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.
The suggestion that the President issue an order without legal authority to do so was pretty ridiculous.
Shoot, we can just tell all conservatives in states that went Democrat in 2000 to go to hell, huh?
Really? Sad.
I've seen you authoring sentences containing the letter 'g'. I've also seen sentences containing the letter 'g' at Socialist websites. That must mean you are a Socialist.
Because our experience with incipient socialism has endowed us with the ability to smell it coming.
If you insist. Laz.
The implication, that Registered's graphics are showing up at DU, is that he shares viewpoints in common with people at DU.
If this is not your intent, to smear him by association, use this occasion to forcefully denounce this association.
Trash someone else.
Take this occasion to deny you intended to trash Registered.
So you are actively advancing the idea that Registered is a Democrat Underground participant and/or sympathizer.
You are a slurring bit of bathos-laden flem, aren't you.
I dunno. I'd never accuse him of being obtuse on purpose.
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