Left Turn: Is the GOP conservative?

National Review ^ | July 23, 2003 issue | National Review Editorial Board

[Constitutionalist Conservative]

he news this summer has been rather bleak for conservatives. The Supreme Court first decided to write "diversity" into the Constitution. A few days later, it issued a ruling on sodomy laws that called into question its willingness to tolerate any state laws based on traditional understandings of sexual morality. In neither case was there much pretense that the Court was merely following the law. At this point it takes real blindness to deny that the Court rules us and, on emotionally charged policy issues, rules us in accord with liberal sensibilities. And while the Court issued its edicts and the rest of the world adjusted, a huge prescription-drug bill made its way through Congress. That bill will add at least $400 billion to federal spending over the next ten years, and it comes on top of already gargantuan spending increases over the last five years. The fact that a pro-growth tax cut is going into effect this summer hardly compensates for these developments — especially since expanding entitlements threaten to exert upward pressure on tax rates in the future.

Republicans have been complicit in each of these debacles. Both the affirmative-action and sodomy decisions were written by Reagan appointees. President Bush actually cheered the affirmative-action decision for recognizing the value of "diversity." Bush has requested spending increases, and not just for defense and homeland security. He has failed to veto spending increases that went beyond his requests. But let it not be said that the president has led his party astray. Many congressional Republicans have strayed even more enthusiastically. Bush originally wanted to condition prescription-drug benefits on seniors' joining reformed, less expensive health plans. When the idea was raised, House Speaker Denny Hastert called it "inhumane." Congressional appropriators — the people who write the spending bills — have been known to boast that they would beat the president if ever he dared to veto one of their products.

We have never been under any illusions about the extent of Bush's conservatism. He did not run in 2000 as a small-government conservative, or as someone who relished ideological combat on such issues as racial preferences and immigration. We supported him nonetheless in the hope that he would strengthen our defense posture, appoint originalist judges, liberalize trade, reduce tax rates, reform entitlements, take modest steps toward school choice. Progress on these fronts would be worth backsliding elsewhere. We have been largely impressed with Bush's record on national security, on judicial appointments (although the big test of a Supreme Court vacancy will apparently not occur during this term), and on taxes. On the other issues he has so far been unable to deliver.

It is not Bush's fault that Democrats oppose entitlement reform, or that the public wants it less than it wants a new entitlement to prescription drugs. He should, however, have used the veto more effectively to restrain spending. Had he vetoed the farm bill, for example, Congress would have sent him a better one. We need presidential leadership on issues other than war and taxes. Instead we are getting the first full presidential term to go without a veto since John Quincy Adams. Bush's advisers may worry that for Bush to veto the bills of a Republican Congress would muddle party distinctions for voters. But this dilemma results from a failure of imagination. Why must the House Republican leadership always maintain control of the floor? When Democrats and liberal Republicans have the votes to pass a bill, sometimes it would be better to let them do so, and then have the president veto it. The alternative — cobbling together some lite version of a liberal bill in order to eke out a congressional majority — is what really makes it hard to press the case against big-spending Democrats.

The defeats on racial preferences, gay rights, and the role of the courts generally reflect a conservative political failure that predates this administration. Republican politicians have never been comfortable talking about moral or race-related issues, and have been eager to slough off these responsibilities to the courts. Their silence is not, however, only an abdication of responsibility; it is also politically foolish. Opposition to racial preferences and gay marriage is popular in every state of the Union. And if the courts are going to block social conservatives from ever achieving legislative victories — and Republicans will not even try to do anything about it — social conservatives may well conclude that there is no point to participating in normal politics. There goes the Republican majority.

To get back on track will require effort from President Bush, congressional Republicans, and conservatives generally. Bush ought to bear down on spending; we suggest that an assault on corporate welfare, followed by a reform of the appropriations process, would be a fine start. Republicans need a strategy for dealing with the judicial usurpation of politics that goes beyond trying to make good appointments to the bench — a strategy that now has a two-generation track record of nearly unrelieved failure. On gay marriage, a constitutional amendment appears to be necessary to forestall the mischief of state and federal courts. But a mere statute can make the point that Congress controls the federal judiciary's purview. Congressman Todd Akin's bill to strip the federal judiciary of jurisdiction over the Pledge of Allegiance has the votes to pass the House, and has a powerful Senate sponsor in Judiciary Committee chairman Orrin Hatch. It should be high on the Republican agenda.

Conservatives, finally, have to find ways to work with the Republicans — their fortunes are linked — while also working on them. The Pennsylvania Senate primary offers a choice between a candidate who is conservative on both economics and social issues, Pat Toomey, and one who is conservative on neither, the incumbent, Arlen Specter. The White House and the party establishment has rallied behind Specter. But President Bush's goals would be better served by a Senator Toomey. And as recent events underscore, this is not a bad time for conservatives to declare their independence from the GOP establishment.

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

Question: "... Is the GOP conservative?"

Answer: No.

Comment: Merely another group of degenerates.

[js1138]

i>I dropped in to watch.

Lurking placemarker. We should all ban together.

[PatrickHenry]

We should all ban together.

"We must all hang together or assuredly we will all hang seperately."
-- Benjamin Franklin

[Rightwing Conspiratr1]

Yes and I remember having that goofball leprechaun to thank for giving us 8 years of Semenstain and higher taxes.

Yes and I was proud to cast my vote for Ross Perot then rather than the spineless incumbent. Nearly all my relatives voted for Perot. They are all staunch Republican conservatives. Bush handed the election to Clinton.

[tpaine]

You are in denial.
Legislators in two states, and in dozens of local governments, plus arguably hundreds of thousands of your peers, perhaps millions, express serious constitutional reservations about the entire thrust of the 'Act'.
Yet you insist its repugnancy is urban myth.
Dream on.
538 tpaine



What I've insisted upon is that you show actual legal text evidence to support your claims.
So far, you haven't. You probably won't, either.
In contrast, I've shown some of the actual legal text.
Hmmm... No evidence from one side; plenty of evidence from the other...I wonder who's more likely to be right?!
559 -Southhack-


Denial of the obvious is a strange maladay. Millions of americans see the evidence that the 'act' infringes ~in its totality~ upon our basic principles of liberty.
The list I posted before enumerated numerous 'acts' of congress that are, in essence, unconstitutional.
The 'patriot act' adds insult to these previous injuries.

Posting "actual legal text evidence" of the Acts violations would run thousands of words, already done by the states which have told the feds to take this act & stuff it.
You want 'legal' text? Read their deliberations.

[ApesForEvolution]

Potential Nominees. Alberto Gonzales, Part 3: "Liberal" civil rights issues.

As a state supreme court judge, Alberto Gonzales faced a docket heavy with products-liability and contract cases--not exactly the bread and butter of the Supreme Court he may soon join. Nonetheless, his participation in a few decisions on the Texas Supreme Court, and his few major public statements since he became White House Counsel, indicate that as a Justice Gonzales might prove a moderate on rights dear to the political left, though quite conservative on the civil-liberties consequences of new antiterrorism measures.

Thanks to the Senate hearings on his former Texas Supreme Court colleague Patricia Owen, Gonzales's participation in a series of Texas abortion cases is already well known. In 2000, his court issued a half-dozen opinions construing the judicial-override section of the Texas parental-consent law. Gonzales voted with the majority or plurality, and often concurred separately as well, in all of those cases, each time emphasizing that the cases concerned construction of the judicial-override statute rather than the scope of the constitutional right to abortion. As one opinion he joined put it, "We are not called upon to decide the constitutionality or wisdom of abortion. Arguments for or against abortion do not advance the issue of statutory construction presented by this case." In re Jane Doe, 19 S.W.3d 249 (Tex. 2000).

Doe had the effect of clarifying, and perhaps also of lowering, the burden a minor seeking judicial permission for an abortion must meet. But in one of the opinions that followed on the heels of Doe, In Re Jane Doe 3, 19 S.W.3d 300 (Tex. 2000), Gonzales would have required the minor to meet a higher burden than several of his colleagues. (That case was still vacated and remanded to the lower court.) These and three other Doe cases produced a deep conflict on the bench, with Gonzales's fellow Justice Hecht, a recurrent Doe dissenter, accusing the majority of acting on a "deep-seated ideology that minors should have the right to an abortion without notice to their parents, free of any significant restriction," a charge Gonzales denied with an lengthy paen to the judiciary's limited role as faithful agent of the legislative will. To impose a more stringent burden on minors than the statute required would, Gonzales wrote, be "an unconscionable act of judicial activism." In re Jane Doe, 19 S.W.3d 346 (Tex. 2000).

Gonzales's views are more predictably conservative on matters of open government. As White House Counsel, he was the principal defender of President Bush's controversial executive order restricting the records due to be released from the archives of past presidents, and an early advocate of the Administration's plan to try "enemy combatants" before special military tribunals. He has appeared occasionally on television since taking up his current position defending Administration initiatives against complaints by civil-liberties groups.

Scott Shuchart

***

What an absolute freaking disaster an Justice Alberto would be. A "Patriot" Act loving, pro-abortion parsing, pseudo Republican that had better not be nominated if Bush wants to win again. Bush flirts with a lot of '3rd rail' issues that aren't very conservative, and then falls on the other side *way* too often.

[ApesForEvolution]

"Bush handed the election to Clinton"

Scary, but very plausible given the evidence from the "Read My Lips" candidate, POTUS 41.

[Southack]

"Posting "actual legal text evidence" of the Acts violations would run thousands of words, already done by the states which have told the feds to take this act & stuff it."

No, posting the actual legal text that you claim is unconstitutional would simply expose your argument as being based upon an oft-repeated urban myth.

Nor would it take much space or require many words. Each Section of the Patriot Act is comparitively small.

You could, as I've done already in this thread, post and cite a single problematic section with ease.

Well, you could at least post it easily. Finding and citing a Constitutional problem in the Patriot Act is considerably more difficult, primarily because there is no such Constitutional problem with the law.

And that fact leaves you in an uncomfortable position; you can't post and debate any of the actual legal text because doing so would further expose your lie.

Ergo, you have to find **other** ways in which to channel any debate on this subject (e.g. personal attacks, change of subject, distractions, etc.), rather than be caught cold with the actual legal text.

Which basicly means that you'll simply attempt to waste my time in any number of petty ways, rather than posting the actual legal text that you claim is unconstitutional.

Come on kid, post the legal text that you claim is specificly unconstitutional!

I dare you.

I challenge you.

And I'll continue to mock you if you don't.

[CWOJackson]

And you should mind your own business or, as you say, "shut the EFF up"

All the man is doing is whinning and describing a political recipe for disaster. He's naive and your foolish.

[tpaine]

Mock away kiddo. Your credibility here is long gone, so you'll only serve to make a further spectacle of yourself

[Southack]

Oh, I see. If I dare post the actual legal text and discuss the facts, then my credibility is shot, at least in your worldview.

But if you simply repeat an urban myth in the style of the Big Lie (where a lie told often enough is accepted as fact), then you have credibility in your mind.

Oh sure.

OK

I understand you completely now.

< /MOCKING! >

[.30Carbine]

Recommending the entire list in Post #303 for Quote of the Day - this needs to be spread far and wide! If it's okay with you, Southack, I'll send it out to my email list. I've already posted a link to it from my profile page. You did good.

[.30Carbine]

(FEARLESS PREDICTION:)Or will they be portrayed as the the "monopoly" party--akin to a bunch of rich, eeeeeevil, greedy 'corporate' white guys intent on "turning back the clock" to the bad old days of Bull Connor, Segregation, women in bondage...etc now that they have a 'monopoly' on Washington.

The portrayal - by the Left-wing media, Hollyweird, and DemonRats - of the Republican Party and the Conservative Agenda for restoring a Constitutional form of government to America is not our concern. Let them say what they will. Wisdom is proved right by her actions. The goodness, the rightness of our cause will be and is already being displayed as we advance! Look at Southack's list of President Bush accomplishments in Post #303. Look at just about any scientifically adminsistered poll of the American people (not at the spin the leftpress put on it). Look at the numbers of homeschoolers, and how many of their numbers are at the top of any nationwide testing measure - National Spelling Bee, National Geography Quiz, etc. Look at Free Republic and its steady rise in veiwership and participation and see FR's numbers in comparison to leftist sites on Alexa.

I'm "fearless" when it comes to how my Conservative principles and the Republican Party are portrayed. I trust the American people to figure out for themselves that Leftists are hiding behind pusillanimous propaganda, class warfare and bigoted rhetoric, and how empty of meaning these things are. It is not in the portrayal that we place our hope, and the portrayal can not steal our hope.

Jim Robinson makes the case much better than I ever could; I suggest you click his "Find in Forum" and read every post he's written on these issues. I agree with him 100% - the ax blows to the tree of liberty have taken years to wedge so far into the base our Founders built. But they built on rock, be sure of that, and these storms will not topple the American Spirit, Cause, or, ultimately, Constitution.

We can not disclaim all responsibility for the damage that has been done to that noble document, however. Voting for third party candidates bought us eight years of torment and tearing of our Constitution under Clinton. Conservative stay-at-homes contributed to the foil! And some of us who now know the truth were once pawns of the opposition.

Tell me what great battle for liberty was ever won by a single meeting on a single field? Our perspective of wars past is skewed by our distance - the Revolution, the Battle to remain United, the War to topple the Nazis and Communism...none of these, nor any other, were won in a day, a week, a year, or even an election cycle. Be encouraged! Don't listen to the propaganda of the enemy who would have you believe that all is lost and you will never regain your ground. Don't believe their lies! Don't think for a moment that anyone else believes their lies! They have turned up the volume and pumped up the presses precisely because our victory is at hand!

[tpaine]

Post the legal text in the Patriot Act with which **you** maintain is unConstitutional.
-Southack-


I'll grant that its written to conform [barely] to todays federal standards of 'constitutionality'. - Most of which have little basis in the actual words of our constitution, or its original principles.

Look below at the 'acts' it changes.. -- Most of them are blatant infringements on our liberties in themselves:

*Bank Secrecy Act
*Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
*Electronic Communications Privacy Act *Family Education Rights and Privacy Act
*Fair Credit Reporting Act
*Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act *Immigration and Nationality Act
*Money Laundering Act
*Money Laundering Control Act
*Right to Financial Privacy Act
*Pen Register and Trap and Trace Statute
*Wiretap Statute (Title III

Thus, imo, we have constitutional insult piled on injuries.
469 posted on 07/11/2003 10:40 PM PDT by tpaine



You 'mock' the unrefuted truth of the above constitutional infringements..

[.30Carbine]

1992 Presidential Election Results - Colorado

	Presidential Candidate	Vice Pres Candidate	Political Party	Popular Vote		Electoral Vote
	William Clinton	Albert Gore Jr.	Democrat	629,681	40.13%	8
	George Bush	J. Danforth Quayle	Republican	562,850	35.87%	0
	H. Ross Perot	James Stockdale	Independent	366,010	23.32%	0
	Andre Marrou	Nancy Lord	Libertarian	8,669	0.55%	0
	Other	-	-

Because 23% of Colorado's Conservative voters chose Perot in '92, the larger slice of the 8-vote Electoral Pie went to Clinton. Turnout was just over 60%.

[.30Carbine]

1992 Presidential Election Results - California

	Presidential Candidate	Vice Pres Candidate	Political Party	Popular Vote		Electoral Vote
	William Clinton	Albert Gore Jr.	Democrat	5,121,325	46.01%	54
	George Bush	J. Danforth Quayle	Republican	3,630,574	32.61%	0
	H. Ross Perot	James Stockdale	Independent	2,296,006	20.63%	0
	Andre Marrou	Nancy Lord	Libertarian	48,139	0.43%	0
	Ron Daniels	Asiba Tupahache	Peace&Freedom	18,597	0.17%	0
	Howard Phillips	Albion Knight	American Ind.	12,711	0.11%	0
	Other	-	-

If the 21.06% of California Libertarians and Independents had voted Republican instead of Third Party in 1992, Bill Clinton would not have received that state's 54 Electoral College votes. Turnout was only 50%.

[.30Carbine]

1992 Presidential Election Results - Connecticut

	Presidential Candidate	Vice Pres Candidate	Political Party	Popular Vote		Electoral Vote
	William Clinton	Albert Gore Jr.	Democrat	682,318	42.21%	8
	George Bush	J. Danforth Quayle	Republican	578,313	35.78%	0
	H. Ross Perot	James Stockdale	Amer. for Perot	348,771	21.58%	0
	Andre Marrou	Nancy Lord	Libertarian	5,391	0.33%	0
	Dr. Lenora Fulani	Maria Munoz	New Alliance	1,363	0.08%	0
	Write-Ins	-	-

Connecticut's 8-vote pie went to Clinton because of Third-Party candidates. 60% turnout.

[.30Carbine]

1992 Presidential Election Results - Hawaii

	Presidential Candidate	Vice Pres Candidate	Political Party	Popular Vote		Electoral Vote
	William Clinton	Albert Gore Jr.	Democrat	179,310	48.09%	4
	George Bush	J. Danforth Quayle	Republican	136,822	36.70%	0
	H. Ross Perot	James Stockdale	Independent	53,003	14.22%	0
	Bo Gritz	Cyril Minett	Independent	1,452	0.39%	0
	Andre Marrou	Nancy Lord	Libertarian	1,119	0.30%	0
	Other	-	-

Same thing in Hawaii. 40% turnout.

[.30Carbine]

1992 Presidential Election Results - Illinois

	Presidential Candidate	Vice Pres Candidate	Political Party	Popular Vote		Electoral Vote
	William Clinton	Albert Gore Jr.	Democrat	2,453,350	48.58%	22
	George Bush	J. Danforth Quayle	Republican	1,734,096	34.34%	0
	H. Ross Perot	James Stockdale	Independent	840,515	16.64%	0
	Andre Marrou	Nancy Lord	Libertarian	9,218	0.18%	0
	Other	-	-

22 Electoral College votes from Illinois to Clinton. 60% turnout. Starting to get sickening.

[.30Carbine]

1992 Presidential Election Results - Louisiana

	Presidential Candidate	Vice Pres Candidate	Political Party	Popular Vote		Electoral Vote
	William Clinton	Albert Gore Jr.	Democrat	815,971	45.58%	9
	George Bush	J. Danforth Quayle	Republican	733,386	40.97%	0
	H. Ross Perot	James Stockdale	Prud. Action Res.	211,478	11.81%	0
	James Bo Gritz	Cyril Minett	America First	18,545	1.04%	0
	Andre Marrou	Nancy Lord	Libertarian	3,155	0.18%	0
	Other	-	-

Louisiana. I can't take anymore. BTTT.