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.
Zell Miller in my state isn't bad, but I'm still going to vote against him (again) in 2006 if he doesn't switch parties.
I wish we had a Solomon, maybe Bush will do a hard right and suprise us all when he get's his Republican congress and senate.
That's the spirit!
Coop busted his hump fer a candidate who was less than many of us wouldda liked, and his "issues" with you were borne out of frustration more than anything. In any event, I don't see Warner doing but so much damage as long as we maintain a strong majority in the legislature.
FReegards...MUD
RIGHT ON BROTHER
You forgot to mention George "Palestinian State as a Reward for Terror" Bush's hypocritical double standard in regard to Palestinian terrorists.
The Social Conservatives
the Libertarian conservatives
The fiscal conservatives
the Paleo-conservatives
The Neo-conservatives
The Isolationist conservatives
and so forth. When you look at the various third parties each party is made up of one faction of that spectrum. There is no hope of a "cooalition 3rd party simply because the existing 3rd parties are completely incompatible. The GOP is a coalition party. It has a significant conservative faction, a VERY LARGE moderate faction and a small liberal faction. However, when you look at committee assignments, the conservatives hold the larger share of chairmanships. That is why it is important to suck it up and elect even RINOs to the senate. It is the numbers that count and who chairs the committees. The GOP is now what Reagan wanted it to be, a big tent party truly capable of a governing majority.
We have long accepted the premise that we must appeal to liberals to get elected. But when we get elected we pass liberal legislation. Then the Dems retake the office and move legislation that is 90 to 95% leftist. Heck, both sides are burying us.
We do it strategicly and they do it because they love the agenda. Either way it sees us burried further and further in the socialist quagmire, further and further from the ideal.
If Bush passes the Kennedy healthcare plan and the medication addendum to Medicare, I don't see how either will be rescinded any more than Social Security or Medicare will be. That's a far worse situation than we were in when Bush took office.
I understand where you're coming from. I'm just very frustrated these days.
These people are like sleeper cells of terrorists waiting for the right moment to attack. You cannot trust them. I often hear people say that there is no one else whom we can elect, and we just don't have conservatives willing to take office. I believe that both parties rig their candidate elections so that we don't have a real choice. I think that both parties are simply screwing the voters. Neither party has the interests of the country in mind. They are all about power to the ruling class.
Hopefully, I'm not included in the "they" you describe here, but admittedly, many of us are increasingly frustrated by OUR SIDE's apparent willingness to grow the Federal Leviathan just as rapidly as the Left. Many of us have worked for years to get the GOP into as advantageous of a position as we find ourselves today, and it seems all we get from the Pubbies regarding domestic policy is timidity. As the DemonRAT base contains too many folks from the "gimme-gimme-gimme" cartel, I can't see where I'll ever vote for them, but it's getting increasingly difficult to convince family, friends, and co-workers how the GOP is that much different from the RATS, and why they ought to join me in actively shilling for the allegedly more conservative Party.
"...after all, I am apparently a "Bushbot"."
Heck, I've been called a "Bushbot" and a "BushBasher" on the same thread...those name-callers belittle their argument on both sides. Still, I will maintain my right to humbly offer Dubyuh my on-Forum counsel when I feel he's strayed too far to the Left, and folks who continue to admonish me for it will have to keep on admonishing until Dubyuh begins fightin' fer conservative principles the way I elected him to!!
FReegards...MUD
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