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.
If they get it and they want us to beat the Islamofascists and the leftists in this country who hate America, they'll vote Bush/Cheney. It's as simple as that. Black and white, no gray.
Now is not the time to get yellow-belly.
Not this conservative. Not a bit.
So-called conservatives who waste their votes on 3rd parties tend to be malcontents who are addicted to griping and whining. It is very suspicious that such people gripe only about Bush and say nothing about Kerry. It is very curious where their true political allegiances lie.
Wow, this old-timer was the only person in the world who didn't believe it at the time. I'm impressed.
If they are uneasy with Bush, are they going to be less uneasy with Liberal #1 (Kerry) and Liberal #4 (Edwards). If so, they are not conservatives in the faintest sense of the word.
In all fairness, the neocons never promised that the overthrow of Saddam would be as easy as their compassionate invasion of Somalia.
Nevertheless, I agree that they downplayed and understated the difficulty of rebuilding a stable Iraqi government.
All part of the rhetoric necessary to generate political support, I suppose.
I have no problem with that.
Saddam was a despot who needed removal anyway.
Papa Bush shoulda taken care of that the first time around.
And IMHO, they NEVER shoulda captured the SOB alive.
Plopping a grenade down his grungey little spidey hole woulda saved the world an awful lot of trouble.
If I have any problem with this whole sordid mess, it's the continual claims that this has nothing to do with Iraqi oil. What a bunch of baloney. If it wasn't for the oil in the region, we'd ignore the MidEast tribal feuds just like we ignore the Tutsi and Hutus in Africa. And as far as I'm concerned, BOTH major political parties are guilty of failing to make us less dependent on MidEast energy sources. I don't like American blood being shed to secure foreign sources of petroleum production one iota. Certainly not when we have other energy sources available to us.
Notice the "self-described" conservatives they are quoting? That's almost as good as "anonymous source".
Conservatives? More like wuss' locked in 30 second sound bite hell. The guy has no real idea why Sadam had to go nor that Syria and Iran should be next.
The democrats have just been much more effective at silencing dissent from within their party. I'm not sure thats something they should be proud of. Sometimes the voices that have been silenced are the ones that are the most dangerous later on.
Repbublican dissent is out in the open, democrats need to keep looking over their shoulders. I have a feeling that there are a few more Zell Millers out there.
When was the last time we saw AP(All Presstitutes) write about 'Key Liberals Uneasy About Bush?'
These are not "conservative voices that perhaps need to be heard." I don't care what their names are or their jobs were. Scott Ritter was turned, I'd bet these so-called conservatives were too.
This article is disinformation, designed to persuade weak people to stay home on election day.
Well said!
This is rather like the phenomenon of those who call in to C-SPAN, and identify themselves as "Republican" then proceed to bash everything to the right of Jim Jeffords. Which is quite a lot.
These people are ringers, and would not be identified as true conservatives after five minutes of conversation with them face to face. This is much like John Kerry professing to admire "conservative" values, and upholding "traditional" beliefs, before he launches into a furious attack on both "Conservative" and "Traditional".
So why don't we dramatically move toward eliminating the need for the oil and win the War? Where is the leadership on this essential step to victory? Why do we just get the endless litany of corporate boondoggles such as oil shale was and ethanol is and talk about drilling in ANWR, endless discussion of fuel cell technology that can only be done by the likes of GM, the least likely folks to make it work, and every body buy an expensive Japanese hybrid that will kill you in a crash? Is this a policy? Hardly.
If 97% of conservatives and Republicans back Bush, then 3% do not.
We see them here on FR. They are the single-issue, more-conservative-than-thou, *principled* wing of the Movement. Many would never belong to any Party except the Constitution Party and formerly voted for Buchanan.
They exist.
It is my contention that we make up for them by the votes of disgusted former Democratic voters, of which there are many, and the votes of Independents who see the stark choices we have this year.
There is an element of vote supression in this article, but it is based on a nugget of reality.
Very good find.
A google seems to confirm that Columbia is indeed in Boone County.
Missouri FReepers: can you verify?
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