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.
Very well said...MUD
No president in the 20th century has "rolled back" government.
You'd better give up that quaint notion; the best you can expect is that government growth will be slowed, and not even Ronald Reagan did very much of that.
You do a piss-poor job of trying to sell your ideology on FR, much less to the vast majority of voters out there. They rightly see a shabby product sitting on the shelves and walk away from it. As usual, the fault must lie with the consumer rather than with the product.
What "learned men"?
Your RIGHT about the QUEEN and her family. Americans dont want to go to a 50th Anniversary and they do not want to get 50th Anniversary CUPS or even PLATES. The QUEEN seems OK but she IS not an American and never can BE. I am sorry to see that your wrong ABOUT President Bush. President Bush may not BE a good political speaker but he is a VERY good listener. Pat Buchanan and Alan Keyes are great SPEAKERS but they dont ALWAYS know how to listen. President Bush cares what OTHER people think. Do you think Keyes and Buchanan know what OTHER people want or THINK? Do you think they care what you think or WANT?? How come they never GET any votes??? That is why Keyes and Buchanan should stay ON TV and out of elections. President Bush WINS because he listens. Then he knows what PEOPLE think and what they want. I bet that if you wanted TO win an election you would listen to what people think MORE. We are in a WAR now. President Bush is ON our side. He has to win the WAR and also LISTEN to what OTHER people think. Keyes and Buchanan do not HAVE to win a WAR and they dont have to care what OTHER people think. That is why they stay ON TV and out of elections. They talk and talk and talk and thats OK because they dont have TO do anything. If you go ON TV or the radio then you would BE OK just like you ARE but if you ever GET in an election you WILL have to CHANGE yourself. LISTEN harder. That is WHAT President Bush does.
Malcontents like DoughtyOne, need not apply.
Militants like tpaine, need not apply.
Why don't all you extremists, reactionaries and absolutists get together and just walk out on that political fringe a little more and jump off into the empty void of unreality.
Spoken like a true coalition-builder.
Nice use of alliteration on the gratuitious insults to the posters you didn' have the courtesy to flag to your bile.
Luis, I agree that just advocating big cuts in the welfare state without explaining to the public “why” it is absolutely necessary is a political strategy doomed to failure. Our "leaders" in the GOP need to educate the public why expanding socialism is a dead-end for America and why smaller, limited government is far superior to the ever expanding socialism (Marxism) that the democrats are “successfully” peddling. But that's NOT HAPPENING! We haven't had anything like that since Reagan.
Bush and the GOP leadership are in fact doing the exact opposite by running away from their party’s historic principles and passing the democrats’ socialist legislation without, in many cases, even debating it. Bush in particular seems to have in effect painted himself in a corner with his constant concessions to the likes of Tommy Dashole. I mean how can we ever gain back the moral high ground when we are always agreeing with the democrats? That’s not how one wins a war against an enemy that is relentless and hell bent in their pursuit to destroy everything that made America the greatest country the world has ever known.
Look at it this way, if the public perceives that the republicans don’t have much confidence in their own conservative ideology then why should they? And if this route on the very conservatism that our country was founded on continues unabated while Bush remains silent is it not logical to assume that Bush has very few differences with the democrats?
That's something for conspiratorial minds like yours to contemplate.
I have to wonder .. are these posters who want Democrats in control so that the government to collapse the reason we have such a mess in Congress today??
Good question. He won't answer it.
Take care and have a good day. I'm not going to waste more time over here.
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.