The American Spectator

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Republican vs. Conservative

6.5.06 @ 12:01AM

CHANNELING
Re: Michael Fumento's TV and Tykes Don't Mix:

One thing I've always said about cable TV: "It takes you twice as long to find out there's nothing on."
-- P. Aaron Jones
Huntington Woods, Michigan

BIG TENT COLLAPSE?
Re: Andrew Cline's The Task at Hand:

I agree with your assessment. The Era of the Big Tent is over. The Big Tent requires "moderation," i.e. compromising conservative principles to elect what we hope is a conservative president. Conservatives should bolt the GOP and form a party based on, well, principles. True, it's going to be a smaller tent. At least we would return to a two-party system. (In fact, I'd like to see many parties on both ends of the political spectrum.) And so what if we don't capture the presidency? If we can persuade enough conservative Democrats to abandon their party, we might achieve a kind of parliamentary voting block sufficient to make life miserable for the (thanks Michael Savage) Demicans and Republicrats -- and their president. If the new party's legislators eventually succumb to the pleasures of Beltway approbation and legal (and some illegal) bribery like the current bunch, we vote them out or break away yet again.
-- Terry Robb
Columbia, Missouri

As a resident of Texas, I'm not surprised by W. He is a big government guy, just like his dad. Who can forget his attack on conservatism with the politically correct slogan "compassionate conservative"? That slogan to me was as infuriating as Clintons "we didn't pay our fair share" class warfare attack. I still consider Reagan's greatest mistake the choice of George Sr. as VP. George Sr. is a great guy but he is a big government guy.

I always thought Cheney was a conservative, but you have to look at where he came from. Chief of Staff for Gerald Ford? We were hoodwinked.
--unsigned

The legendary money manager Peter Lynch was fond of noting that most Americans spend more time planning their next vacation than they do planning their financial futures. I would add that most Americans spend even less time, virtually none, actually examining the voting records of their senators and congressmen and comparing those records to the politicians' campaign promises and, more importantly, to the voter's own wishes. Yet this is not hard to do, nor does it take a great deal of time -- as elections draw nearer there are scads of sources for this information, from local newspapers to hundreds if not thousands of websites.

So many issues these days, so many votes in Congress, have major, gargantuan implications for both our near-term and long-term future: spending bills laden with obscene levels of pork; decisions on development of domestic energy sources; further expansion of entitlement programs; immigration, to name just a few. If you don't know specifically where your guys stand on these matters, and more importantly how they have acted to either advance or defeat them, then in good conscience you should find out before you vote.

Do your homework, assay the record in total (recognizing that sometimes everybody has to go along to get along), and if the record does not match up pretty well with what you want and what you thought you were getting, well then off with his or head, and let the chips fall where they may, so-called party "loyalty" be damned.

Too many of those folks in Washington will never get the message until threat is turned into action.
-- C. Vail

I totally agree with Andrew Cline's "The Task at Hand," of 2 June.

After the GOP took both Congress and Senate after 40 years of the Dems' terror, WE HAD IT ALL!!!! And what did you do with it? YOU SQUANDRED IT!!!!

As a conservative Pennsylvanian, my husband and I felt betrayed when our president, George W. Bush, and my Senator, Senator Rick Santorum, supported Arlen Specter instead of of Pat Toomey, a real conservative. Specter won by a small margin and many of us feel that Toomey could have won if President Bush and Senator Santorum had not supported Specter, with his liberal ideologies.

If there is a Republican candidate worthy of any part of our retired income, that's who gets our money -- not the GOP RINOs. Hopefully, that candidate will be George Allen of Virginia. Prior to moving to Pennsylvania, we lived in Northern Virginia and what we saw of Allen, we liked.

Someone once said, "We have a two party system. The evil party and the stupid party. We Republicans are the stupid party." But don't take advantage of us for too long. Our patience is beginning to wear thin.
-- Stella L. Jatras
Camp Hill, Pennsylvania

Letter to the Editor

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