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.
Keep fighting the good fight.
Hogwash.
911 posted on 6/22/02 10:02 PM Pacific by Roscoe [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 852 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]
If you are going to quote my post, try quoting all of it, not just the part that serves your little agenda.
HOLY COW!!!
So, tell me who was/is a "conservative" in whatever world you reside in?
Because he didn't promote legalizing child porn and throwing the bodies of servicemen out of Arlington National Cemetary?
One test will be in November: if Simon wins, that could go a long way in reminding the RNC that conservatism is a winning strategy.
I thik Pat died of natural causes.
Val, is it a coincidence that we keep finding references to child porn or what?
A fine suggestion. Sounds like a winner to me.
Yes, America is alive and well, and sleeping soundly.
"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."
No thinking conservative believes we are going to get every single thing we want overnight.
All we are looking for right now is a sense that our leaders are fighting for our agenda, and not that of our enemies...one of the reasons Reagan is so beloved to us all is because we believed that about him...even though he didn't even come close to accomplishing all he or we wanted him to. (Thank God that because the man was willing to fight for it all, he got the most critical thing of all done...he brought down the Soviet Union.)
I know if we managed to implement seventy-five or eighty percent of everything in the conservative agenda, I would go into the hereafter satisfied that we did pretty darn well.
But to ever come even close to that, we are going to have to work with every ounce of strength we possess, for the short-term, the mid-term, and the long-term.
Unfortunately, right now we're batting about .196...
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