Posted on 07/10/2003 1:06:07 PM PDT by Constitutionalist Conservative
1. You claim that liberatarians on FR have called Bush a fascist.
2. The evidence for that claim is conveniently missing.
Of course it's missing because the accounts have been ZOTted.
Trace
1. You claim that liberatarians on FR have called Bush a fascist.
2. The evidence for that claim is conveniently missing.
Of course it's missing because the accounts have been ZOTted.
Trace
It's not that the GOP choose to ignore certain issues. They know what they can get accomplished which will serve to keep them in position to effect more change.
They can't fight all the battles at once. You can't have a sea change in politics all at once. It does not work like that. The system of checks and balances is designed to moderate change. To expect otherwise is naive.
That's a quote for the books!!! That would make a great inscription on the marble walls of Congress!!!
Bravo! Encore!!!
But both the excited young NR "neocons" and you pure paleo souls have not yet really grasped the two pivotal facts about the present moment:
(1) There's a war on. The question before us is not the percentage of government growth, or the prescription drug benefits, or budget deficits. The issue is whether we will win or lose the war on terrorism. The most important fact about the Presidency for the 2004 election is that the President is Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces.
Losing the war, which could happen, which would already have happened under Al Gore, would change life in this country in ways impossible to measure, none of them good.
For one thing, the gut instinct of any liberal is going to be to pull back and try to protect the country by ever-expanding domestic security programs rather than military action abroad, but of course politically-correct domestic security, with lots of slush-money for favored constituencies. Those who think John Ashcroft is a threat to their liberties, should give a long slow thought to the opportunities 9-ll would have given Janet Reno. No detentions or deportations of foreign nationals, of course, but maximum extension of control over ordinary citizens.
Winning the war will take determination, and near-total indifference to "world opinion," and the capacity to think way out of the box strategically. If you can tell me where we can find an electable presidential candidate other than Bush who even comes close to exemplifying those qualities, I'll listen to you about all Bush's impurities as a conservative. Otherwise, I don't want to hear it. I would swallow a million bad drug benefit plans rather than see my daughter grow up to live in one big bleeding Ulster.
(2) The other pivotal fact is that it ain't Bill Clinton's Democratic Party any more. I know, we all hate Bubba, but his Administration was not really ideologically driven; it was leftish in its assumptions but poll-and-penis driven. However much control the Clintons still maintain over the machinery of the Democratic Party, the Democratic candidate this year is going to be a far more ideologically committed 1960's socialist than Big "I want you to want me" Bill.
In the Clinton years, it made some sense to say that the gap between the parties was miniscule. But can anyone say with a straight face that there will not be a dime's worth of difference between the Bush Administration and a Kerry Administration, or a Gephard administration, or -- Lord save us -- a Dean administration? The only possible exception to that is Edwards, who would be as poll-driven as Bubba (I don't know about the other thing) but he isn't going to make it. And doesn't the thought of that pretty boob as Commander in Chief warm your heart?
So let's grant for the sake of argument that Bush is no true conservative, and the Congressional Republicans are no better, blah, blah, blah. Let's compare what we're getting with Bush and what we would be likely to get if we had a Democratic President and Congress:
Bush: Determined to eradicate international terrorism | Democrats: We can only do so much and we may just have to come to terms with the fact that the world has changed.
Bush: Doesn't give a damn about world opinion | Democrats: Give the EU a veto on US foreign policy.
Bush: Refuses to erode US sovereignty by joining the ICC and other "international community" boondoggles | Democrats: Committed to "multi-nationalism" and the "international community"
Bush: Tax Cuts | Democrats: Tax Increases
Bush: Budget Deficits | Democrats: Budget Deficits
Bush: Bumbling domestic security programs that cost too much money, may have pinched some liberties that I can't see, and get howls from liberals because they haven't always been nice to Pakistani and Saudi illegals | Democrats: America becomes Renostan but is always nice to Yemeni "students" whose visas expired two years ago
Bush: Bad prescription drug benefits bill | Democrats: HillaryCare Mark II
Bush: All conservative judicial nominations so far (though I realize that in the alternative universe inhabited by some conservatives he has already appointed Souter's little brother to SCOTUS) | Democrats: Breyer and Ginsburg clones to all courts.
You may call me a Bush-Bot or whatever, but in this situation, with these alternatives, I do not think that it would be responsible for conservatives to engage in political brinkmanship in 2004 to threaten or punish the Republican Party or the President. I believe that the survival of this nation, even in the imperfect form in which it now exists, may well depend on the re-election of George Bush, not because I worship at some shrine with his picture surrounded by candles, but because of the way in which I see the real-world alternatives.
The best thing conservatives can practically do for their country and for conservatism is to do everything possible to increase the Republican grip on the Senate in '04. Then we might actually get the beginnings of Social Security privatization, conservative judges, drastic reduction of the power of the public employee's unions by hiring out more federal jobs to private firms, deeper tax cuts, and the abolition of the death tax -- all things which any honest observer knows that George Bush would have done already if he had had real control of the Senate. That seems to me as much as I could expect from one president who was also fighting a war.
Amen, amen, amen!
Are you kidding? The difference frightens me.
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