www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Is the "McCain Surge" a good thing?

I think referring to John McCain as "Juan" McCain in this obviously pejorative manner is in very poor taste.

Ryan

thank you, Nathan!as my former choice Rudy has gone over to John, I'll be voting for him, or at least his slate of delegates. (if I vote for Rudy, it may dilute the McCain vote). McCain was a protege of Barry Goldwater, one of my boyhood heros. I voted for McCain in 2000 after the right wing fundie nut jobs smeared McCain with a disgusting rumor, and I'd have problem with doing it again.
Much Love,
Jonn

John,

No apology necessary! Great insight...

I think Mike Huckabee would unite SOME of the conservative base. He is certainly good on social issues, but his style of governance is not entirely conservative.

God bless,

Gordo

McCain was a protege of Barry Goldwater??!!

Some of his positions seem to be against a lot of what Goldwater stood for. Campaign Finance Laws, voting against the tax cut, in Iraq for maybe 100 years to name a few off of the top of my head.

I'll never forget the brouhaha over defunding PBS as well...

If ever there was an organization that deserved defunding it IS PBS! I think there were even some cartoons depicting the "evil" Republicans attacking Big Bird or some other such nonsense. Personally, I think they set their sights too low at the beginning of the Republican Revolution. They should have eliminated the Department of Education by marching for three days around the DOE Federal Office building, carrying the Contract With America in procession, and blowing trumpets until the walls came down!

Ahhh...those heady days before school lunch...

Viva La Revolucion!

Gordo

That atttitude may well mean that the Democrats will win.

I'm curious: Is it more important to conservative Republicans to maintain ideological purity or to win elections?

-- John

Purity by every measure of conservativism, from fiscal, social, and national defense, is impossible with Romney, McCain, or Huckabee. It's more that McCain has brushed up against certain elements of the Republican base the wrong way in the past years.

Terry

Since 'extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice' as Barry Goldwater once famously said, allow me to offer a somewhat different take on all of this.

The only two people in the GOP race who are suitable to be president are Ron Paul and Alan Keyes. John McCain is certainly not. And, no, neither is Mitt Romney who, as John Derbyshire deliciously explained recently, believes most everything that John McCain believes, at least when he is in a room full of people who do believe those things.

So therefore the McCain phenomenom is good, salutary, and commendable, as well as not necessarily so surprising.

Since the GOP has comprehensively frittered away any semeblance of conservative principles and constitutional values as we have witnessed in the Congress since 1994 and the White House since 2001, there is nothing to cry about or be upset about here with regard to John McCain.

And if a McCain nomination will cause a groundswell among those who still consider themselves at least somewhat conservative to bolt and look for genuine conservative candidates elsewhere, and rock the GOP corrupt edifice to its foundations, then John McCain may yet augur a genuine renewal of conservative, Christian, and constitutional princple.

Best,
Robster

The following was written by Howard Phillips on behalf of Michael Peroutka, the Constitution Party candidate for president in 2004. I respectfully offer this up for all Americans who consider themselves principled conservatives. It's probably even more relevant now with John McCain than it was 4 years ago with George W. Bush.

By Howard Phillips

The Constitution Party, then called the U.S. Taxpayers Party, was established in 1992, with its goal to limit the federal government to its delegated, enumerated, constitutional functions and to restore American jurisprudence to its Biblical common-law foundations. Neither John Kerry nor George W. Bush shares that goal.

Both President Bush and Senator Kerry have voted for or signed into law more money for Planned Parenthood and other pro-abortion groups, more money for homosexual activist groups, more money for the United Nations, more money for foreign aid, more money for federal intervention in education, not to mention the biggest budgets and budget deficits in the history of our Republic. Neither Bush nor Kerry has supported �Ten Commandments Judge� Roy Moore and his Constitution Restoration Act to prohibit reliance on foreign law and deny federal judges the authority to restrict our acknowledgment of God. Both men favor amnesty for illegal aliens and policies that benefit Communist China to the detriment of U.S. national security.

You and I know these things, but most �conservatives� plan to vote for George W. Bush. Some say the reason they plan to vote for Bush is judicial appointments. But that argument lost its validity when President Bush intervened to prevent the nomination of Congressman Pat Toomey over pro-abortion Sen. Arlen Specter in the recent Pennsylvania Republican Senate primary. If Senator Specter is re-elected on Nov. 2 and the GOP holds its majority in the U.S. Senate, Specter will become chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, situated to act in collaboration with his liberal Democrat soul mates to prevent the confirmation of pro-life judicial nominees-and positioned to argue to Bush, if he is re-elected, against the appointment of judges who are comprehensively opposed to abortion. For these reasons and others, it is specious to vote for George W. Bush on the basis of supposed advantages for our side with respect to judicial confirmations.

Moreover, just as Senate Democrats have blocked Republican judicial nominees, the GOP majority in the Senate can-if they summon the will to do so-block nominees by a President Kerry. Of course, only three GOP Senators voted to oppose the confirmation of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Only nine voted against Stephen Breyer, and no Republican Senator voted against confirming either pro-abortion David Souter or pro-abortion Sandra Day O�Connor. The positions of both of these nominees were a matter of public record when the Senate placed them on the Supreme Court of the United States.

But there is a greater reason that many conservatives are reluctant to vote for the Constitution Party�s Michael Peroutka. It is fear of the �Bogey Man,� and John Kerry is the Bogey Man of 2004. George W. Bush is presented as �the lesser of two evils,� and Bogey Man John Kerry is characterized, perhaps accurately, as evil incarnate.

Kerry personifies the antithesis of what most conservatives believe, but he is only the latest in a long line of Bogey Men who have diverted us from putting our Republic back on a constitutional track. In 1992, most conservatives were understandably frightened by Bogey Man Bill Clinton and voted against me when I offered then, as Michael Peroutka does now, a constitutionally correct alternative to both major parties. Despite your votes for Bush the Elder, the Bogey Man won in 1992.

Bogey Man Bill Clinton reappeared in 1996 and, once again, most conservatives rejected the only candidate who offered a Christian, constitutional plan of action and invested their votes in Kansas Sen. Bob Dole. There were some exceptions. Jim Dobson declared after the fact that he had cast his vote for Howard Phillips. Of course, despite conservative support for Dole, Clinton won again in 1996.

Last time, Al Gore was the Bogey Man and, once again, conservatives rejected the Constitution Party nominee in favor of George Bush the Younger. In 2000, the Bogey Man lost, but what did it profit America to have elected the �lesser of two evils�? Would we have had the unwise, unnecessary, unconstitutional war on Iraq if Gore had been elected? I doubt it.

We have traveled farther down the wrong path with a Republican president and Congress than we would have if we had experienced gridlock with a Democratic president and a Republican majority in the House and the Senate.

As president, Michael Peroutka would end federal intervention in education, cut off federal funding of Planned Parenthood and homosexual activist groups, withdraw from NATO, the UN, NAFTA, WTO, the World Bank, and the IMF. He would seal our borders, cancel the George W. Bush-Vicente Fox treaty to pay Social Security benefits to illegal aliens who have returned to Mexico, expel illegal aliens, end all foreign aid, withdraw from Iraq, oppose the Patriot Act, fight all forms of socialized medicine, and appoint only judges who are 100 percent against abortion. Peroutka would abolish the IRS and replace the income tax with a revenue tariff. He would recognize the threat posed by Communist China and rebuild the U.S. Navy, which has dropped from 600 ships under Ronald Reagan to fewer than 250 today.

If conservatives don�t vote for what they believe, they will never get what they want. Losing as slowly as possible means we still lose. Going over the cliff at a supposedly slower speed still means we are going to crash.

A vote withheld from both the Democrats and Republicans weakens that which is wrong and strengthens the cause of that which is right. Any vote cast for constitutionally sound, Biblically based policies hastens the day when, should God will it, we can witness the restoration of the Republic. It is not for us to decide elections, but rather to determine where we shall invest our precious franchise. God alone determines the outcome, and He blesses those who trust in Him.

McCain is pretty much a carbon copy of the Democratic party so voting for him would be the same thing.

Let's recount what 'winning' elections has brought us, a globalist who spends like a drunken sailor like George W Bush isn't much of a victory for Conservatives. You live in Ohio like me, when Ken Blackwell was rumored to be challenging Bob Taft all I heard about was how important it was to have a Republican in the Governor's mansion, what a disaster that turned out to be.

John, I've heard it all before, how voting for the Constitutional party is like voting for the Democrat. Which is absurd. Republican shills act like my vote belongs to them. It doesn't. A vote for the Constitutional party is a vote for the Constitutional party and for limited government and for the sovereignty of the US, what's left of it.

McCain needs to be sent a message loud and clear,

No Se Puede!

(I'm not sure if I wrote that right by the way )

Monomakh

Spanish is the most spoken language in the Americas, perhaps it is time we realized that we can't pretend we're isolated forever and learn the language of the majority of the people of the Western Hemisphere.

I'm sorry to hear that you side with the racists in groups like La Raza who say the same thing. It's ashame to see racists like La Raza want to impose their language and culture on this nation. Many think that racism is a thing of the past, it obviously isn't. I guess La Raza doesn't have any respect for the immigration laws of the USA, so why should the current culture and language of the USA be any different.

As a side note, Ukrainians were told the same thing for centuries by Russian imperialists and later by the Communists, learn Russian, it is the most prominent in the Empire.

Monomakh

We don't need to learn Spanish, but it would help to learn about the Spanish and Latino culture. Gabriel Garc�a M�rquez is one of my favorite modern story-tellers.

Terry

I've never heard of La Raza or if they are racist, either way, if something is correct, I can't help that they've repeated it.

As to Ukrainians being told to learn Russian - isn't that what some Americans tell immigrants all the time? "Come to the USofA and you better Learn English", I think the analogy is backwards. Actually it is what the US has been telling the world for decades, want to do business with the US, learn English; want to work here, learn English; want to go to school, tell your kids to leave the Spanish at home...

I think it is an ENORMOUS mistake to expect the US to adopt Spanish as one of its national languages. English still remains (as it should) the language of commerce and culture - and with it, opportunity. (In the EU, English is also the first language of commerce, with German being the second.) To accomodate Spanish speakers to the point where they do not need to learn English to function or even gain employment holds them back from opportunity. To borrow a quote from St. Francis deSales, "It is so nice as to be unkind."

I would favor, rather, expanding locally driven ESL programs.

God bless,

Gordo