Posted on 09/19/2005 8:10:32 AM PDT by Mikey
The turn of the century was supposed to be the triumph of the conservatives. From the dark era of the Democrat-dominated '60s and '70s, conservatives began their protracted march toward electoral power, culminating finally in the long-awaited capture of all three branches of the federal government. The Reagan Revolution was finally to be realized in earnest!
But just as most Republican Supreme Court nominees have turned out to be treacherous supporters of big government – activist liberals in disguise – their legislative- and executive-branch colleagues likewise revealed themselves to be every bit as unfaithful to conservative principles of small government and individual freedom. As is all too often the case, conservative success carried within it the seeds of its own demise.
President Bush's recent speech on his administration's planned long-term response to Hurricane Katrina marked an interesting point in the continued devolution of American conservatism. Whereas his first five years had previously been a strange combination of strategic Wilsonian foreign policy and tactical Keynesian domestic policy, the president managed to make it abundantly clear that in domestic terms, his presidential guiding light is Lyndon Baines Johnson, not Ronald Wilson Reagan.
Real conservatives now understand they have been betrayed – badly – by this fraudulent man. Compassionate conservatism, as it turns out, is simply another name for Great Society liberalism, and not even the Texas swagger is original. Genuinely conservative Republicans are dismayed by the president's unveiling of his core liberalism and rightly fear for the future of a party which has likely seen its high-water mark already.
But nothing dissuades the Three Monkeys from screeching and howling their enthusiasm for their Dear Leader's every action. They have redefined conservatism to be the actions of one known as a conservative, so the individual is no longer defined by his ideology, the ideology is defined by the individual.
Consider radio host and former WND columnist Hugh Hewitt's take on the president's speech:
My acquaintances at the nation's leading "conservative" blog, Powerline, agreed:
Unfortunately, celebrating the realization of that which one opposes is the predictable end result of pragmatism, which is nothing more than a euphemism for the slow sacrifice of one's principles. Longtime readers may recall that I wrote the following in 2003:
As I feared, that tide has continued to rise under the aegis of a Republican House, Senate, presidency and Supreme Court. So, are there truly no conservatives left in the Republican Party today? Or is the determination to see, hear and speak no evil about the present gang of Republican charlatans in office based on a fear of giving aid and comfort to Hillary Clinton in 2008?
In either case, it is apparent that mainstream politics in America has been reduced to a Seinfeldian sport wherein voters are simply rooting for laundry.
Since the Republican Party has dedicated itself to racing its Democratic rivals in offering more bread and circuses to the underprivileged masses, there is no longer any reason for conservatives to support it. Disenchanted and dismayed Republicans will do well to remember these pragmatic betrayals of conservative principle when The Most Important Election of Our Lifetime rolls around again three years from now.
Vox Day is a novelist and Christian libertarian. He is a member of the SFWA, Mensa and the Southern Baptist church, and has been down with Madden since 1992. Visit his Web log, Vox Popoli, for daily commentary and responses to reader email.
"The only correct thing in this article is the last sentence, however: "disenchanted Republicans" should remember the outcome of the '92 election should they choose once again to send a message to the Republican party."
Good point. It was a hollow "victory" to send a message to Bush41 by voting for Perot, and I'm one of the fools who did it, and I regretted it for all the eight years of Kiss It Clinton.
WYSIWYG = What you see is what you get.
It's called "triangulation" If you'd won one election by a few hundred votes and the next one by 3%, you'd do what Bush is doing too. The fact of the matter is that had Bush had a mandate (not in Clintonian terms, but in real ones), of say 10-15%, then he could be more conservative in policy and spending.
The fact is that he hasn't had that luxury and has to do these things if he's to set the stage for his successor. As to spending, etc., Bush may set the agenda, but the so-called conservatives in Congress allocate the funds. So it's not just Bush, he's plewnty of company on the spending bandwagon. And that's spending that republicans can get through simply because they CAN. McCain, Tancredo, et. al., are just as guilty of becoming what they claim to detest as Bush is.
So while you worry about whether the President is "conservative enough" or whether a Supreme Court nominee rules to put the National Guard outside abortion clinics to stop the murder, the rest of the so-called Conservatives are running up record deficits and spending like drunken sailors. All of them sputing the platitude of "Do as I say, not as I do."
It is obvious to me that where the Big Issues are concerned there is no functional difference between the Democrat and Republican parties. No matter which party's candidate is elected President or to any other office, the United States government will continue to grow in size and power, abortion will remain legal, there will be no end to the federal income tax, and the false "wall of separation" between church and state will be maintained.
This is why I am not a Republican or a Democrat, and why I will from henceforth vote for the candidate best suited to hold a given office, the candidate who I deem most in line with true and traditional conservative values, no matter how "fringe" or "third party" he or she may be considered.
And if that means I'm "wasting my vote" and the Democrat wins in a given election, so be it. After all, what's the difference? We get the same anti-Christian liberalism either way.
What good would that do? It is wasting votes.
SPR, cool :) I'd say I'm about there myself, used to be more libertarian, but Reality intruded on that dilusion. SPR's are as motivated by the dislike of the Left as they are of their fondness of the right..
I agree, and you said it much better than I could have.
I sometimes use the term "conservatarian" to describe my leanings.
Critics Squirm as Bush Rises to the Occasion
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ^ | September 18, 2005 | Jim Wooten
Posted on 09/17/2005 1:39:20 PM EDT by new yorker 77
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1486442/posts
As he did yet again in Thursday's fireside chat with a country mired in rancor and angst, George W. Bush demonstrated the remarkably adept ability to rise to the moment. Just as his critics are pronouncing him poll-dead and his second term an abject failure, he does two things that mark him as a leader destined to join the ranks of America's greatest presidents.
In important speeches, like the president's compassionate reassurance to the victims of Hurricane Katrina that their lives will be put back together and their communities rebuilt, Bush's rhetoric connects. It attaches the urgency of the moment, inspiring confidence and trust.
The second indication of his ability to lead, and a trait that so befuddles his adversaries, is that he rebounds from pronouncements of his certain demise to reassert his vision and his agenda.
Hurricane Katrina's devastation is a perfect example. Unfairly, but predictably, Bush took the brunt of the criticism, becoming the whipping boy for the failings of state and local officials to either execute the Southeast Louisiana Hurricane Evacuation and Sheltering Plan or to make timely decisions under pressure.
Gov. Kathleen Blanco acknowledged as much this week, confiding to an aide, "I really should have called for the military." Had she called out the National Guard, or invited the president to send troops earlier, much of the looting, violence and misery could have been avoided.
Near unanimously, however, commentators, reporter/commentators reacting to what they were seeing and partisans blamed Bush, through the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Some of it was genuine frustration. Some was more sinister, an effort to destroy one of the premises of Bush's conservative governance that it is competent.
Establish that Bush is incompetent here and the premise of homeland security and the Bush foreign policy, especially Iraq, become easier to attack. And, ultimately, the entire Bush legacy, lessening the chance that his initiatives will be durable.
In his speech, Bush expressed his empathy for the victims and promised them that their government will help reunite their families and restore their lives and communities. It's a big-ticket expenditure a staggering $200 billion is the estimate that reflects conservatism at its most compassionate and generous.
But the president is not promising to rebuild New Orleans as it was, a violence-prone city with a sizable population deep into generational dependency, with little or no stake in tomorrow. The debate will rage between liberals and conservatives as to whether the reality the nation saw on TV is the result of too little or too much welfare state expansion over the past 40 years. Bush wisely avoids that.
Instead, he announced a series of initiatives that continue the approach embodied in No Child Left Behind and the prescription drug bill: more spending, often substantially more, but with real incentives to change behaviors.
Two examples are job training and home ownership. Bringing the evacuees back into public housing would continue cultivating the behaviors that rendered them passive and dependent on buses never dispatched and government too overwhelmed in crisis to protect them.
Bush promised an urban homesteading initiative, with sweat equity and favorable mortgages. He vowed, too, to give businesses incentives to create jobs and individuals up to $5,000 to buy training and services, such as child care and transportation, that they'll need to gain the skills to qualify for those jobs.
Faith-based organizations will be given incentives, too, to pitch in. As we saw in the evacuation, the caring and guidance expressed through religious institutions and faith-based organizations put a face, and a tenderness, on help extended that no government can.
New Orleans and the Gulf Coast become, in effect, a laboratory for conservatives to experiment on a grand scale, starting with a relatively clean slate, to see whether ownership and opportunity incentives can change the behaviors that keep people in poverty.
It's a grand vision and a bold agenda.
What happened here? Yesterday the critics were arranging the Failed Second Term funeral procession. Today the corpse, declining to accept political demise, is driving the procession to the destination of his choosing. And brother, it ain't the graveyard.
Jim Wooten is associate editorial page editor. His column runs Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays.
My brother is an avowed South Park Conservative and he has given up on voting and the Republican Party completely. He didn't vote in '04. There was an episode on SP about having to vote for either a Giant Douche or a Turd Sandwich. That's how he feels about the so-called "2 party" system.
Thanks!
A Bushian Laboratory
By DAVID BROOKS September 18, 2005
On Oct. 5, 1999, George Bush went to the Manhattan Institute and delivered the most important domestic policy speech of his life. In what was mostly a talk about education, he made it quite clear he was no liberal. But he also broke with mainstream conservatism as it then existed
He distanced himself from the cultural pessimists, the dour conservatives who were arguing that America was sliding toward decadence. Then he bluntly repudiated the small government conservatism that marked the Gingrich/Armey era.
It's not enough to cut the size of government, Bush said, or simply get government out of the way. Instead, Republicans have to come up with a positive vision of "focused and effective and energetic government."
With that, Bush set off on a journey to define what he called "compassionate conservatism" and what others call big government conservatism.
It's been a bumpy ride. Over the past five years, Bush has overseen the fastest increase in domestic spending of any president in recent history. Moreover, he's never resolved the contradiction between his compassionate spending policy and his small-government tax policy.
But gradually and fitfully, Bush has muddled his way toward something important, a positive use of government that is neither big government liberalism nor antigovernment libertarianism. He's been willing to spend heaps of federal dollars, but he wants that spending to go to programs that enhance individual initiative and personal responsibility.
On Thursday, President Bush went to New Orleans and gave the second most important domestic policy speech of his life. Politically it was a masterpiece, proof that if the president levels with the American people and admits mistakes, it pays off.
But in policy terms, the speech pushed the journey toward Bushian conservatism into high gear. The Gulf Coast will be a laboratory for the Bushian vision of energetic but not domineering government.
Bush proposed an Urban Homestead Act, which will draw enterprising people to the area, giving them an opportunity to own property so long as they're willing to work with private agencies to put up their own homes. He proposed individual job training accounts, so much of the rebuilding work can be done by former residents. Children who have left flooded areas will find themselves in a proto-school-choice program, with education dollars strapped to each individual child.
This is an effort to transform the gulf region, which had become a disaster zone of urban liberalism. All around the South, cities are booming, but New Orleans never did. All around the country, crime was dropping, but in New Orleans it was rising. Immigrants were flowing across the land in search of opportunity, but as Joel Kotkin has observed, few were interested in New Orleans.
Now the Bush administration is trying to change all that. That means trying to get around the corruption that made the city such a rotten place to do business. The White House is trying to do this by devising programs in which checks and benefits flow directly to recipients, not through local agencies.
That means challenging the reigning assumptions. Right now the White House is fighting with Louisiana over where to house evacuees. The state wants to put temporary trailer parks on faraway military bases, where there are no jobs and where they will live in "abject dependency," as one senior White House official puts it. The Bush folks want to put temporary housing within a mile of the original neighborhoods so people can become self-sufficient as quickly as possible.
On Thursday, the president was honest about the cost of all this, but he only began to lay out a plan. The Bushies are still trying to figure out how to help people from broken families and those with mental disabilities. They're trying to figure out where to cut government to offset the costs. There are arguments about what New Orleans should try to be, a smaller controlled-growth Portland or a booming and spreading Houston.
Like Franklin Roosevelt in the New Deal era, Bush doesn't have a complete vision of what he wants to achieve. But he does have an instinctive framework.
His administration is going to fight a two-front war, against big government liberals and small government conservatives, but if he can devote himself to executing his policies, the Gulf Coast will be his T.V.A., the program that serves as a model for what can be done nationwide.
If you think losing your rights to a "conservative" party that is leftist, come see me, I have some anti delusion pills for you.
BTW, for the reading impaired among you lefty cheerleaders, please cite any post where I or anyone else on this thread ever said they wanted "Every last thing". Talk about childish strawmen.
Some of us just want things going in the right direction. Lickspittles make up such nonsense.
Well, ask yourself just whay that is, think about it, and you'll see why the "true conservatives" here are full of crap. I consider myself a "true republican" in that I believe in the COnstitutiona nd the checks and balances system. Unfortunately, when it comes to voting we get a chice between a "republicrat" and a "democlican".
And it's the very people (republicans and conservatives) that have done more to wreck the party system than anyone else. Ross Perot and his minions (the "true conservatives")split the party in 1992 and gave us 8 years of Clinton-all-the-time. McCain pushed through "campaign finance reform" which had the effect of narrowing free speech and dissent, which is a necessity if we're to have a true constitutional republic and a healthy democratic exchange.
Before anyone complains about the playing field Bush finds himself on now, let's take a look at what we have done to make things this way. The "true Conservative" viewpoint has become a mirror image of the hated liberal left --- we've basically become so "right" that we've wrapped around and are starting to look like a "left" party.
You want to correct the ship? Start holding people accountable. Republicans used to do that (i.e. Nixon, Packwood, etc) but we've been stung by so many years of "gotcha!" politics and the desire for instant gratification (on abortion, on tax cuts, etc) that we've become the other side, only we pretend we're more rational.
"I've been saying it for years and years and years, there's no major differences between the republican party and the democratic party."
There is a difference between the basic philosophy of the Republican Party and that of the Democratic Party.
However, the Bushes - Bush I and Bush II, have proven to be most disappointing in applying those distinctions.
Bush I was a total disgrace. He was a genuine northeastern liberal who destroyed the Reagan Revolution and tried to shore up the collpasing Evil Empire.
Bush II, after a good start in his first term in flushing out the Taliban and initiating the War on Terror, has gotten bogged down in fighting a defensive action against foreign invaders in Iraq, instead of interdicting them at the borders and seeking out and destroying those nations which are aiding and abetting them, e.g. Syria.
His border policy and continued deafness of both himself and his advisors to the screams of outrage from ALL Americans of whatever political persuasion to the violation of our borders by an invasion of foreign infiltrators and social parasites is inexcusable.
Nobody wants these people and nobody wants his bogus "guest worker" program except a handfull of big business interests who swill on the profits of cheap labor.
I am suspicious of the ultimate cost to the American taxpayer, and the negative fall-out to the Republican Party by this plan to bail out New Orleans.
New Orleans must be rebuilt, but not on the current site, and the cost of it must be carefully monitored to assure that all local funds available are first employed before raiding federal tax dollars.
His slection of advisors and lieutenants: Mineta, Freeh, Tenet, Whitman, Ridge, Brown, Tom Kean, Gonzales etc, has been most imprudent.
His apparent unwillingness to go to the mat with an unabashed conservative, strict constructionist dedicated to undoing the liberal excesses of prior Federal Court decisions is most unsettling and bodes ill for future Supreme Court nominees.
I am very unhappy with Bush II - almost as unhappy as with Bush I.
PS - I do not fear for the future of conservatism or republicanism, I merely fear that we will go too far one of these days unless we're more careful and circumspect. We have to get back to our republican roots and start practicing what we preach if we're to take advantage of and extend the majority we enjoy now.
Ross Perot was one of the best things that ever happened to the Republican party. He and Clinton. 2 years later Republicans found a message and successfully sold it and won the house for the first time in (40?) years. Republicans need to get back to that message: fiscal responsibility, smaller government ... and hammer away at the Left/Socialist/Democrats.
A huge leap. I want to be free again. I haven't got a clue what you want.
There are "conservatives" all over this site who want liberal policies and government control of every last aspect of your life. I have no idea if you are one of them.
I said; " No luck so far, they have moved significantly left.
I disagree.
Do what you want. they have moved left, considerably so.
While some things being done by the current administration and congress are not to my liking, I know it is far better than what the Democrats would be doing.
Oh goody, you got gonorrhea instead of cancer.
we're All gonna die!!!!!!!!!!!
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