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 didn't intentionally leave out 1987. I am certain that if the left is planning the future while the right becomes obsessed with the past, there will be no contest.
Of course there are "non-productive snivelers" out there, but Dubyuh's been giving them a bit too much ammo with his willingness to grow the Federal budget and not fight as hard as we know he could for conservative principle. I urge more folks to make productive suggestions as to how Bush could get his Conservative Agenda back on track, and thereby build momentum for this November.
FReegards...MUD
"You are not permitted to have that opinion. Get back into ranks."
I'm marchin' in lockstep, sir, it's everyone else who's outta cadence!!
FReegards...MUD
Thank you.
The left set out to destroy the world of the past. They have done that. Now, we are to march off to the future singing, we will overcome. You are correct though. We have been changed, and the change is permanent. The people have changed. And, it is the people who control the nation and the future. The brave new world had better be a good place. But, I suspect that the only conservatives allowed there will be the neo-conservatives. There will not be a place for love of country, morality, or truly spiritual things in that world.
Depends on what the definition of the word "conservative" is.
I consider myself to be included within both Reagan's Base and the Goldwater conservatives, but I think some of Goldwater's followers musta voted for Ronaldus or else Ford wouldda won the nomination.
FReegards...MUD
You're looking at those ink blots again TP.
Don, Don. There you go again. Telling us if we don't think like you do we don't have love of country or mortality.
And you all wonder what a third party isn't viable?
Amen, Brother.
I assume you know?
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