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.
I assume you are familiar with bell shaped curves. Most of the progress of civilization and almost all brilliant new discoveries occur because of the people at the upper end of the curve. These are the people who can see that the trends can no longer be supported or who recognize that the facts are changing or that other facts will take precedence over the facts used to project the trend. I don't deny that history may prove me to be wrong. At least I have examined the evidence and thought carefully before drawing my own conclusions.
This site would have little or no interest if the viewers were pleased with the trends that are in place. And I suspect that most recognize that all trend changes begin at the margin. Conventional wisdom is frequently wrong. And those who accept it as gospel are the ones who suffer the most severe consequences. I don't think Freepers should accept either of our opionions. They should look at the facts, exercise their own judgments about the facts and draw their own conclusions about the trends. This map offers clues what secession and the United States will be like by 2016, despite ReaganMan's conclusion that I live in the company of lunatics..
That's just the 2000 residential election map.
By the way, you never commented on my other two points: that (1) Bush should veto any funding to abortion groups, and (2), given his family's long neo-Malthusian obsession with population control, he's not likely to do anything at all to stop abortion.
That's just the 2000 presidential election map.
I've got a clue about a few of the actions he can take. How about these:
Well, that just a few of the actions that he's taken of late. This list can go on and on and on..not bad for being clueless eh?
And who made the OSHA regulations and determines their meaning and the scope of their application?
Do you understand what selective unenforcement is?
For the purpose of judicial review?
For the purpose of the President ordering an agency to change course?
Once again, pursuant to what law could a President order a change in the manner that regulations are interpreted and/or applied by a regulatory agency?
But you knew that. You were just being obtuse on purpose.
Trying to speak to you in a language you can understand.
The Pubs could care less about the fringe right malcontents. Pat gets less than 1/2 percent, Harry about a third. Hell, Nader got 7 times as many votes as Harry. Not only that, Bush could kiss Harry Browne's ass on prime time TV and the libertarians still wouldn't vote for him. Its a drug thing.
Your state is going to gives its electoral votes to the democrats so who cares what you think.
You have adequately defined Roscoe.
Ask him what his opinion of the Second Amendment is.
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