There is no doubt that Kerry’s position represents a typical leftist approach. Is George Bush’s approach really all that different apart from tough talk? Yes, he went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq. (Kerry signed on to both, despite his laughable posturing on the issue.) Look what happens when our forces capture Islamists from Britain, Canada, and even our own country who are engaged in hostile military action against US forces.

They are increasingly (in the case of the terrorists with Western citizenship) being treated as criminal cases already. Note the slap on the wrist given to John Walker Lindh for an overt act of treason. Does anyone seriously believe Bush, ultimately a liberal, would actually order the execution of any British, Canadian, or even French terrorists being held at Guantanamo? Why haven’t these folks faced the threatened military tribunals?

The great problem we face this year is that the choices for president offered by the two major parties are simply various flavors of liberal - ranging from typical big-government globalists like Bush all the way to raving Marxists like Kucinich. Not one holds any genuine loyalty to the American people or their constitution. Congress is where conservatism has to make its stand. Electing representatives and senators who are sympathetic to Tancredo and his fellow patriots - ones who will oppose either Bush or Kerry - is essential. The president elected this year will be a basically treasonous liberal - with all that implies - regardless of which party wins.

The Kerry position simply reflects the liberals’ view that there is no such thing as evil in the world. In this case, it is tantamount to a denial that there are thug nations who would dabble in or collaborate surreptitiously with terrorist Islamicist fanatics to enhance their own clout (look at the career Arafat has built out of this, and what Hashemi, Khaddafi, Sadaam, and Bashir Al Assad are doing). Presumably if Kerry’s law enforcement officers ever somehow caught a terrorist, Kerry would then advocate therapy and rehabilitation, with careful attention to our own faults in failing to previously provide the conditions that would have supposedly caused the terrorist not to choose to act the way he did. Meanwhile, thoughts about opposing Bush to bring about a conservative renaissance are equally fatuous: the American people are not with us. Bush may be about as good you can realistically expect. Looking out on the cultural wreckage of America, we need to recognize that generations of work will be needed to reconstitute essential values destroyed in the 20th century, and that is childish to imagine that electing (or defeating) some one man at some one time to an office of rather limited powers, the US presidency, will somehow work a revolution in our favor.

Thucydides, I am afraid, is overoptimistic on one point. Liberals do believe in evil, or more exactly that there are evil people. They think that people like US are evil!

I am not so fatuous as to expect that a defeat of Bush by itself would lead to a conservative revolution in this country. But it would defeat the Bush policy of transforming the GOP from a right-liberal party into a left-liberal party and therefore have a reasonable chance of at least bringing the Republicans and the conservatives back to where they were in the 1990s before Bush began leading them even further the left than they already were. A Republican party that was even minimally loyal to its right-liberal principles could then hold a Democratic administration in check, and open the chance of a more conservative Republican being elected in 2008.

Appalling as it sounds, I believe Bush is about as far right as a president can be and still be electorally competitive. This is why I said a lot of work needs to be done on the culture before we can look to electoral politics for real conservative advances. At the same time, I believe the left is so dangerous that another 8 years of some democrat in office could demolish what small hopes there are. Imagine if Clinton had succeeded in making us all dependent on government for health care. The only hope for avoiding the democrats reducing the middle class to electoral dependency by expanding entitlements is Bush’s strategy of privatization. What would happen to the Constitution, already in a sorry state, if the US Supreme Court had every member replaced by a leftist? Nope, opposing Bush is just not responsible, whatever his shortcomings.

I don’t agree with Thucydides’ last comment. The Republican MINORITY in Congress turned back Clinton’s health care insurance plan. The Republican MAJORITY in Congress has passed one Bush liberal proposal after another.

In their current state, the only way the Republicans have any life in them is if they’re in opposition.

We can’t say Bush is as “far right” as a president can be, because we haven’t had a “far right” ( = Republican populist) candidate since ‘84. We just get one country-club, MBA type after another. I know one thing, any presidential candidate who vowed to end illegal immigration, Democrat or Republican, would win California at least. But apparently there isn’t a single politician in the U.S. with enough moxie to be willing to take the heat from his fellows of the ruling class for leaving the plantation, and run on a—dare I say it?—nativist platform.

Mr. Auster evocatively and with very recent proof suggests that one of my favorite conservative talk show hosts, David Gold (of the weekend afternoons on KSFO Hot Talk 560) is I’m afraid painfully right when he says he’s going to “hold his nose” and vote for the lesser of two evils come November 3rd. Gold (a talk show host on the rise and no lover of liberal politicians) calls this “The Great Conservative Dilemna”. So I ask, can we as conservatives can forget about our consciences and our beliefs and punch that voting card in the space next to Bush’s name knowing full well that Bush has 1) given or will be giving amnesty to illegals during his next four years, 2) kept our boys in harms way in a ridiculous “nation building” operation that continues to result in the deaths of hundreds of our boys and has gone on and will go on for years although we have already destroyed their army and captured their dictator 3) left our Southern flank wide open because of his fondness for the Mexican presidente, NAFTA and GATT and cheap labor for American business 4) stretched our armed forces SO thin that we cannot possibly prevent China from attacking and wiping out our longtime friends in Taiwan, 5) gone on a spending spree that would make Bill Clinton look like a conservative and 6) wiggled out of supporting a VERY important Consitutional Amendment that would make marriage between a man and a woman only and prevent states from legalizing homosexual marriage.

Well, no…Listen, I take back what I said!! I suppose I CAN’T vote for Bush…No…and so The Great Dilemna continues, like a bad soap opera. What CAN conservatives do? Write in, stay at home or vote Third Party, THAT’S what!!

To thucydides’ statement on how we had better vote for Bush or else all is lost with The Supremes, I must ask him to answer the question “What president appointed the wacked-out leftist Supreme David Souter?”. He (thucydides) must then answer the question, “With Supreme Sandra Day O’Connor having been ‘turned’ by the left (since her one vote saved Bush’s lection victory) to where she is voting with the left in the Court on many important issues, what is the point of having a supposed ‘conservative’ judge in the first place?”. Now, let’s all join in on the chorus:
“It doesn’t seem to make a hoot’s bit of difference”.

Mr. Bush wants to make Sandra Day O’Connor Chief Justice of The Supreme Court if Rehnquist retires during his Presidency. He would then place a liberal Hispanic (currently White House Counsel) on the Court, which he intends to do if at all possible.