Posted on 12/23/2002 1:37:32 PM PST by Jim Robinson
WASHINGTON – Government downsizing, privacy and national security/defense emerged as the top three action plans that a group of some of the nation’s key conservatives will urge on the Bush administration and the incoming Republican 108th Congress.
Gary Aldrich, president and founder of the Patrick Henry Center for Individual Liberty, outlined the purpose of the meeting Thursday.
“Is it enough for Republicans to smartly manage an unaccountable, ever-growing bureaucracy? Or can we do more?” Aldrich asked in a Nov. 22 letter inviting influential conservatives to the strategy session.
Among those weighing in at the nearly daylong gathering were leaders of well-known cultural, economic and national defense conservative groups, as well as a member of Congress, two Reagan administration officials (one in person, the other by written communication), a pollster, fund raisers and candidates for public office (past and future).
Republicans, as the more conservative of the two major parties, have presented people of his persuasion with “a great opportunity,” Aldrich told NewsMax.com.
“We have the White House. We have the House, and we have the Senate. And that is called opportunity,” he observed. “The only thing I don’t think we have right now is a vision where we would like to be five, 10 or 20 years from now.” That is where the activity of the strategists comes in.
Privacy and Hillary
The privacy issue was discussed in terms of making certain that any information the government can gather on law-abiding citizens in the name of national security is information you would not mind falling into the hands of Hillary Clinton should she someday become president or attorney general.
Aldrich — best known as a former FBI agent who went public in 1996 with a blockbuster book “Unlimited Access,” exposing the lax or almost non-existent security at the White House - allowed as how there can be times when left and right agree on the privacy issue, but that “I personally find it difficult to deal with leftists because their primary interest, as far as I can see, is the dismantling of our current form of government, which is the Constitution that we love and enjoy and our Bill of Rights.”
Some discussion at the meeting focused on the fact that much of the left raises the concern over privacy only when the private sector collects information, but was complacent about Filegate and other scandalous privacy invasions by government when the Clintons were in power.
Those who met Thursday are fervent believers. Aldrich noted how difficult it would normally be to persuade people to give of their time less than a week before Christmas.
Time to Attack Back
The participants were definitely of a mind to go on offense, perhaps strengthened by information - not rumor or gossip, but hard well-sourced information — that top Democrat party operatives met about a week after the GOP’s victorious Nov. 5 election and decided on a strategy of intimidation and attack, attack, attack. The first move in that left-wing strategy was to go after the conservative talk show hosts, Fox News and the Washington Times. When that failed to resonate with the public, the Democrats pounced on Trent Lott.
However, the Democrats’ attack strategy is prompted by desperation, it was agreed. Comes a time soon when it will be the left’s turn to be on defense.
The administration wants to streamline Social Security and Medicare so that they will not take the country into the chaos of bankruptcy. The Democrats have been delaying necessary reforms in these programs, the better to demagogue the issue. But the Nov. 5 elections showed that senior citizens no longer fall for the scare tactics.
Now the burden is on the Democrats' shoulders to help save Social Security and Medicare, because if they don’t, “they can’t try to socialize the country,” one attendee opined. The monkey will be on their back.
This was not merely a gathering of like-minded activists “preaching to the choir.” Aldrich prefers to think of this as the “visionary group,” with plans to see that its message is heard by Congress and the administration through grassroots action.
He recalled a 1997 meeting in Charleston, S.C., that met to deal with the Clinton scandals. Ultimately, these citizens determination helped lead to the 1998 House vote that made Bill Clinton the only elected impeached president in the nation’s history.
I agree wholeheartedly. It shouldn't have come to this, however, that Judges are being allowed to legislate from the Bench. Article III, Sections 1 and 2 of the United States Constitution clearly provide balancing measures for an out-of-control judiciary, namely, "The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour," and are subject to "such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make."
Congress ought not to have gone to the steps of the Capital to recite the Pledge of Allegiance with the outlawed words "under God," when the Ninth Circuit suddenly found them in the Pledge and suddenly found them unconstitutional, but ought to have called a special session right then and there to oust those leftist fools on the Ninth Circuit Court. The same ought to have been done by the Republican-majority House voted into the Vermont legislature after the 2000 election, because of the VT Supreme Court's DEMAND that our legislature make laws to enable sodomites to marry. Those Justices who found the non-existent "Right to Privacy" in Roe v. Wade out to have been canned, too.
If Congress had been policing the Judiciary as they are required by the Constitution to do we wouldn't be in the mess we are now. I submit that we don't have to wait the years (and perhaps decades) it will take to replace dying and retiring leftist-agenda judges with Conservative ones. Why won't Congress call their 'behaviour' exactly what it is - diametrically opposed to 'good,' and do their duty by the American people as clearly written in the Constitution, which they are sworn to uphold?
I was in Boston at that time. It seemed that the people who were most fed up with the busing mess were those whose children were taken out of schools in their community and sent across the city for their educations. The Italians in North Boston and the Blacks in Roxbury were particularly impacted. There was a lot of talk back then that if the money had been spent on improving education instead of busing, the schools could've been improved.
This was a factor in the downfall of a lot of communities, such as Mattapan. Without the community touch (and isolation) the violence just about toppled some of the schools and brought in violence from other parts of the city.
It is time to once and all defund the left. Why should my tax dollars go to people who want to destoy everything that is sacred?
Begin of course with PBS. When they are not promoting treason or endlessly praising Castro, they do things like run slick Muslim propaganda, in your face during Christmas week.
Defunding the left also includes, IMHO, tort reform. The lawyer industry is not only exploitative and utterly corrupt, it is of course the largest single source of revenue to the DNC.
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