Die-hards and the damage done: Hugh Hewitt likens McClintock recall race, Buchanan bid

WorldNetDaily.com ^ | Wednesday, September 17, 2003 | Hugh Hewitt

[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?

[Cacophonous]

Nicely said.

[EternalVigilance]

We surrender.

From now on we will abandon all principle, because you, in your unbelievable wisdom, have taught us that the only way to the promised land is to do so.

You have also taught us that we can quote scripture and piously ridicule all who don't agree with us as we do it! What an incredible bonus! (/sarcasm)

[DLfromthedesert]

But PB cannot be blamed for putting David Souter on the Court, and that's part of the reason GHWB lost; he made some very poor decisions.

Having said that, I agree with Hugh's point about McClintock.

[Walkin Man]

Right.

How dare you (real)conservatives having morals and standards that you really believe in!

You should mindlessly drink whatever kool-aid the RNC is handing out and support their leftist lib candidates 100%! like good little robots!(BARF!)

This article proves there isn't a dimes worth of difference between the two parties at all. They both demand their members drink swill and call it champagne!

[Valin]

I (like many others) have been following this ongoing flamewar between the "principled conservatives" and the "evil rino traitors pseudo-consevatives".
I would remind BOTH sides that at the end of the day, that which unites us is much greater than that which divides us.

Now go back to your corners, remember no rabbit-punches, no hitting below the belt, no kidney-punches, in case of a knockdown go to a neutral corner.

[WilliamofCarmichael]

RE: "woo and screw"

Good point!

I am very likely to vote McClintock. Vote Schwarzenegger and show the leftist / liberal pukes that we can win?

Or is it as James Bowman said, "the only place that respectable conservatives, wishing to avoid the taint of racism or anti-Semitism or nativism or protectionism, have to go is to the neocons."

Either way conservatives have been rolling over for more than a generation and what we have is a neocon Republican Party that is the patriotic American 1960s Democrat Party. Today's democrat leaders are Marxists.

Conservatives (paleocons ?) are being, as Jonah Goldberg demands, dumped into the dust bin of history. The Marxists are winning.

Regardless, I am absolutely convinced that no one not the patriotic neocons or the "evil" paleocons can have discouse with today's liberals / leftist secular internationalists. The Marxists' aim is to destroy our sovereignty one bite at a time or all at once.

There is no peaceful solution. What ever it takes to bring it on. Let's get it over with. It is part of the war to defend against terrorists whom the left feeeeeeeeeeeeels are fighting against the "root cause" of all the world's problems, us.

[RGSpincich]

continues to ignore the principled (McClintock) conservatives

That's a leap. McClintock's principles are forged in superfolous words that have never been matched by action. He can't get decent Bills out of committee after he introduces them, the budget is still a mess after 20+ years of McClintock and he's running an intramural Gubenatorial campaign. The only cause of his that has flourished is Indian Gaming.

I'll borrow a phrase from the Ravencliff reservation to describe Tom's principles as I see them. "Heap big smoke but no fire."

[EternalVigilance]

Right.

And Arnold's political record of accomplishment is the passage of an NEA multi-hundred million dollar wet dream of an afterschool babysitting program.

Spare us.

[Jabba the Nutt]

So, the President of the United States was a victim? It wasn't his fault, that he broke his 'no new taxes' promise, that he signed the quota bill, that he signed the Clean Air Act and foisted the Americans with Disabilities Act upon us? It's the fault of a newspaper columnist and cable news talk show host? Alllllrighty then.

[EternalVigilance]

Uhmm...I never said any of that...

[MeekOneGOP]

Oh. Sorry about that. It's a 'separated at birth' comparison of Cruz Bustamante
and Mr. Spacely, the President of Spacely Space Sprockets from the cartoon
The Jetsons.

[PuNcH]

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

In reality, Bush is completely responsible for his own loss.

[RGSpincich]

You guys give an ineffective legislator a pass because he talks a good show. He has alienated his own party in Sacramento, he is laughed at and used by Democrats and he doesn't know how to gain a consensus. The legislature will not magically begin working with the guy, he'll be forced to govern by referendum and initiative. The paid signature gatherers full employment act in the making.
Of course Tom would have to figure out how to fund the initiatives. Who do you suppose has that kind of wampum on hand?

[Theodore R.]

If Pat Buchanan put Ginsburg and Breyer on the Supreme Court, then the logical questions is this: Who REALLY put David Souter, Anthony Kennedy, Sandra Day O'Connor, and John P. Stevens on the liberal court?

I think the answer is three Republican presidents, but I could be wrong, Hugh.

[Theodore R.]

Another really bad GOP campaign was Dewey in 1948. He was picking potential Cabinet officers when he should have been challenging HST issue by issue.

[EternalVigilance]

Well, your guy will be working with the RAT legislature on their mutual left-wing agenda, so your shots at Tom don't sway me much at all.

Consensus is only a good thing when it is a consensus to do the right thing.

[BibChr]

Sad that you virtually only write as a fool on this topic, when I think you are capable of better.

I shall continue to try, to strive failingly, to live the truth that "Christian" and "self-obsessed, self-righteous, short-sighted, vicious, fickle, shallow, scorched-earth fool" are not synonyms.

Dan

[Brian Allen]

<< [P J Buchanan is] 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. >>

Thanks, FRiend and Brother John.

Mr Hewitt gets it -- but the "principled" die hards, who [And just how appropriately this word fits!] COLLECTIVELY fulfil Joe Stalin's prophesy that when Communists and/or any other of evil's various manifestations' hang the last of US, it will be with ropes sold them by America's useful idiots -- never will.

With useful idiots like McLintock's, Buchanan's and/or Perot's -- and or, come to that, Preston Manning's -- plus a couple of million thrown-in criminal-alien and/or other felonious votes and the consequential fiat bench -- North America's lunatic left-wing fringe liberals are a lead-pipe cinch to erect many many many more treasonous criminal gangs of the KKKli'toon variety.

[BibChr]

You are so right, as Hewitt is.

Look, can you imagine yourself in a contest, "you" being a conservative conservative... and you notice that all the Usual Suspects — the liberal pols, the commentators, the reporters, the (for crying out loud) LA Times — they all keep saying nice things about YOUR guy, and keep featuring him, and keep focusing their vitrol not on him but on his GOP colleague, whom they tirelessly "diss" and "expose" and portray in the most negative light....

Can you imagine yourself in that situation and NEVER ONCE DEEPLY THINKING, "Hmmm... this smells fishy. What am I missing?"

I can't.

Dan

[BibChr]

You are so right, as Hewitt is.

Look, can you imagine yourself in a contest, "you" being a conservative conservative... and you notice that all the Usual Suspects — the liberal pols, the commentators, the reporters, the (for crying out loud) LA Times — they all keep saying nice things about YOUR guy, and keep featuring him, and keep focusing their vitrol not on him but on his GOP colleague, whom they tirelessly "diss" and "expose" and portray in the most negative light....

Can you imagine yourself in that situation and NEVER ONCE DEEPLY THINKING, "Hmmm... this smells fishy. What am I missing?"

I can't.

Dan