Boortz is making sense:
So, there he was … Randall Terry, the anti-abortion zealot, screaming outside of the nursing home housing Terri Schiavo. He was screaming something about “hell to pay” if Terri Schiavo dies. He then went on to rant a bit about all of the work that the anti-abortion movement did to elect these Republicans, and that now is the time for them to deliver and perform.
You know what? This time Randall Terry may just be right. There just may be a political price to pay. But Terry is right for the wrong reasons. Republicans may pay a political price not because they didn’t do enough to prolong the torture of Terri Schiavo, but because they did too much.
Have you seen today’s approval ratings for President Bush? They’re down. Way down. He’s down to 45%. He was at 52% one week ago. This is the lowest point in his presidency. These polls are not because he hasn’t done enough in the Schiavo matter. The downtrend is because he did too much. The largest loss of support was among conservative male church-goers. A majority of the American people were not impressed with the Republican Party’s late night grandstanding this past Sunday, and Bush’s rush back to Washington to sign a bill in the early hours of the morning.
Maybe conservative Republican politicians can learn a lesson from this. They were elected to reduce the size and intrusiveness of the Imperial Federal Government of the United States. They were elected to reduce our tax burden and lower government spending. They were elected to defend us against threats from abroad, specifically the threat of Islamic terrorism … and to do so with preemptive action if necessary. In spite of the delusions of grandeur of the abortocentrist crowd and religious extremists, George Bush was not elected to facilitate a government takeover of the ovaries of every fertile American woman, nor was he elected to establish a theocracy.
Perhaps Republicans will take note. I truly believe that their control of the House of Representatives may be in jeopardy in next year’s elections. Perhaps they’ll learn from this. Maybe they’ll start dancing with who brung them for a change, and pay attention to spending and tax cuts, school choice, national defense and individual liberty.
Some lessons are just learned the hard way.
The leadership in our party has lost their way. If they ever had a way, and weren’t just selling me a bill of goods.
Steve4Clark
heh. You don’t get it.
Republicans weren’t elected to reduce the size and intrusiveness of government.
They were elected because they promised to ban abortion, and nasty shows on TV and gay marriage, etc.
By the time Goldwater died in 1998 he was no longer supporting these fools. Goldwater conservatism in the Republican party died sometime in the mid 1980s.
Sooner or later, we all gotta wake up, I guess.
Baseballgirl
Thank you for your sane and insightful posts of the last week. The last 4 years had convinced me that the “right” was suffering from some sort of mass psychosis.
I was beginning to think we were living in “The Matrix” and I had (stupidly) chosen to find out the truth while those around me chose to stay blissfully ignorant.
Thanks for proving me wrong. I think I may finally see a light at the end of this tunnel.
caleb
I give John props for standing up to these right wing wackos….they can be, literally, deadly when they don’t ge their way…..just ask Dr. Barnett Slepian.
Whether or not the conservatives in the republican party have actually learned anything and are willing to do something about it….we won’t find out till ’06.
CaseyL
Oh, we’ll know a lot sooner than 2006. We’ll see what the GOP’s next move in undermining an independent judiciary is.
They’ve been talking for a while about excluding certain categories of cases from Supreme Court review altogether: gay marriage and prisoner of war petitions come immediately to mind. Maybe now they’ll also want to exclude family law and medical care issues. Maybe the GOP would prefer disputes over mental competence, medical directives, and guardianship be settled by Acts of Congress.
They’re also still toying with the ‘nuclear option’ to get Bush’s ideologues on the federal bench. The Terri Schiavo case plays into that very well. “Only replacing Democrat (sic) judges with pro-life judges can protect future Terri Schaivos.”
willyb
Just curious… Do any of you folks that are giving John props for his position on Terri Schiavo agree with Boortz??? If so, what do you agree with?
Even if you agree that polls mean something, what they mean is another thing. Is it possible that the male church goers believe he hasn’t done enough? I wouldn’t know, because I don’t fit into that category.
Unlike President Clinton, President Bush hasn’t stuck his finger in the wind that much. What makes you thing he gives a shit about the polls?
The Terri Schiavo situation was guaranteed to bring out God’s squad, who else cares so deeply about preserving life? However, it is wrong to say that everybody that wants her parents to have control is a religious fanatic!
S.W. Anderson
Let me endorse Steve4Clarks’s dead-on comment and add this:
Today’s Republicans are all about being the agents and errand boys of the corporations and other big-money people and interests. They’re about exploiting the insecurities and anxieties of gun enthusiasts, social traditionalists and those who are sexually repressed, maybe to the point of being neurotic, and proud of it.
Power, control, anything to win are the means to their ends, and none of those square with seriously pursuing smaller, less-intrusive government.
Nor do any of them suggest a discipline of adhering to traditional conservative principles. That’s especially true of their “anything to win” M.O.
willyb
I agree with the general thrust of the comments made by S.W. Anderson.
The problem I’ve always had is that the Democrats are even worse. Not only do they pander to the same groups as Republicans, they have a bunch more, NEA, Unions, Gays, Blacks, etc. It’s a matter of choosing the lesser evil, if you can figure that one out.
Kimmitt
I guess my thought is that there are worse sets of folks to be responsive to than teachers, working men and women, gay people, and African-American people.
willyb
Kimmitt:
There’s a point at which too much of a good thing is a bad thing.
CaseyL
“[T]here are worse sets of folks to be responsive to than teachers, working men and women, gay people, and African-American people.”
-Kimmitt
“There’s a point at which too much of a good thing is a bad thing.”
-willyb
Fascinating, willyb. When is being responsive to the majority of the American people a bad thing? What is the ultraclass of Americans – Americans who are not teachers, working men and women, gay people, and African-American people – who, in your view, aren’t pandered to enough?
willyb
When is being responsive to the majority of the American people a bad thing?
You’re going to have to give me a specific example of being responsive to the majority of the American people before I can respond. But just to be clear, I happened to believe all pandering is bad. And your comment about the Ultraclass… what the hell is that about????
Kimmitt
She is referring to this class of Americans which represents the platonic ideal of “Americans,” from which teachers, working men and women, African-Americans, and gays deviate.
At any rate, you’re against pandering. Me too, actually. I have an abiding concern for what I view as the polity’s common good. What I don’t understand is how this could translate into support for the Republican Party, which I suppose is kind of the point of Mr. Cole’s post.
willyb
What I don’t understand is how this could translate into support for the Republican Party, which I suppose is kind of the point of Mr. Cole’s post.
Unfortunately, life is full of tough choices, most of which come with some baggage. From my perspective, it’s about choosing the lesser of two evils.
Rob
“Unlike President Clinton, President Bush hasn’t stuck his finger in the wind that much. What makes you thing he gives a shit about the polls?”
Just because Bush claims he doesn’t care about polls doesn’t make it so. If the Bush Administration didn’t care about polls, why have they conducted more polls than any other Administration in history. Just about EVERY decision is checked out through polling before it is done to make sure the pros out weigh the cons. I think what happened with the Terri Schiavo case is that it blew up so fast they didn’t really have time to poll it and they probably also figured it was a “no-brainer” issue that they could exploit. Too bad they were wrong.
wild bird
The liberal left-wing news media are always bringing up about right-wing extremists are radical antiabortionists while not mentioning the fact that the unibomber was a eco-freak who read AL GORE eco-babble book EARTH IN THE BALANCE i mean they will always bring up about RANDAL TERRY but not about THE UNIBOMBER and him being a eco-freak
Christopher J. Arndt
President Bush did too much?
The Republicans did too much?
What did the Republicans do about Terri Schiavo?