Posted on 05/17/2006 7:47:58 AM PDT by Pukin Dog
Edited on 05/17/2006 8:30:59 AM PDT by Lead Moderator. [history]
"A house divided against itself cannot stand." – Abraham Lincoln, 1858
It is getting somewhat strange around these parts when not only the President, but yesterday the First Lady was personally attacked by someone claiming to be a ‘Conservative’. Can there be any doubt that there are forces among us looking to drive a wedge between us?
A few weeks ago, this forum’s owner attempted to remind all of us of the big picture, that regardless of any personal animosity towards the President or Republican Party over their adherence to Conservative principles, that they are still a clear choice over the alternative Democrat Party rule. At that time, I assumed that FReeper-sanity had been restored, and that some of the negative rhetoric aimed at those in Washington D.C. would be dialed back.
Free Republic is a political forum with a proud history and vision, responsible for dragging Dan Rather from his post, and providing countless radio-talk shows with their daily talking points. FReepers are unique in their determination and energy towards protecting and defending the goals of our Founding Fathers.
We are also quite a powder keg of emotion and anticipation, expecting our Republican majorities to take advantage of this opportunity to make permanent gains in our Conservative agenda. Some might argue that this opportunity has been squandered, but those persons would be ignorant of history, lacking understanding that change cannot occur overnight in Washington, and that this is the way our Founders designed our Republic.
In frustration, impatience, and ignorance, we have allowed this forum to become a haven for those who do not share our Conservative goals. I do not blame our enemies anymore then I would blame a scorpion for stinging me. If anger and stupidity were one’s nature, I would expect the trolls that infect this forum to be angry and stupid consistently, which also makes them somewhat easy to detect.
The trolls are not the problem, though. The problem is that so many of us are allowing ourselves to be taken in by those who seek only to prevent us from going to the polls in November to keep their stinking hands off our government for another term. There can be no doubt, that no matter how disappointing our current government has been in promoting the Conservative agenda, that the alternative, enabled by our staying home will be MUCH worse.
The way to deal with Republicans who have actively worked against our goals is to defeat them in Primary elections. We do not even have to defeat them all, only enough of them to send the message that we will indeed target them if they work against our agenda. It should be the goal of EVERY conservative to see that Lincoln Chaffee is defeated in November. His seat is one we can afford to lose. Were I a Rhode Island resident, I would vote for the Democrat if only to send a message to Snowe, Hagel, Collins, Graham, and especially that bastard Specter that their primaries just got a lot tougher.
We only need to get one of them, and Chaffee is the one to get. It does not really matter if a Democrat takes his seat; he will be junior and mute as long as we maintain our overall majority in the Senate.
The one thing that bothers me here like nothing else, is the simple disrespect of the President. Am I am Bush-Bot? Damn straight I am. If you want to know why, click on my handle to read Southack’s excellent list of Bush’s accomplishments in office. But if Bush had done almost nothing in office, it would be no excuse for some of the slights and disrespect he has received from some of us on this forum.
Some of the things I have read here this past week match in tone what one can find on our favorite Democrat sewer site. Someone calling himself or herself a FReeper was promoting shooting aliens at the border until they stopped coming. Is that what we are about? Obviously not, and that so-called Conservative has been eliminated from this forum.
I think it is important to remember that you and I have just as much responsibility as George Bush does in changing our culture to better reflect Conservative values. Right now, this very moment, Conservatives have the government they deserve. We put them there. They are not our mommies and daddies sent out to bring home our Conservative bread. That responsibility lies with all of us. These Republicans represent us, they don’t serve us. Our job is to pick the best individual and send him/her to Washington in the hope that their CHARACTER will see them through.
This is why it is such a nutty thing to consider punishing the Republican party, when we should be letting them know that we’ve got their back, but if they cant do the job, we will replace them with ANOTHER Republican, instead of handing the reigns of government to the party of anger, hopelessness and despair. We sometimes like to think that those people we send to Washington are different from us, that they are capable of meeting our every need and desire.
I want every one of you to think about what you would consider to be your perfect mate. Maybe some of you think you have found that person. If you are married and totally in love with another person, that is great. Now I want to ask you to think about the last time that person you love, who is PERFECT for you, completely pissed you off. Remember, this is your perfect mate, your one true love. Do they do everything you want them to do? Obey your every desire? If you answer yes, I am going to put you on my troll list.
Those people in Washington do not even cut your lawn, yet you expect perfection. Get over it.
I am issuing a challenge to every person who considers him or her to be a Conservative; why don’t we all commit to a return to HONOR? Do we honor our Conservative agenda when we comport ourselves in disgraceful ways? Is it an honorable thing to suggest that our President is a moron, as I read here a few days ago? Is it honorable to attack Laura Bush or any other person representing true Conservative values?
Some of you might argue that George Bush is not representing Conservative values to your liking. I would remind you that the first thing Bush said upon taking office, is that he was going to be President of ALL the people, not just some. You know that if you followed Bush from the beginning that he campaigned of the very immigration platform he is defending right now. Did you vote for him? Yeah?
If you have ever had a steak at a Ruth’s Chris restaurant, you know that sometimes they bring that wonderful steak to your table with a sprig of parsley on it. I hate parsley. Hate it. If I were to treat my steak the way some of us want to treat our President, I would have to throw out the steak, due to that nasty parsley that comes with it. I can deal with the parsley to get the steak, and that is what I am asking FReepers to do.
Expecting perfection from any person, group or team is a recipe for disaster. George W. Bush is my president. You can disagree with him, you can blame him for your problems if that is your desire. If you disrespect his office, his service, his risking his life to be with our troops in Iraq, his steadfast desire to bring a new tone to Washington, or if you just like the way he keeps Democrats so pissed off they lose their minds on a regular basis, I ask you to treat him and his wife with respect and cut the personal attacks. If you call him ‘Shrub’ or ‘Jorge’ consider yourself my enemy.
Right now, our real enemy are the Main Stream Media, the Democrat Party, and all who follow and support them. If you want to jump-ugly on someone, why not start with those leaky bastards and give our side a break?
Do it for Pukin.
I knew that you could.
No,
He's prefectly fine.....hugging his wife, petting his dog, living his life :)
You obviously have more experience regarding this forum than me.
But from what I can tell, people in 2008 will fight for candidates who are conservative in the Republican Primaries, against the likes of John McCain and Rudy. Only a tiny minority would refuse to vote form either one of them after either won the Primary.
Similarly, only a tiny minority would punish Rick Santorum because he's done some dumb things like submarining Pat Toomey by refusing to support Senator Santorum, who is so far superior to Bob Casey on every single issue discussing it hardly needs saying... Just as every single Republican is superior to every Democrat running against him for every Senate and House seat, Joe Lieberman vs. Lowell Weicker being the exception that proves the rule.
I can defuse lots of situations, huh?
Who knew they were so effective at making the ladies swoon????
ROFL!!
Mr. President,
I trust that this communication finds you and the First Lady well.
I’d like to congratulation you on the fine speech you delivered the other evening. As I listened to your words, I could not help but compare their sincerity with the increasingly shrill rhetoric of those who have continually attacked you since taking office.
I know you are a man of conviction, a man who follows his principles and not polls; in short, a statesman, and not a politician. I am thankful for that in my daily prayers.
Least your staff become disheartened by the increasing volume and direction of the attacks, I would remind them that “we” elected you to lead us in this time of great peril. When I say “we”, I mean the common everyday Americans who simply go about our daily lives without becoming swept up by surreptitious political agenda or fear of our government. No matter how imperfect our current elected government is, it is “we” who chose it.
We did not elect the journalists who manufacture news and polls to suit their political agenda. Nor did we elect the single issue advocates or talk show hosts who market conservative values for profit. Although they each claim to know the secret to make our government perfect, they do not have the courage of their convictions to run for office and affect change. Instead they attempt to circumvent “our” will and the election process through demands, threats, cajoling, creating dissent and claiming to speak for “us”.
These people do not represent your base, any more then they represent “we” the people.
Stand firm and proud, you are doing a fine job.
God Bless.
Millee I must say you handled that quite politically correct.
He expressed just that same sentiment to me as well. JR could kiss his postyerior and FR could pleasure itself.
OK too much niceness, gotta go cus somewhere!
It's not insane. I think that's my issue here.
Even Rush is saying that he doesn't understand why the WH and Senate GOP (and GOP HQ) doesn't get it.
These aren't guys having a bad season. As Rush says, the house has the only real durable conservative majority in all three branches. He's given up, essentially given up, on W as a viable conservative.
I agree with him on this. We have a long way to go in the Senate - probably another 8 Senators before we have anything close to a durable conservative majority there.
46 million tuned in to the President's speech on immigration. Rove is selling Amnesty to the House, and they are telling him, "Have you looked out the window lately?"
This isn't a partisan issue. My whack-job liberal in-laws are rock solid on immigration, and can't understand why guys like McCain or Bush doesn't get it.
This is a NO BRAINER issue. If the GOP has all three branches and can't get it through their heads on this issue, it shakes everyone's confidence in their ability to handle national security at all levels.
That may not be fair, but it is reasonable for Joe Sixpack to arrive at that conclusion. It isn't insane, is my point.
Now, I'm not saying the Democrats have an alternative. They are actually to stupid to capitalize on the golden opportunity laid before them either.
If Pelosi or Reid came out and said, "Even Ray Charles can see you have to close down the border first . . .", they'd be back on the road to the middle again from way far out left.
In that case, I withdraw my previous statement of sorrow at his exit. This is no place for him, it's evident.
This is an extremely long thread, I've lost track of the conversation. What the heck are you two talking about?
;)
Can I buy you an icecream?
'92 was the fault of people who can't think straight and are suspectible to waves of Mass Hysteria. That is what we are seeing today wrt Illegals as well. Apparently the American voter must from time to time act like idiots.
Post #915. I do not know if it is still up.
LOL! Yep and he'd agree.
Did you ever see the movie "Gettysburg"?
There's a scene in it, roughly cobbled together from real history, where General Longstreet has organized the Confederate forces and, at Lee's command, sent them marching across the cornfield in the disastrous Pickett's Charge.
In the movie, the disagreement between Longstreet and Lee over the charge is expressed by having a British reporter speak with Longstreet as the waves of Confederates in butternut grey move out of their lines towards the Union center.
The reporter, who is quite enamored of the Confederates and their Cause, talks excitedly to Longstreet about the expectation of the Confederates breaking through the Union center and rolling on to victory.
Longstreet looks back at him rather blankly, looks out at the field, and with the mechanical precision of an experienced field commander explains precisely what will happen. At a certain range, the Union cannon will open up, tearing holes in the line. Closer, the Union carronades will open up, wreaking further carnage. As the line struggles forward, rifle fire will diminish it, and when it is about to close with the Union breastworks, volleys of infantry fire will decimate it. The line will falter and break, and less than half of the attackers will make it back to Confederate lines.
Longstreet goes through the math of it coldly and precisely.
The British reporter is horrified and turns to watch as it develops precisely as the professional Longstreet described it would.
Longstreet did not will the disaster.
And he counselled against it.
When it was ordered, he executed.
But he was under no illusions as to the result.
And it happened.
I'm surveying the political battlefield here, now, and about as optimistic as Longstreet.
Who can give?
The House Republican could, but won't.
The Senate Republicans could, but won't.
The President could have, but lashed himelf to the mast.
The BorderBots could swallow their pride and conviction and come and vote Republican anyway, but it is even less likely that several million people will do that than it is that a handful of men in the Senate, or one man in the White House, will.
It's not me talking about it that makes it so.
They make it so.
I wish it were not so.
But it is so.
Now, opportunity can rise up.
It could be that salvation on this issue comes from an unexpected source. It could be that some Democrat who is conservative on border issues could step forward and bring with him some Senate Democrats who will align with the BorderBot Senators and override McCain and Kennedy. That seems about as likely at this point as either wing of the Republican Party in the Senate backing down, or certainly the House backing down.
The thing that all of the analyses I've read here don't seem to grasp is that the larger the group of people, the harder it is to turn. It would be much easier for the President himself to reverse course than for a group of Senators, easier for a group of Senators to do it than for the Republican caucus of the House of Representatives, and easier for the whole government to change its stance than for the 3 million or so BorderBot voters. The bigger the group, the harder to change its course.
The thing I DON'T see out there, anywhere on the Republican side, is a large, vocal, mobilized pro-guest worker faction to match the large, vocal, mobilized BorderBot faction.
Sure, we saw the illegals protest, but those were Democrats and future Democrats protesting against the Republican Party. They are not the issue here, because they are not voting anyway.
We're in a wierd sort of political house of mirrors here, where there is a very large, vociferous, angry and motivated Border Conservative movement, with Minutemen on the border itself and even building fences. They want something and they are screaming for it. And the House of Representatives, the most representative body in government, is solidly with them.
But then we have this very strange and extremely stubborn and powerful reluctance on the part of a substantial number of Senate Republicans, and of course the President, to listen to the obvious voting bloc. Instead, they relentlessly, insistently, and unwaveringly call for a massive guest worker program.
Where, precisely, is the constituency for guest worker?
Where is the comparable huge body of Guest-Worker-Bots who are screaming at the President and Senate to ignore the loud, huge body of BorderBots.
There isn't one.
That's the thing.
The President and the Senate are acting as though they are caught in a political vice, but if they are, it is an INVISIBLE vice. Democrats aren't going to vote for them anyway. There is no visible Guest WorkerBot coalition. There are no angry GuestWorkerBots posting anywhere, or writing editorials anywhere, at all, to counter the BorderBots.
And yet the President and the key Senators are dogged in their insistence on guest worker/amnesty-by-another-name, even though it is clear that this is sending the Party charging into the guns of its own massive BorderBot wing.
WHY?
WHAT INTEREST are the GuestWorkerBots protecting? It's not a BIG electorate, or a vocal one. So why are they doing this?
"Principled conviction" doesn't work well: they are saying, in effect, that they will refuse to allow the existing law of the land to be enforced unless they get additional avenues for bringing cheap labor into America.
That's horsetrading, not principle. And it's dangerous horsetrading, given the political climate.
So WHY ARE THEY DOING IT?
If it were JUST the President, it could be dismissed as being his own idiosyncratic principles, based on his familial ties with Mexico. But if that were the case, the Senate would simply override him and move with the House.
It's not just the President, though. MCCAIN is leading the charge! Why?
The answer, of course, is that the business wing of the Republican Party is ABSOLUTELY ADAMANT about maintaining a flow of cheap, exploitable, unprotected labor. That's not a big, vocal constituency, but it is the moneymen at the very heart of the finances of the party.
What we have, really, is a faceoff between the Republican rank-and-file conservative voters, who are visible and loud, and the silent, invisible, but incredibly powerful business roundtable Republicans who finance much of Republican operations in the pay-to-play system that is Washington. The Senate Republicans know that they need Business Roundtable money - and there's nobody who knows how to get money from business sources than John McCain - and, faced with a direct confrontation between the mass of BorderBot conservative voters, and the invisible influence of the power Business Republicans, many Senators have chosen to follow the money and not the noise.
That's what's really going on.
Seeing that, what can you do?
It's more depressing, really, because the answer is that, given that dynamic, there ISN'T anything you can do. Illegal labor is so cheap relative to protected American labor, that anything that really closes that border will hit business' bottom line irrevocably. Americans can't be made as cheap as Latino peones. Profit calculations drive the equation, and business is not going to concede profits for political peace.
Look at it from a business perspective. What happens if there's a closed border and no guest worker? The cost of labor starts to ratchet up. If there's no guest worker and an eventual amnesty, and an effective border, the cost of labor doubles or more...and all of these Mexicans who are currently uninsured and can't sue employers will be protected. The cost of employing Americans is staggering, so staggering that when one does the hard cold analysis, the additional regulation and taxation that would come with a Democratic takeover of goverment would STILL NOT equal the costs of actually having to employ Americans for everything.
Business Republicans will fold their hand and stop giving as much to the GOP if the border is closed effectively and there is no guest worker. They'd rather have Democrats like Clinton (they got very rich under Clinton) than pay American wages to every worker...and that's what they'd have to do with a truly closed border and an amnesty.
Notice, therefore, the careful pitch of the President and the Senate Republicans: a PARTIAL, "virtual" fence (i.e.: a barrier whose effectiveness can be ratcheted up and down behind the scenes by the political authorities), a robust guest worker program providing a continuous flood of LEGAL cheap labor to American business, ending the threat to such businesses of INS investigations and sanctions, and NO AMNESTY. Amnesty would turn Mexicans into Americans, and give them protections.
The Bush/Senate plan is perfectly tailored to the labor demands of business in every respect. There is no large Republican constituency calling for guest worker - in fact, other than the President and the Senate, there's no Republican constituency vocally calling for guest worker AT ALL. And yet the party is being smashed all to pieces by a struggle between the President and Senate who want this strange set of policies which has no vocal GOP support base, and the angry conservatives and BorderBot Base.
WHY have the fight at all?
Money. Follow the money, and the reason for the collision becomes obvious.
It also becomes clear that compromise really is probably impossible.
Because the bottom line truth is that Business "Republicans" are first and foremost economic actors and businessmen, and they will shift their money support to pro-guest worker Democrats before they support a Republican party that will really close the borders and not give them a steady flow of cheap guest workers.
The GOP is trying to hold onto two mutually incompatible bases. One votes with votes. The other votes with money.
We've all been talking here for days about how the BorderBots should knuckle under and support the Republican Party even if there is guest worker and an ineffective border.
Let's flip that.
Big Business should continue to pump millions of dollars into the Republican Party even if the Republican Party acts directly against its desires and interests by making labor much more expensive for business by closing the border. The Business Roundtable should understand that winning the War On Terror is so important, that they should be willing to endure 50% increases in labor costs, over time, to keep Republicans in power, against their own economic interests in cheap labor, and even though Democrats with their regulations and higher taxes actually offer a cheaper option, because labor savings outweigh taxes.
Businesses who withdraw their money from the Republican Party in time of war, even if Republicans enact policies that massively increase the cost of labor, are traitors to America, because they will let the Democrats win.
That's what folks have been saying about the BorderBots and their votes. It seems very odd when you flip it around and apply it to the other side in this guest worker debate. Is BUSINESS morally obligated to give monetary support Republicans, no matter what the GOP does to businesses (no guest workers would be a MASSIVE blow to business, equivalent to perhaps a 50% tax hike)?
Why not?
Same logic applies to BorderBots and their votes.
Is there a way out of the box?
No.
Either the Republicans alienate business, and take their chances with conservative populism, or their alienate the conservative base and keep the business roundtable money flowing.
The President and Senate are trying to split the baby, still, but their doing it in a way that still gives business everything it wants, and only pretends to give the BorderBots what they want. House Republicans are giving the BorderBots what they want and giving business nothing they want.
I'm probably depressing you further.
ROFL!!! You're cracking me up today!!
The Bush camp mantra: "It's not my fault!" /Han Solo.
It's never a Bush President's fault, is it? It's always the fault of the unwashed hysterical rabble who just don't understand!
I guess you missed the latest Rasmussen poll - Bush is having trouble across the political spectrum on this issue. So it isn't hysterics, as much as you try and pretend otherwise.
See post #915.
Those claiming there was some gigantic conspiracy involving the Court, Mr. Schiavo, the doctors and the Culture of Death working to "murder" Terri. The level of hatred directed at people doing their best was incredible. The willingness to throw the law away by those calling themselves conservative was breathtaking.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.