Conservatives Against Bush
Reaganite Doug Bandow votes no on Bush:
Quite simply, the president, despite his well-choreographed posturing, does not represent traditional conservatism -- a commitment to individual liberty, limited government, constitutional restraint and fiscal responsibility. Rather, Bush routinely puts power before principle. As Chris Vance, chairman of Washington state's Republican Party, told the Economist: "George Bush's record is not that conservative ... There's something there for everyone."Even Bush's conservative sycophants have trouble finding policies to praise. Certainly it cannot be federal spending. In 2000 candidate Bush complained that Al Gore would "throw the budget out of balance." But the big-spending Bush administration and GOP Congress have turned a 10-year budget surplus once estimated at $5.6 trillion into an estimated $5 trillion flood of red ink. This year's deficit will run about $445 billion, according to the Office of Management and Budget.
Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation reports that in 2003 "government spending exceeded $20,000 per household for the first time since World War II." There are few programs at which the president has not thrown money; he has supported massive farm subsidies, an expensive new Medicare drug benefit, thousands of pork barrel projects, dubious homeland security grants, an expansion of Bill Clinton's AmeriCorps, and new foreign aid programs. What's more, says former conservative Republican Rep. Bob Barr, "in the midst of the war on terror and $500 billion deficits, [Bush] proposes sending spaceships to Mars."
Unfortunately, even the official spending numbers understate the problem. The Bush administration is pushing military proposals that may understate defense costs by $500 billion over the coming decade. The administration lied about the likely cost of the Medicare drug benefit, which added $8 trillion in unfunded liabilities. Moreover, it declined to include in budget proposals any numbers for maintaining the occupation of Iraq or underwriting the war on terrorism. Those funds will come through supplemental appropriation bills. Never mind that Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz had promised that reconstruction of Iraq could be paid for with Iraqi resources. (Yet, despite the Bush administration's generosity, it could not find the money to expeditiously equip U.S. soldiers in Iraq with body armor.)
Nor would a second Bush term likely be different. Nothing in his convention speech suggested a new willingness by Bush to make tough choices. Indeed, when discussing their domestic agenda, administration officials complained that the media had ignored their proposals, such as $250 million in aid to community colleges for job training. Not mentioned was that Washington runs a plethora of job training programs, few of which have demonstrated lasting benefits. This is the hallmark of a limited-government conservative?
Jonah Goldberg, a regular contributor to NRO, one of Bush's strongest bastions, complains that the president has "asked for a major new commitment by the federal government to insert itself into everything from religious charities to marriage counseling." Indeed, Bush seems to aspire to be America's moralizer in chief. He would use the federal government to micromanage education, combat the scourge of steroid use, push drug testing of high school kids, encourage character education, promote marriage, hire mentors for children of prisoners and provide coaches for ex-cons.
Conservative pundit Andrew Sullivan worries that Bush "is fusing Big Government liberalism with religious right moralism. It's the nanny state with more cash."
Bandow's essay is anything but love letter to Kerry, whom Bandow calls "bad for the cause of individual liberty and limited government." But, a Bush victory, based on the results of his presidency? "Catastrophic."
Yeah, but there's the war.
Crid at September 11, 2004 6:56 PM
Yeah that war.... the one that was sold as a defensive measure against an "imminent threat" when, as we all know, it was Israel that was threatened. Doesn't the USA feel a bit chagrined, having been conned into acting as a proxy-bully on behalf of a country with a population the size of Washington state?
Stu "Green Card" Harris at September 12, 2004 8:32 AM
I don't think the prez ever feels chagrined.
LYT at September 12, 2004 3:56 PM
I don't know if the president knows the meaning of "chagrined."
Amy Alkon at September 12, 2004 3:59 PM
Stu, I can't put Amy's blog through this again... But WMD's were not how the war was sold. It was only two years ago, remember? No? Then trust me.
>"...chagrined..."
Why are young liberals so fascinated with the conditions of interior life?
See this, it's a fairly harsh Bush critique from a writer I kinda like. Note that he doesn't call Bush "stupid."
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040913fa_fact1
My vote's in the air. If it comes down for Kerry, it will be to deadlock the WH against the Hill, to check governmental authority. Furthermore, a Kerry presidency would essentially doom Hilary's hopes of career advancement. I like to call this maneuver "Charles Nelson Reilly to block."
Crid at September 12, 2004 6:14 PM
Just looked at the calendar. Two years ago today, Bush made a speech at the UN. I remember, because at the time I was across the street at the Intercontinental sleeping off a gentle hangover, and wondering why there'd been so many earphone-boys asking to see ID every time I stumbled through the lobby.
WMDs, you will note, appear neither in the introduction nor the summary. Mostly it's about whether the US is a force to be taken seriously.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20020912-1.html
Crid at September 12, 2004 8:40 PM
...whoops, whether the *UN* is a force to be taken serio... Ah, whatever.
Crid at September 12, 2004 8:43 PM
> "Why are young liberals so fascinated.....
Who's young? Who's liberal???
Personally I'm a non-young socialist. With a good memory for recent State-of-the-Union speeches, too.
Stu "Green Card" Harris at September 13, 2004 8:12 AM
Crid- you made my day saying your vote is in the air.
Apologies out there to everyone for beating a dead horse, but....
Anyone else out there besides Crid want to peddle some of this "it was never about WMD's" hubris?
Chris, it WAS stated emphatically, time and time again, by every single one of the Bush players that the United States knew there were WMD's, and the America was in "immenent threat of attack."
It would be hard to get Americans whipped into a war frenzy based on giving Iraqis the vote. That is abstract- WMD's are here and now! It was a sales job, it turned out to be a lie, and the reputation of the United States has been forever damaged.
Here are a few of those on-the-record statements Crid maintains were never peddled, or the war was about, or as Kurt Colbain would say "oh well, whatever, nevermind." Most of us with a memory can skip the rest of this entry.
"There's no question that Iraq was a threat to the people of the United States."
ï White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan, 8/26/03
"We ended the threat from Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction."
ï President Bush, 7/17/03
Iraq was "the most dangerous threat of our time."
ï White House spokesman Scott McClellan, 7/17/03
"Saddam Hussein is no longer a threat to the United States because we removed him, but he was a threat...He was a threat. He's not a threat now."
ï President Bush, 7/2/03
"Absolutely."
ï White House spokesman Ari Fleischer answering whether Iraq was an "imminent threat," 5/7/03
"We gave our word that the threat from Iraq would be ended."
ï President Bush 4/24/03
"The threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction will be removed."
ï Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 3/25/03
"It is only a matter of time before the Iraqi regime is destroyed and its threat to the region and the world is ended."
ï Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke, 3/22/03
"The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder."
ï President Bush, 3/19/03
"The dictator of Iraq and his weapons of mass destruction are a threat to the security of free nations."
ï President Bush, 3/16/03
"This is about imminent threat."
ï White House spokesman Scott McClellan, 2/10/03
Iraq is "a serious threat to our country, to our friends and to our allies."
ï Vice President Dick Cheney, 1/31/03
Iraq poses "terrible threats to the civilized world."
ï Vice President Dick Cheney, 1/30/03
Iraq "threatens the United States of America."
ï Vice President Cheney, 1/30/03
"Iraq poses a serious and mounting threat to our country. His regime has the design for a nuclear weapon, was working on several different methods of enriching uranium, and recently was discovered seeking significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
ï Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 1/29/03
"Well, of course he is.î
ï White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett responding to the question ìis Saddam an imminent threat to U.S. interests, either in that part of the world or to Americans right here at home?î, 1/26/03
"Saddam Hussein possesses chemical and biological weapons. Iraq poses a threat to the security of our people and to the stability of the world that is distinct from any other. It's a danger to its neighbors, to the United States, to the Middle East and to the international peace and stability. It's a danger we cannot ignore. Iraq and North Korea are both repressive dictatorships to be sure and both pose threats. But Iraq is unique. In both word and deed, Iraq has demonstrated that it is seeking the means to strike the United States and our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction."
ï Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 1/20/03
"The Iraqi regime is a threat to any American. ... Iraq is a threat, a real threat."
ï President Bush, 1/3/03
"The world is also uniting to answer the unique and urgent threat posed by Iraq whose dictator has already used weapons of mass destruction to kill thousands."
ï President Bush, 11/23/02
"I would look you in the eye and I would say, go back before September 11 and ask yourself this question: Was the attack that took place on September 11 an imminent threat the month before or two months before or three months before or six months before? When did the attack on September 11 become an imminent threat? Now, transport yourself forward a year, two years or a week or a month...So the question is, when is it such an immediate threat that you must do something?"
ï Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 11/14/02
"Saddam Hussein is a threat to America."
ï President Bush, 11/3/02
"I see a significant threat to the security of the United States in Iraq."
ï President Bush, 11/1/02
"There is real threat, in my judgment, a real and dangerous threat to American in Iraq in the form of Saddam Hussein."
ï President Bush, 10/28/02
"The Iraqi regime is a serious and growing threat to peace."
ï President Bush, 10/16/02
"There are many dangers in the world, the threat from Iraq stands alone because it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place. Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists."
ï President Bush, 10/7/02
"The Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency."
ï President Bush, 10/2/02
"There's a grave threat in Iraq. There just is."
ï President Bush, 10/2/02
"This man poses a much graver threat than anybody could have possibly imagined."
ï President Bush, 9/26/02
"No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq."
ï Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 9/19/02
"Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent - that Saddam is at least 5-7 years away from having nuclear weapons. I would not be so certain. And we should be just as concerned about the immediate threat from biological weapons. Iraq has these weapons."
ï Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 9/18/02
"Iraq is busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents, and they continue to pursue an aggressive nuclear weapons program. These are offensive weapons for the purpose of inflicting death on a massive scale, developed so that Saddam Hussein can hold the threat over the head of any one he chooses. What we must not do in the face of this mortal threat is to give in to wishful thinking or to willful blindness." Dick Cheney 8/29/02
eric the liberal granpappy of 1 at September 13, 2004 9:57 AM
> this "it was never about WMD's" hubris?
Quote me precisely: I said "WMD's were not how the war was sold," and I meant it. It's this seemingly willful inattention to rhetorical detail that makes me wanna vote Republican.
> (a bunch of people use the word) ...threat...
He was right, Saddam was a threat. Don't you agree? Aren't we at least fractionally safer with this guy off the air? Aren't we better off morally for having killed the monster's sons before they could (rather literally) shred another generation of Iraqis? Aren't we better off finally *knowing* that he's not equipped to attack neighbors or others with WMDs? Hans Blix couldn't give us that assurance. (Consider the bang-up job Blix did in North Korea scant years earlier.)
American voters seem to have understood what Bush meant when he said this. If you can recall from your own impressions the events of February 2003, it's not like Ari and Donald and Condi had convinced everyone that the Republican Guard were going to march through the shopping malls of Tulsa with nerve gas. (I can't help notice how the passages you quote echo contemporaneous musings from Gore, Albright, Cohen, Byrd, Pelosi, Lieberman, Feinstein, Boxer, Waxman, Chirac, and Hilary... And even more if you want me to list them).
You keep trying to put the words "threat" and "imminent" together as if, following a single slip from Fleischer's lips, Bush finally and barely received authorization to launch the war. This is pathetic. It's prissy and legalistic and infantile, like Daffy Duck. And it ignores the reasoning by which voters *were* strongly convinced that we had work to do over there, without answering those points by other means. Alternate outcomes just float there in a Star Trek parallel universe: Saddam in power in 2004 with freshly delivered nukes from NK, his sons still raping and pillaging, mass graves a-filling, Saudi wahabbists unaddressed, Qaddafi still going nuclear, Iran's program unchecked).
This frenetic, "Gotcha!" style of politicking is familiar. The Democrats did it during the Reagan years (I remember, because I participated). The Republicans did it during Monicagate and other times. It's profoundly hokey. And it's not working: Lacking the charisma wielded by RWR and WJC, as of this week GWB seems nonetheless likely to win in November. Says the Asian Times today:
"George W Bush almost certainly will win another term as president of the United States... (snip) ...Bush voters are the sort of people who believe in their heart of hearts that America was founded to protect the likes of them - [unlike] the clever and attractive people who can fend quite well for themselves. That is the source of their patriotism."
- (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FI14Aa01.html)
Your quarrel in this series of messages isn't with the war, or our fulfillment of responsibilities thereby. You just hate GWB. I can dig it. His philosophies counter my own in a dozen respects, particularly public finances and the environment (though not always in either case... Plus, his wife is a stone fox). The problem is that you offer nothing but wordy platitudes and chatter instead. You'd have been entirely happy to let Clinton's Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, and the praise of liberty sung therein, wheeze to death unnoticed and unmourned.
But consider the rhetoric of these two speeches from ten months ago:
- http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/11/20031106-2.html
- http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=2196565
Even if GWB's not Abraham Lincoln, he's talking the talk and walking the walk. I can't imagine anything that could be better for the long-term fulfillment of a virtuous human destiny than the United States demanding decency from her vendor nations. If he MEANS this, the guy *is* Abraham Lincoln.
And if not, and he's probably not, history will still be kind to him for saying it, demonstrating sincerity at the cost of a thousand of the finest, most important lives of the next generation.
Did you really think we could live like this --and gloss our errors such as the Hussein regime-- without making sacrifices, both for our own lives and for the liberty of those compelled by history (and the CIA) to work for us?
Shee-it, son. See you in November.
(PS- MY spell check tries to change Monicagate to "Monticulate, a. Furnished with small mountains.")
Crid at September 13, 2004 9:35 PM
> "He was right, Saddam was a threat. Don't you agree?
NNN NN 000000000000
NNNN NN 00000000000000
NN NN NN 000 000
NN NN NN 00 00
NN NN NN 00 00
NN NN NN 00 00
NN NN NN 00 00
NN NN NN 000 000
NN NNNN 0000000000000
NN NNN 00000000000
Is that plain enough?
Stu "non-young, non-liberal" Harris at September 14, 2004 6:56 AM
Not really. Again, it's kind of an ostrich-y approach that doesn't address those other outcomes... And that pattern looks kinda like the star ship Enterprise.
Crid at September 14, 2004 12:32 PM
Crid-
Isn't it ironic you live in a state (I assume you are a Californian) that Bush can't win and I live in a state (Idaho) where Kerry will be lucky to
get 15%? Once again I agree with and applaud your noble intentions. They are, in my opinion, not served by your political loyalties.
I do not think the US is safer with Hussein out of Iraq. I am glad he is captured, and Uday and Qusay are dead, but I think Iraq will fall into civil war if America ever leaves, which we cannot. No exit strategy there! That will be a prime opportunity for Iran to step in, which is probably a good way to get the dominoes falling. We have to justify the hundreds of billions spent
on our own weapons of mass destruction (i.e. depleted uranium). We broke Iraq, and now we own it.
I agree with your Asia timeís quote, except I believe Bush will lose. It is inconceivable with his record that he can be reelected. It is sad that Bushes political base comes from those who believe God is an American.
Bush walking the walk? Pure bull. He hasn't sacrificed a thing. He sent others for that task. And the cost will be tens of thousands of Americans (killed, wounded, and sent home with debilitating mental and physical illnesses) before this is settled.
Talking the talk? Maybe in a crowd where the participants have signed a loyalty pledge. How very brave Bush is. I would love to see
the president in an unscripted debate. His policies are indefensible in the light of day. This is why he has cowardly begun to opt out of the second debate, the "town-hall" debate. Plus, do you really think he wrote the speech you quoted from the Scotsman? Do you think he has read anything by, say, Lord Shaftsbury?
I loathe Bush. He is the product of his privileged upbringing. He never had to sacrifice a day in his life, so he constructed a war without civilian participation, civilian sacrifice, or political courage. The human and
financial costs are obfuscated.
He has the "courage" to publicly denounce assault weapons, but refuses to act to keep these weapons out of our streets, for his own political gain. He has the temerity to talk of the sanctity of life while killing tens of thousands. He proposes stiffer drug penalties on those who ingest the very substances he enjoyed for years. He mocks the "tax and spend" Democrats while creating record deficits through record spending. But most of all, he glorifies all our soldiers as "heroes" for his own purpose, and then
denigrates those with valorous war records that happen to be political opponents. When Bush can't compete on a level playing field, he resorts to the basest tactics. This demonstrates his lack of character loud and clear.
PS- You didn't really say Laura Bush is a stone fox, did you? I read that back and forth over and over again, it makes no sense to me, but it seems like you did say it. Please tell me you are joking. Seriously Crid. I need you to tell me you are joking. I gotta sleep tonight.
eric at September 14, 2004 3:44 PM
>"I can't imagine anything that could be better for the long-term fulfillment of a virtuous human destiny than the United States demanding decency from her vendor nations."
WAAAAAAAAAA--HAAAAAAAAAAAA know what this is? It's some pompous old fart of a Viceroy in Poona, circa 1890, with his silly feathered hat and his swagger-stick, holding court in the British Officers' Club:
"Got to keep these dam' sepoys in order don'cha know? They need a firm hand, and they appreciate it. Alas their own chaps don't seem capable, so our own Dear Queen has to step into the breach, what? Nother gin? Don't mind if I do"
History has, quite rightly, long since judged this character to be an international figure of fun.
Stu "non-young, non-liberal" Harris at September 14, 2004 4:54 PM
> We broke Iraq, and now we own it.
Yes, but we broke it long before GWB took office. Back in Indiana, schoolboys are taught: After you've raped a woman, and sodomized her, and maybe cracked her ribs and sprained her ankles and so forth, it's considered rude to then snicker at her crying hulk and say "Get over yourself." The willingness (even eagerness) of very enlightened, compassionate liberal Americans to do this to the Iraqis --to assume that for some reason they can't aspire to the orderliness and decency that capitalist democracy has brought to us-- stinks wickedly of racism. They're literate, they're relatively tech-savvy, and they're sitting atop the second-finest pool of petrochemical wealth in all creation.
And that oil is going to be "sold" to other nations anyway, either by criminal dictators or righteous traders. This is not heartless realpolitik, it's simple sanity. I think the United States of America, and the western world generally, has a genuine claim to that oil. BUT ONLY IF WE PAY A FAIR, MARKET PRICE FOR IT. Do you really think we have any choice about this?
> not served by your political
> loyalties.
It ain't loyalty. But i'm very close to being a single-issue voter. It's absolutely essential that we follow through on our commitments in these matters. Bush may be wobbly, at least in the fiscal sense, but Kerry is plain doddering in terms of the morality of it. What I can't get you guys to acknowledge is that the left never had any other plan for Iraq, despite acknowledging the problem.
> He hasn't sacrificed a thing. He sent others for that task.
Eric, representative government is like that. It's a childish impulse that thinks these guys can, or should, do battle as individuals. (I remember that commercial from 1969, where the old farts step out of limos and wrestle down the hillside. At the time it was hard to imagine a more mawkish, infantile, manipulative sentiment. Two years later we had the indian crying a single tear as the soda bottle tumbled off the highway.) If it was single-warrier combat, we'd send Bill Gates and be done with it.
> I loathe Bush.
There's much not to like. But when I see how the left is ready to throw the Iraqis overboard just to maintain a perfect dislike of GWB, often with bogus arguments like the preceding, I think their morality is not to be trusted.
> Do you think he has read
> anything by, say, Lord
> Shaftsbury?
Well, *I* haven't. Booklearnin' is a wonderful thing, but there are important limits to its value. See these (links posted here before, they make an important case):
- http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/cpr-20n1-1.html
- http://www.aldaily.com/hangingjudge.html
> tell me you are joking.
We're men, Eric... Flesh and blood, not political machines. And men have needs. And I can't help but think that that shy, slender, Marlboro-reekin' blue-eyed schoolmarm could bring an important kind of comfort to a lonesome, overworked video technician. And if she couldn't, the Twins could rock the world, and you know it.
> WAAAAAAAAAA--HAAAAAAAAAAAA
You laugh too loud and weirdly, even in your typing. For whatever reason, *you're* the one with the racist presumptions about the inability of the people in hinterlands to be held to high standards. You're the one who's fondly looking backward at history.
> judged this character to be an
> international figure of fun.
Nobody's laughing, babe.
Crid at September 15, 2004 3:45 AM