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.
Well if this is your story, I'd say you're sucking on a hind tit (a little farmer lingo there).
But let's say that the story is the truth (chortle, snuffle, guffaw) then what Buchanan was doing was being pragmatic.
But let Bush engage in the same sort of pragmatism and he gets savaged by the wingnuts who considered Pats Pas de Deux with Fulani as something completely unremarkable.
As Haley Barbour says, I was born at night but not last night.
They would be virtually speechless if they couldn't chant "traitor", "statist" and "Nazi".
Congress never read the Patriot act before sending it to the President to sign. That is a fact. They are definately to blame along with the traitor Bush who signed it.
Exactly. Bush handed the Taliban a victory if you believe that they hate us because we are free.
Good luck in prison.
I think you need a dictionary...
When in a hole stop diging.
Buchanan was not voted into office. That's about eighteen months ago by now. He's not running again. So explain to me again why it's relevant to be discussing who was trying to help Pat get elected.
You guys like to trot out the, "you guys supported a looser" line to silence us. Tell me what that has to do with your candidate and the leftist policies that he supports? The discussion is whether they are leftist policies or not, and if we should support someone who supports leftist policies if they are.
I supported the man that most closely mirrored my desired objectives for this nation. It was either that or support a party that used Carvelian tactics in 1996 to portray Pat as Hitler, or the next Hitler. The RNC leadership and Bob Dole are the reasons I could not in good concience vote Republican in 2000. So please lay off the childish name calling and get back to the topic at hand.
Do we support those who support leftist policies, yes or no?
"Alice in Wonderland" logic.
Prove it. I rarely use the word. In this case, it is completely appropriate. Since you have never read the Patriot Act, you're arguing from ignorance.
Most of those raving the loudest are not conservatives, they're Libertarians.
Oh they will claim to be conservatives, but they're not.
So assuming that you're a conservative Republican, they're really not "our people" at all.
And Haley Barbour, the country club republican du jour, stole it.
I have, now point out the treasonous portions.
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