Posted on 03/21/2005 1:42:58 PM PST by RWR8189
PRESIDENT BUSH DID NOT INITIATE the political realignment that made Republicans a majority party. But he has helped create the current moment of opportunity for Republicans to enact a far-reaching conservative agenda. Absent Bush, Republicans might not have 55 senators--which they also had in 1997, but otherwise their greatest number since 1930--which was enough to approve oil-drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge last week and to enact bankruptcy reform the week before. Both measures had failed repeatedly in recent years.
Five factors have come together to give Republicans their best chance for major legislative and foreign policy achievements in nearly 80 years. And Bush has been crucial to each one.
The first factor is, obviously, the Republican ascendancy. Bush had only a little to do with the breakthrough election in 1994, when Republicans won the Senate, House, and a majority of governorships (including that of Texas, where Bush became governor). Nor did he aid Republicans much in 2000 when he won the presidency but not the popular vote.
But in the midterm election of 2002 and last year's presidential contest, Bush campaigned aggressively for Republican congressional candidates. And Republicans picked up seats. Many Republican challengers might have won anyway, but not all. Either his campaigning or his coattails were critical to Senate victories for Saxby Chambliss in Georgia, Mel Martinez in Florida, and David Vitter in Louisiana. The Bush landslide in Alaska helped Sen. Lisa Murkowski keep her seat. And, of course, Bush's own reelection was necessary for Republican rule.
Factor two: Democratic disarray. Nothing drives Democrats to distraction--and to demagoguery--the way Bush does. He brings out the worst in them. If Bush wants something, they're reflexively and often mindlessly against it. They chose the shrill Howard Dean as national chairman, and he insists Republicans in general and Bush in particular are "evil." Senate minority leader Harry Reid says the Bush gang seeks "absolute power." And so on.
Worse for Democrats, Bush makes them delusional. Sen. Edward Kennedy claims that while Democrats lost the 2004 election, they still represent "majority opinion." And he appears to believe it. Others, like Democratic representative Maurice Hinchey of New York, spin conspiracy theories, in public, about the Bush White House and Karl Rove, Bush's political adviser. The conspiracy? Rove slipped those fabricated memos to CBS News, which led to Dan Rather's downfall and Bush's reelection. Really.
The CBS scandal leads to factor three, the crackup of the mainstream media. The MSM--the big papers, TV networks, and newsmags--had been slipping for years. Their role as gatekeepers, deciding what was or wasn't news, was a thing of the past. In the 1990s, the arrival of talk radio and Fox News meant there was a popular alternative media. In 2004, bloggers emerged as a nation of fact-checkers whose chief target was the MSM.
Bloggers exposed the CBS story on Bush's Texas Air National Guard service as a fraud almost instantly. Just as important, they forced a reluctant mainstream media to take up the story of the Swift Boat Vets and their challenge of John Kerry's claim to have been a Vietnam war hero. Studies found that the national media were lopsidedly more favorable to Kerry than Bush in their coverage. But Bush won, which tells you something about Big Media's loss of influence.
Factor four: the decline of liberalism. No one has described liberalism's sad state better than Martin Peretz, editor in chief of the New Republic. Liberalism is no longer a serious set of ideas. Nor is it a coherent ideology used to guide political action. In 2005, it has become merely a complaint, Peretz suggested, a complaint about Bush and much of America.
And, finally, factor five: an ambitious, impatient president with an agenda. In a word, Bush. Presidents have a choice. They can lead or they can govern. President George H.W. Bush governed. His son leads. He does what he doesn't have to do. Or at least tries to. So Bush aims to reform Social Security, curb trial lawyers, make the federal courts more conservative, and implant democracy all over the world.
These five factors have produced a rare political moment for Republicans. It's a moment that won't last more than a year or two. The question is whether they'll do anything with it. Nothing is guaranteed. But a lot is expected.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.
It is really funny but also sad when you people start eating great conservatives like Ronald Reagan. Obviously in your minds the only "true conservatives" are yourselves. It is a good thing that most conservatives don't demand such perfection because if we did, then this country would have become communist decades ago.
OK. I did vote for Bush but because you told me not to vote im going to pass.
Relax. I have to choose who is going to be more wasteful with my tax dollars and I had to vote against Kerry. I just hope future wars with muslim nations wont be so expensive. Like I said, im not looking for a perfect conservative but I dont think its too much to ask for a conservative.
You can still bitch and moan in pursuit of your fictional perfect candidate forever, good luck to you. Just don't think any of us normal people, who live in the real world, give a damn about you perfectionists and your silly, crybaby ways. We don't.
What? You are saying that you dont stay up late at night worrying about my vote? Im shocked!
Im just stating my opinion and you are stating that you dont have an opinion other than "Everything Bush says and does is right and nobody should say otherwise!"
Ive got news for you, most normal people care a lot more about their families and their tax expenses than a bunch of muslims in Iraq thousands of miles away. Im not the extreme here Im the mainstream. If you had the people vote on whether or not $100 billion in their tax dollars should be spent to build Iraqi roads, infrastructure and pay their wages they would vote NO overwhelmingly.
In a way, they had their chance on Election Day. No doubt, Americans hated the occupation of an ungrateful Iraq. No doubt, Americans like David Noles hate a possible ramping up of arms on the part of our enemies, one that we should freely admit could be a consequence of muscular action in the Middle East. When you strike at a nest of snakes, they tend to get aggressive.
Americans voted for a President with plain-spoken ideas to navigate difficult waters. This is the direction we are engaged in - no other was suitable advanced. Every major war has setbacks. If one cannot believe that we will win, naturally he will complain.
That was the fraud perpetrated by Bill Clinton. Our country was in peril and it was kept from us. The problems were ignored, hidden under that damn bridge to the 21st century.
The mainstream media and the left would still have us believe that George Bush lied to us about weapons of mass destruction, but not a word about Bill Clinton's decade of deception.
We've never had much of a stick in the middle east but after the aphgan war , we had enough to deter the terrorist considering we ran them out of home base.
We had enough troops to make Iran and syria think twice without directly threatening them , without making china and Russia feel threatened. We had the world on our side after 911 when we went to war in aphgan.
If you don't know about what china and Russia are up to then your head has been in the sand. They percieve us as a loose cannon bent on reshaping the world in our image at any cost , which is a direct threat to their interest which they are prepared to protect at any cost.
You are starting to rant incoherently, better put down that bottle and get some sleep. Things will be better tomorrow.
Russia is selling missiles because it wants CASH. It's a poor country. Putin admitted that his military is in too bad a shape to even respond to the terrorists who killed the kids in Beslan. They have no hope of opposing us.
China would be arming themselves whether we took action or not. They have their own goal of being a world power, regardless of what we do. Weakness on our part would merely mean that they would expect no check on their actions. If you want to maintain a balance of power, then we are doing the right thing in making China think twice about any action they may want to take.
Our best course of action is to show our enemies that we take being attacked seriously and we will fight until the threat is destroyed. Not until we have taught them a good lesson, but until the threat is eliminated. The lesson from history is that if we don't destroy them, we'll have to fight them again, later. Cross reference North Korea, the Barbary Pirates (as a counter-example), and yes, even Saddam Hussein, who has attempted to kill a former president, who routinely tried to kill our pilots, and who provided refuge and financing for terrorists.
It comes down to that old saying: You can start the fight,but I'll finish it.
We haven't finished the fight with Islamist dictators and terrorists while there are any still breathing.
If the next set of bad guys learns the lesson, great. If not, then we'll destroy them, too.
And no, I don't feel bad that we are the greatest power in the world, capable of doing whatever we want whenever we want. I feel proud of it.
We are using our might to destroy evil. That's the way it should be.
You keep asserting things with no factual basis. Where is your proof that we "had enough to deter the terrorist thread" after we rran them out of home base--the bombing in Spain? What kind of terrorist threat would we have been just fine with post-Afghanistan? Another 9-11, and then we'd have attacked again? Well, obviously, considering the AQ attacks post Afghanistan, booting them out of there didn't solve everything, now did it? Oh, right, those attacks wouldn't have happened if we just stayed in Afghanistan. Your evidence of this being...?
"We had enough troops to make Iran and syria think twice without directly threatening them , without making china and Russia feel threatened. We had the world on our side after 911 when we went to war in aphgan."
And you know this...how? Should be easy enough to site your proof.
"If you don't know about what china and Russia are up to then your head has been in the sand."
How about knocking off the smartalec crap when you don't have any facts--which you haven't quoted a singele one of?
"They percieve us as a loose cannon bent on reshaping the world in our image at any cost , which is a direct threat to their interest which they are prepared to protect at any cost."
OK, ONE MORE TIME...this has changed since our war on terror HOW? Are you trying to say China and Russia had no ambitions until we attacked Iraq? Someone's got his head in the sand, but it ain't me.
So to sum up, you've provided NO evidence that China, Russia, Syria and Iran have changed their stances since we invaded Iraq, but WE are the ones quoting talking points?
I guess you just know, huh? Don't need any "facts", you just KNOW.
Thanks for the ping. Excellent article.
Excellent post!
That is a great statement.
Yep, Democrat should adore President Bush for making them a minority party for at least the next twenty years.
Like 8.5 millions Iraqis going to vote for a democratic government for the first time in their history.
Like the Lebanese people encouraged by our presence in Iraq and the Iraqi election went to the streets to demand the end of the brutal occupation of Lebanon by the Syrian terrorist regime and its puppet government.
Like Egypt allowing for the first time multi parties candidates to run for President.
Such a slippery slope!
I am glad that you are a writer and teacher of History. We need people like you my friend :)
His fiction tales?! why? because he will write and teach the truth about one of greatest Presidents, President George W Bush.
Good for showing your true colors. The 11th commandment shall not apply on you then because your are no more a Republican.
Just remember this is coming from someone who thinks that President Bush is part of a NOW conspiracy to turn U.S. sovereignty over to the U.N. and/or Mexico.
Excellent points.
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