WHY RUSH IS DISGRUNTLED (Bush is advancing the Democrats most liberal agenda )

I was thinking about this part of your answer. Why doesn't the LP go after Dem constituents? There are many blacks who won't even consider voting for the GOP due to a largely irrational bias, but may consider voting for a third-party with free market values mixed with suspicion of government. If blacks would start voting for the LP it would be good for the LP and good for the country. It might even cause the Dems to shift a tad in the free-market, school accountability direction.

That's a very good point you bring up and some people within the party (especially Jacob Hornberger, US Senate candidate in Virginia) have proposed doing just that in their campaigns. I'm concerned that many blacks will still have a problem with the LP however for the same reason they have one with the GOP- the affirmative action issue. As you probably know we're also opposed to quotas, preferences etc. and this is one of the key issues that keeps a lot of blacks (or so it seems) on the Democrat plantation. In fact the LP is more consistent in opposing quotas than many within the GOP, so this may get in the way of some of our efforts. Nevertheless I'm confident that we can make inroads by appealing to the historical and justified mistrust many blacks have towards the federal government.

This reasoning is an example of how Rush is doing more to harm conservatives than to help them---because he is educating them incorrectly to believe that the President is all-powerful, that he does not have to work with political realities, that he can get more done by being ideologically pure than by being ideologically realistic.

Rush will soon see the loonies he's bringing out of the woodwork by demanding ideological purity on his particular issues.

When he comes back around to reality, oh, about 2004, those of us who knew all along that ideological purity in politics is an oxymoron, by definition a suicide course, will be long gone and he will then p.o. the people who are demanding even more stringent ideological purity than he is.

Ideological purity is the antithesis of politics. One can never be "pure" enough ideologically to represent what constitutes "pute" to each and every voter.

I, for one, never thought Rush had to disabuse the public of the idea that he was "Mr. Republican."

OTOH, Rush, like all thinking people, in the past has exhorted conservative voters that if they want to make a difference at all, and have any chance of implementing their ideas, they must work within the framework of the Republican party. Voting for Mr. Forgetaboutit from the Forgetaboutit party is, as Rush used to proclaim day after day, plain dumb.

All Rush is doing now, by not even mentioning the good things Bush has done and by not appreciately the political process and context, is drive the political puritanicals to vote for Mr. Forgetaboutit. <>Rush's complaint that Bush should be using his popularity to "recruit new conservatives" shows an appalling lack of political instinct. New conservatives aren't made by telling liberals or anyone else that conservatives demand ideological purity as defined by Rush or whoever else claims to be the conservative mouthpiece.

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