Posted on 01/27/2005 5:53:16 PM PST by RWR8189
Undeniably, it was a good year for Time’s Man of the Year. For the second election in a row, George W. Bush increased his party’s strength in Congress as he secured the second term his father failed to win.
Not since FDR has a new president done so well by his party. But here the comparisons end. Where FDR carried every state but Maine and Vermont in his re-election campaign in 1936, and Ike carried every state but Missouri and a few Dixiecrat bastions in 1956, and Nixon and Reagan carried 49 states, George W. Bush won only 31. His margin was 3 percent.
An historic victory this was not. No wartime president had ever been turned out of office. But Bush came closest. A turnaround of 60,000 votes in Ohio, and he would have lost to a liberal from Massachusetts with a voting record indistinguishable from Teddy Kennedy’s.
I have political capital in the bank and I intend to spend it, says the president. But that capital is shrinking as fast as the dollar.
What, then, are the yardsticks of success for a second Bush term?
On the “moral values” front, there is but one test. Can he, will he, reshape the Supreme Court and ring down the curtain on the revolution it has been imposing upon this country, illegitimately, for 50 years? If he succeeds here, President Bush will have achieved what Ike, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and his father all failed to do—together.
As for the Bush guest-worker plan for illegal aliens, it is in trouble in the House, as he is condemned in his own party for refusing to secure America’s borders. One major terror attack by an alien who sneaked across the Mexican border, and the president will lose the terrorism issue for the balance of his term.
Bush’s trade policy cost America 2.7 million manufacturing jobs in his first term. With the Multifiber Agreement expiring, the imminent loss of hundreds of thousands of textile and apparel jobs will create a crisis for free-trade Republicans. Yet to the deindustrialization of America, Bush has no answer other than “I believe free trade is good for America.” This is mindless ideology.
Arthur Laffer and Lawrence Kudlow may see a trade deficit of $600 billion and a sinking dollar as signs the world loves America as a place to invest. But the financial world dissents, as does Steve Forbes, who sees the soaring price of gold, oil, copper and other commodities, and housing, as fire bells of inflation.
After having turned a $200 billion Clinton surplus into a $400 billion deficit, the president, prodded by his own deficit hawks, is going to have to perform fiscal surgery. He is going to have to address the Social Security and Medicare deficits. Neither will be popular, and the president is already below 50 percent approval again.
Only one in nine economists predicts a recession in 2005, and two of nine by the end of 2006. This points to clear sailing for the economy, but the political question remains: will working America share equitably in Wall Street’s prosperity?
It is in foreign policy, however, that the president has been hailed as a revolutionary for his Bush Doctrine of preventive war and his Wilsonian declaration of a “world democratic revolution.” And it is here that his presidency will be made or broken.
Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and North Korea are the proving grounds of the Bush Doctrine. While Afghanistan just held its first national election, the country also appears on the way to becoming a narco-democracy, the world supplier of the raw material for heroin, as it was before the Taliban eradicated the drug trade.
North Korea appears to have successfully defied the president and crashed the club of nuclear nations. Iran has begun to take steps toward the threshold. Yet the Bush Doctrine, which calls for preventive wars and “regime change” for axis-of-evil nations that defy America’s will, has yet to be applied. To the dismay of neoconservatives, the Big Stick remains in the closet.
Ultimately, the success or failure of the Bush foreign policy, the Bush Doctrine, the “world democratic revolution,” comes down to Iraq. The price in dead and wounded, American and Iraqi, in divisions within this country and with our allies, in the anger and alienation of the Arab and Islamic street, is already high and rising.
If January’s elections produce an Iraq that looks to America as a friend and ally and offers a model democracy for the Arab world, Bush’s war will be judged a success. But if the Sunni insurgency tears Iraq apart in chaos and civil war, leading to a U.S. withdrawal, or a second Vietnam, Bush’s fate is sealed. He will have launched a war of choice, not necessity, and lost it, something no other president has ever done.
Do you mean "hola?"
Buchanon has his own demons that extend beyond Bush, but isn't it interesting how the people Bush defeats seem to go mad.
The Democrat Party in Texas seems to hold the strongest bias. They visited Kinko's to create false documents about his service. The Washington establishment of the party is in full meltdown. Gore is screaming himself horase. Kerry is running over the world playing president. General McCain wants to determine who will be Secreray of Defense, even though Republicans rejected him in 2000. I have no idea what Richards and his other opponent in Texas are up to these days, but I'd be surprised if they still weren't imagining "what if".
Pat Buchanan is just William Jennings Bryan without the brains and the oratorical skills.
Pat Buchanan was the dumbest conservative Ted Turner could find. He was put on CNN's Cross fire becuase almost any liberal could defeat Pat in debate. After Time Warner dumped Ted, the power structure at CNN decided that Pat Buchanan was too dumb to be a token conservative.. so they went looking for Tucker Carlson. CNN wanted a conservative that was just slightly retarted not totally retarted..;.. so Buchanan had to go.
Buchanan is an isolationist and anti-Semite and therefore
sees any foreign involvement in Iraq as part of the Viet Nam syndrome. At this point his extremism comes close to
Ted Kennedy and his Viet Nam "quagmire" statements. There
is absolutely NO historical parallel between Iraq and Viet
Nam. We were in VietNam for over a decade and lost 58,000
troops. The causes and nature of the two conflicts were
totally different. The VietNam syndrome is a quagmire that
both Buchanan and the Left are caught in. Buchanan is not
a paleoconservative. He is paleoLITHIC.
I would disagree on one level. We lost Vietnam not militarily but politically, due to some deranged leftists. And many of those same leftists are trying to accomplish the same ending with Iraq. The jury is still out as to whether they will succeed.
It must be because they form opinions of him before they meet him or really find out much about him.
I can't imagine any person not liking him when they meet him unless they were predisposed to resent him.
Maybe it's because he doesn't put on a show of the hard work, discipline and moral steadfastness that is the reason for his accomplishments. He makes it look easy and people misinterpret it to mean that he just got lucky or was "anointed" or some other excuse for him doing better than them.
Yes, I think you're right about. The public initially
supported the war until they caught the liberal/lefty
LBJ lying about it, starting with the Gulf of Tonkin
resolution and escalating his mendacity until even other
lefties were turned off. The Tet offensive was a military
victory but when Walter Cronkite reported it, it was
portrayed as an American disaster. Once people lost confidence in our leaders -- they didn't know whom or
what to believe and were ready to pull out. But I think
Bush has been truthful. Mistakes are made in every war,
but I think the BIG question is whether or not he can
convince people this is a legitimate part of the war on
terror. If not, there will be even more than just the
lefties who want to cut and run. I do think Bush could
do a better job of "selling" his foreign policy to the
public.
That must be why there are more whore houses south-of-the-border than churches?
Maybe that's why illegals are 25% of the prison population in some states?
Maybe that's why Hispanic gang crime has increased 50% during Bush's years in office?
Maybe that's why unwed, teenage, Hispanic girls are giving birth and dropping out of school in epidemic proportions? Does the catholic church really preach a doctrine of get pregnant, have a baby, drop out and let the U.S. Taxpayers support you or is that the Bush Small Business Administration?
I knew there was a reason!
Maybe that's why illegals are 25% of the prison population in some states?
Maybe that's why Hispanic gang crime has increased 50% during Bush's years in office?
Maybe that's why unwed, teenage, Hispanic girls are giving birth and dropping out of school in epidemic proportions? Does the catholic church really preach a doctrine of get pregnant, have a baby, drop out and let the U.S. Taxpayers support you or is that the Bush Small Business Administration?
I knew there was a reason!
I don't know how many south of the border whore houses there are, I do know that there are quite a few whore houses across the country, and not all of them are spanish....and No I have not been to one to check.
In some states, yea, 25% sounds right, but thats not the country at large, and also, these guys aren't exactly bashing the church or screaming to ban religion, or advocating abortion.
Hispanic girls dropping out of school in epidemic proportion to give birth (and not abort the child), how does that compare across the board to other religious or secular groups?
Make no mistake, I am totally against illegals, and feel that we need not only to upgrade our border security, prosecute illegals and punish them with incarceration (breaking and entering is still illegal, if I break into your home, you don't kick me out, you arrest me and prosecute me for breaking and entering).
Never the less, compared to the anti-god secularist hating crowd, they are more religious, or as I said earler a "3rd world" version of christian.
Thanks, but if it's all the same to Bush and Rove, I don't want a '3rd world' version of anything around here.
IMO, it's insane to spend $30,000 to $50,000 per illegal, per year to incarcerate these low-life, border-jumping leeches.
What in the world could you be thinking of?!!
So you propose sending them back, so they can break in again?
If you lock them up, just for breaking and entering illegally into the US (as opposed to giving them government services), I think you'd find illegal immigration dropping rapidly.
4Freedom is right. None of us has to go to a whore house to
encounter Spanish: just read the brochures and instructions
that come with every product we buy - and which increases
the cost of those items. Victor Davis Hanson and others
are right: to avoid making needed internal reforms Mexico
is happy to dump their unwanteds on us. They send back the
money to Mexico and we pay in taxes for bankrupt school
systems, insolvent hospitals and the cost of prison incarceration (and in California it IS 25%). We are getting
a permanent underclass as the sunami of illegals pours
across the border. And I just read that Bush has cut
funding for increased border guards! Frankly, I'm not
happy to support bastards even if they're not aborted.
Then we seize the assets of anyone employing illegal aliens and auction everything off to cover the U.S. Taxpayer's cost of enforcement.
Let someone that knows how to run a business legally, without hiring illegal aliens, buy one that we confiscated from these un-American, criminal traitors.
Cut off their jobs, access to welfare, food stamps, all other social programs, education for their children, housing assistance and health care and the majority of these illegal aliens will DEPORT THEMSELVES and they won't come back! Why would they?
Use the money we save, by not supporting these deadbeats and incarcerating them, to build walls along our borders with Canada and Mexico to keep out those that are only coming here to commit crimes.
A president that had a spine could do it.
I'd still want to throw them in prison, though.
Since most illegals are Catholic, one has to presume from your post that you think Catholics are not Christian.
Is that a safe assumption?
You're right about the border security funding cuts. I believe that the Customs Border Patrol mailed out 'Dear John letters' to about a million applicants that had applied and been tested and qualified for the 44,000 new agents jobs they claimed they were going to create.
The CBP hardly hired any new agents.
It appears the whole thing was just an election year ploy by Bush and Rove to con conservatives into voting for Bush last year.
This was just as big a scam as any the Clintons ever pulled on us.
Try and find a male catholic from south-of-the-border that hasn't been to a legal, government regulated or other whore house at least once.
A large percentage of these so-called devout, catholics south-of-the-border will frequent those whore houses or free-lance prostitutes from puberty to the grave.
Sorry, no sale.
IMO, let their country of origin deal with their criminals. Our money is better spent on securing our borders.
How do you know? Do the whores tell you?
You're a rather judgemental sort.
Anyway, The Brotherhood never answered my question: does he consider Catholics Christians, or not?
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