The American Spectator

Reader Mail

(Page 5 of 12)

br> Rolla, Missouri /p>

Quin Hillyer wants George W. Bush to "surprise" conservatives in his upcoming State of the Union speech. Good luck. The only surprise here is how long it has taken conservatives to figure out that "compassionate conservatism" is "liberalism-lite." At least Democrats have been honest about their obsequious intentions to "buy" the American electorate. Republicans still haven't figured out that their base doesn't want government handouts for everything.

p>In reality, there were only three good reasons to elect George W. Bush twice: his stance on terror, Al Gore, and John Kerry. br> -- Arnold Ahlert br> Boca Raton, Florida /p>

Sadly, President Bush has learned the lessons of Ronald Reagan's second administration -- lessons of compromise and pandering to the public that may have helped Reagan's poll numbers go up, but were bad governing.

By the end of his second term Ronald Reagan (who saved the PLO from annihilation and recognized it as the official and only representative of the Palestinians) was riding a tide of popularity for "growing" in office -- code language for compromising with Democrats by raising taxes, granting blanket amnesty and citizenship to millions of illegal aliens, appointing moderates to the Supreme Court and Federal bench, creating a new bureaucracy called the Department of Veterans Affairs, expanding the Departments of Energy and Education, trying to bring peace to the Middle East with an unworkable scheme involving a Jordanian-Palestinian "federation" and increasing Federal spending and deficits to highs unmatched in the history of the United States. But it wasn't this pandering and wholesale sellout of conservative principles that made Reagan great it was his unwavering commitment to the destruction of the Soviet Union and securing America's status as the world's only superpower.

Bush should ignore both the right and left and focus on keeping taxes low, the economy chugging along and fighting terrorism the three things that matter most to him. To hell with poll numbers, the media, pundits and other "back seat" Presidents.

p>With the mythologizing of Ronald Reagan, beyond all resemblance to the man, the conservative movement has created a standard that makes it nearly impossible for a Republican politician to measure up. (Ronald Reagan the 40th President of the United States and the greatest President of the 20th century would be squarely in the "RINO" camp based upon what is now being called conservative.) The time has come for to let Reagan be Reagan and end the mythological conservative "Camelot" that is destroying any hopes of conservative ideas dominating the U.S. political landscape. For those foolish enough to believe a Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama administration would produce a new "Reagan" or conservative resurgence look to what such naiveté led to in 2006. In the immortal words of Barry Goldwater, another great conservative who wouldn't be acceptable to most of today's self-described conservative, "Let's grow up conservatives!" br> -- Michael Tomlinson br> Jacksonville, North Carolina

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