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.
Yes it is, particularly if morally required as a civilized country (we don't accept the mass killing of civilians absent clear and compelling need), and if the mass killing would backfire in our faces and defeat our ultimate goal, which in this instance beyond the noble one of liberating the Iraqi people, is to pacify the Muslim jihadists. Your policy would breed more of them by the hundreds of millions.
Oh my , I may be sunburnt by the brilliance of that statement.
Disagree. Being humane will save American lives in the long run. That's why our soldiers (of which I am one) don't fire on crowds when they recieve fire from them. The long-term implications (risk of mission failure) of civilian casualties are considered (by the guys on the ground making those decisions) to be more important than the risks of the fire they take.
I remember one troll that was furious with Bush because he didn't issue an executive order at once ending abortion. Tabitha Soren was her screenname, I believe.
It's continuum Joe, not either or. Just because some additional folks hate us, is no reason to adopt the Joe Hadenuf policy and exponentialize the problem. Does that make any sense to you Joe? It's also morally wrong to me, but your mileage clearly varies on that one.
Thank God it wasn't President Torie during the war with Japan and Germany.
Do those "rock solid Conservatives " support the war now that we are in it?
{You seem to think Bush can just dismiss the current justices on SCOTUS, and appoint his own or something}
The Constitution Party and other unappeaseable conservatives are promoting urban legends that say Roe vs. Wade and other unlikeable Supreme Court decisions can be overturned by mere excutive orders by the President.
So are allies are mad at us, huh? I didn't see any other country who lost 3,000 citizens in a single day. And until they do, shut the crap up, who needs you?
This entire post is bunk. No true conservative is stupid enough to say things that this post says.
How come you can't tell us why, you are her husband.
You already told us that your wife posts under many different names, why not go the full hundred yards, and be truthful.
Give Military Chick the TROPHY !!
The gratuitous killing of civilians in WW II was wrong too. Dresden comes to mind. Also, bombs were cruder then, so there was more collateral damage, and we were about defeating German and Japanese military machines and as nations, who had the support of their populations, not liberating them in the sense of freeing them from their oppressor. In any event, we defeating the Iraqi military in short order. What is going on now, is not about defeating a nation's military. But then you already knew all of this. But I took the bait anyway. Shame on me.
For all intesnvie purposes could be "miltary chick". Already got an admission from her husband on this thread that she posts under different names.
Tabitha sounds like a good woman. Ill-informed about the political process....but I'd hardly call her a "troll". A few million more just like her and the wholesale slaughter of babies would come to an end in this country.
Whew if you beleive what Michael Wiener(Savage) says, you seem like a good person to sell the Brooklyn Bridge to. Interested in buying it?
It's not a secret, I simply didn't know. Now I do, because I asked since I originally posted. She hadn't posted under ANY name since she got her new computer, so her old name/password aren't saved on it. She didn't remember the password, and couldn't get it renewed because she no longer has the e-mail address she originally signed up with (we've moved and changed ISPs). It's a technical matter, really.
Why do you automatically assume everyone that you perceive disagrees with you has evil motives?
BTW, if you know a way she can get her old handle back without having to use an E-mail account that no longer exists, I'm sure she'd love to know about it.
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