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.
They fail to realize that they are supporting their own demise.
You're absolutely right. It is "the people who control the nation and the future." Unless your ideas have broad public support, you aren't going to see them enacted into law. We'll always have conservatives and for the most part conservatism will dominate. It's just that conservative thought changes also. We no longer believe in the divine right of Kings.
Well, Quid you just open a can of worms and based of I just read, it looks like the pendulum swings both ways with equal energy.
I could not believe myself that, on our side are so many narrow minded, dead brain stiffs, to be honest with you. I am, to put it mildly, extremely dissapointed.
Now, it dawns on me why the liberals are calling us "wing nuts"...I think they have a point, ...hard to defend, all of this considered!
If you believe that the right consists of the elite class, are you in the right ball park? I always thought that I was a conservative. But I don't wear a crown. Look, you can call yourself whatever you want, but the way that you act, think, and just generally live your life determines what you are, not a title or a political affiliation.
Yes. In simple terms: Goldwater = Conservative.
Bush = Liberal.
IMHO, I have a gripe now, because spending is UP significantly, and not only in Defense. We've not seen any good, solid Conservative domestic legislation cutting the size and scope of government since Welfare Reform, and it's high time we went back on the offense and demanded some!!
"Right now he is just switching money around within the present budget. That is what budgets are for to decide on spending priorities."
The Federal Budget is also growing at a crisp pace...if Dubyuh can get this new Homeland Security Department up and running with a decrease in overall personnel and cost, it'd be quite a coup. The Federal Budget is inarguably too large, and the GOP's representative in the Oval Office needs to show some leadership in paring it back!!
FReegards...MUD
Really? You didn't know him much during the last few years of his life did you? Goldwater actually became very liberal...
Well then there goes the Social conservatives, the isolationist conservatives. The religious right conservatives. But yeah Goldwater was a darling of libertarians.
LOL.
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