Posted on 08/10/2002 9:50:50 AM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
I'm not in California but I'm glad to see Perry in Texas is starting to fight back against his nothing-but-negative-ads liberal opponent. Republicans need to fight fire with fire and also see how certain groups of people are being manipulated by the democrats --including illegals and try to grab away at least some of their votes.
And I'm not sure what the point of all this pessimism is. Saying "There's no way Simon, that idiot, can win" is not helpful. Saying "Simon can't win now, but if he makes himself more visible, he might" is.
However, I think it's worth bearing in mind that few but political junkies pay much attention to the race until after labor day. As long as Simon is not falling disasterously in the polls, I'd wait to pass judgement on him until then.
I will make one more point: The Davis commercials I have seen on his web site are not likely to give anyone much of an impression of Simon, one way or the other. They are done in such a lifeless way as to leave little, if any, impression behind. So I would not worry about Davis and his ad budget just yet; he's burning up the contents of his warchest to little effect in my view.
D
Reinhold "Ron" Gulke (AIP) - American Independant Party (George Wallace's old vechicle) Probably your typical "conservative" Democrat mad at the 'RAT party for no longer pandering to the "White Protestant America". Usual thinly-veiled racist stuff?
Peter Camejo (Green) - '76 SWP Presidential Nominee. Kooky socialist hispanic candidate. Usually tree-hugging stuff. Will suck liberal votes from Davis (Go Camejo Go!)
Gary Copeland (Libertarian) - Computer Consultant & Libertarian Activist. Has some bizarre stuff about "run with the Libertarian Wolf pack...hunt with us". The first thing he mentions on the website is legalizing drugs. Sounds like your typical libertarian. (Ending the WoD is to the Libertarian Party what "Campaign Finance Reform" is to John McCain...an obsesssion)
Iris Adam (Natural Law) - Business Analyst & Frequent Candidate. The Maharshi Yogi candidate or whatever. You might remember their presidential candidate from 2000, John Hagelin. Are you into "transidentialism medicine"?
Burton Ridgeway (Independant Write-In) - Businessman, Writer & '00 Presidential Candidate. No clue why this guy is bothering to run a write-in campaign (does he really think he'll surprass 0.001% of the vote?) He has a webite with an annoying green-colored text at http://www.burtonridgeway.com/. Platform sounds pretty liberal. "Bill Simon is too right wing!", I tell ya.
To Norm: I agree but overcomming even a small negative perception is difficult if you don't start and going negative late in the game doesn't make your candidacy any less palitable. And don't count on the debates. Simon is only a slightly less boring public speaker than Davis.
To goldstategop: You got it. While there are many conservatives in California wanting to be led and be heard the traditional Republican party leadership is terrible.
To daviddennis: Yes the best policy when an opponent is devastating himself is to get out of the way but an alternative must be establish to prevent chaos.
By 1980, thanks to Jimmy Carter's thoroughgoing incompetence, constant irritation of those not sharing his religious beliefs (most candidates practice their religion rather than preach it and being born again is uncharted territory for most Jews of any persuasion), Ronald Reagan, a nice guy, and a hardliner compared to Nixon or Ford, got 44% of the Jewish vote (not all of them German Jews by ancestry) and even Jake Javits, beaten in a GOP primary by D'Amato and running only on the Liberal Party line, took time out to campaign hard for Reagan among elderly keft Jewish voters in Florida saying that unless Reagan won Israel was finished.
You may well be right about the distinction between Hispanics born here and Hispanics coming in from Mexico. Nothing new there. Many immigrants are attracted to the Demonrats because Santa Claus's welfare state is what they are more familiar with than American free enterprise. Nonetheless, they have little ambition that their children and grandchildren should have careers as welfare queens. Give them time. With voting populations, you have to prime the pump.
People like thee and me (not necessarily literally you and me) are not reproducing themselves in the numbers necessary to maintain your standards of political conservatism or mine. Furthermore, many conservatives take the easy way out and turn their kids over to the local knowledge suppression factory and brain laundry known as public schools, assuring themselves (to protect their own convenience) that THEIR public schools are fine and it is many others that are no good. 94% of American kids are still relegated to the intellectual ash heap of public grammar and high schools.
We ought to be yanking our kids from government schools permanently, to be defunding those schools, destroying their reputations and building private alternatives. If we defund government schools, plenty of money will be available and we ought not to let the gummint get its meddling paws and claws on those schools. Personally, I think we can do with a spirit of sacrifice and without vouchers. Set up schools with English immersion and patriotic history and moral conservatism and high academic standards and see how fast this apparent immigration problem can be turned into our greatest opportunity. Check out how well even the Stone Age Montagnard Vietnamese villagers who fled here after the war have done. No one had ever been literate in their families in the old country. Here, their kids are valedictorians regularly and the kind of citizens who make you feel good to be American.
If we won't raise our birthrate (and we ought to anyway) and won't shut the leftist parochial schools known as "public" schools (which we ought to anyway), then there is no way whatsoever other than recruiting massive waves of immigrants and successfully competing with the left for their allegiance for us to win. We can do this if we try, but will we? If we think this problem is going to go away via border control, we are tragically naive and terribly wrong. It is VERY late in the game for our country and our ideological way of life.
I have butted heads with you hereon on numerous occasions, I appreciate the seriousness with which you urge your position. I often respectfully disagree with you.
If I were to debate an issue, any issue, with those who disagree with me on that issue, let me debate before an audience of my opponent's partisans. Then I can convince them or not according to the quality of my argument and the weakness of my opponent. If the audience starts out only his, he may enjoy their partisan applause but every convert will be mine. Likewise, if Hispanics pouring across the border seem to you to be hopelessly and unanimously aligned with your opponents and mine, that is a great opportunity to go straight to them so that every convert (as to values) will be yours. Recruit conservative Hispanics born here to act as padrones. It can work. It must work.
I think they did our country very much harm too and we may never recover. When this country started, it wasn't Socialist but Socialists from Europe moved in. I think we should be more careful to have people whose beliefs are compatible with the Constitution, it's rather ironic that many move here but don't care anything at all about it.
If that could be done it would help but La Raza et al would not agree to that. I know the problem is that our huge welfare system is attracting many of the wrong types. Also we have a foreign leader with an agenda for this country who believes he must dictate how things are done here but refuses to change his elites back home so people continue to leave. I also know immigrants from Mexico are a mixed group, the professionals who come to work and come legally don't seem to be in favor of out-of-control immigration either, many don't want the third world conditions moving in here and very high taxes anymore than the rest of us and those people would tend to vote Republican without help.
I also know many immigrants who really come to work without committing felony fraud intend to return to Mexico and would prefer having a Mexico worth returning to, some are actually patriotic to their own homeland which to me isn't a bad thing. For them I wouldn't care if they learn English or not --but I think if their labor is really needed, there should be some legal program like the Bracero program that lets them be here temporarily to work. They should be allowed visits back to their families and shouldn't have to live in fear of the migra ----but that's only if we need their labor in some areas ---I don't know that much about that. I think legal immigration where anchor babies are born to collect easy US citizenship and welfare benefits is far worse than temporary workers coming here, I think all sponsors should be required to really provide financial support as they agreed to do and for at least 20 years. If an immigrant can't make it here without taxpayer programs, they don't need to be here --and for citizenship some knowledge of our language and our Constitution and history should be required.
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