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.
Some how I doubt it ..
Can anyone guess what I was implying in this statement?
Fair enough. Laz, I'll add that you're one of my favorite FReepers on the Sunday talk show threads, even if we seem to disagree somewhat on the President.
I could ... but I might get banned also ..LOL
POT THIS IS KETTLE... POT THIS IS KETTLE... YOU ARE BLACK, OVER
Dude, I think you lose the moral high ground when you do stuff like that. Advice from a friend: Kill that image and others like it, and don't do any more parody pictures of freepers. Freepers are not public figures, and they should not be subject to this level of satirical attack.
Just my humble opinion, but I hope you take my advice.
:o) Now THIS sort of disagreement, I like. :o)
We'll talk in the future, and have constructive dialogue. Who knows, you might even sway me to your point of view or vice versa. (The former has been done before....) :o)
Then if it doesn't fit, then how does that play into a strategy of winning? I thought that winning was your definition of politics. According to you and the others, that is what we are here for isn't it? How are we winning by gaining nothing and giving everything, and governing against your core principles, and pissing off your core base too?
Sounds good!
Who knows, you might even sway me to your point of view or vice versa.
Hopefully the former! ;-)
Apt label.
Begging the question.
(But, he's not a Freeper)
(Besides, I'm serious, it would be a much better tack to take. Personally, I've withdrawn some of my humor responses and supplanted them with coldly logical responses (with occasional lapses into flames, of course). It is a requirement of this time. Former friends have turned because I disagree with them and this disagreement so chafes them, that they turn ugly.
Because of this new environment I have found, and the political absolutism prevelant all over America lately, I've pulled back on being jovial and being funny. It might be a wise tack for all of us that appear to be in a minority viewpoint -- that viewpoint being, it is important to try to hold President Bush's feet to the fire as regards his conservativism, so that we can return our country to a Constitutional Republic.
You might want to follow suit. Just an idea.
First off, its not true, that President Bush is pissing off the vast majority of his conservative base. In politics, if you don't compromise your principles to some extent, you'll never accomplish a damn thing. The Founding Fathers understood that. The big question is, why can't people like you understand what Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Eisenhower and Reagan understood? I don't know how to be any clearer in my explanation to you. Again, many small and medium size farms are owned by conservatives and conservative minded independents, whose votes have a significant effect at election time.
President Reagan won victory in his day, because he appealed to Independents and dissatisfied Democrats. President Bush is following a similiar strategy. Conservative Republicans can't win with just conservative and mainstream Republicans votes alone. There aren't enough conservatives and Republicans around to assure victory and a good president knows very well, the path to victory is through building a united coalition.
This means war!!
;-)
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