Posted on 09/17/2003 1:44:36 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
A picture hangs on my office wall that reminds of the glory years of the Reagan Revolution. It shows the White House team entry in the D.C. Nike Challenge from 1985. The six participants include Dick Hauser, then Deputy Counsel in the White House; John Roberts – newly confirmed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and then a young White House lawyer; and me, also a young White House lawyer. The captain of the "White House V-toes" was Pat Buchanan, at the time the Gipper's communications director.
Whenever a visitor's eye turns to the picture, I point to Pat and say, there's the man who put Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer on the U.S. Supreme Court. Only the politically inclined get it: Pat Buchanan's primary challenge to President George H.W. Bush in 1992 bled the incumbent and opened the door to Perot. Perot, of course, put Clinton in the White House, and Clinton put those justices on the highest court.
Buchanan fans sputter a lot when they hear this recounting of history, and many splendid arguments follow. They protest too much, the Pat people do, because of the impulse to disguise guilt with vigorous and emphatic denunciations. Facts, to quote Reagan quoting Lenin, however, are stubborn things. Buchanan wrought what he wrought, and honest accounting requires that the two Clinton appointees be put credited to Pat's legacy ledger. So much for the pro-life platform upon which Pat has long stood. There is no doubt that he sincerely believes in the platform – but there is overwhelming evidence that the unborn would have been far better off had Pat never launched a public career.
This history becomes relevant as the California recall vote draws near. Like Pat, Tom McClintock is a smart, talented and principled public man. Like Pat, Tom is supported by a legion of dedicated, energetic activists. Like the Buchanan campaign of 1992, the McClintock campaign of 2003 thinks it has momentum, a mirage created wholly by an elite media eager to wound a Republican front-runner. A decade ago, that front-runner was President Bush; these days it is Arnold.
And like the Buchanan campaign of 1992, the McClintock campaign of 2003 is playing the role of unwitting pawn of the Democrats to a perfection.
It will not be clear for some years what the real costs of the McClintock candidacy will be. The GOP is already damaged in California, but the real disaster will arrive only if Cruz Bustamante replaces Gray Davis, winning the second part of the California recall with a margin less than the total number of votes garnered by McClintock.
The die-hards ought to think about Breyer and Ginsburg as they launch rhetorical salvo after rhetorical salvo at Arnold. These attacks are very similar in tone and detail to those hurled by the Buchananites against the elder Bush in 1992. Whether they will result in the declaration as unconstitutional of such laws as a ban on partial-birth abortion remains to be seen, but Pat Buchanan clearly didn't set out to destroy such protections with his candidacy of 1992.
But he did. What will the McClintock ledger show a decade hence?
While we are skeptical of the raw numbers in the most recent LA Times poll..." - RealClearPolitics.comTheir skepticism in the veracity of the LA Times poll numbers appears to have been validated, from:
Los Angeles Times Caught Faking Its Pro-Democrat 'Poll'
NewsMax.com ^ | 9/17/03 | Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff
Posted on 09/17/2003 9:38 AM PDT by kattracks
The pro-Democrat Los Angeles Times has once again been busted for faking a "poll," this time by stacking it with blacks.
"Why did the size of the unreported racial/ethnic subgroups in the latest Times Poll amount to 18%, when according to its own exit poll, blacks and Asian voters combined comprised just 10% of all voters in the last general election?" the rival Field Poll wonders.
Slate.com notes that Field makes "a powerful case" for the Times' having "wildly oversampled non-white non-Latinos" and observes, "The Times hides this flaw by failing to even report the black and Asian subgroups separately."
The excessively large number of black surveyed accounts for the bias, Field concludes, because Orientals "historically tend to be more divided in their voting preferences on partisan matters."
CLICK HERE for the rest of that thread
Worth repeating. It's been obvious for weeks that Schwarzenegger is the only recall candidate running against Davis.
The Soviet bloc had to build an "iron curtain" to keep people from fleeing their failed system to the west. People were not stopped by barbed wire, broken glass, land mines, or machine guns.
The flow of people from Mexico is caused by the bankruptcy of their socialist system and the mentality of entitlement instituted by liberals in our own country.
Mandated minimum wages, welfare, public education for illegals including tuition-free universities, and free high-quality medical care are among the reasons that people cross our borders.
Only the cessation of the giveaways will stop this flow. This cessation can come about because someone like McClintock insists that the courts recognize that legal Kalifornians should not be forced to pay for illegals. Or the cessation can come about through bankruptcy of Kalifornia when it becomes unable to pay its bills.
Arnold's plan for amnesty followed by a border closing that won't work has already been tried. Until Kalifornia becomes a land of opportunity instead of a land of entitlement, there will be no solution.
If by some incredible fluke McClintock actually won, they would trip over themselves to complain about everything McClintock did once he took office. Whatever happens, the only constant is their constant complaining.
If the consequences of such self-destructive behavior were limited to California, it would be of minimal concern to the rest of us. Unfortunately, history suggests that the venom directed at Arnold is a foreshadowing of what they have in store from Bush in 2004. One doesn't need a crystal ball to see the relationship between the Schwarzenegger-bashing and the malevolence toward Bush from certain conservatives that would earn high praise from the “principled, no-compromise, true conservative” counterparts at DU.
We've seen this behavior enough times to discern the pattern. A small yet vocal number of self-described “principled conservatives” decide the leading Republican candidate (i.e., the only Republican candidate with a realistic chance to win) “isn't conservative enough,” so they back someone with absolutely zero chance to actually win, but serious chance to play the spoiler in a close contest. The predictable outcome is the election of yet another leftist Democrat.
The “we're the only principled conservatives around here” shtick is getting tiresome as well. McClintock's supporters self-congratulate themselves for their principles the way liberals self-identify as the sole repositories of compassion and tolerance. They mistake inflexibility and fanaticism for principle. By their lights, Adolph Hitler was the most principled politician who ever lived.
One wonders if McClintock's supporters behave this way in everyday life. You ask for a $25,000 raise, but the boss offers only $10,000. Insulted and enraged, you quit in a huff. Months later, you find another job at $10,000 less than your original salary. Your wife complains and you tell her that just proves how stupid/unprincipled she is! Repeat every couple of years/marriages.
Actually, the term “McClintock supporter” is an oxymoron. You cannot support a candidate who himself knows he cannot win. McClintock is not so much a candidate for governor as he is a spoiler of Schwarzenegger's chances. Let's call McClintock supporters what they really are based on what they spend most of their time/energy doing, which is bashing Arnold. Their behavior defines them as Schwarzenegger spoilers, which in turn makes them de facto Bustamante supporters.
Next year, they'll be Hillary's secret weapon.
I'll ignore the ad hominem and further assert that Bush, as liberal as Clinton, certainly could have appointed Breyer and Ginsberg. After all, he gave us Souter, didn't he?
None of which applies to what I said in the least.
But carry on with your word games & strawmen arguments.
Well, you have confidence that AS will actually even try to stop the swing left...I don't. Hence the disagreement.
Get real.
First of all. It does not reflect the simplified political reality for which he contends. Pat Buchanan did not wound President Bush, by opposing him in the Primary. The idea that forcing a candidate into a debate, or contest, somehow is unfair to him, is pathetically absurd. But it is also fallacious to believe that it somehow weakens him, to force him to set forth his position, and win on his principles, if he is to win; not by leaving a vacuum.
It is also foolish to blame Pat Buchanan for Perot, or to blame Perot for Clinton. Bush, Sr., lost because he was beaten in a campaign, where he had every opportunity to rally support. Perot's vote probably cut as deeply into the Democratic vote as into the Republican vote, for that matter; but if it cut more deeply into the Republican vote than into the Democratic vote--a point not conceded--that would be Bush's fault for not doing a better job at holding the Republican vote.
A good analogy would be the 1948 campaign, where Harry Truman's bid for reelection was challenged both by his own parties Left and Right. Both the Wallace campaign on the Left (Henry that is), and Strom Thurmond's campaign on the Right, cut into the Truman vote. Those were much more focused attacks on the incumbent--as opposed to his major party foe--than was Perot's campaign. But Truman rose to the occasion and held the overwhelming majority of the Democratic Party, and in his feisty adequacy in the fray, he won the bulk of the independent vote as well. There was nothing stopping Bush, Sr., had he had the stuff it took, to achieve the same result.
Finally, the writer, misses the whole point of the political process. It is not to reward the members of a club of claque, but to determine the course of the body politic. There is no reason why those who advocate a particular course should have any claim on the allegiance of any faction. Those claims for support always have to be won, and won anew, every time the issues or personalities change.
There are times to compromise. One such time is when you need to put together a coalition, to get as much of your program through a Legislative body, as possible. But in the choosing of an approach to the future, it is not a reasonable request to ask those who do not agree with your approach to simply lie down and accept your approach. If you can persuade them, fine. If you cannot persuade them, you had better live with it; because insulting them, their motives and understanding, will only further reduce your already shrinking base.
Put another way, the attacks on McClintock are what will hurt the long run future of the Republican Party, not a lusty election battle, where every faction is represented.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
Funny!
Then take them apart rather than resorting to ad hominems.
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