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.
"When I began entering into the give and take of legislative bargaining in Sacramento, a lot of the most radical conservatives who had supported me during the election didn't like it. "Compromise" was a dirty word to them and they wouldn't face the fact that we couldn't get all of what we wanted today. They wanted all or nothing and they wanted it all at once. If you don't get it all, some said, don't take anything. "I'd learned while negotiating union contracts that you seldom got everything you asked for. And I agreed with FDR, who said in 1933: 'I have no expectations of making a hit every time I come to bat. What I seek is the highest possible batting average."
"If you got seventy-five or eighty percent of what you were asking for, I say, you take it and fight for the rest later, and that's what I told these radical conservatives who never got used to it."
~~ Ronald Reagan, in his autobiography, An American Life
So it is your belief that we should have Rats destroying the country because it would pull the conservative ranks closer together
Oh Good Grief .. I think I have heard it all
I was joking tpain. You just have no sense of humor. You're not only a whiner, you're meanspirited too!
It is called adulthood.
There was an ad on Lifetime just a few moments ago that showed an expectant mother and father watching a color, three dimensional picture of their unborn baby on a TV screen.
Update your sayings, they are dated.
After four years of Gore, we wouldn't have had much of a Country left and as for swelling the ranks of conservatives -- if 8 years of clinton didn't do that then four years of gore certainly would not have done it either! Getting sick and tired of this elect DemocRATS to make more conservatives. Doesn't work that way! And only DemocRATS come out the winners!
Well I want to be on the winning side in November and that means voting for anyone for the House or Senate with an (R) behind their name so we can control the Committees! If you all want to stay home then go right ahead but when you do, keep your mouths shut about what happens if DemocRATS take over because people like you stayed home to teach us all a lesson! Don't even think of complaining about the DemocRATS, I, for one, will be in no mood to hear anything coming out of the mouths of people that want DemocRATS in office to make more conservatives.
Right. That's why the military is doing so poorly in Afghanistan then eh? So many gays? Do you ever even think about your absurd propositions? If "most knowledgable" people agreed, then there would be no controversy at all.
There is, and that is because "most knowledgable people" in fact DO NOT agree.
Goldwater rightly stated that one's sexuality was not a relevant test of one's ability to do well in battle: "You don't have to be straight to be good in battle, you have to SHOOT straight."
He was correct.
I agree with this. Would you care to provide your estimate of what the percentage is that we've gotten from the current administration?
No, it wouldn't. I know this because it hasn't been. The only American media member to make mention of it has been Sobran. Both Germany and Brasil reported the exchange. Where is this alleged rebuttal you claim exists?
Oh, so the Republicans are fighting for our sovereignty? Besides Tancredo, which Republicans are these Jim? If you could be specific?
Libertarian fantasy.
Proof of the other can be had easily. Do you support our military effort against the terrorists? (Yes or no).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.