Posted on 08/24/2005 1:15:06 AM PDT by Dr. Marten
Conservative lawblogger Stephen Bainbridge is getting a lot of what they call in Washington strange new respect for his strongly-worded criticism of the Presidents international and domestic policies. While liberals like Kevin Drums commenters are quick to gloat about Bainbridges lament, and more tellingly, some Bush backers have accused Bainbridge of recycling leftist cant, Bainbridge has rather solidly made a conservative not leftist, not paleocon case against President Bush:
Its time for us conservatives to face facts. George W. Bush has pissed away the conservative moment by pursuing a war of choice via policies that border on the criminally incompetent. We control the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives, and (more-or-less) the judiciary for one of the few times in my nearly 5 decades, but what have we really accomplished? Is government smaller? Have we hacked away at the nanny state? Are the unborn any more protected? Have we really set the stage for a durable conservative majority?
He continues with a critique of the shifting rationales for the Iraq War and asks,
if Iraqs alleged WMD programs were the casus belli, why arent we at war with Iran and North Korea? Not to mention Pakistan, which remains the odds-on favorite to supply the Islamofascists with a working nuke. If Saddams cruelty to his own people was the casus belli, why arent we taking out Kim Jong Il or any number of other nasty dictators? Indeed, what happened to the W of 2000, who correctly proclaimed nation building a failed cause and an inappropriate use of American military might? And why are we apparently going to allow the Islamists to write a more significant role for Islamic law into the new Iraqi constitution? If throwing a scare into the Saudis was the policy, so as to get them to rethink their deals with the jihadists, which has always struck me as the best rationale for the war, have things really improved on that front?
Though Bainbridge is spot-on in his analysis of the terrible miscalculations made by Bush and Rumsfeld during the war in Iraq, I take issue with his characterization of the war as the reason Bush and the Republican Party have abandoned domestic conservatism. In fact, a strong case can be made that Bush, Rove, and Congressional Republicans had no intention to advance a domestic conservative agenda in the first place.
They always mention Iran and crazy kim, and some on the right parrot the lefts ankle biting, masked as keyboard commandos.
JMO, I'll take Rumsfeld expertise and those of his Joint Chiefs, than some UCLA law professor keyboard commando.
DIVIDE AND CONQUER! Well SCREW the left!!! I am not buying their tripe!!!
LLS
Boo for No Child Left Behind, expanded Medicare Drug benefit, the Highway Bill and not 1 Veto in 5 years. To the President's defense he never played a fiscal conservative.
It's not "kennedy's" bill entirely and now the NEA hates it.
Anything the NEA hates, I'm for.
"Some day so called conservatives will stop eating their young. No one is conservative enough. I think many are really libertarians who will never be satisfied, no matter what, since they can see little through the smoke".
AMEN!!! Some on this board put the "lib" in Libertarian!
Thank you!
LLS
I would be for the dismantling of the Dept. of Education. Governemnt Education is a Marxist idea. But NOOOOOOOO we have this stupid Kennedy law which actually EXPANDS IT!!!
DON'T YOU SEE?!? The NEA just hates it because it evaluates teacher's results. Big deal- it's still an expansion of liberalism.
I have to go, so I won't be responding any more. Had fun flaming you. Turkey.
I think your post is well-thought out and I agree with about all of it. It is difficult to veto legislation when your party controls Congress and not lose support there. I do think that we focus too much on the here and now sometimes, and forget the bigger picture. I don't think Bush has that problem. Spending is much too high, and wasteful, but that train is hard to stop. Given Bush's current popularity figures and the war on terrorism (and the asinine attacks on Bush because of it) he may not have the political capital he needs to deal with some of these issues. I don't know what his excuse is regarding immigration policy. He may be sucking the dems in on that one, as they are willing to take ANY position contrary to what they think Bush's is. If he turns and adopts the positions on immigration that dems are beginning to say they hold, the dems will be hard pressed to argue (but they will still do it).
.
Well don't you see?!? This is a first step, after the incompetancy of the NEA is shown, then the arguement of more competition in the education system can be made(i.e vouchers).
The govt school mess wasn't made in a day and it ain't going to be dismantled in a day.
thanks for the info
no barf alert?
That has always been an extremely poor argument to me. As a vet, and I think I can speak for a few other vets, no so-called "exit strategy" needs to be discussed until the entire mission is completed. It took how long after WWII before we exited Germany, for example?
Win first. The exit strategy comes later.
ping
What democracy? Iraq is on it's way to becoming a nation under rule of Islam, a sure-fire start to another dictatorship. Wow, what an improvement. A secular terrorist dictatorship to an Islamic fake democracy. How many elections until an "Allah's voice" candidate gets in office and starts dissolving the voting process because "Allah" disapproves? And then claims to be following God's wishes when he starts taking in extremists, attacking neighbors, and pursuing nuclear weapons? Oops, all we have is a more religious Saddam Hussein!
And our hand may have been force going in, but we've tied our *own* hands* behind our back now that we're there. American soldiers are dying because we can't conduct air strikes on terrorist camps, and force our troops not to retaliate to bullets being fired from mosques, because it's okay for a few dozen soldiers to die as long as a shot-up mosque doesn't appear on the evening news! We try to hold cities while leaving borders wide open for the terrorist reinforcements to come right across!
We were right to go in, but now we're playing politics instead of war, and Americans are dying because of it. Bush is no hero.
>"All of my years working in politics to help get Republicans in the majority, and look what they do! so "sweetie, sweetie", just "getting along" with the dems!"
- Yup, I think we're all getting a little tired of the RINO "go along to get along" routine.
BTW, did you know it was because of the Republicans that the 16th amendment on federal income taxes was passed? and the reason?
-They were afraid of being demagogue by the Democrats as being for the rich. So...they went along with the Dems, just to "get along"
That was in 1913. Very little has changed about Republicans, it appears...
>>"I've had it with them rubbing elbows with the enemy. They've all got a limited amount of time to prove themselves--or they're out!!"<
Ageed. I've already dropped my membership from the Republican party, and registered as an independent, last month.
I'll still vote for Republicans, but the party will not get one more cent from me, until they enact some major tax reforms, and start cutting the bloated federal bureaucracy.
Any chance they'll do that? ;^D I'm skeptical...
You are kidding right? Lincoln?
GWB, if he continues as he has, will go down as mediocre at best.
His impeachment is one terrorist attack from someone who walked over the souther border away. This issue will dwarf all else in the next year or two. If he continues to play dead on it, he will go down in flames from both parties.
LOL! You're automatically labeled a DU troll ...or worse.
What's going on here is a concerted effort by the DNC complicit with the MSM to push the lie that Iraq has become another Vietnam.
If this drumbeat isn't answered, the GOP is toast.
President Bush's real "crime" is that he isn't SPEAKING to the American people as he did immediately after 9/11. The people would get behind him if he would only tell us what is being accomplished.
I find myself changing my opinion too.
What are our soldiers being killed and maimed for?
I will take a page from the Michael Graham and Ann Coulter playbooks.
Kill all the Muslim leaders and convert the followers to Christianity. They would do it to us if they could. We should ensure they never can.
El Presidente Bush? Stop playing footsie with Vicente Fox?? Blasphemy!
What are you talking about?
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.