Bush's Record Calls into Question His Conservative Label

Bush's Record Calls into Question His Conservative Label

David T. Pyne
June 4, 2002

President George W. Bush, having won an extremely close and hard fought election in November 2000, has been attacked by liberal Democrats for being "too conservative" almost from the time he was elected. However, Bush's overall record since assuming the office of President calls into question the general perception that Bush is a conservative. During his first few months, Bush seemed to set a commendable course as a moderate conservative.

Some of Bush's notable conservative accomplishments include his decision to withdraw the US from the strictures of the ABM Treaty, the US victory in the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, the passage of the biggest defense spending increases since Ronald Reagan and the appointment of a Secretary of Defense who is committed to furthering US national security. President Bush also succeeded in preventing a communist return to power in Nicaragua and has passed limited, but vital protective tariffs to help protect America's dying steel industry under heavy assault from America's steel-dumping trade partners.

During the past year, Mr. Bush's conservative accomplishments have been undermined by his other actions, which indicate an increasing and unwelcome tilt toward the left, likely prompted by advice from Colin Powell and Karl Rove who advocate appeasing liberals both in regards to his domestic and foreign policies. On the domestic side of the house, the Bush record has been a disappointing one as the President has submitted balanced budget-cap busting budgets which will return the US to a time of $200 billion a year deficits increasing government spending 15% over two years, a far higher rate of increase than his more liberal predecessor.

Bush also signed the radical Ted Kennedy education bill, which federalizes education and provides tens of billions more a year for the liberal-dominated Department of Education to indoctrinate America's children in their socially liberal value-free philosophy. Bush's record on social issues has been decidedly mixed with his support of federal funding for grisly stem-cell research, his failure to reverse pro-abortion executive orders signed by Bill Clinton in 1993, and his appointment of pro-abortion activist and White House Counsel, Al Gonzalez, to lead his Supreme Court nominee search team.

President Bush has undertaken a major effort to remake the GOP in "his" image, alienating many of his conservative supporters in the process. He has engineered a successful liberal takeover of the California Republican Party by a man who has branded all pro-lifers as extremists. Bush has supported moderate to very liberal candidates against their more conservative opponents in California, North Carolina, Tennessee and elsewhere throughout the country, appointed a pro-choice governor to head the Republican National Committee and helped install a liberal abortion supporter as RNC treasurer. In addition, Bush has attempted to push his proposal through Congress to grant amnesty to two million illegal immigrants in the US in a bid to buy the Latino vote in America and appease Mexican President Vincente Fox.

Most troublesome of all to Republicans, Bush broke a campaign promise in signing the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill. This Democrat congressional majority insurance bill will have the effect of legislating a permanent Democrat party stranglehold on the majority of both houses of Congress, reversing the hard-won and historic gains by the Republican congressional majority during the past decade. Initial implementation of this bill in the 2004 election cycle will likely result in the defeat of scores of Bush's loyal Republican supporters in Congress.

On foreign policy, Bush supported PLO terrorist Yasser Arafat in power and repeatedly urged Sharon to halt Israel's counter-terrorist operations until Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon finally succeeded in persuading him to change course and find enough moral clarity to support the Israeli war against the Palestinian terrorists. However, Bush still supports a Palestinian state, something that not even Bill Clinton would support. In addition, the Bush Administration actually tried to enlist Iran, listed by the State Department as the greatest state sponsor of terror including Al Queda, as a strategic partner to fight terrorism back in September.

In pursuing relations with Communist China, the president has opted to pursue a Clintonian policy of accommodation, if not outright appeasement. Last year, Bush signed an executive order to permit the sale of significantly more advanced supercomputers than those allowed to be sold by the Clinton Administration. He has also championed the awarding of permanent most favored nation trade status and WTO membership for Communist China, whose record on killing hundreds of thousands of its political and religious dissidents, forcing tens of millions of Chinese women to have abortions every year, threatening nuclear incineration of American cities and continued unrestricted sales of advanced nuclear warhead and ballistic missile technology to America's enemies leaves much to be desired. The Bush policy of appeasing the Butchers of Beijing has had the effect of rewarding them for their 'bad behavior' while encouraging future offenses and escalated threats against our Free Chinese allies on Taiwan.

Bush has also forged a new, overly trusting relationship with the Russian Federation led by former KGB spymaster, Vladimir Putin. Bush has pledged to destroy and dismantle 75% of the US strategic nuclear deterrent that has kept the nuclear peace for nearly sixty years, signed an agreement admitting Russia as a full partner with veto power in NATO, and offered to jointly develop US missile defenses with Russia. It is not at all clear that Russia can be trusted to keep its treaty obligations, let alone serve as a reliable US ally. President Bush also supports the implementation of a Clinton-era plan to disarm the US Army of its tanks, tracked vehicles and much of its artillery that will likely result in the unnecessary deaths of thousands of American soldiers if they are called upon again to fight a major war.

For the good of the country, President Bush should move away from governing from the mushy middle and return to governing to the center-right. He may need to do so in order to regain lost conservative support and avoid a major conservative challenge in the 2004 presidential election.

© 2002 David T. Pyne

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David T. Pyne, Esq. is a national security expert who works as an International Programs Manager in the Department of the Army responsible for the countries of the former Soviet Union and the Middle East among others. He is also a licensed attorney and former Army Reserve Officer. In addition, he holds an MA in National Security Studies from Georgetown University. Mr. Pyne currently serves as Executive Vice President of the Virginia Republican Assembly. He is also a member of the Center for Emerging National Security Affairs based in Washington, D.C. Mr. Pyne serves as a columnist for American-Partisan.com, OpinioNet.com and America’s Voices. He is also a regular contributor for Patriotist.com. In addition, his articles have appeared on Etherzone.com and AmericanReformation.org where he serves as a policy analyst.

I've seen this vaunted list of Bush accomplishments before and it simply doesn't wash for the reason that many if not most of the accomplishments you list as conservative are in fact betrayals of the conservative cause. See the list below for specific examples.

The Real Bush Record
3-29-02 (since modified)
rightwing2

* Began implementation of his plan to unilaterally disarm the US of 75% of its strategic deterrent, which will eliminate the US as a nuclear superpower and permit the Sino-Russian alliance to supplant the US as the most powerful political and military force on the planet. It will also make the world safe for nuclear war by eliminating the US ability to deter nuclear attack from the superior nuclear forces of the Russian Federation.

* Supported anti-nuke wacko proposals to ‘de-alert’ much of our remaining nuclear triad making it impossible to fire except within several days or weeks upon the decision being made to do so.

* Agreed to continue the Democrap Congress mandated ban on nuclear testing, which his father opposed.

* Supported a Clinton initiated Army Transformation plan which will unilaterally disarm the Army of all of its war-winning main-battle tanks and tracked vehicles including the Crusader SP artillery system.

* Attempted to forge a strategic partnership with prime 9-11 terrorist state sponsor Iran in the misnamed “war against terrorism” in addition to other terrorist state sponsors like Syria and the Sudan.

* Appeased Communist China and embarrassed his country by disgracefully apologizing to the Communist Chinese hostagetakers who kidnapped the brave crew of the EP-3 recon plane they forced down.

* Appeased Communist China with an executive order legalizing the sale of computers 50-100 times as powerful as those sold under Clinton’s watch during the Chinagate scandal which caused Rep. Henry Hyde, Chairman of the International Relations Committee to remark that these 600 US supercomputers purchased by Communist China gave it “more computing power than the entire Department of Defense.”

* Forced a vote in Congress on permanent Most Favored Nation trade status with and WTO membership for Communist China so that the PRC would continue to enjoy a $100 billion a year trade surplus with which to build themselves into the best nuclear superpower enemy US trade surplus can buy.

* Refused to support repeal of the 1994 Clinton gun-ban and championed tougher implementation of all draconian gun-control legislation now on the books by pledging to throw gun-control violaters into prison and throw away the key.

* Forced a stealth vote on the amnesty of two million illegal aliens in the House of Represenative as the first step in a much broader amnesty plan to effect millions more.

* Passed the radical Ted Kennedy education bill which federalizes education and providing tens of billions more a year for the liberal Department of Education and NEA to foist their perverse atheist liberal dogma upon our children.

* Appointed as the head of the Supreme Court Justice nominee search team and announced that the front-runner for his first Supreme Court pick is White House Counsel Albert Gonzales, a pro-abortion liberal who as Bush’s appointed Texas Supreme Court Justice found Bush’s own tepid parental notification on abortion legislation to be constitutionally impermissible. Why didn’t Bush appoint earstwhile pro-life champion Attorney General John Ashcroft to lead the Supreme Court nominee search team?

* Championed a Kyoto Lite Plan to appease the environmental wackos.

* Sent a report to the UN on climate change and the profound and very much imagined and fanciful “danger” of global warming.

* Signed the Democrat Congressional Majority Insurance Bill which, when implemented, will have the effect of bringing a permanent end to the hard-won Republican majority in Congress and making it much more difficult for Republicans to get elected nationwide.

* Left 99.9% of Clinton’s last minute unconstitutional executive orders in place.

* Championed and increased funding for Clinton’s fascistic AmeriKorps national service program

* Repealed only one of Clinton’s infamous four pro-abortion executive orders, which Clinton signed on the first day of his Presidency in January 1993 to reward the militant pro-abortion feminist constituency. Clinton’s pro-abortion executive orders had in turn repealed Ronald Reagan’s and President Bush’s own father’s pro-life executive orders. The Clinton executive orders concerned federal funding of international family planning agencies that fund and encourage abortions abroad, mandated that military hospitals offer abortions, mandated that federally-subsidized family planning clinics offer abortion as an alternative to women seeking counseling and provided federal funding for the harvesting of stem cells from aborted babies. President Bush repealed only the first although he has continued to support Congressional funding to provide funding to international organizations that themselves fund abortions abroad.

* Repealed his own temporary ban on continued federal funding for the harvesting of stem cells from aborted babies.

* Hosted Communist President Dos Santos of Angola only days after his assasination of Reagan's favorite anti-Communist freedom fighter, Dr. Jonas Savimbi failing to utter one word of protest over this assassination which was a flagrant violation of the peace process which Bush claimed to support.

* Refused to campaign with or do a TV commercial for conservative gubernatorial Republican nominee for Governor Mark Earley when all post-election polls and studies show that had he done so the Repubilcans would have won the Governorship and the Lt Governorship, whereas the Democrap candidates narrowly won both, subjecting my home state to Democrap rule for the first time in 8 years.

* Championed the election of moderate to liberal candidates in state primaries nationwide including most notably Richard Riorden for Governor of California, a RINO to the left of Bill Clinton who has championed partial birth abortion, gay rights, endorsed scores of Democrap incumbents and has contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democrap candidates.

* Engineered a successful takeover attempt of the once-conservative California Republican Party by arch-liberal Gerald Parsky who has called for the California Republican Party to be pro-gay, pro-abortion, and pro-illegal immigrant as the only way to win elections and denounced moderate conservative GOP gubernatorial nominee Bill Simon as an extremist for being pro-life. This one Bush mistake alone will likely prevent an otherwise likely GOP victory in the critical California Governor's race in November due to Parsky's continuing refusal to support Simon or help him raise money.

* Championed a globalist Free Trade for the America's Treaty which would serve as the precursor to uniting the Western Hemisphere into a North American Union similar to the EU.

* Supporting the entry of Russia into NATO as a full-voting de-facto member with veto power ,which will mean the complete and permanent end of NATO as a military alliance capable of opposing Russian and Communist aggression.

* Submitted the first unbalanced budget to Congress in five years with deficits in the $200 billion range for the next few years.

* Opposed the Israel’s efforts to defend itself from Palestinian terrorist suicide bombers and called for the immediate withdrawal of Israel from “the occupied territories”, of which Israel's claim is at least as great as that of the Palestinians.

* Supported the creation of a Palestinian state led by longtime PLO terrorist leader Yassir Arafat, something even Bill Clinton refused to do.

* Signed an $80 billion farm subsidy bill reversing the hard won gains of the GOP Congress which had nearly succeeded in phasing out this FDR-era socialistic govt subisidy.

* Refused to investigate numerous Clinton crimes against the Constitution and instead attempted to help cover them up.

* Courted the homosexual vote by speaking to homosexual groups and appointing prominant homosexuals to influential positions in the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Defense.

Sure Bush has done some good things. However, as you can see Bush's overall bipartisan "moderate" record and betrayals of the conservative Republican cause are very much widespread and not limited to merely a few isolated incidents. I am all too willing to support a united front except when it does more to advance the liberal Clintonite agenda as Bush has done. I put my allegience to conservative principles and party first, not to any one man who in this case has betrayed both.

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