As often happens, our current quandary was put best by my valued lifelong buddy and libertarian colleague, Professor Ralph Raico. Ralph was an ardent Buchananite, but as Pat faded in the primaries, and the horrible nomination of Slick Willie loomed, Ralph began to admonish me, in his hilarious mocking half-serious tone: "Remember Murray, we must do nothing to harm the president." When the Perot phenomenon hit, Ralph, for some unaccountable reason, failed to share our enthusiasm for the little punk from East Texas. After the punk's Great Betrayal of the Perotvian movement, I was ranting and raving over the phone to Ralph, who took it all in, and then concluded: "I'm glad to see you're working your way back to the president."

Yes, gulp, and here we are. It is late July, and we're down to the grim, realistic choice: which of two sets of bozos is going to rule us in the years 1993-1997? Lord knows, it's a crummy, terrible choice, presented to us by a rotten, extra-constitutional two-party system that is fastened upon us by restrictive laws and a moribund electoral college system. But there it is, and there we are. Which set should we choose to rule us?

No publication has been more bitterly critical of George Bush than Triple R; certainly no publication has been more vituperatively opposed to Bush's lionized Gulf War. But yet, dammit, we are working our way back to the president. What? "Four More Years?" Yes, yes, for consider the alternative. It's come down to Bush or Clinton, and there can be only one rational answer for the conservative, the paleolibertarian, or indeed for any sensible American. Four More Years!

Let's boil the reasons down into two categories: the positive reasons to vote for Bush, and the negative reasons to vote against Bill Clinton.

l. First and foremost, Bush ain't Bill Clinton (see below).

2. Bush has by far the most pro-American policy on the Middle East since Jack Kennedy; he is the only president since Kennedy not to serve as a lick-spittle for the State of Israel, the only one not to function as an abject tool of the powerful Zionist lobby, led by AIPAC (the American Israel Political Action Committee, which somehow escapes being a registered agent of the State of Israel). The greatest credit, of course, goes to Secretary of State James Baker, who formulated this policy, and maintained it under the most vicious pressure. But Bush deserves credit for picking Baker and backing him up; further, with only a little stretching, Bush/Baker can take credit for the Israeli election that deposed the little monster Shamir, and brought in a more rational government in Israel. Bush-Baker stood firm on delaying the $10 billion loan guarantee until Zionist settlements are slowed down on the Arab lands of the West Bank.

3. Despite tremendous pressure by New World Orderites at the New York Times, by Democrats, and elsewhere, Bush has kept his cool, and has not gotten American troops or even airmen involved in a shooting war (read "quagmire") in ex-Yugoslavia. As readers of Triple R know by now, no one, even the most fanatical Croat or Bosnian Muslim, surpasses Triple R in hatred of the Serbs; and yet we recognize that American military involvement in the Balkans would be a catastrophe that could accomplish nothing. The poor Bosnian Muslims, who understandably want someone to save them from genocidal slaughter, claim that all the U.S. need do to take out the Serbs and save Sarajevo is to bomb Serb gun emplacements in the mountains surrounding that bleeding city. Rubbish. Objective military experts estimate that it would take no less than 500,000 American infantry troops to secure Bosnia and Sarajevo, and God knows how many more to actually roll back the Serbs. America, Keep Out of Bosnia!

While Bush has been lauded for his action in Desert Storm, the really sensible foreign policy is to do nothing, and Bush's dithering nature has, apart from the Gulf War, led him to Keep Cool and to stay out of foreign quagmires.

4. Last but certainly not least: the president has reconciled with Pat Buchanan. At last Bush has shown some smarts, and perhaps even a spark of a sense of justice. After a vicious and despicable smear campaign by Bond, Bennett, Quayle et al., the Bush people – while of course not apologizing – are at least implicitly repudiating their own smears by rolling out the welcome mat for the "Nazi," "fascist," etc. Pat Buchanan, who will speak at the Houston convention. So OK. That was the least the Bushies could do, but they did it. The rally for the Greater Good, the rally to stop the advent of Total Evil, can start mobilizing.

Which brings us to the ghastly spectre of Clintonian Democracy.

CONTRA CLINTON

1. Clintesist. Yikes!

2. The Clinton-managed Democrat convention was the leftest ever: multi-culturalism reigned triumphant, with the "Lesbian Rights" banner almost as prevalent as "Clinton for President." Clinton means the triumph of ultra-feminism, trillions more of our dough for inner cities, and the aggrandizement of "gay rights" and other phony "rights" over the genuine rights of private property.

3. Are we the only publication that detests Al Gore, the alleged "moderate" check on Slick Willie's possible liberalism? Al Gore was one of the biggest spenders in the wild-spending recent Congress. Al Gore, furthermore, is an extreme left-environmentalist, who shores up Clinton's left flank on this issue. (As an Arkansas governor, seeking jobs and growth, Clinton had a sensible [therefore media-designated "poor"] environment record as governor.)

4. Gore and Clinton is the most toadying pro-Israel presidential ticket in recent history. Triple R was one of the first publications to note that David Ifshin, general counsel for the Clinton campaign, was a leading attorney for the sinister AIPAC. As if this were not enough, Albert Gore is undoubtedly the politician most beloved by organized Zionism in decades. A recent New York Times article, discussing the Clinton-Gore ticket, noted that Jews would vote enthusiastically for Clinton because Clinton had received "the heckscher" from Albert Gore, now vice-presidential candidate. "Heckscher," the Times article went on to explain, is Yiddish for "imprimatur." But what the Times felt it unnecessary to explain is the intriguing problem: "Why is Al Gore so beloved by Jews that he has it in his power to confer the heckscher?" Perhaps one clue to the answer is the fact that the left-libertarian columnist Nat Hentoff, himself a moderate Zionist, in 1988 was moved to dub Al Gore, "the Senator from Likud."

5. The verdamte neocons, who carry a kind of negative heckscher for us, are shifting from Bush back to their old home, the Democracy, in honor of the Clinton-Gore ticket. The neocon Wall Street Journal has been oozing friendliness to the Clinton ticket, as has left Neocon Central, the New Republic. Indeed, the neocon shift to Clinton has been detailed by one of their own, Fred Barnes, in the New Republic. ("They're Back!," August 3) Ex-Democrat neocon Richard Schifter, assistant secretary of state for human rights in the Reagan and Bush administrations, has quit Bush and is now a foreign policy adviser to Clinton. Ditto veteran right-wing Social Democrat and neocon Penn Kemble, of Freedom House. Then, there is a full-scale "neocon outreach effort" being conducted by David Ifshin and by Clinton buddy Michael Mandelbaum, professor at The Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies.

Norman Podhoretz, Field Marshall of the neocons, hasn't quite shifted yet, but he is strongly tempted. Even more tempted is young Commentary smear artist and "global democrat" Joshua Muravchik, of the American Enterprise Institute. Muravchik explains that "what's kept me firmly in the Republican voting column is foreign policy. But on foreign policy, Clinton's stands are preferable to Bush's." In what way? "On what I care about – human rights, promoting democracy, keeping some sense of ideals in our foreign policy, Clinton is more amenable than Bush." Translated from the code words, this means, plain and simple, that Clinton is more pro-Israel and more devoted to a neocon-guided New World Order than George Bush. Or, as Jeanne Kirkpatrick, herself still not back in the Clinton camp, explains more candidly: the major factors impelling the neocons into the Reagan camp in 1980 were "Soviet expansionism," now disappeared; and the Carter administration's alleged "hostility to Israel." Kirkpatrick comments: "That issue still exists but it's flipped. George Bush is putting the pressure [on Israel] now."

The right-wing neocons, headed by Irving Kristol and including Robert Bork, feel no tug toward the Clinton ticket. Partly, because the Kristoleans are a tad less socialistic than the others; but there is another more personal consideration; Crown Prince Bill Kristol is the chief-of-staff, the control, of Dannie Quayle. They're not going to start deserting their own ticket.

6. Let's never, never forget the looming menace of the monster Hillary. Sure, they cleaned up her act until November; they shut the witch up, stopped her from openly reviling baking cookies, they bobbed and blonded her hair and took that damned headband off (courtesy of the chic Beverly Hills hairdresser Cristophe), and made her look like a sophisticated matron instead of an aging grad student. But you can bet your bottom dollar that if Clinton wins in November, that the monster Hillary will be back: worse than ever, in control, nasty, tough, and very leftist – she and her bosom buddy, the mannish, lantern-jawed left-wing lawyer Susan Thomases.

Mom and Dad: Hillary is Out to Grab Your Kids! Hillary is the prophet of the children's "rights" movement, a movement now openly backed by left-"libertarian" philosopher Tibor Machan, a movement that encourages 11-year-olds to sue their parents for "malpractice." Any parent can be accused by some officious biddy of "malparenting," and since 11-year-olds and 9-year-olds and 5-year-olds are not exactly legal beagles, you know darned well who will really be doing the suing: leftist ACLU-type lawyers, lawyers cut in the mold of Hillary and Thomases. When the campaign began, ultra-left social theorist Garry Wills hailed the "brilliance" of Hillary as a "children's rights theorist." That means: the government, the leftist lawyers and social workers are out to get your kids! There is a lot of confused discussion about family "values," about what these terms really mean, and about what they don't mean. Well, there's one clear test: "family values" means that kids get brought up, get governed by, their parents. Anti-family values means that other folk; bureaucrats, lawyers, duly licensed social workers and counselors and "therapists," the rapacious, power-hungry, leftist New Class, get to bring up and run everyone's kids: all in the name, of course, of children's "rights" and "liberation."

A vote for Bill Clinton is a vote to destroy the last vestige of parental control and responsibility in America. Stopping the coming to power of the Clintons is a must in any attempt to preserve American family life.

All these reasons for voting for Bush as against Clinton are, unfortunately and as usual defensive: A victory for Bush will – at least partly – hold back the hordes for another four years. Holding back the hordes may be important, but it's not exactly soul-satisfying. What would be soul-satisfying would be mounting our own offensive, taking the offensive at long last. Some day, we must launch a total counterrevolution: in government, in the economy, in the culture, everywhere, against malignant left-liberalism. When O when do we get to start?