Is this the look of DETERMINATION, or WHAT.....
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 suspect you already know.
Before 1990 we practiced managed trade that saw this nation become an industrial giant. We imported raw materials and a few manufactured items. Now we have opted to import as much of everything that we can. Explain why that is better than than before 1990. Were we a banana republic before 1990?
If those Muslims have their way, it would be a burka.
Is this the look of DETERMINATION, or WHAT.....
This subjective "principles" mantra is getting old. Principles are self defined and very often used to mask plain bull-headedness. Your "principles" are NOT necessarily MY "principles". I am as conservative as any sane person on this forum however I know the real world and the real world states that this country is not about to elect a foaming at the mouth "real conservative". Bush is doing just fine given what happened in the election, and cards that have been dealt to him. I am not willing to burn down the village to save it.
Look,he makes his money by selling screeds to people via direct mail.
His flirtation with the Reform Party was to get his hands on Ross Perot's mailing lists of gullable malcontents.
Buchanan never expected to get elected, otherwise why did he keep making campaign speeches over and over to the same people?
A serious candidate would have moved into untapped areas to try to convert people who weren't aware what his message was.
But ol' Pat kept plowing the same ground over and over.
It was all boob bait for the bubbas designed to keep his prospective direct-mail contributors revved up.
If by "in on it" you mean they sat back and let the Clinton corruption happen, so what. Most Republicans, including the current administration, did and are doing the same.
Yet the Democrats keep nominating foaming-at-the-mouth liberals. Sometimes they win, sometimes they don't. The point is that the Democrats DON'T LIVE IN FEAR OF HAVING THEIR PRINCIPLES KNOWN.
I don't know...those of us on FR are far more conservative than average voters. In the last presidential primary, the "constitutional" candidates got 5% of the vote? The majority of Americans are most concerned about the FedGov helping them with health care, education, and retirement.
Before you can get most, or even a majority, of Americans to vote for a true conservative candidate, I think there's going to have to be a significant voter education component, so that people know what our government is supposed to be, and why all the government "goodies" aren't right.
The other thing is, if we "take our ball and go home", we're not in the game any more, so we aren't influencing it at all.
...It makes no sense at all to vote for Dole when you wanted a conservative. Vote for what you want, even if there's a chance you won't get it.
That makes sense in the primaries, but in the general election, if what you really want isn't on the ballot, what are you gonna do? IMO, better to vote for the one who is farthest right, (even if that isn't very far right) in hopes of influencing bigger things, like judicial appointments and the Supreme Court. It's either that, or have no say at all.
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