GWB needs to use the same stategy on Senate Democrats that he proposes to use on Iraq: Take it to them; do not rely on defense alone.
It escapes me why so many Republicans do not want to be hard to get along with when dealing with opponents who are trying to cut their throats. These folks are trying to kill Bush politically and are willing to kill the country to do it. Why do folks in the Bush Administration refuse to understand that you cannot deal gently with people like this? Obviously Mr. Bush got elected president and neither Mr. Steyn nor I did, but I sincerely believe that Mr. Bush needs to have John Howard over for a chat.
1 posted on
06/15/2002 4:12:45 PM PDT by
Tom D.
To: Tom D.
Do you really have to ask? Votes. It really is that simple.
Bushphiles keep telling me it's all the doing of Karl Rove ... and it's merely a short-term strategy to widen the base.
Well, in the first place, Bush has to going along with the strategy, so blame cannot be placed squarely on Rove. Bush is as much responsible for the pinhead idea of abandoing principles for votes.
Secondly, does anyone really believe it's a short-term strategy? Why not just become Democrats and promise everything to everyone ... and then you'll get lots more votes.
Most aren't aware of it ... but it's happening right in front of them. The Republican Party is going through a paradigm shift ... a long struggle between conservatives and moderates (neo-cons). The irony of it is that conservatives will have ended up voting the neo-con in office that will complete the paradigm shift.
To: Tom D.
Bush has to deal with a Congress filled with unprincipled hacks, many of them republicans, a hostile media that will spin everything he says or does to turn the public against him, and a dumbed down public that takes little notice of anything, and responds only in an emotional fashion to anything inflammatory that the media puts out for purposes of manipulating them in the 'rats direction. In such an environment, I think Bush is doing very well. The 'rat coalition has many cracks. Their left can spin off at any time, they can't move to the center where the electoral support is, and they turn off the public with the racial paranoia that they have to stir up to get 95% of the black vote, essential to overcoming deficits elsewhere. I believe Bush has figured out how to deal with this horrible political environment he finds himself in, and will prove a great success. By toeing the line on conservative principle, he would quickly be trashed. Watch what he does when he has built strength.
To: Tom D.
George W. Bush, at least in non-warmongering modeI would not use the term 'warmongering' but, except for 9/11 and related matters, Bush has been a rather mediocre president. Without 9/11, I think his popularity would also be mediocre.
4 posted on
06/15/2002 4:31:10 PM PDT by
RJCogburn
To: Tom D.
I agree with Bush's priority - retaining the House and getting control of the Senate. That's really important for getting anything done.
I also have qualms about how he is going about doing it. But I want him to be successful, and the polls look like he is.
I'm going to be somewhat silent on some of these doses of castor oil - if he gets what he wants in Nov, then I will forgive him for how he got it (and be brutal on what he does from then on!) If he doesn't get it, then he will have lost respect for his political acumen.
What he's doing is a big gamble. It takes a confident guy to even try it.
To: Tom D.
I told everyone a year ago, that losing the Senate would have a catastrophic effect for President Bushes judicial nominees and would also significantly hinder conservative legislation getting passed into law. That's exactly whats happened. The truth is, losing the Senate has allowed Democratic obstructionism, an open field and they've taken advantage at every turn. Daschle and his obstructionist pals, have done a good job of halting the advancement of the Bush agenda. Throw into the equation, factors related to the war on terrorism and its easy to see how complicated the entire situation has become for the President and his people. And rightfully so.
The war on terrorism has changed the political landscape dramatically and the Bush administration is faced with serious problems no President and no other American generation, has ever come up against before.
Bushes record hasn't been perfect in the last year. He's made some wrongheaded moves involving a few key pieces of legislation, but were its been possible, the President has moved his agenda along. Working to take back the Senate should be the priority for every conservative Republican. Having a Democrat controlled Congress, will only exascerbate the political gridlock that exists in WashDC today.
To: Tom D.
Why didn't he jump on Leahy last fall when, post-9/11, he had 90% approval ratings? Why didn't he do to Leahy what Clinton would have done to Gingrich? If Bush jumped on Leahy, Leahy would tell Bush to go to hell. Leahy is from one of the most liberal states in the Union. What are you going to threaten him with? You can't defeat him. And he doesn't give a rat's a$$ about public opinion outside his own state. And if he gets into a hand to hand fight with Bush , his state will build Leahy a monument. Leahy is not screwing his secretary and cheating on his wife. Gingrich was. There is nothing to blackmail Leahy about.
This is garbage. There is only one way to get things done and that is to gain control of the senate.
In the USA about 1/3 of the voters are on the right and a 1/3 on the left. That leaves a third in the middle. If arguments that appeal to the left appealed to the center the the center would be leftist. If arguments that appeal to the right appealed to the center the the center would be conservative. The center reacts to different issues than the left or right. They (GASP) react to centerist issues.
When the left captures over half the center, they take control and move the nation to the left. When on rare occasions the right has found issues that appeal to the center the right has prevailed and moved the nation to the right. It ain't rocket science but it escapes many freepers.
To move the nation to the right, the center must be attracted to vote for the right. It should not take an overly large brain to figure out that the center does not react positively to the agenda of the right. So the right to be successful has to try to move the left to the left. That costs the left teh center. And the right must do things that make the center vote for the candiates of the right.
The left from FDR to Bill Clinton understood that you have to appeal to the center to win. Can you say "New Democrat"? I didn't think so. Can't you just hear the right wing idiots? "Just becuase it always works is no reason to do it." "We on the right should be about making everone like us." If that could be done... Everyone would be like us. Everone is not. In fact 2/3 are not like us. Never have been. Never will be. Get a Clue.
Bush is doing his best to make Daschle and company look like "OLD DEMOCRATS' and Bush and his gang look like NEW REPUBLICANS.
People on the right always think that the center will vote for the rights agenda. That fact that the center never has done so, doesn't phase them. The fact that he center votes for a centerist agenda escapes them.
The object then is appeal to the center enough to get the center to vote for the right. Bush is also trying to postion the Democrats to the left so they do lose the center.
BUSH HAS BEEN DOING EXACTLY THAT WITH GREAT SUCCESS. The Middle. Victory Lays in the MIDDLE. WIN THE MIDDLE Then and only then can the agenda of right be enacted.
What Part of Dubya's great success in reaching the middle, ticks you off the most?
To: Tom D.
Bush is jettisoning his principles for what?
Power.
To: Tom D.
What principles? In Texas he expanded the government dramatically and, when it came time to appoint vacancies to the Texas Supreme Court, appointed jurists who moved it to the left. His first proposal in Washington was to expand the Department of Education while cheerfully ensuring a new, friendlier tone by going along with the Democrats. He has thrown the conservatives who elected him a few bones (miniscule tax cuts, appointments to the courts - none of whom he'll fight for), a limited amount of red meat to chew on (Defense increases) and a better posture on the 2nd Amendment which he allowed his appointment John Magaw to promptly toss in the ash heap the first time they had a chance to back it up by allowing pilots to be armed.
Face it, the guy's a Rockefeller Republican. He believes in government and, while he doesn't want to say so, knows taxes will eventually have to go up to pay for it all. If the Democrats are smart enough to nominate someone who can successfully pretend he's a moderate, Bush could easliy wind up back in Texas in '04.
25 posted on
06/15/2002 7:56:36 PM PDT by
caltrop
To: Tom D.; all
"The key to understanding the American system is to imagine that you have the power to make nearly any law you want. But your worst enemy will be the one to enforce it." ~ Rick Cook
To: Tom D.
I voted for W with much faith in him. It was not blind faith. I knew that he would make me unhappy sometimes.
The alternative was AlBore. I knew for a fact he would just be a mouthpiece for Klintoon. I also knew for a fact that AlBore would make me unhappy 365 days of the year.
It ain't rocket science.
29 posted on
06/15/2002 8:17:41 PM PDT by
LibKill
To: Tom D.
Among the lucky "farmers" piling up the dollar bills under the mattress are CNN founder Ted Turner, ABC News bloviator Sam Donaldson, the oil company Chevron, and dirtpoor hardscrabble sharecropper David Rockefeller of Chase Manhattan Bank. Federal subsidies are aimed at the largest, most profitable farming operations, so, if you've got a small dairy operation in Vermont or New Hampshire, you'll be getting precisely nothing. I have found that not many people are aware of this very important fact.
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