This article is a crock!!!, Pure BS!! No Way!!
Posted on 07/11/2004 10:48:58 AM PDT by Military Chick
Some Key Conservatives Uneasy About Bush
SCOTT LINDLAW Associated Press
WASHINGTON - When an influential group of conservatives gathers in downtown Washington each week, they often get a political pep talk from a senior Bush administration official or campaign aide. They don't expect a fellow Republican to deliver a blistering critique of President Bush's handling of the Iraq war.
But nearly 150 conservatives listened in silence recently as a veteran of the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations ticked off a litany of missteps in Iraq by the Bush White House.
"This war is not going well," said Stefan Halper, a deputy assistant secretary of state under President Reagan.
"It's costing us a lot of money, isolating us from our allies and friends," said Halper, who gave $1,000 to George W. Bush's campaign and more than $83,000 to other GOP causes in 2000. "This is not the cakewalk the neoconservatives predicted. We were not greeted with flowers in the streets."
Conservatives, the backbone of Bush's political base, are increasingly uneasy about the Iraq conflict and the steady drumbeat of violence in postwar Iraq, Halper and some of his fellow Republicans say. The conservatives' anxiety was fueled by the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal and has not abated with the transfer of political power to the interim Iraqi government.
Some Republicans fear angry conservatives will stay home in November, undercutting Bush's re-election bid.
"I don't think there's any question that there is growing restiveness in the Republican base about this war," said Halper, the co-author of a new book, "America Alone: The Neoconservatives and the Global Order."
Some Republicans dismiss the rift as little more than an inside-the-Beltway spat among rival factions of the GOP intelligentsia. Indeed, conservatives nationwide are still firmly behind Bush. A Pew Research Center poll last month found that 97 percent of conservative Republicans favored Bush over Kerry.
But anger is simmering among some conservatives.
"I am bitterly disappointed in his actions with this war. It is a total travesty," said Tom Hutchinson, 69, a self-described conservative from Sturgeon, Mo., who posted yard signs and staffed campaign phone banks for the Republican in 2000. Hutchinson said he did not believe the administration's stated rationales for the war, in particular the argument that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
Hutchinson, a retired businessman and former college professor, said his unease with Iraq may lead him to do something he has not done since 1956: avoid the voting booth in a presidential election.
Jack Walters, 59, a self-described "classical conservative" from Columbia, Mo., said he hadn't decided which candidate to vote for.
"Having been through Vietnam, I thought no, never again," Walters said. "But here comes the same thing again, and I'm old enough to recognize the lame reasons given for going into Iraq, and they made me ill."
The tension has been building in official Washington, where conservative members of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees have pressed the administration for answers on combat operations; disagreed with the Pentagon on troop levels; and expressed frustration with an administration they feel has shown them disdain by withholding information.
Chief political adviser Karl Rove's formula for re-election is primarily to push Bush's conservative base to the polls.
Another administration official involved in Bush's re-election effort has voiced concern that angry conservatives will sit out the election.
But Matthew Dowd, the Bush-Cheney campaign's chief strategist, described the fear of losing conservative support as "just ludicrous."
Bush is "as strong among conservative Republicans as any Republican president has been" - higher than President Reagan's approval among conservatives during his re-election campaign of 1984, Dowd said.
Yet, Halper said his critical review on the administration's performance on Iraq last week was met with expressions of support in the conservatives' weekly meeting, which is closed to journalists.
The marquee speaker sent by the administration was Eric Ciliberti, who spent several weeks in Iraq this year and told the audience of broad progress being made there.
Ciliberti complained to the group that the news media was not reporting the positive developments out of Iraq. Ciliberti did not return several calls late in the past week from a reporter seeking his account.
I really don't think conservatives will let the likes of kerry, the most liberal senator, to become President. They will come out for Bush on November 2nd.
Ah. I see.
Some flunkie in the State Department under Reagan is touted as a key conservative?
Are they really conservatives on do they just claim to be one. I'm not staying home in November and Bush/Cheny get my vote. I just hope those socialist liberals only vote once like I do and that people in their graves aren't voting. Don't laugh it happens.
I tend to agree. But, still I wouldn't let anything go to chance.
Biased reporting.
Big choice: Kerry or Bush...now that's a hard one. (end/sarcasm)
What so called conservative would vote for Kerry or abstain from voting for Bush (which is in essence a vote for Kerry.)
Anybody who says they're thinking of doing this has absolutely no credibility as a conservative.
That's my two cents!!!
I agree. There are any number of things I could critisize the president over. That doen't mean that I would by idiotic enough to think the two Johns are even worth considering.
I didn't know that the GOP had a French wing.
I'm just waiting for the article entitled "Some key Liberals Uneasy About Kerry". I bet you we see that one right after Mike Wallace does a 60 Minutes exclusive on Kerry's radical, pro-life beliefs ("I am against abortion, I think life begins at conception...). This article is negative innuendo and nothing more.
Conservatives are voting for Bush. Period.
The spineless listed above in the article complaining that every action hasn't been 100% flawless are those that cannot wait to stand by The President's side when they perceive him to be in a position of strength. Reagan had his detractors, Bush has his. Whether they claim conservatism as a cause is irrelevant.
So the war is "not going well"? First of all,who says so?
Let these "key conservatives" vote for kerry. He will make it all better.
There is no "there" there. Time to move on. That 97% must have all been brainwashed by those evil neocons or something.
He was at his best when he was at his toughest, in the days after 9/11 when he told everyone that they were either with us or with the terrorists. By playing nice, he turns off those who cheered that attitude, and he doesn't gain the votes of anyone who is moderate in this fight for our lives.
He has to choose whether to be Reagan or his father. Right now, he's somewhere in between. As a result, this election will be somewhere in between 1984 and 1992. It should be 1984. He is the man who has kicked the terrorists' butts in 2 wars and kept America safe, and who has conquered the recession he inherited. He should be reelected by acclamation. But instead, he will win, but will have to work hard for it. And if he makes any big mistakes, it could get close. I don't think he will lose, but I was hoping for a landslide of 1984 proportions, one that picks up lots of Senate and House seats.
That said, there is another type of conservative voice against the war, the Brent Scowcroft/Grover Norquist wing. There are the pro-Arab types who got too friendly with the enemy during the cold war, and haven't adjusted to the clash of civilizations. The people cited in the above article seem to be of this type. Ignore them, they are either bought off by Saudi money or not able to adapt to new realities.
For what? So they can bitch and bellyache?
There's nothing that can be done about the war now except to bolster the government and help them.
What do these doofuses think they'll accomplish by electing Kerry?
The idiocy that passes for "principle" with some of these far right-wingers just astounds me.
They'll stay home and pout, and think somebody will give a damn.
Considering their verbalized stupidity...no.
They ARE being heard. They don't need to be agreed with, as their opinions are absurd.
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