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.
That is a statement in search of a rebuttal. You judge him to be an "undoubted conservative" so if I disagree with you I run the risk of being a crackpot?
I say the same is true of everything I say which you disagree with. You must be a crackpot if you don't agree with me. Try it on the other way.
I have met Roeser many times and I have lived in Chicago all my life. IMO, He is a Republican, not a conservative. As such he can be expected to be a Bush apologist.
PS,,spell checker was a great invention. Being a poor speller, I use it all the time.
This is basically what happened to that elitist idiot Bubba-2 calls "Poppy" in 1992,and to Bob Dolt in 1996. Bush-1 used executive orders to ban guns and Bob Dolt refused to allow the repeal of the AWB to come before the Senate for a vote,even though it had already passed in the House,and there were enough votes in the Senate to pass it. The result was gun owners either say at home and didn't vote,or voted for Perot or Buchannan. This lead to Bush-1 and Dolt-1 losing.
BTW,Bubba-2 is backing Dolt-2 for a Senate seat in NC,and Giddy is for gun-control,gun registration,and gun bans.
If not, he can try and win re-election without me. I'll campaign and help the local offices of pro-2a friendly reps, but I'll leave the top blank or vote for someone else.
To: Lazamataz
I miss Reagan.(lazamataz)
Huh I guess you want a Social Security tax increase and gas tax increase.
BTW, Reagan was a great president who brought down the Soviet Union, but he wasn't a "God" (Dane)
208 posted on 6/17/02 9:43 AM Pacific by Dane
To: Dane
Well, maybe you have a point. I wasn't paying as much attention to politics then as I do now. Maybe Reagan wasn't quite what my mind paints him to be.
212 posted on 6/17/02 9:44 AM Pacific by Lazamataz [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 208 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]
With the popularity Bush has due to the war on terror, he ought to be using the bully pulpit to push for conservative ideas and use the opportunity to presuade the masses why those ideas are superior. Reagan most certainly did that because he was a real conservative.
Bush is practicing the fine art of triangulation out of the Bill Clinton and Dick Morris playbook. And, if he manages to get reelected and the GOP wins the back the senate, he will keep compromising in order to maintain the GOP majority.
Bush isn't a conservative. He is a unprincipled politician without conscience that determines what position to take based on poll numbers.
Said the anarchist.
An excellent critique of both sides of this issue.
I'll stay with virtous extremism.
Regards
J.R.
Oops.
Please correct me if I'm wrong (and I may be),but didn't you state on another thread to me that you would vote for her anyhow to keep a Dim from getting the Senate seat?
I must have missed that one.
I know Rogers voted against CFR and got CCW to a vote in the senate. Garcia told John Granholm, I mean Engler, to go pound sand on his tobacco tax increase, and led the way to its defeat in the senate.
Raw,naked ambition,and a thirst for power. She IS the "Republican Bubbette!".
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