George Bush's Big Government Adventure

Free Republic and Various ^ | 01-30-02 | aaabest

[AAABEST]

With Conservative Like This, Who Needs Liberals?

Let me start off by addressing those who have been bashing(and I do mean bash) me and other well intentioned and well known Freepers as being anti-Bush, Libertarians, from the reform party or whatever. 

I voted for GWB, and I can ping several freepers to this thread that met me in real life at several Bush rallies (with megaphone in hand). I was a member of the Broward County Young Republicans before moving to the West coast of Florida and I was active in Jeb Bush's campaign for Governor. 

I've been on this forum for almost 4 years and anyone that knows me is aware of my conservative views and knows that I'm not a member of the reform party, I'm not a Libertarian (large "l") or any of the other things I and others like me have been accused of.

If you have been engaging in inflammatory rhetoric, bashing long-time, well known Freepers or acting like children because not all of us are enthralled with "Georges Big Government Adventure",  please try to control yourselves, at least while posting on this thread. 

It's not my purpose (at least at this point) to get GWB un-elected, I like him, he has a beautiful wife, he's a good Commander in Chief and he seems like an honest politician. However,  if he keeps ignoring conservative principles and promoting a larger more intrusive government, I and others can no longer continue to support him....on principle. 

We're working to roll back decades of governmental largesse, to root out political fraud and corruption, and to champion causes which further conservatism in America.

Above is the Free Republic mission statement.  After his first year, would anyone say that GWB has worked towards this end? I think many conservatives suffer from some kind of Stockholm Syndrome as a result of 8 years of President Clinton, because when I ask many of them what GWB has done for conservatism lately, all I get is that he's not Clinton. 

I know he's not a corrupt, law breaking scoundrel, but is that all that's required? Can our republic survive a cycle where Republicans get into office grow government greatly, interspersed with Democrats who grow government even more greatly with little or no reduction? There are actually people on FR that think all of this growth in government spending is some grandiose 8 year plan by Mr. Bush to fool Democrats so that he can cut government later. What an absurd notion.

If any of the initiatives below originated from the Clinton administration, people on FR would have had a cow. Those "Day in the Life of President Bush" threads garner hundreds of fawning responses, while a thread on how our government is growing out of control will die after 10.

I appeal to anyone reading this to consider the below information without bias. The links will open in a separate window for you convenience.  I will be adding to this information as necessary God bless America, God bless this forum and God bless you.

Click on the Picture of the President (thinking of new ways grow government) for the corresponding article.

	Huge education spending bill (i.e. Federal Local School Board Bribery Act) which liberal Democrats love that doesn't mention a word about choice or local control.
	Food stamps for immigrants.
	Largest spending bill in American History. The first to exceed 2 trillion dollars.
	The Airport Security Bill that completely takes control of over 28,000 screening jobs. Now it seems that they don't even have to be high school graduates either. The big difference, they can't be fired.
	100 million for welfare moms.
	Hugely Expanding Clinton's Amercorps boondoggle that all conservatives railed against.
	Kowtowing to law breaking illegal immigrants by proposing amnesty. Speaking of illegal immigrants who sneak across the border; "And we've got to respect that, seems like to me, and treat those people with respect," he added. "I remind people all across our country: Family values do not stop at the border."
.	38 Billion for a new Homeland Security bureaucracy that allots a 20% increase for border control. Guess what. It goes to our problematic Canadian border, with not a dollar spent on the Mexican border. Read it for yourself
	The  Orwellian "Patriot Act" that gives Federal authorities carte blanche to rifle through all of your digital communications and essentially,  rob your house without notice.
	71.5 billion over 10 years for government health care.
	Not releasing appropriate documents on Clinton and FBI corruption.

 

[verboten]

Yet, you've lost no specific liberty. What right was denied to you?

I'm always a little baffled by such questions. What do government laws do other then restrict behavior or take property, and therefore circumscribe freedom? If all the crimes protecting property and person have already been defined, then any new law can only restrict liberty or take propery, it can not make illegal a crime against another person's liberty or property i.e. murder, theft, rape etc. So every prohibition in new laws is a theft of our liberty.

[Doctor Doom]

God bless America.

[Joe Hadenuf]

Ditto....

[zog]

---I dunno. I've personally suceeded in getting quite a few people to *not* vote for any democrats or republicans, based on asking them to just look honestly at decades of "business as usual" out of both parties. If everyone did that, we could break the back of instituionalised republocrat statism, same as we on the internet are starting to crack the shamestream news monopoly. All it takes is for one person to convince two others, and they in turn two others, and stick to it at the voting booth. I'm proud I don't waste my vote on either evil, I refuse to pick any lesser evil. I've heard the expression 'I voted for such and such but I had to hold my nose to do it." Like, why do that? Makes no sense, and the people who argue you are "wasting your vote" are usually partisan pols who have a party agenda that's above national interest. Not all, generaslizing here, but most do that I have met.

[redrock]

Excellent..and thoughtful opinion piece.

One that I heartily agree with.

redrock--Constitutional Terrorist

[WDG55513]

but as long as he maintains his position on taxes, all of his faults are neutralized

Easily one of the most outrageous things I've read here yet.

Do you even remember what you spent your $300 on? I don't.

[annalex]

there oughta be a law

The best law ever written about that is the Constitution, and here we are. There oughta be a revolution.

[verboten]

Do you even remember what you spent your $300 on? I don't.

A tax accountant.

[AAABEST]

#311, lmafao.

You're good d00d.

Heh.

[Rowdee]

Thanks for pinging.....I agree....this is excellent....and not done hotheadedly.

[TransOxus]

Most of those disagreeing and calling dissent as "Bush Bashing" should look at the big picture and future of the Republican Party. In the 90's Republicans became majorities in Washington and also in the majority of the states including some liberal ones. Why? Part of the reason was Clinton who was so far left and rest of the reason was that Republicans used it to get their conservative message across and tried hard with success.

But now that RINOs are in charge, there doesn't seem to be much difference in the parties other than as you noted a slower rush to "socialism" with RINOs. The closeness of the elections and recent loses indicate that the Republican conservative is not getting excited. The danger is then of having liberals in charge. We are at cross roads where Republicans may end up never getting majorities in the future because the demographics (anti-American) of unrestrained and illegal immigration is favouring the liberal. The Republicans had control but they are not capitalizing on it by standing for what they believe in or using it as the bully pulpit. Fence sitting liberals are going to vote for the Rats instead of the RINOs since at least the Rats are "honest" about their liberalism whereas the RINOs are whoring to just get elected.

[Rowdee]

..."Also, the federal budget is set to automatically increase funding for most major programs each year"....

I think not.......the spineless jellyfish have to vote to appropriate the $$$$ every single year, as well as going in for legislation for emergency spending bills.

..." Until conservatives can dig up so much popular support that those automatic spending increases are stopped, every President is going to preside over a budget that is the largest in history and obviously bigger than the last year's budget and bigger than the last President's budgets"....

Explain how Senator Pete Domenici, R-NM can go on tv bragging they even spent more for education than the Pervert asked for. It takes spine in politicians---they have all regreted having the Balanced Budget Act pass and routinely year in and year out do everything in their power to meet the hoops and loops to up the ante, er the budget! There isn't this great arm-twistsing going on....that's a pipe dream! They are all following their instincts to 'buy votes, buy votes'.

Do you also buy into the GOP Incrementalism Plan?

[Askel5]

The political system resists change unless there is a real crisis or catastrophe. If you want change, keep up the policy analysis, build coalitions, and present what you want as reforms or incremental changes, rather than as a revolution or a radical rollback.

But its those who've capitalized on the crises who've netted the changes even as they've outfoxed us on the other by forging Rainbow Coalitions bound by Litmus Test issues guaranteeing a lockstep march sufficient to power the incremental changes obtained by all the factions ...

... eco-feminists eradicating the masculine from the language and patriarchy from culture, the deconstruction of marriage by de facto unions, the tyranny of the ecological movement to reserve habitat for animals and corner natural resources for a few at the expense of humans, the sorting always by skin, sex, sexual orientation or perfection that is ensuring Diversity and the affirmative action special treatment the State decides makes folks "equal".

The right's been left in the dust. All their analyses, coalitions and squandering of their moral capital through "Square One" compromises (netting Zero) only serve as opportunity to condition them to a fresh barrage of semantics in the wake of the last crisis or compromise ... or Great Leap of technology which compels the political transformation of self-evident Truths by ... deconstructing "Is", even.

Now's not the time for a consensus on how much of "Non-Personhood" is really viable for taking back and making fully Human. It's time for men, each of them, to stand up and get radical about Objective and self-evident truth. We're too cowed as a rule to respond to anything less.

Besides, there's not going to be any coalition-building or incremental winning back if everyone's attention is turned to the latest corps or coalition they compel us belong in light of the latest Crisis.

I fail to see how Bush's decision on ESCR was a necessary. On what basis do we build our coalition to protect human life from conception to natural death after an Executive decision that Excess lives are best put to some good use before being trashed?

I fail to understand the massive hemhorrhaging of the Constitution the moment our minds were turned -- as one -- to the War on Terror and Homeland Defense in the wake of sudden, dramatic, compelling national crisis that turned us on a dime.

Overnight it no longer matters that we are -- as evidenced by our actions, anyway -- aligned with exactly the policies and programs and mindsets against which I thought we were fighting.

In fact, you might say we've beat them at their own game by cutting to the heart of several matters ... ESCR, for one. The most profitable window of Non-Personhood is LOCKED DOWN TIGHT. By us. Go figure.

[Askel5]

(with megaphone in hand)

Can I get'a wit-ness !

[mrustow]

Thanks for the ping.

[Joe Hadenuf]

If Hilary gets elected barring a coup the country is doomed America will become another Soviet Union. Don't not vote Republican if the dem nominee is Hilary.

Hillary? A coup? Uhmmm?

[weikel]

Ie if the Army has the good sense to say alright any population that elected Hilary is too stupid to have a democracy. I'd prefer a military dictatorship to a Hilary dictatorship anyday.