From: clc5q@hemlock.cs.Virginia.EDU (Clark L. Coleman)
Subject: Re: No Difference Between the Parties?
Organization: University of Virginia Computer Science Department
Distribution: usa
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 20:20:39 GMT

In article <1992Sep7.190138.986@dg-rtp.dg.com> meyers@leonardo.rtp.dg.com (Bill Meyers) writes:
>
>Sarah Brady is a Republican.

Brilliant. I post an article SPECIFICALLY stating that I am only dealing with
the Congress, and that I don't want to talk about individuals like George Bush
because they are not as reliable (statistically) as a larger sample of a few
hundred Republican members of Congress, and I get this gem.

>
>While a Republican Congress would be better, it wouldn't be good enough.
>It's also important to convince the Republican Party to support the RKBA.

I have posted the numerical summaries of a couple of key votes in the last
year that I took from the NRA magazines.  They showed that Republicans
support the RKBA by an overwhelming majority (e.g. 7 to 1 against a recent
anti-hunting bill that was incredibly ridiculous --- yet Democrats voted 55%
in favor of it.)  The Republican Party, on the whole, supports the RKBA,
and if we removed the Democratic Party majorities in Congress, there would
no longer be any need for the weak ones to compromise in order to get other
things passed.

>Sure, they're a whole lot better than the Democrats -- but they're a whole
>lot _worse_ now than only 5 or 10 years ago.  In fact I daresay they're a
>whole lot worse now than just 4 years ago -- i.e., since the last election.

Evidence? No isolated anecdotes or fuzzy impressions, please. Some hard
numbers on voting patterns in the Congress would be nice.

>
>So while I will personally continue to spend time and effort on behalf of
>_some_ Republican candidates for Congress (and state/local offices), and I
>will not actively try to make Bush lose -- by voting for Clinton -- I won't
>try to help Bush win, by voting for him, either.  If he does in fact lose,
>tough potatoes.  Think of it as a long term investment in good government.

If Bush loses, he (and other country club Republicans like Bob Michel and Bob
Dole, etc.) will get the message about breaking pledges about raising taxes,
passing too many regulations that hurt the economy ("kindler and gentler" is
what Bush calls it, I believe) and perhaps even that they should have rolled
the tanks all the way to Baghdad when they had the chance.  They will NOT
say, "Well, it was that ban on imported semiautos that cost Bush the election.
We'd better cut that out next time."  Nor will a victory mean, "We can ban
semiautos and still win --- who cares about the NRA?"

No, I hate to burst anyone's bubble, but the election will likely be decided
on issues of character, the economy, the family and government policy, taxes,
etc.  Guns will be in the noise margin as a deciding factor.  We aren't going
to "send a message" at the Presidential level in 1992 about the RKBA. We
might do it at a much lower level, though, in individual races for Congress
or for state and local offices.

With 99.9% of the nation's voters turning their primary attention to economic
and other issues, and no RKBA message being sent one way or the other, what
we are going to do is decide what Congress we have for the next 2 years, and
what President we have for the next 4 years, and what Supreme Court we have
for the next 30 years. (Byron White will likely retire if Bush wins, getting
replaced by a younger conservative; Blackmun and Stevens will probably retire
ASAP if Clinton wins, so they can be replaced by younger liberals who will
be there for another 30 years.)  Considering the following:

1) Lack of noticeable message about RKBA; drowned out in shouting about
     the economy, family values, personal character, etc.

2) Long term impact of Supreme Court appointments.

3) Long term impact of new government programs (e.g. national health care)
     that we will get from Clinton and a Democratic Congress, and which
     seem impossible to get rid of once they are in place (look at Great
     Britain, with a terrible system they can't get rid of).

It is not credible to me that we would just have some short term pain if
Bush loses, which we can balance against the long term gain because the
politicians will get the message we sent. We would have short term pain
and long term pain.

Failure to get the Democrats out of at least one house of Congress will send
the message that they can retain power even in the biggest wave of voter
antagonism towards incumbents (and the Congress) in decades. They will take
that message and run with it for another 40 years.


-- 
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"It is seldom that any liberty is lost all at once." David Hume
|||  clc5q@virginia.edu (Clark L. Coleman)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns,talk.politics.misc