Bush's ideological facade hides political goal

Alameda Times-Star ^ | June 15, 2003 - 5:06:22 PM PST | Neal Gabler

[RLK]

Why wouldn't you...it's written by a leftist.

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But you are a leftist and I don't agree with you.

[RealEstateEntrepreneur]

Why is a question of being ideological OR politically savvy?

Why can't you be a politically savvy, incrementalist ideologue? And what's what Bush is (with great help from Rove).

[Southack]

You can sum this article up thusly:

"It's all about politics, and Karl Rove is the real brains behind the puppet."

And of course, the Left still doesn't get it. IF, big *IF*, it was all about politics, then Bush would be nominating moderates to the federal bench, rather than nominating fire-breathing conservatives (e.g. Pryor, Estrada, Owens) who drive the Left nuts.

You don't "co-opt" your opposition's positions by nominating their ideological enemies to the bench. No, such actions will instead rally your opposition to take uniform stands (e.g. filibusters).

But that's far too complicated to explain to any Ph.D'd Lefty that you might have the unpleasantness to meet on the street.

So much for the "it's all about politics" nonsense, then. Bush's federal judge nominations clearly debunk that theory.

And if Rove is such the behind-the-scenes genius, why is it that Bush hasn't flubbed up in public?

Time and time again the Left has told us that Dubya was so dumb that he couldn't handle foreign politics or manage to control foreign leaders.

Yet when have we seen a foreign "leader" roll over Bush?!

Thus, the lie that Rove is the brains is easily disproven by observing that it is Bush who wins each time he meets face to face with foreign leaders, not the other way around. Let's face it, Rove can't be around all the time, and he can't tell Bush what to say to those leaders when it is mano-e-mano, so it has to be that Bush is winning against those diplomats on his own.

But that ruins the cozy little fantasy world that liberals have crafted for themselves. They have to believe that Bush is dumb, as their worldview depends upon Bush and his ideas being all wrong.

[RLK]

Incrementalist... That's funny.

[RealEstateEntrepreneur]

Funny?

[Luis Gonzalez]

"Why can't you be a politically savvy, incrementalist ideologue?"

The political ingénue around these parts can't "see" that.

Baseball has innings, football has quarters, years have months, weeks have minutes...these people follow the absurd idea that ideology without political strategy can help advance the conservative cause better than the incrementalist approach. They believe that while everything else works incrementally, in politics you have to score, or even win every game, by going for it all on every single play. In spite of the fact that all this strategy has ever brought them is defeat, they cling to it.

If Bush advances even one of the ideas generally recognized as being part of "the conservative agenda", he will accomplish more than they ever will.

Imagine that this was an actual war, and that elections are actual battles. These politically naive individuals would agree that the battle had to be fought, they just didn't agree with everyone else on the location. So while the main bodies of the opposing armies beat the hell out of each other locked in battle for God and Country on some bloody field, these guys would be standing about twelve miles away from the engagement, bitterly complaining that no one showed up to fight them.

[numberonepal]

everything in this administration is political, by which he meant that everything is the product of political calculation and everything is devised specifically for political advantage.

Frickin' DUH! What administration doesn't do this? Amateurs do not get to the White House.

The article does seem a bit paranoid, but the fact that this Administration is taking a jackhammer crew and wrecking ball to the Democratic foundation is dean on. IMHO, I think they should use someting more metaphorically extreme - say C4?

[InterceptPoint]

I'm sure everyone will slam this guy but lets face it, he is pretty much on the right track.

Bush and Rove are trying to build a Republican majority for the ages, one that will last. That is what all administrations do, despite what this Dem Dumbo wants us to believe. The bottom line of his argument is that it is a bad thing for the Republicans to try to dismantle the Democrat organized institutions like the Teachers Union that feed off the Government and support the Democrat Party. The trial lawyers are in the same group. The simple fact that these political links exist doesn't mean that they are somehow God given and immortal. They were put together for political gain and they can be justifiably dismantled for the same reason.

How do spell sour grapes?

[petuniasevan]

The above article:

Nah, need something stronger.

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[Avoiding_Sulla]

There is so many items I was going to highlight and point out that they were Democratic tactics that I just gave up. Others here have already beat me to it on a number of posts. To all of you I tip my hat.

I will simply add that this political "analysis" belongs filed in what may already be your most oversized computer folder. That folder would be appropriately titled:

Democrat Projection

[Mortimer Snavely]

RLK wrote this a while back. It bears repeating:

"Republican and political amateurs tell me daily that the only important thing is to get the Clintons and Gores out of the White House. Nothing could be further from the truth and this thinking is an ultimate deathtrap. Without a highly articulate spokesman advancing a well thought out broad agenda, winning an election is an ultimate disaster during which your opposition gets a rest period while the world watches your candidate prove the criticisms the opposition made during their election campaign. You lose leverage during your own term in office because of internal organizational dissension and directionlessness. You've simultaneously undermined your ideological and political strength in future elections. Winning an election with an incompetent or compromising or compromised candidate is deferred suicide.

The worst thing that can happen is to win an election with someone who is too incompetent, or is reluctant, to confront and refute your ideological enemy. It makes a better case for the view that the enemy is so correct as to be unrefutable than the enemy could make by himself. Ideological silence or ineptitude confers an image of indominability, immortality, invulnerability, and permission upon the opposition. The message given is that the only thing your presidential candidate can do is lamely apologize by embarrassed silence for not adopting the ideology of the political left. Your supporters are betrayed to find when they vote against the opposition they still have no voice and the opposition remains the dominant political voice.

In subsequent elections that image of indominability and permission are used against you. The ideological weaknesses of your weak previous office-holder are declared by the radical left opposition to be the wise valid positions of your party, while deviation from weaknesses and attempts to correct them are labeled extremism. A competent new candidate in your party is nearly mortally crippled by needing to spend as much time and effort refuting or reversing the silent ineptitude and embarrassment of the previous officeholder from his own party as he does making a rational ideological case. This allows the opposition the opportunity to present your candidate as being a divergent radical within his own party for saying what the previous candidate or officeholder was too inept or disinclined to say.

Concurrently, you find your own political party has become a comfortable nesting place for an influx of weaklings and trash now promoting and attempting to extend the agreeable softness and weakness of weak predecessors.

It must be understood there absolutely is no such thing as a moderate or center position in politics where there is a radical left. Any time your candidate moves half way to accommodate or make peace with the left, the left responds by moving farther left, which then moves the middle point farther left. Consequently, in the last 40 years moderation and middle ground have been moving targets receding leftward at the speed of light as so-called moderates and peacemakers desperately and lamely pursue the endlessly moving average set and reset by ever-increasing radicalism and pathology on the left. The shift has been such that the leftist position of 40 years ago is now called right-wing extremism.

Electing peacemakers and "nice guys" in dealing with the radical left is the equivalent of quitting the antibiotic medication which is fighting an infection threatening to turn into gangrene. The infection gains strength while unopposed, and your political party or next presidential candidate faces the future having lost an arm or a leg. "

[Uncle Bill]

((((Loud Clapping))))

[RLK]

Consequently, in the last 40 years moderation and middle ground have been moving targets receding leftward at the speed of light as so-called moderates and peacemakers desperately and lamely pursue the endlessly moving average set and reset by ever-increasing radicalism and pathology on the left. The shift has been such that the leftist position of 40 years ago is now called right-wing extremism.

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Yup. And somebody here conjured up the word incrementalism in an attempt to avoid seeing the reality.

[Mortimer Snavely]

"Why can't you be a politically savvy, incrementalist ideologue? And what's what Bush is..."

Bush is "incrementing" us further and further left. His vision of the USA is more like Huey Long's "Share the Wealth" noise than anything else, with Bible verses to support it.

[Mortimer Snavely]

Shakespeare was able to conjure up words and phrases which expanded thinking. Madison Avenue and the like create words and phrases to achieve the opposite effect. Language is the vehicle of thought. Organizing words represents concepts, and that is what language is all about. Organizing words rationally is called thinking.

English is very flexible. It can be spliced together so that whole concepts can be represented in words, which can either expand or contract the ability to think. Orwell wrote about this at length.

[RLK]

You said it better than I could.

[jagrmeister]

Laughably paranoid. In a representative democracy, politics and policy are like overlapping strands of DNA. In pursuit of good politics, good policy is produced and vice-versa. The people are the final arbiters of whether policy is good or not- and they make their judgment known through elections.

[GatekeeperBookman]

This is good news-the actions have been effective & the left screams. I like it.

[mombonn]

I believe this guy appears in that Fox News Watch show on FNC.

Never trust a smiling liberal.