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.
What is right and constitutional is not dependent upon the ability to win an election for its justification.
If there were only 4 of us spitting into the wind, I would still chose the constitution over any pragmatic "realpolitik" policy decision meant to pander to this or that special interest.
Make it more like "constitutionalist republican", has a nice ring to it, don't you think so?...
Thanks for the DU style pointless point.
No matter what happens, though, the good news is we get what we deserve, in the end.
When I say stuff like this to other FReepers and what you also stated in RE#648 & #676, I get called every name in the book and then some. Guess it pays to be "THE BOSS". Right Jim?
I believe it. If I never said it again, I would believe that Bush's signing of CFR and the Patriot Act were crimes against the constitution and make Americans subject to the whims of the federal government. Al Quaeda is said to hate us because we're free.
Bush federalized airport security, refused to allow pilots to carry firearms, signed the Patriot act and signed CFR. All of which attack the freedoms supposedly guaranteed and protected by the constitution.
Jim, when you called Bush a coke-snorting traitor back in the days when Alan Keyes was the only republican running who actually relied upon the constitution for his guidance, you were shooting straight.
Only when it looked like Bush would win did you change your tune. I believe you made a mistake by jumping on the Bush bandwagon. He's not fit. He has no respect for the constitution.
Of all people, going what you've gone through in the lawsuit against the Post and the Times, you are the one person who should understand how important free speech is to a Free Republic.
Bush spit on that. With contempt.
They just bark.
Jumping in here with my personal choice, Tancredo. He's very conservative, yet knows how to hammer out a compromise that doesn't give away the farm, he is for controlling our borders, and he would do a great job conducting the war on terror. Why won't the Republican Party run a candidate like him? If we keep bowing to their leftist leanings, what chance is there that a Tancredo will ever be presented for a candidate?
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