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.
Their ideas bordered on posses and hunting near the border.
Not vigilantism, hunting.
How are "Third Worlders" any worse than the native born black and white trash that I have encountered throughout the country?
Anyway, the screen name only brings to mind to me the "Muslim Brotherhood," an organization that has tended to have gone a bit rancid. But who am I to criticize? My name also poses problems to many. :)
Some tend to focus more on really fringe sects than others I see. LOL.
And you know this, how?
An exit poll?
Do they have entrance polls?
You're right, everyone knew something was going on with SS. Part of that came from his first campaign. However, SS reform or overhaul was hardly part of the campaign.
Sound observation by an outstanding American conservative.
When did the Catholic Church come out in support of legalized prostitution and the government regulated whore houses these so-called "devout" catholics have all over their countries?
One of the uses of the term 'compadre', south-of-the-border, is in reference to (or possibly in reverence of) the guy that took one of these "devout" catholics to their first prostitute.
Most of these "devout" catholic illegal aliens, Sinkspur wants us to legalize, have 'compadres' and are 'compadres' themselves.
Now, that we're talking about it, it is thought provoking that platoons of catholic priests and nuns led the charge to close our U.S. Naval bases at Vieques and Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico.
They chained themselves to our naval bases' gates and went to federal prison in the throes of their anti-American Military, religious fervor.
When was the last time you can recall catholic priests and nuns being as fervent in their insistence that houses of prostitution be closed south-of-the-border?
Which, IYO's, is the greater threat to their congregation's spiritual wellbeing?
A penny for your thoughts. ;^)
It just goes to show that maybe the brakes should be applied to some of the culture war going on.
I never said illegal aliens were "devout" Catholics. You made that up and attributed it to me.
I said illegals were largely Catholic; you proceeded to assert that every illegal alien was Catholic and that they all visited whorehouses on a regular basis. That's a bizarre contention, and I, as well as Indy Pendance, wanted to know how you knew how many Mexicans visited these places on a regular basis.
I also invite you to point out where I came out for legalization of these illegals.
You have a fixation on what Mexican Catholics do, and ignore the original assertion made by The Brotherhood that Catholics may not be Christian.
You also have a propensity to embellish your posts, making stuff up as you go along.
The fish keeps getting bigger and bigger with every post.
You didn't try to refute or ask for any substantiation of his claim. No, instead you accuse me of making it up.
If many of us have been confused over just where you are coming from and where you stand on the subject of illegal immigration over the years, you might consider that to be, at least partially, your own fault.
How about clarifying your stance on illegal immigration for us?
"...you proceeded to assert that every illegal alien was a Catholic and that they all visited whorehouses on a regular basis."
Please use the exact quote of mine you're talking about and the post number in question.
I believe you're the one making things up, so you can accuse other FReepers of "bizarre contentions".
How does this answer any of the questions I posed in my posts?
You and Indy are concerned with how I could know what I know as opposed to the hypocrisy of priests and nuns chaining themselves to the gates of our Naval Bases on Vieques and Roosevelt Roads, PR, while legalized prostitution runs rampant south-of-the-border?
Don't look now, but your agenduh is showing. ;^)
Possibly, you believe that if you turn a blind eye towards hypocrisy, it ceases to exist?
IF he wants to.
The President has ALL the cards in his favor -- the majority in BOTH Houses.
He has no excuse to do otherwise.
No, pal. YOU! Only YOU were confused about where I stand. And this thread is not about illegal aliens anyway.
Your obsession with bordellos is very strange, and getting stranger.
How about government just butting out?
Spot on analysis by Pat. The president can define himself during his second term as a freedom loving, small government president: ending illegal immigration, sharply curtailing legal immigration, cutting domestic spending (including his own whopper sized MediPill program), opposing discrimination against Whites and Asians, curtailing the U.S. world policeman role, refusing to cede American sovereignty to the U.N. or spend billions in tax money on foreign welfare programs, and ending the long tyranny of federal hegemony over sovereign states. Will he do it? That is all Pat is asking in this article. What is your prediction?
Pat Buffon loves the sound of his own keyboard.
After all, I'm not one of the millions of illegal aliens in our country from south-of-the-border that Sonny M believes the majority of to be so-called "devout" catholics, even though prostitution is legal and government regulated in their countries of origin.
I'm nobody's 'compadre'. Are you?
So, where's that exact quote of mine I asked you for?
LOL!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.