Posted on 01/25/2008 12:49:01 AM PST by Aristotelian
Declarations: The primary campaign is tearing the Democrats apart. President Bush already did that to the Republicans.
We begin, as one always must now, again, with Bill Clinton. The past week he has traveled South Carolina, leaving discord in his wake. Barack Obama, that "fairytale," is low, sneaky. "He put out a hit job on me." The press is cruelly carrying Mr. Obama's counter-jabs. "You live for it."
(snip)
As for the Republicans, their slow civil war continues. . . . The rage is due to many things. A world is ending, the old world of conservative meaning, and ascendancy. Loss leads to resentment. (See Clinton, Bill.)
(snip)
It will all come down to: Whom do Republicans believe? Mr. Romney in spite of his past and now-disavowed liberal positions? Or Mr. McCain in spite of his forays, the past 10 years, into a kind of establishment mindset that has suggested that The Establishment Knows Best?
Do conservatives take inspiration from Mr. Romney's newness? Or do they take comfort and security from Mr. McCain's rugged ability to endure, and to remind?
It is along those lines the big decision will be made.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Well said. It is so fashionable to bash Bush now. Is it Bush’s fault that there is no conservative in the race now? Oh how we have been infected by the left’s Bush derangment syndrome.
“Hey, do you even care about the U.S. Constitution and our Second Amendment rights?”
I’m beginning to believe that the parameters many “conservatives” use to determine if a candidate is “OK” are as long as WS is OK and/or the person is anti-abortion to hell with the Constitution.
Oh I forgot the “he’s” a war hero so I’ll vote for him even if he’s nuts. To “Preserve, Protect and Defend the Constitution” is too limiting to some, it gets in the way or their agenda’s.
He's quite the opposite.
Sounds like GW Bush and Mike Huckabee are kindred spirits.... GW has destroyed the national GOP, Huckabee decimated the Arkansas GOP...
Haven't even read the whole article but I loved this ...
LOL! You're never right...your adoration of the Mutt from Mass is the vivid proof.
I don’t think we can completely blame Bush for destroying the Republican Party, After all, it’s the party that nominated BOB DOLE in 1996, simply because it was his turn. There wasn’t that much to destroy.
You say that all we’ve got left are non-conservative GOPers, and I wonder when we had anything else? Reagan was a man with deep-seated American principles, so deeply seated that he didn’t have to wear them on his sleeve. Find someone else like that in the Presidential race now. What is wrong with the nominating process, that is my question.
I agree. It is strange what some folks will allow, without really caring much at all.
I snap when it comes to 60 year aspirations, and one dufus sticking his nose in if he couldn’t keep a conservative tone on the subject.
Well, Dark ... you’re seeing why I’m losing interest in FR as a place for rational discussion. There are so many subjects for which serious, adult thinking is required, and so many threads on them inhabited by shrieking nitwits.... Ms. Noonan could just as well have been speaking about FR as about the demise of the Republican Party.
You posted: I didn’t vote for Bush in the 2000 Republican primary.
Once it became only choice between Bush and Gore there was only one possible choice - which I don’t regret making. Gore would have been far worse.
So it is what it is. That’s life.
***
Thanks for a measured response. There is too little of that here on FR. I will support a conservative, or the closest approximation to it, in the primary, but I will not let RINO status keep me from voting GOP in the fall against the dem libs.
It is one thing to refuse an offer of two lesser choices if the end game is nothing (e.g., would you rather have liver or onion flavored ice cream— refuse both and have nothing), but where, as here, we WILL have someone in the White House, I’ll take the onion over the liver every time, and wince as each bite goes down.
I’ve gone round and round with him, and I’ve only done that on a few subjects with people. The predominant issue is immigration. I may have touched a sore spot that made him defend it, or we tangled on some other issue.
We’ve got a thing going back years. I do appreciate you weighing in though. It’s not my intention to claim something about him that isn’t accurate.
Take care.
Never mind, forget my post. I see now you are having to deal with folks utterly lacking in maturity this morning so I will lay off and assume I read your post wrong ;-D
No, Peggy says it best when she says "On the pundit civil wars, Rush Limbaugh declared on the radio this week, "I'm here to tell you, if either of these two guys [Mr. McCain or Mike Huckabee] get the nomination, it's going to destroy the Republican Party. It's going to change it forever, be the end of it!" This is absurd. George W. Bush destroyed the Republican Party, by which I mean he sundered it, broke its constituent pieces apart and set them against each other. He did this on spending, the size of government, war, the ability to prosecute war, immigration and other issues..."
Bush's biggest failure was trusting an obviously impaired Rumsfeld with the keys to the car then trying to explain the wreck to the American people. It is going to take a real leader to put that wreck back together: McCain!
::weeps for joy!::
Sigh. If it really is, the economy, stupid then why don't we elect a good economist?
::deaf ears everywhere are fallen on::
The GOP is a mess because of RHINOs and wackjobs like ron paul get in.
What mess?
Have we been attacked?
OBL can’t stick his head out of a cave without the threat of it being shot off.
This prez stuck to his guns and stayed in Iraq and Afghanistan. We got too good Judges in the SCOTUS.
Now that news is good there, all the naysayers have been silenced.
Bush inherited the screwups of the clinton admin.
Is Bush perfect, hell no.
But overall he was a great president.
Superior to who is trying to replace him.
My 2 cents.
I could expand this, but it’s pointless. You are convinced that no matter what, it’s best we didn’t have Gore.
You probably realize what will happen if the Supreme Court agrees with the Bush administration and allows carve-outs that apply to our second ammendment rights.
It will give communities across this nation the right to determine what weapons they don’t want us to have, and ban them.
In extreme circumstances they could make the case that we only needed “X” weapon to protect ourselves and ban every other one.
This has been a right for our citizens for over 225 years, and Bush in one burst of brain power decided to jump in with both feet and screw us.
It honestly baffles me how folks can just smile and act as if they are on tranquilizers when we bring this up. Then they have the timerity to call me names and totally ignore the issue.
Nope, no worries. Gore wasn’t involved. Everything is okay.
Time has past Peggy Noonan by. She really has little to say and her opinions are strained because they have to be to get reader interest.
Rather than being iconoclastic she is more of an iconic pundit who is losing her ability to convince.
By the way, does anyon know whether “anethmatizes” is spelled correctly or used correctly? My dictionary suggests that the correct spelling is “anathematizes.” Oh, well, when you lose it gradually it gradually shows.
No, I don’t think you were being unfair. I think you were fairly accurate in your disagreement. I responded in the manner that I thought was appropriate, but I don’t fault you for providing your view on my comment.
I will agree that the 1986 immigration “reform” bill signed by Reagan was a disaster.
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