Bush Betrays The Base: The GOP's Supreme Quag-Miers
by Chris Knight
George W. Bush has betrayed the base, blatantly and intentionally, with his selection of Harriet Miers for the United States Supreme Court. The tens of millions of social conservatives who voted, recruited, and worked for him in the 2004 campaign did so not out of any interest in a 21st-century King George, right or wrong.
Their work, and their success in electing him to the Presidency of the United States last November, was based upon the understanding that he would appoint Supreme Court Justices who would overturn un-Constitutional decisions made by their predecessors, including Roe vs. Wade, Doe, Danforth, Casey, and other pro-abortion decisions.
Also on the list of decisions we would now expect pro-Constitution Supreme Court Justices to overturn is the Kelo decision, which recently gave local governments license to take absolutely anyone’s family home at any time, no matter how long that home had been in the family or how much the people wanted to keep their home and not have it taken by the government.
Kelo of course flies in the face of the very heart of private property rights in America, and contravenes the core principle upon which this nation was founded: that we are a country based upon the people, individuals and families, whom government serves. Kelo inverted that, by telling formerly safe families that their private homes can be taken by the government any time the government feels it could get more taxes out of something else to be built on the land where family homes now stand.
Roe and Kelo. The need to overturn both is an expression of nothing less than the primordial need to preserve, protect, and defend one’s family and one’s home.
It is about the right to life for innocent little pre-born babies from conception forward, and the right to have and to hold onto a family home in which to raise your children in the ways they should go. Tens of millions of people believe in these things.
Tens of millions of people were willing to, based upon their belief in these things, seek out someone who would appoint pro-Constitution Justices to the U.S. Supreme Court, so those Justices could fully overturn decisions like Roe and Kelo, and a not-short list of other un-Constitutional decisions handed down by the USSC in years past. George W. Bush promised the conservative base of our country that he would be that someone.
George W. Bush promised that he would appoint Supreme Court Justices like Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, both of whom are willing to overturn Roe, Kelo, and comparably un-Constitutional decisions right now. George W. Bush promised such Justices to the conservative base.
George W. Bush lied.
Let’s make no mistake here: George W. Bush is not a social conservative. Voting for him in 2004 was not about any falllacious presumption that he is. However, he did make one central, clear, definite promise to the social conservatives who form the voting base of the United States, and upon whose backs he was elevated to the Oval Office. That promise was that he would, unequivocally, appoint Supreme Court Justices who would rule as Justice Scalia and Clarence Thomas do.
He broke his word. The promise is no more. With the appointment of Harriet Miers, the President of the United States has sold out tens of millions of conservatives who had stood by him through all of his many failures in anticipation of him standing by them when it came time to make the all-important appointments to the Supreme Court. President Bush’s failures are legendary: amongst the long list of them are the appointment of Michael Brown to lead FEMA, the disastrousness of which was readily apparent in the wreckage left in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Many people lost their lives because the President appointed someone with connections to his Administration, instead of appointing someone with the qualifications for the position to which they are being appointed.
No one should be appointed to any position in government except where they are both fully qualified for the position to which they are being appointed AND have a clear track record illustrating their ability to make decisions of the nature that their new position would require.
Appointing cronies, instead of fully-qualified people with clear, publically-viewable track records, results in people perishing. Michael Brown was a crony. And Harriet Miers is the crony that broke the camel’s back.
Our nation was designed, via the brilliance of our Constitution, to be a democracy within the framework of a Constitutional Republic. Certain rights, like free speech, are guaranteed by the unambiguous language in the Bill of Rights. Many things, including abortion, are unmentioned in the Constitution, and are thus up to each of the states to render legal or not, as the people of each state democratically decide.
Pro-Constitution Justices, of which they are a great many with principled track records who would undoubtedly love to be appointed to the USSC, have just one duty. That is to rule on the cases that come before them in a way that is faithful to the text of the United States Constitution: not adding anything to it, not taking anything away from it, just applying the clear meaning of the text, as it is written. This judicial philosophy is the only one that can be acceptable to the conservative base of our country. It is one that, where held to resolutely, inevitably leads to the conclusion that decisions like Roe and Kelo must be overturned, for the very fact of their continuance is a contraversion of the Constitution.
George W. Bush does not understand that. His lack of understanding is easily demonstrated by his willingness to sign a clearly un-Constitutional “campaign finance reform” bill which banned certain forms of political speech within certain time frames around elections. Would the founding fathers, who risked their lives for political speech of a revolutionary nature, approve of such a hobbling of the First Amendment?
In the midst of this greatest-ever upsurge of conservative rebellion against a RINO President, one question rises above all the others: what does the future hold for the conservative base of this country? They are not going to want to man phone banks, stuff envelopes, recruit, and vote for a Republican candidate whom they see as another Bush, another appointer of eminently dubious Souter-Miers cyphers to the Supreme Court.
If the GOP nominates someone in 2008 who isn’t really a tried-and-true social conservative who has unshakable principles, the GOP will lose in 2008. The conservative base will never be fooled again by someone like the Bushes, who make promises to get votes and then flat out break them. The only way to inspire and engage the conservative base, without which the Republican nominee cannot win, is to nominate a real conservative, with a clear track record.
No flip-flops, no empty promises, no history of attempting to appease the conservative base with substance-free phrases like “culture of life”. The base doesn’t want words alone; the base wants concrete actions.
President George W. Bush is a lame-duck less than a year into his second term, a second-term given to him by tens of millions of social conservatives who believed that he would represent their interests and appoint Supreme Court Justices like Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. As he had given his word he would.
He is a lame-duck because he betrayed the conservative base, breaking his word and thus subjecting our Constitutional Republic to the spectre of more lost innocent life and more taken family homes, such as will be for as long as Roe and Kelo are left in place. Social conservatives will never forgive him for this. Nor will they forget: not in 2006, not in 2008, not in 2010…
Many social conservatives don’t agree with the GOP on other types of issues. Famously, many disagree with the whole Iraq situation, and feel, as a majority of Americans do, that we never should have gone in, shouldn’t be there now, and should get out ASAP. Some may feel this way about the Iraq situation because of the loss of life; others because it is draining hundreds of billions of dollars better placed back in the pockets of American taxpayers; others because George W. Bush pays more attention to what happens half a world away than to the needs within our own borders and taking care of our neighbors here; others because it’s obvious to virtually everyone that a true war against terrorism would start with securing the USA’s own porous borders instead of sending half-a-million U.S. military men and women into a joyless desert on the other side of the planet.
Other social conservatives disagree with the GOP on environmental issues: for example, the pro-life thing to do with regards to mercury pollution would be to seek to decrease it, given that small children and innocent little pre-born babies feel it’s effects most devastatingly. George W. Bush has gone exactly the opposite way, endorsing increases in mercury pollution from industrial sources. Most social conservatives care much more about the health of their children than they do about any particular industrial plant’s desire to contaminate local water with mercury.
In short, tens of millions of social conservatives who have voted for Republican candidates in the past are not, as the GOP continues to erroneously mis-presume, people who would vote Republican even if social issues (and by extension the USSC) weren’t on the table. Quite the opposite.
Where the GOP sells out the socially conservative base of the party, the GOP will lose. As George W. Bush has irrevocably sold out the conservative base of the party, association with him will inevitably be damaging to the campaigns of anyone who runs as a Republican in 2006, 2008, or 2010. True conservatives who currently hold or would one day like to hold elected office need to first and foremost run against George W. Bush. He has defined his Presidency in opposition to that which tens of millions of social conservatives care about most. So, for any future Republican candidate for the Presidency to secure their support, they must define themselves in sharp contrast to this lame-duck President. The race for 2008 began the day he nominated Harriet Miers.
For all of the tens of millions of social conservatives disgusted by the actions and inactions of this President, I say this: it’s time to take over the GOP. No more “big tent” on social issues. The Democratic Party is liberal on them; the GOP must be conservative on them. President Lincoln once said that the United States could not survive half-slave and half-free:
The GOP cannot survive half pro-life and half pro-abortion. The stances are obviously contradictory, and cannot co-exist. The GOP needs to be pro-life, and any Republican who is not needs to be exchanged for one who is in the next primary they face.
The GOP must be, and act, and govern, as the 100% pro-life party. It must stand for the right of families to keep their family homes. In short, it must stand with the base. For all the tens of millions of pro-life, pro-private property, pro-Constitution voters out there, please don’t let the fact that George W. Bush betrayed you push you away from your pursuit of reclaiming this nation. George W. Bush is not the GOP, and there are still men of true principle there. The task now is to identify them, and to support them directly, as opposed to giving money to the RNC for redistribution to others who will sell you out too. Choose individuals you support carefully, making sure that they are real social conservatives with the courage of their convictions. In short, directly support true conservatives who are the opposite of George W. Bush.
Bush surrendered to the approved short list of Democratic Senator Harry Reid, and to his own moral weakness, and to the dustbin of mediocrity.
We will not.
Reclaiming the Supreme Court is still necessary, and surrender is not something that true conservatives ever do.
Chris Knight
George W. Bush has betrayed the base, blatantly and intentionally, with his selection of Harriet Miers for the United States Supreme Court. The tens of millions of social conservatives who voted, recruited, and worked for him in the 2004 campaign did so not out of any interest in a 21st-century King George, right or wrong.
Their work, and their success in electing him to the Presidency of the United States last November, was based upon the understanding that he would appoint Supreme Court Justices who would overturn un-Constitutional decisions made by their predecessors, including Roe vs. Wade, Doe, Danforth, Casey, and other pro-abortion decisions.
Also on the list of decisions we would now expect pro-Constitution Supreme Court Justices to overturn is the Kelo decision, which recently gave local governments license to take absolutely anyone’s family home at any time, no matter how long that home had been in the family or how much the people wanted to keep their home and not have it taken by the government.
Kelo of course flies in the face of the very heart of private property rights in America, and contravenes the core principle upon which this nation was founded: that we are a country based upon the people, individuals and families, whom government serves. Kelo inverted that, by telling formerly safe families that their private homes can be taken by the government any time the government feels it could get more taxes out of something else to be built on the land where family homes now stand.
Roe and Kelo. The need to overturn both is an expression of nothing less than the primordial need to preserve, protect, and defend one’s family and one’s home.
It is about the right to life for innocent little pre-born babies from conception forward, and the right to have and to hold onto a family home in which to raise your children in the ways they should go. Tens of millions of people believe in these things.
Tens of millions of people were willing to, based upon their belief in these things, seek out someone who would appoint pro-Constitution Justices to the U.S. Supreme Court, so those Justices could fully overturn decisions like Roe and Kelo, and a not-short list of other un-Constitutional decisions handed down by the USSC in years past. George W. Bush promised the conservative base of our country that he would be that someone.
George W. Bush promised that he would appoint Supreme Court Justices like Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, both of whom are willing to overturn Roe, Kelo, and comparably un-Constitutional decisions right now. George W. Bush promised such Justices to the conservative base.
George W. Bush lied.
Let’s make no mistake here: George W. Bush is not a social conservative. Voting for him in 2004 was not about any falllacious presumption that he is. However, he did make one central, clear, definite promise to the social conservatives who form the voting base of the United States, and upon whose backs he was elevated to the Oval Office. That promise was that he would, unequivocally, appoint Supreme Court Justices who would rule as Justice Scalia and Clarence Thomas do.
He broke his word. The promise is no more. With the appointment of Harriet Miers, the President of the United States has sold out tens of millions of conservatives who had stood by him through all of his many failures in anticipation of him standing by them when it came time to make the all-important appointments to the Supreme Court. President Bush’s failures are legendary: amongst the long list of them are the appointment of Michael Brown to lead FEMA, the disastrousness of which was readily apparent in the wreckage left in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Many people lost their lives because the President appointed someone with connections to his Administration, instead of appointing someone with the qualifications for the position to which they are being appointed.
No one should be appointed to any position in government except where they are both fully qualified for the position to which they are being appointed AND have a clear track record illustrating their ability to make decisions of the nature that their new position would require.
Appointing cronies, instead of fully-qualified people with clear, publically-viewable track records, results in people perishing. Michael Brown was a crony. And Harriet Miers is the crony that broke the camel’s back.
Our nation was designed, via the brilliance of our Constitution, to be a democracy within the framework of a Constitutional Republic. Certain rights, like free speech, are guaranteed by the unambiguous language in the Bill of Rights. Many things, including abortion, are unmentioned in the Constitution, and are thus up to each of the states to render legal or not, as the people of each state democratically decide.
Pro-Constitution Justices, of which they are a great many with principled track records who would undoubtedly love to be appointed to the USSC, have just one duty. That is to rule on the cases that come before them in a way that is faithful to the text of the United States Constitution: not adding anything to it, not taking anything away from it, just applying the clear meaning of the text, as it is written. This judicial philosophy is the only one that can be acceptable to the conservative base of our country. It is one that, where held to resolutely, inevitably leads to the conclusion that decisions like Roe and Kelo must be overturned, for the very fact of their continuance is a contraversion of the Constitution.
George W. Bush does not understand that. His lack of understanding is easily demonstrated by his willingness to sign a clearly un-Constitutional “campaign finance reform” bill which banned certain forms of political speech within certain time frames around elections. Would the founding fathers, who risked their lives for political speech of a revolutionary nature, approve of such a hobbling of the First Amendment?
In the midst of this greatest-ever upsurge of conservative rebellion against a RINO President, one question rises above all the others: what does the future hold for the conservative base of this country? They are not going to want to man phone banks, stuff envelopes, recruit, and vote for a Republican candidate whom they see as another Bush, another appointer of eminently dubious Souter-Miers cyphers to the Supreme Court.
If the GOP nominates someone in 2008 who isn’t really a tried-and-true social conservative who has unshakable principles, the GOP will lose in 2008. The conservative base will never be fooled again by someone like the Bushes, who make promises to get votes and then flat out break them. The only way to inspire and engage the conservative base, without which the Republican nominee cannot win, is to nominate a real conservative, with a clear track record.
No flip-flops, no empty promises, no history of attempting to appease the conservative base with substance-free phrases like “culture of life”. The base doesn’t want words alone; the base wants concrete actions.
President George W. Bush is a lame-duck less than a year into his second term, a second-term given to him by tens of millions of social conservatives who believed that he would represent their interests and appoint Supreme Court Justices like Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. As he had given his word he would.
He is a lame-duck because he betrayed the conservative base, breaking his word and thus subjecting our Constitutional Republic to the spectre of more lost innocent life and more taken family homes, such as will be for as long as Roe and Kelo are left in place. Social conservatives will never forgive him for this. Nor will they forget: not in 2006, not in 2008, not in 2010…
Many social conservatives don’t agree with the GOP on other types of issues. Famously, many disagree with the whole Iraq situation, and feel, as a majority of Americans do, that we never should have gone in, shouldn’t be there now, and should get out ASAP. Some may feel this way about the Iraq situation because of the loss of life; others because it is draining hundreds of billions of dollars better placed back in the pockets of American taxpayers; others because George W. Bush pays more attention to what happens half a world away than to the needs within our own borders and taking care of our neighbors here; others because it’s obvious to virtually everyone that a true war against terrorism would start with securing the USA’s own porous borders instead of sending half-a-million U.S. military men and women into a joyless desert on the other side of the planet.
Other social conservatives disagree with the GOP on environmental issues: for example, the pro-life thing to do with regards to mercury pollution would be to seek to decrease it, given that small children and innocent little pre-born babies feel it’s effects most devastatingly. George W. Bush has gone exactly the opposite way, endorsing increases in mercury pollution from industrial sources. Most social conservatives care much more about the health of their children than they do about any particular industrial plant’s desire to contaminate local water with mercury.
In short, tens of millions of social conservatives who have voted for Republican candidates in the past are not, as the GOP continues to erroneously mis-presume, people who would vote Republican even if social issues (and by extension the USSC) weren’t on the table. Quite the opposite.
Where the GOP sells out the socially conservative base of the party, the GOP will lose. As George W. Bush has irrevocably sold out the conservative base of the party, association with him will inevitably be damaging to the campaigns of anyone who runs as a Republican in 2006, 2008, or 2010. True conservatives who currently hold or would one day like to hold elected office need to first and foremost run against George W. Bush. He has defined his Presidency in opposition to that which tens of millions of social conservatives care about most. So, for any future Republican candidate for the Presidency to secure their support, they must define themselves in sharp contrast to this lame-duck President. The race for 2008 began the day he nominated Harriet Miers.
For all of the tens of millions of social conservatives disgusted by the actions and inactions of this President, I say this: it’s time to take over the GOP. No more “big tent” on social issues. The Democratic Party is liberal on them; the GOP must be conservative on them. President Lincoln once said that the United States could not survive half-slave and half-free:
The GOP cannot survive half pro-life and half pro-abortion. The stances are obviously contradictory, and cannot co-exist. The GOP needs to be pro-life, and any Republican who is not needs to be exchanged for one who is in the next primary they face.
The GOP must be, and act, and govern, as the 100% pro-life party. It must stand for the right of families to keep their family homes. In short, it must stand with the base. For all the tens of millions of pro-life, pro-private property, pro-Constitution voters out there, please don’t let the fact that George W. Bush betrayed you push you away from your pursuit of reclaiming this nation. George W. Bush is not the GOP, and there are still men of true principle there. The task now is to identify them, and to support them directly, as opposed to giving money to the RNC for redistribution to others who will sell you out too. Choose individuals you support carefully, making sure that they are real social conservatives with the courage of their convictions. In short, directly support true conservatives who are the opposite of George W. Bush.
Bush surrendered to the approved short list of Democratic Senator Harry Reid, and to his own moral weakness, and to the dustbin of mediocrity.
We will not.
Reclaiming the Supreme Court is still necessary, and surrender is not something that true conservatives ever do.
Chris Knight
1 Comments:
The more words you need to explain your position, the more likely it's a fallacious opinion.
We don't know how Miss Miers will vote. But she's pro-life, and she carries a '45. These two facts tell me a lot about her.
And while I agree about some of the things you said about GWB, he's still the best we've had since Reagan. How 'bout we just concentrate on getting an even better one after him? Can't see how tearing down this one will help us get a better one later.
Unless you're actually a "fellow-traveler", which would then make some sort of sense.
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