Posted on 06/22/2002 9:46:05 AM PDT by quidnunc
This summer will mark the 47th year since I took my first Republican job: as public relations director for the party in Minnesota. Since then I have rarely strayed from politics, or my party. I served as a staffer to two GOP congressmen, to a GOP governor, as a federal appointee to Richard Nixon and as a corporate executive who supported in Washington and Springfield much, if not all, of the Republican agenda.
You can describe me as a conservative. Thus I am qualified to say that although I dearly love conservatives, they tend to be querulous, disagreeable and threaten revolt when Republican office-holders don't please them. So it is now with George W. Bush. Here is a president who has surprised us all with the firmness and resolve he showed after 9/11. I must tell you I voted for him with less enthusiasm than I had for many of his predecessors. But his administration has pleased me often — most notably on two issues: defense of America and social policy.
Yet, Bush has to get re-elected in a country that is evenly divided on philosophy. Thus he must occasionally — on matters that sometimes offend conservatives — dip into the other side's ideology for support. He has done so on three notable occasions: on the issue of steel protectionism, where he departed his free-market proclamations; on the signing of a campaign finance bill tailored by his enemies, and allowing his attorney general (in the words of Libertarian Nat Hentoff in the Washington Times) "to send disguised agents into religious institutions, libraries and meetings of citizens critical of government policy without a previous complaint, or reason to believe that a crime has been committed."
In a perfect political world, where conservatives are in the majority, these things would be sufficient to encourage a boycott of the polls. Either that or a protest vote for the Democratic opposition. But we are not in a perfect world. We conservatives have a president who didn't receive a majority of the votes, and has one house of Congress against him. He must make compromises to get re-elected. Conservatives who do not understand the nature of politics ought to stay in their air-conditioned ivory towers and refrain from political activity altogether. If they cannot adjudge the stakes in this election and the difference between Bush and an Al Gore or a John Kerry (D-Mass.) or a Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.), they are foolish indeed.
-snip-
To read the remainder of this op/ed open the article via the link provided in the thread's header.
DoughtyOne said things like that? Stalin used to applaud the contradictions of the police state as a means of withering away the state. Since the communist ideology is rooted in the magick of dialectical materialism, the ensuing oppression of people would ensure another dialectical leap, or so his spiel went.
He didn't abandon the GOP in order to somehow strenghten it by assuring that the Democrats win. He worked from within the party.
Right now, the GOP is where the majority of every stripe of conservative is making a stand, that's where the trenches are.
Now, some are saying that they will stand on principle and simply walk off the battlefield. Go wait somewhere back, deep behind the lines, for the war to reach them, they're willing to allow the enemy's encroachment that far into our territory to "shock" conservatives into "doing the right thing".
What I don't know is whether they are standing ahead of, or behind the line of our total defeat.
Do you?
I didn't think so.
What lie? You have already proved your mindset with your "butt out of Virginia politics if you don't live here" comments.
You were on those threads "waxing eloquently" about how you had family roots there since the 1700's and then you state that you are a newcomer to VA. I just called you on that and you didn't like that fact.
Anyway that is not the real point. The point is your bull headed and statist like discourse with anyone who disagrees with you as you have amply proven in your recent comments.
read the patriot act. You know that fascist bill that Bush signed? Then read all of the threads around here that says Bush is not honoring the constitution by treating terrorists as terrorists.
Bush gave Ted all the money he wanted, gave up the vouchers, but kept the standards in.
The schools are failing under a Democratic Bill.
Time to go back and get the other 20%. Time to go get the vouchers.
By any means necessary.
If my memory serves me correctly, that's not correct. LOL!
Well by my candidate you must be refering to Pat Buchanan. I'm really sorry to break this to you but Pat won't be running again. While I would think that would make you happy, this fact has been out there for over a year, your candidate won the vote eighteen months ago and you still can't let go. Pat is a non issue here. We're talking about liberal agenda items that can't be passed off as conservative policy. Would you like to address that topic?
Tell me what's wrong with a guy like Senator Nichols from Oklahoma? What's wrong with Tancredo from Colorado? What's wrong with Bob Barr? Run someone that isn't falling over themselves to appeal to foreign nationals more than they are to appeal to those on my side of the isle and I'll vote for them.
If they had not been here, they could have simply boarded in Canada, bound for a vacation in Disney World, and still accomplished the same thing.
This had nothing to do with immigration.
I must have been confused :o
WooHoo!
It's a loaner, but it sure works for me.
United States District Court decision out of Democrat judge Mariana Pfaelzer, California's appeal killed by Democrat governor Gray Davis.
The USSC never had an opportunity to hear the matter, much to the relief of California's leftists and Libertarians.
You just can't be that dense.
The sooner the better.
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