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.
Bush does care.
Give Bush a strong Republican Congress, so the Dems can't obstruct his judicial nominees.
There will be judges retiring the next 4 years, there is no way they will hold out past that. So the next 4 years are critically important from that stand point also.
Do you want Kerry or Bush to appoint judges to the Supreme Court?
For a minute there I thought you were talking about John Edwards and his "channeling" the unborn baby.
As for these "key conservatives" and their uneasiness, I doubt that they are "key." Most of us can find a Bush administration issue or two with which we disagree. But that hardly seems to justify either sitting this one out or voting for the vet and his pet.
"If Bush doesn't do x,y,z, I'll stay home on election day or vote for a third party".
Some would like to equivocate, but the bottom line is, no matter how you try to deflect from reality, is that the choice is BUSH or KERRY. If you are not supporting Bush, you are effectively supporting Kerry. This is FACT and REALITY.
Why do you object, when someone points out reality?
I thought only liberals live in a fantasy world of their own.
I noticed how you didn't mention that, un-military DU Chick, signed up on FR 6-22-04.
If anyone wants a good laugh, re-read the article and identify the "key conservatives" that are identified.
You seem to enjoy posting articles critical of the war.
Are you trying to make a point? If you are, please do so and stop with the trolling.
If they want to attack Bush then they should attack him on what he has done wrong and not on what he has done right.
Even then, I don’t believe his worst transgression would justify putting a man like Kerry in the Whitehouse. My God, we used to refer to people who did what Kerry did as “Commie-Pinkos”. I never thought that I would see the day that one of them was a serious (or series) contender for the Presidency.
How can one of them be leading in so many northern states? Have the people up north been chewing on lead?
In the words of another president (NRA) in one of his movies: “It’s a madhouse”.
I'm pretty sure the poster is aware of that fact.
That information is bad.
CONSERVATES NEED TO SHUT THEIR YAP, and lay out the 100 yards of CRUSHED GLASS to CRAWL ON to vote for BUSH.
WAR is full of UNCERTAINTY, but overall IRAQ is a success.
I especially liked this quote:
"Is it also the plan for Israel to use the cover of war to forcibly relocate the Palestinian population (as has been publicly stated by some members of Israel's current government)?"
BTW, I think I like your "the vet and his pet" better than my "Botox and Bobby Sox"
There are plenty of reasons for Conservatives to be upset with the Bush administration. The Iraq war is definitely NOT one of them. Anyone who doesn't support this war is no Conservative and most likely un-American.
That's not entirely true. We could have stopped Iraq from doing anything militarily with just our airpower. Anything even remotely deemed militarily offensive in nature could have been taken out at a moments notice. We could have eliminated Saddam and his two boys without putting one single soldier on the ground in Iraq.
Are you trying to make a point? If you are, please do so and stop with the trolling.
I suppose I don't need to justify my posts but here goes. I am very much behind the war effort. I was raised that way. My father a West Point grad fulfilled his duties with honor. I served in the US Air Force, serving with honor and my husband who currently serves in the US Army as a Field Artillery officer because of those facts I feel I have at least some knowledge of the military. I do not to profess to know all, but, in sharing ideas and views on current topics to include the military, seems the best avenue to stay informed. As for the date, yes it does show a recent account activation but I can assure that I have enjoyed the FR for quite sometime. My husband and I enjoyed a wonderful Free Republic gathering years ago, on Halloween weekend. Perhaps I should have used my original screen name, but, after the year we have, my husband serving in Iraq, this seemed by far the more appropriate screen name. Another questions on my intent feel free to send a PM I really don't think folks like to see bickering while enjoying their time on FR.
I know Military Chick personally. She's my wife. She's posted on FR under other names in the past, in fact for several years. She decided to chose a new name to post under recently (you'll have to ask her why).
As to her not mentioning the guy's with the AP -- Who cares? She posted the source where SHE found it. With the percentage of the media (Miami Herald included) being leftists, does it matter which leftist group a particular journalist is with? If it matters to you, look it up yourself.
Besides, it's the credentials of the primary source of this article (Halper) that should be questioned. Something many other posters to this thread have done famously. In fact, they've also pointed out Lindlaw's failings in other places.
As to MC's choice of material, she frequently presents controversial stuff like this amongst the group we have e-mail discussions with. She does so to spur discussion, not because she agrees with them. Perhaps you didn't notice the question mark when she posted "Voices that perhaps need to be heard?".
Ref this:stands2reason: You seem to enjoy posting articles critical of the war. Are you trying to make a point? If you are, please do so and stop with the trolling.
MC supports the war enough that she sent her husband (me) to fight it. Her commitment hasn't changed. Like I said above, she likes to stir discussion, not just join threads where everyone agrees with each other. Seems she's done that.
"Bush has a GOP Congress, and he still supports Spector when he could have had Toomey."
Or most likely he would have gotten the Democrat, which would have also meant a Democrat Congress.
IOW, you couldn't find anything.
Going forward, you should be more careful about such slanderous claims. I'll let this one slide, though.
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