leadership? I have a better way to accomplish that goal. Bill Janklow should defeat him in the next Senate election. People who are not in the Senate cannot lead it and we don't have to go the convoluted route of ruining what's left of GOP policy when we can nail his hide in a general election in South Dakota. Let's get Daschle the old-fashioned way. Janklow is no kid but he cannot lose in South Dakota and he is worth voting for on policy grounds. I did not mention the country club. I certainly did mention the polo club and the Junior League. If we are going to promote a GOP Senate caucus of clueless elitistswhose major ambition is making the nation safe for their inheritances and off-shore banking schemes, this is a self-curing strategy that will give us the kind of strength the GOP had in the late 1930s. Sniff, sniff, well there aren't many of us, but we belong to all the right clubs and don't have to rub elbows with hoi polloi. Really, Muffy, how did this country come to reject its superiors as leaders? I don't know Skipper. Why don't you get your English riding saddle and funny little helmet and have a good go at it on the polo field?
It's simple, really. Those who are elected based upon Reagantite agendas and Reaganite voting records are the ones who do not commit fraud by adorning their names with (R-Pennsyltucky) in newspaper articles.
You want Daschle gone? You want judges confirmed? That's nice. I want an end to abortion (in installments as necessary), a strong military amply and well-equipped with the latest in firepower and comprised of a hard professional core of veterans and an enthusiastic corps of young enthusiasts, no more gun controls even if Muffy and Skipper think it is absolutely appalling that mere citizens are armed, the dismantling of an indoctrination system (gummint skewels) that has failed (sorry Dubya: Make that No child left behind wallowing in ignorance and amorality in government ignorance factories); the enactment of one, just one piece of legislation on any topic whatsoever (as to regulation of the Falkland Islands shark fisheries, anything), removing jurisdiction from the entire federal court system over just one subject to prove that Congress can to carry out that constitutional power as a precedent. When those are achieved, talk to me some more about the gutless wonders of the Republican Senate caucus. Also, what is the principle of not accepting a vote for ANY Democrat, if not that Democrats cast bad policy votes. If you cut them, do they not bleed? Let's find out but you know that no RINO ever drew Demonrat blood.
I live in Illinois now but I would still vote for Loserman over Weicker early and often and the New Haven Democrat machine would surely help me. If Governor Crook were running for re-election here, he would NEVER get my vote. Loserman's campaign ad in 1988 for the red meat Republicans was to remind voters of Weicker scuba-diving with Castro, and then having Hadassah Lieberman's parents, bare their wrists to show their tattoos inflicted at Auschwitz and to say: In my family, we don't have to be reminded of the meaning of totalitarianism. You won't see me scuba-diving with the Fidel Castros or any other totalitarians. Yeah, I'd cast that vote over and over.
Zell Miller is a fellow American to be wooed and won like former Democrats (but not Demonrats) Ronald Reagan, Richard Shelby, Ben "Nighthorse" Campbell and many, many others. Of course, if you want people worth having to switch parties, you have to give them a reason why. RINOs aren't very good at that. Slogan: Join the ranks of progressive Republicans: We're modern but not tooooo modern. 90%, just about right?"
I could not stab Lowell Weicker in the back. He is well aware of who I am and would never claim that I EVER was counted on to support him.
As to keeping RINOs on our side of the aisle: Use wedge issues. Drive them to the Demonratic Party where they belong and bring in ten morally respectable, foreign policy militant, military veteran, tax loathing blue collar Democrats or small business people to the GOP for every Muffy and Skipper exiled. AND Muffy and Skipper can take their attitude of "Who are these grubby working people and what are they doing in OUR political party?" with them as they don't let the door hit them, etc.
Do we really need aged Connecticut Congresscritter Nancy Johnson (Wellesley: Class of 1846?) whose husband Ted was a New Britain abortionist right up to his retirement? I'll take Maloney any day. We can make up elsewhere when people are energized to vote by a GOP with spine and spleen. Keep Dubya in office through 1/21/09 and it will be Democrats keeping their private sector jobs to avoid unemployment politically. Replace him then with, say, Rick Santorum and unemployment will be a Demonrat way of life.
Meanwhile, Muffy and Skipper know what they can do with their polo mallets where the sun shineth not.
Daschle will not be up for reelection until 2004. That is more than 2 years away. Two years in which he will keep judges from being confirmed. Two years of him obstructing bills and whining on national television. Two years to undermine the President in the war.
I simply disagree with you. Glad you are in Illinois, where your vote won't make much difference, anyway. Who are you voting for, Durbin?
A good man like Ed Bryant was defeated by the application of enough MONEY to nominate even the traveling plaid shirt wimp for the GOP. I have real issues with "democracy" skewed to death by the application of big bucks to buy a senate full of brainless bozos as reliable marionettes. Remember always as to LAMAR!!!!! that he already has the piano lessons and with a silk-striped shirt he is well-qualified to work any room in the house.
Bob Smith may not be a blow-dried matinee idol, but he voted right on most issues and fought for issues like banning partial birth barbarism while young Sununu can be relied upon to dutifully obey orders from the PLO and the business lobbyists. Now the Senate seat becomes less reliable and Sununu will be replaced by an outright pro-abort in Congress in one of the nation's most conservative districts. Go Muffy! Go Skipper!
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