If everyone agreed on here it would be boring as hell, to me anyway. I must question the motives of people that wish to silence or ignore dissenting voices within the conservative spectrum of thought.
Gawain's best post ever.
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.
Yes, I agree with you that redistributing income from average income earners to farmers with net worths in the top 1%-2% is unfortunate social policy. That was what you had in mind wasn't it?
Spoken with the smugness of a genuine DU troll who is convinced that Jim and John Robinson and every other commander of ships that steer to the right, are too inept to notice when traitors from the left, have commandeered the helm and are directing the vessel to the extreme left. I feel sure that our wise and gallant leader sees your ilk as it is and is playing out the line until the exact moment for setting the hook.
I believe liberals have underestimated our leader and will soon be reminded that it is they who are the captives, revealed as the enemy, and we the shunned will be asssisting in the reeling in of the liberals that Conservatives will be having for lunch.
I could be wrong, but Jim could never have served this nation so well, if he could be shammed by the likes of Jim Scott and the DU moles that infilterated into positions of moderators, where they can silence conservatives at will, with no avenue of protestation.
Your moderators need moderating, JIm, the ones they exterminate are on your side.
I've never been one to run away from a fight or a debate, so I'd probably never use it (except in the most extreme circumstances).
On Free Republic, I have only seen one or two people get that obnoxious.
And btw, "abuse" isn't the same as being annoying, and most people know the difference, I think. I don't think having an ENUF filter (as "Salon" called it) will eliminate calls to the moderator for truly egregious posts.
I'll remember that when the Keysters have another get together. I am working on some "good cartoon" fun of my own.
(Why the new icon?)
Newflash for Roeser and quidnunc: We are on the inside.
Why not just admit it? Even though controlling the executive and one branch of congress and barely outnumbered in the other, the R's are doing a very poor job of advancing a conservative agenda.
If everyone agreed on here it would be boring as hell, to me anyway. I must question the motives of people that wish to silence or ignore dissenting voices within the conservative spectrum of thought.
Gawain's best post ever.
Hah! Turning blue yet?
BTW, I'd honestly like to know what is so offensive about the Cleaning Lady that made it get pulled from all the threads. Seems to me it was pretty harmless, no nudity, no cussing, just plain old cartoon fun.
You are not permitted to have that opinion. Get back into ranks.
Losing the GoPatGoers is not what Dubyuh and the GOP has to worry about, he's got to win over those of us who saw him as an acorn falling not far from his Daddy's tree, yet voted for him anyway hoping he would have learned a lesson from his Daddy's failed Presidency!! Apparently, that lesson has not been properly ingrained in his psyche yet, and this willingness of good GOPers to abstain from valid criticism of a Big Guv'ment Administration is doing Dubyuh no long-term favors.
FReegards...MUD
Fawning over W. is still permitted, and in fact encouraged.
See, that's the nub of the problem, the way I see it.
Y'all go after all Bush critics so hard, you don't even realize that you are taking the mainstream of the GOP into your wide net.
You are not permitted to have that opinion. Get back into ranks.
Someone else asked me today if there was significance to any of them, mad, relaxed, etc, There isn't.
Just mixing it up a little. Part of my self-promotion game!
I reckon yer Right...MUD
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