Trojan Horses In The GOP

by Christopher G. Adamo

With the 2004 presidential election barely eighteen months away, and despite President George W. Bush's phenomenal popularity, it would be wise for Republican strategists to take stock of his vulnerabilities. Democrats certainly are. In particular, they appear to be positioning themselves so as to exploit a weakness that the President cannot seem to deal with, mainly because it doesn't reside within his administration, but rather within his party's Senate majority.

Shortly after the harrowingly close 2000 elections, Presidential advisor Karl Rove made a surprising discovery in the voting patterns of Conservative Christians. Among nineteen million such voters that had been expected to support Bush, approximately four million had not done so, but inexplicably left their ballots blank. Had only a tiny percentage of them pulled the lever for Bush, the Florida debacle would never have taken place. More significantly (from the Democrats' perspective), if the figure of four million had been increased by only fifty thousand nationwide, the election results would have been completely reversed, and President Gore would now be “negotiating” with Saddam Hussein, and begging Osama Bin Laden for “meaningful dialogue”, or some such nonsense.

Rove quickly dismissed the significance of those numbers, and instead suggested that the Republicans simply need to broaden their appeal and thus gain support from other constituency groups in order to make up the difference. But four million votes aren't easily substituted... a fact of which the Democrats are keenly aware. Furthermore, if the same disillusioning factors can be expanded to cause a similar reaction from the remainder of the nineteen million, Democrats will deal a lethal blow to the Bush Presidency. All other options having failed, it is worth the gamble, particularly since the greatest unsung heroes of the liberal movement, the Republican “moderates” in the Senate, seem once again to be willing to ride in to their rescue.

Among this nation's vast population of social conservatives, George W. Bush was far from being universally inspiring in the 2000 presidential race. Particularly due to his “lite-beer” version of liberal socialism, regularly trumpeted as “compassionate conservatism”, many Christian Conservatives were hesitant to give him their support.

The single argument which these people found most persuasive was that the nation's courts simply could not endure any more of the leftist judicial activists nominated and confirmed during the Clinton years. Furthermore, if the Supreme Court were to stand any chance of being returned to its constitutional roots, upcoming vacancies would have to be filled by a Republican President. And it was with this particular hope that the “religious right” signed on to the Bush candidacy.

Admittedly, September 11 changed all of that, at least for a time. But while Americans still recognize the significance of the “war on terror”, each passing day convinces them that the threat of further attacks is diminishing. Thus, other issues will likely assume dominance in their minds as time goes on. A 2004 election cycle, ensuing in the absence of any new terrorist activity, may well be definable by some version of “it's the economy stupid” or, in the minds of Conservatives, by whether or not the judiciary is in any better shape than it was in 2000. If it clearly is not, but the Republicans are perceived to have done all they could to improve it, Conservative resolve could extract an enormous political price from Democrats for their obstruction of the confirmation process. Enter the Republican “moderates.”

In a piece dated April 19, columnist Robert Novak explains how “old guard” and liberal GOP senators complain that they are growing weary of the President's continuing attempts to gain Senate approval for nominees such as Priscilla Owens and Miguel Estrada. Apparently, neither the credibility of the nation's courts, nor the integrity of the Constitution, holds much merit within the “politics as usual” wing of the GOP. It is so miserably inconvenient to have to stand on principle, when what they really want is to be able to get together with the opposition at some posh Washington eating and drinking establishment and laugh the whole thing off.

International affairs and the possibility of further terrorism on American soil render the political situation far too fluid to make absolute predictions about the outcome of the 2004 elections. However, it is certain that a Republican cave on judicial nominations will totally demoralize conservatives, generating an unmistakable backlash at the polls. Believe it. Democrat strategists clearly do.

Growing up during the turbulent decades of the ‘60's and ‘70's, Christopher  Adamo saw, to his dismay, the nation's moral foundations being destroyed  before his very eyes. But even then he was a staunch Conservative at heart,  and rejected outright the tenets of America's counterculture revolution.

 After a hitch in the Air Force, where he specialized in airborne  electro- optical systems, he pursued a career in the field of aerospace,  working for major defense contractors in California, Florida, and Colorado. But his career plans abruptly changed during the industry-wide downsizing that followed the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.

Presently he is working in the field of industrial instrumentation in the state of Wyoming. Concurrently, he has become involved in that state's political process, attending state GOP conventions as a delegate, and serving as a member of the Wyoming Republican Central Committee. He has also aided in the candidacies of local legislators and state senators, as well as a U.S. Senator and Congresswoman.

From 1993 to 1996, he edited and wrote for “The Wyoming Christian”, the state newsletter for Christian Coalition of Wyoming. During that period, he developed an acute awareness of the harm being done to Conservatism by liberal activists within the Republican Party as well as the Democrats. This remains a favorite theme of his articles, which now appear as a regular feature on GOPUSA.