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 think many people would like to think that.
Who do you recommend?
Theodore, when you said that someone would say, "Re-Elect Bush At Least He's Not Clinton!," it didn't take long for Texasforever to echo that very sentiment.
Texasforever, how about Micky Mouse?
That is easy. The eternally teed off. The Birchers, the Brownies, the Pitchforkers, etc. You know, the "conservatives" that never saw a silver lining without a cloud.
What does a moderate, such as yourself, happy with the status quo, hope to contribute to an independent, grass roots, conservative, website, working to roll back decades of governmental largess, root out political fraud, corruption, and championing causes which further conservatism in America?
What is the message you would like conservatives to glean from you, what do you hope to contribue to our thinking, and what do you take away from the FR experience as a moderate?
People, such as myself, that hold deeply conservative principles realize that we have no longer have a home in the Republican Party. Carl Rove went to California and said so in plain English. "If conservatives cannot adapt to the new "Big Tent" political platform of the new Compassionate Conservative Republican Party, they should leave". There is a war raging in the Republican Party right now in California, between conservatives such as myself, and a man, Bush, who, with his cohorts have high jacked the Republican Party and are running with it to the far left of Democrats, something that may never be repaired.
I don't think this fact has hit moderates, such as yourself, yet. Many of you will be satisfied with the doppleganger replacement Republican Party. And perhaps this tactic will work for Bush and socialist Republicans. Perhaps the vaccancy left by conservatives, such as myself, will be filled with the left, the moderate, and minorities. It's a gamble on his part for sure. But I don't think it's very kewl of moderates to slam conservatives that see the situation clearly and resent the smug tone in D.C. that says "Who are you going to vote for Gore?", I wouldn't take talk like that from a man I was madly in love with, much less some pizzzant political party.
So we part company on Bush, I see him as death on a pale horse to the Republican Party's conservative base. While I don't have an answer as to how to fix this mess, other than writing in who I feel best represents my views, I don't see how lying to myself about the facts is going to do a thing to further conservative causes, nor do I see how compromising my conservative principles is going to futher conservatism.
Then start a draft of one or all three and educate FR about their qualifications.
I quote: "Let me say it yet again: The rights of the people come from God. The powers of government come from the people. The American people delegated the specific powers they wanted the federal government to have through the Constitution. And any additional powers they wanted to grant were supposed to be added by amendment.
Its largely because weve forgotten these simple principles that the country is in so much trouble. The powers of the federal government have multiplied madly, with only the vaguest justifications and on the most slippery pretexts. Its chief business now is not defending our rights but taking and redistributing our wealth. It has even created its own economy, the tax economy, which is parasitical on the basic and productive voluntary economy."
There were 9 GOP candidates in the primaries. They were involved in 12 debates. Bush won the primaries. There were 3 "major conservative" 3rd party candidates in the general election they got less than 5% total votes and NO electoral votes. All I am asking is if we are to throw off Bush then at least have some idea of how to do it beyond giving the entire government to the democrats.
Texas, the left has the government now.
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