Posted on 01/03/2004 10:24:03 PM PST by Burkeman1
The Bush administration has won a major political victory: the biggest expansion of Medicare in the 38-year history of that jewel of the Great Society. The details are complex; the cost will be staggering — ultimately, trillions of dollars.
This is not only a victory over the Democrats, but a triumph over any principled conservatives who remain in the Republican Party. The GOP leadership in Congress steamrollered those who have supported Bush in the hope and belief that he stood for a return to limited and constitutional government.
President Bush, to put it briefly, has finally removed his conservative mask. As one critic observes, he doesn’t even bother using conservative rhetoric anymore. He has joined the free-for-all of socialist entitlements, hoping to reap his reward in the 2004 election by taking the senior vote from the Democrats who until now have virtually owned it.
This may be a sound political calculation, but it throws an odd light on all those neoconservatives and nominal conservatives who have been praising Bush for having the courage of his convictions. Just what convictions have they been referring to?
Bush is a winner. Give him that. But he has defeated not only his Democratic opponents, but also those gullible Reagan Republicans who trusted him to roll back the Leviathan state, or at least halt its growth. In just three years he has already increased spending more than Bill Clinton managed to do in eight years.
Rush Limbaugh, having returned to the airwaves, accuses the Democrats of hypocrisy. After all, Bush is doing what they say they want the federal government to do, and they’re attacking him for it! Which proves that all they really want is power. Their motives are purely partisan.
Limbaugh is right, of course. But Bush and the Republicans are equally partisan, and at least as cynical. The Medicare ploy is a simple attempt to consolidate their power.
Is anyone surprised? Well, yes. I am. I never thought Bush had any real principles, but I underestimated his audacity. Just as I once thought his father would be boxed in by his “read my lips” pledge never to raise taxes, I assumed that the son would be inhibited by his conservative posture and some respect for his political base. He seemed to have learned something from his father’s defeat in 1992.
And no doubt he did. But the lesson he learned was not the one I assumed he’d learned. He has apparently decided that he won’t risk alienating his core supporters by forsaking any attachment to limited government.
Why? Because the conservative movement has also forsaken that attachment. It may not like expanding the welfare state, it may even grumble a bit about the Medicare boondoggle, but it has been captivated by Bush’s foreign policy. For such conservatives, the war on Iraq has defined Bush as a hero, once and for all. They aren’t unduly disturbed that the new Medicare entitlements, particularly prescription drugs, will remain a permanent albatross on the taxpayer long after they have served their purpose of securing Bush’s re-election. He is banking on their shortsightedness.
As president, Bush has yet to use the veto. No wonder federal spending has run amok. Once upon a time, the presidency was the chief check on Congress. The Tenth Amendment, limiting the U.S. government to its constitutionally enumerated powers, was enforced by the presidential veto. Even Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson sometimes vetoed congressional legislation.
The elder George Bush gained nothing by betraying his base; in fact it helped lose him the presidency. The younger Bush evidently reckons that his base won’t even feel betrayed by his deviation from — indeed, brazen violation of — its avowed principles. Yet even the Wall Street Journal, a leading cheerleader for the Iraq war, notes in a sour editorial that George W. Bush “has never met a spending bill he didn’t like.”
(Excerpt) Read more at sobran.com ...
| Rank | Location | Receipts | Donors/Avg | Freepers/Avg | Monthlies | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 | Virginia | 175.00 |
5 |
35.00 |
588 |
0.30 |
482.00 |
22 |
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The author is correct in criticizing Bush on this issue, but for the wrong reasons. The primary purpose of the Medicare prescription drug plan is not to provide an entitlement to seniors, but to provide a major financial boost to large U.S. corporations with a lot of retirees -- by removing these retirees from the lifetime medical plans that these companies offered to their retired workers.
No comment there, Burkeman1. But regarding the article, it would be ideal if the Federal government were smaller. Most non-ideologue-types won't use its size as any exclusive measure of conservatism, though.
Another liberal Bush program?
And yet both houses that are Republican controlled supported this left wing atrocity? How does that prove your point at all? "Conspiracy Joe" has always said Bush wasn't a Conservative? What is your excuse?
I have idea's for how the Constitution Party could be used to push the GOP to the right, and running a guy for President is not one of them.
I think the CP should field maybe a dozen serious candidates for the US House and Senate where they might actually win. If they get a few seats in the House they will be more effective in getting their message out than they are now.
How happy! And if I am not? I don't have a gubmint Job see? What a total and complete donkey statement from an establishment boob and lackey. Hey socialist who pretends to be capitalist- get lost.
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