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Locked on 01/24/2004 6:45:19 AM PST by Lead Moderator, reason:
This thread has degenerated into a flamewar. No more replies. Sheesh. |
Posted on 01/23/2004 5:23:57 AM PST by Apple Pan Dowdy
I thought President Bush's State of the Union address was fine. It wasn't outrageously long. He drew a bright line between himself and his critics on the war in Iraq, the Patriot Act, Social Security Reform, etc. He delivered it well, and the nudity was tasteful and integral to the plot.
As luck - or bad timing - would have it, I was invited to Manhattan to address the New York State Conservative Party right before the president addressed the nation. It seemed only fitting since the subject of my speech was the conflict between Bush's "compassionate conservatism" and traditional conservatism. You see, conservatives in New York City have suffered more and for longer than conservatives in the rest of America. Trust me, I grew up on New York City's Upper West Side. We felt like Christians in Ancient Rome.
Well, after three years with George W. Bush at the helm, many conservatives are starting to feel like we've been sent to the catacombs. Don't get me wrong. Out in real America where most Americans - liberal and conservative - don't focus on politics every day, Bush is still doing very well. And, even among conservatives, Bush has considerable political support. But among ideological and intellectual conservatives, emotional support for Bush is starting to ebb.
I can't point to anything scientific. But if you pay attention to what conservatives are saying at meetings and in magazines, on the Web and at the think tanks, as well as what readers, friends, colleagues and sources say, there's a definite undercurrent of discontent with the president.
For some it started with his plan to offer amnesty-lite to illegal immigrants. For others, it's his fence-sitting on gay marriage. For others, like me, it was his signing of the campaign finance reform bill even though he thought it was unconstitutional. Or maybe it was his support for steel tariffs. Or the farm bill. I forget.
Anyway that doesn't matter. What unites pretty much all of these grumblers is a deep sense of, well, disgust with how much this administration is spending.
When it comes to taxpayer dollars, this is the second most "generous" administration in American history, second only to that of another Texan, Lyndon Johnson. There may be good aspects to George Bush's "compassionate conservatism," though on the whole I never liked it, but it's clear that compassion doesn't come cheap at the Bush White House, on whose watch overall spending from 2001 to 2003 grew at 16 percent and discretionary spending went up 27 percent. That's double Bill Clinton's rate.
Bush's defenders are eager to point to the war on terrorism as an excuse for increased spending. Fine. But that's only a small part of the story.
Under Bush, spending on education has gone up 60.8 percent, on labor 56 percent and on the Department of the Interior by 23.4 percent . The price tag for the president's Medicare plan alone starts, but won't end, at $400 billion. The farm bill was a pork horror show, pure and simple. More people work for the federal government now than at any time since the end of the Cold War.
Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation sums it up this way: "Overall for 2003, the federal government spent $20,300 per household, taxed $16,780 per household, and ran a budget deficit of $3,520 per household."
The reason most Americans haven't heard a lot about all this is twofold. Conservatives have stayed relatively quiet and liberals have controlled the anti-Bush microphone.
Democratic presidential candidates and interest groups have been screeching that the president is gutting education and abandoning the elderly. Obviously this is nonsense on tall stilts, since Bush is spending a lot more on both than Bill Clinton ever did.
In fact, on Medicare and education, for example, the Dems think Bush is being stingy. And a study by the National Taxpayers Union found that each and every one of the Democrats running for president have plans that would raise the deficit even more, from $169.6 billion under Joe Lieberman to - get this - $1.33 trillion under Al Sharpton.
Conservative opposition to such overspending is more complex than the media and the left think. Some just don't like red ink. Others think big government erodes freedom and traditional arrangements. Others believe it slowly inoculates the citizenry to greater levels of social engineering.
Whatever the reasons, conservatives - as opposed to partisan Republicans - have sincere misgivings about the kind of presidency Bush is conducting. A lot of compassionate conservatism is smart politics for the Republican Party, and some of it is even good policy. And, yes, conservatives understand that the GOP is practically the only place they have a real impact in electoral politics.
But I'm not sure George Bush understands how much he is asking from those who brought him to the dance.
There sure are.. Using the number of posts on FR as a guide in 2000 one could infer that Buchanan and the Libertarians would get 10 million votes... at least. But they barely got 1 million combined votes on election day.
Don't fall into the sucker game of judging what will happen at the polls by what the greatest number of posters say here on FR.
FR is home to lots of Fringers..
To paraphrase an old Texas statement
Above and beyond that, I need to PROVE I'm not a criminal despite our "innocent until proven guilty" legal system.
So you think that checks to see if a criminal is purchasing guns is wrong? Give this person a break! What about the criminal who hits the streets after having committed armed robbery -- guess according to you he should be allowed to go out the prison gate and go buy another gun. What world are you living in?
The need to renew the ban is clear. There is no need for military style, semiautomatic weapons that are designed to kill as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. Equally clear is the need to strengthen the ban. Almost immediately after the law's passage in 1994, the gun industry began evading it, manufacturing "sporterized" weapons just as deadly as their banned counterparts: UZIs, MAC-10s, AK-47s, AR-15s, and others. The Bushmaster assault rifle used in the Washington, DC-area sniper shootings is just one example of a "sporterized", post-ban assault rifle used to kill and maim.
A new analysis of FBI data has found that from 1998 through 2001, one in five law enforcement officers slain in the line of duty was killed with an assault weapon. At the same time, terrorist training manuals found in Afghanistan and available on web sites around the world urge terrorists to come to the United States, obtain assault weapons, and then learn how to use them against us.
Found the above on a website -- if true about the number of Law Enforcement slain with assault weapons, then I have even a bigger trouble with the gun industry and gun lobby. As a matter of fact, after your attack on me and your saying that criminal background checks at least for you should not be conducted, I am now on the side of the folks who only believe that rifles, shotguns, and handguns should be in the hands of citizens. Your defense of no criminal background checks sent a shiver up my spine as I have a close relative in law enforcement.
Sorry, I almost missed your post. Yes, that's what I was wondering. The comment about being more intellectual....was suspicious to me.
Prairie
These "conservatives" are a pretty exclusive bunch, and a pretty exclusionary bunch as well. Their view of the world is fairly narrow; they are essentially pessimistic about everything; they are strident in their attitudes and obnoxious in their behavior. But, I guess, they think the glory days of conservatism were when conservatism was narrow, exclusive, strident and obnoxious.
I think what really bothers them is that George W. Bush operates, pretty much all of the time, from a set of values which are decent and honorable, and not from a rigid "conservative" ideology. What I'd like to know is when did honor and decency stop being conservative values?
And this is what it's boiling down to. If you don't agree with one of the two beltway parties, your a fruitcake.
Tell you the truth, this makes a damn good case for a third party. One that will put our people, and our country first, all the time, *everytime*.
When owning an assault weapon is more important than the issue of gun ownership I'd guess, from the looks of this thread. And then trying to say background checks shouldn't happen for gun owners. Lots of honor and decency that (sarc)....not to mention a criminals dream.
Prairie
Whatever.
That's the job of whoever processes it after it's been shot.
REALLY?
Look at the record. The Soviets put up the Berlin wall under JFK. What did JFK do about it.... NOTHING!!!! JFK did nothing to prevent the advancement of the power of the Soviet Union. JFK folded our hand at every confrontation.
No nation in Western Europe would let us put Nukes on their soil. They were afraid of the Soviets. It will only make us a target, they said. And our missiles could not reach Russia from US soil. Ike got Turkey to let us put our nuclear missiles and the troops to control them on their soil. From Turkey we could blow every Soviet citizen to kingdom come. The Soviets had no bases from which they could not hit us. We were, under Ike, in the drivers seat.
The Russians tested JFK's testicles with the Berlin wall. Khrushchev wanted to go straight to Cuba. But other Soviet leaders demanded he test JFK with the Berlin wall first. When JFK only talked about the Berlin wall, and did nothing, it convinced the Soviets that JFK would back down and remove our missiles from Turkey. With the success of the Berlin wall under the Soviet belt, the Soviets started putting their missiles into Cuba! They were convinced that JFK would surrender our surperior position if they let him save face.
The Soviets made no attempt to hide that they were putting missiles in Cuba. Look at the pictures. ... They wanted us to find them.
What did JFK do to get rid of the Missiles in Cuba? Exactly what the Russians demanded. JFK took our missiles out of Turkey... that's what. That was exactly what the Russians wanted. The Russians did not want Castro to have his hands on their NUKES. They wanted OUR Nukes out of Turkey. That is what they got in the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The difference between JFK and McGovern is McGovern was honest about surrendering to the Soviets. JFK surrendered as long as the Sovites let him claim it to be a victory.
JFK took the whip hand Ike left him and let Nikita Khrushchev beat the crap out of the USA.
Some people like to forget that John, Robert and Teddy Kennedy are blood brothers that share their Daddies views on both woman and politics.
The last real anti-communist Democrat was LBJ. VietNam was his attempt to make the Russians fear us... It did not work. He was just trying to send the Soviets a message. It was a failure. Nixon tried to take us to a military superiority with technology that could destroy them. JFK wanted a public relations victory by going to the moon. Nixon did two things. He built us a missile system that could destroy all of the soviet union, and he created a split between the Soviet Union and China. Those were good moves indeed.
Reagan saw a way to victory that escaped every Democrat plus Ike and Nixon as well. He got the Russians into a war using dollars and rubbles and the Soviets lost. Reagan knew that the weak point in a Socialist system is their economy not their missiles and guns. He used our great advantage to beat them. It was a technique that escaped of the brilliant men in all the great think tanks.
It was Harry Truman who decided that containment was the only game in town. We played containment or 'Can't we just all get along.' until Reagan came to office. It was he who went for the win with the best weapon we had... dollars against rubbles ... and the dollars won.
History clearly shows thjat JFK played poker with Khrushchev, Khrushchev won every hand.
Care to elaborate and define exactly who you believe those "right wing fruitcakes" who "are not a factor" are?
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