Based on his albeit spotty record, the Governor deserves re-election, but his unwillingness to frontally assault the public employee unions and define them before they define him is a fatal weakness in his campaign strategy. The other weakness is simply out of his control – President Bush has betrayed conservatives and they are a madder than hell about it and not about to reward a Governor who isn’t fighting for a conservative fiscal agenda. Witness the defeat of fourteen GOP incumbant Pennsylvania legislators this week at the hands of conservative primary challengers – a historic, and underreported event in political history. The tea is being delivered to the harbor and Republicans better get their act together or they will be fending off primary challengers all over the country in 2008. Frankly, I can hardly wait! Below is the text of an great op – ed piece from today’s Washington Post. It is a must read for all Flashreport readers.
By Richard A. Viguerie
Sunday, May 21, 2006; B01
The Washington Post
As a candidate in 2000, George W. Bush was a Rorschach test. Country Club Republicans saw him as another George H.W. Bush; some conservatives, thinking wishfully, saw him as another Ronald Reagan. He called himself a "compassionate conservative," which meant whatever one wanted it to mean. Experts from across the party’s spectrum were flown to Austin to brief Bush and reported back: "He’s one of us."
Republicans were desperate to retake the White House, conservatives were desperate to get the Clinton liberals out and there was no direct heir to Reagan running for president. So most conservatives supported Bush as the strongest candidate — some enthusiastically and some, like me, reluctantly. After the disastrous presidency of his father, our support for the son was a triumph of hope over experience.
Once he took office, conservatives were willing to grant this Bush a honeymoon. We were happy when he proposed tax cuts (small, but tax cuts nonetheless) and when he pushed for a missile defense system. Then came the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and conservatives came to see support for the president as an act of patriotism.
Conservatives tolerated the No Child Left Behind Act, an extensive intrusion into state and local education, and the budget-busting Medicare prescription drug benefit. They tolerated the greatest increase in spending since Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society. They tolerated Bush’s failure to veto a single bill, and his refusal to enforce immigration laws. They even tolerated his signing of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance overhaul, even though Bush’s opposition to that measure was a key reason they backed him over Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) in the 2000 primaries.
In 2004, Republican leaders pleaded with conservatives — particularly religious conservatives — to register people to vote and help them turn out on Election Day. Those efforts strengthened Republicans in Congress and probably saved the Bush presidency. We were told: Just wait till the second term. Then, the president, freed of concern over reelection and backed by a Republican Congress, would take off the gloves and fight for the conservative agenda. Just wait.
We’re still waiting.
Sixty-five months into Bush’s presidency, conservatives feel betrayed. After the "Bridge to Nowhere" transportation bill, the Harriet Miers Supreme Court nomination and the Dubai Ports World deal, the immigration crisis was the tipping point for us. Indeed, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found last week that Republican disapproval of Bush’s presidency had increased from 16 percent to 30 percent in one month. It is largely the defection of conservatives that is driving the president’s poll numbers to new lows.
Emboldened and interconnected as never before by alternative media, such as talk radio and Internet blogs, many conservatives have concluded that the benefits of unwavering support for the GOP simply do not, and will not, outweigh the costs.
The main cause of conservatives’ anger with Bush is this: He talked like a conservative to win our votes but never governed like a conservative.
For all of conservatives’ patience, we’ve been rewarded with the botched Hurricane Katrina response, headed by an unqualified director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which proved that the government isn’t ready for the next disaster. We’ve been rewarded with an amnesty plan for illegal immigrants. We’ve been rewarded with a war in Iraq that drags on because of the failure to provide adequate resources at the beginning, and with exactly the sort of "nation-building" that Candidate Bush said he opposed.
Republicans in Congress and at the White House seem oblivious to the rising threat of communist China and of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Despite the temporary appointment of conservative John R. Bolton as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, the current GOP leadership keeps shoveling money to the world body despite its refusal to change.
You can read the entire column by clicking here. (If you haven’t already, you’ll need to register for the Post’s website – it’s free and you get no junk mail.)
May 22nd, 2006 at 12:00 am
The problem is CCRs. No, not THOSE CCRs…the other ones. Remember them? Country Club Republicans. They’re back, and they’ve taken over our Party.
The Country Club Republicans bought into the whole “it’s the economy, stupid” slogan of the Clinton era. Hint to all the Reeps who keep telling us how grateful we should be for the strong economy and low unemployment numbers: “Don’t get stuck on [the economy] stupid.”
Elected officials who run around boasting about a strong economy because they didn’t raise our taxes, didn’t sign into law onerous regulations on job creators and didn’t stand in the way of the entrepreneurial spirt of America is like a grown adult asking for star next to the their name every time they wash their hands after using the potty. Rather absurd. (However, I would like a gold star for spelling “entrepreneurial” without spell check.)