Rush: Fleischer Flips Back, White House Realigns With EPA Warning Report

Rush ^ | Rush

[Sir Gawain]

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[LarryM]

Bush has become a sad joke. He panders to the left, gets called on it by his base, flips his position, gets hammered again by leftists and then backs down. Will he stand his ground on anything?

[Paul Ross]

Bump.

This makes GWB look even more pathetic than before. This is beginning to look like poll-driven pandering gone manic. Hellooooo, Jimmy Carter. What next? Focus Groups?! Zoooom. Down the slippery slope into Bush-Gore. Blech. Time for a change. Where's my remote...

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

I was hoping this was one of your humor posts...

Obligatory Global Warming is a Fraud BTTT

[LizJ]

The president has said, citing the National Academy of Sciences, that the increase is due in large part to human activity. The president has also continued, citing both now this report the EPA has sent to the United Nations, previous evidence from the National Academy of Sciences, that there is uncertainty. And the recent report notes that there is considerable uncertainty. That's the state of science, and the president agrees with it.

Rush completely ignored the bold part of the statement. The President has been pretty consistent on this, IMO. He isn't changing any policy and he won't sign Kyoto, so really, why does all this matter?

[Huck]

What next? Focus Groups?!

You think there is a national politician anywhere who doesn't use focus groups? I can't imagine it. In fact, since I am home and immobilized today, I will try and scare up some evidence of the current adminstration's use of focus groups. Maybe they don't use them, but I can't imagine it.

[rdavis84]

"Whatever he said about "the bureaucracy" was misread, mis-analyzed, and misunderstood by the press and others."

The Blind Supporters have refused to accept that a person who can NOT communicate clearly "off the cuff" is a risk in a top political position. This guy has a Problem. We'll all pay for His Problem.

[cake_crumb]

I don't see how this is a flip flop on the president's part. He said during his campaign and after his inauguration that he was going to look for practical, market-based solutions for reducing pollutant emmissions, and place a high priority on "cleaner burning coal technology."

He said when he trashed Kyoto that his administration would look for it's own solutions. The administration is making good on it's promise to look for cleaner manufacturing and fuel burning technologies.

Sounds pretty consistant.

[OldFriend]

All this only matter to Rush who sees himself losing his base of listeners and is now pandering to the libs.......he's just looking for friends poor thing.

[Huck]

Well, that killed a couple of minutes. It's actually an interesting article. Folks might be interested to know how the Administration is using polls and focus groups:

The Other War Room

Excerpt:

On the last day of February, the Bush administration kicked off its renewed initiative to privatize Social Security in a speech before the National Summit on Retirement Savings in Washington, D.C. Rather than address "Social Security," Bush opted to speak about "retirement security." And during the brief speech he repeated the words "choice" (three times), "compound interest" (four times), "opportunity" (nine times) and "savings" (18 times). These words were not chosen lightly. The repetition was prompted by polls and focus groups. During the campaign, Steeper honed and refined Bush's message on Social Security (with key words such as "choice," "control," and "higher returns"), measuring it against Al Gore's attack through polls and focus groups ("Wall Street roulette," "bankruptcy" and "break the contract"). Steeper discovered that respondents preferred Bush's position by 50 percent to 38 percent, despite the conventional wisdom that tampering with Social Security is political suicide. He learned, as he explained to an academic conference last February, that "there's a great deal of cynicism about the federal government being able to do anything right, which translated to the federal government not having the ability to properly invest people's Social Security dollars." By couching Bush's rhetoric in poll-tested phrases that reinforced this notion, and adding others that stress the benefits of privatization, he was able to capitalize on what most observers had considered to be a significant political disadvantage. (Independent polls generally find that when fully apprised of Bush's plan, including the risks, most voters don't support it.)

Or just do a google search on Fred Steeper, he's the focus group guy for the Bush Admin.

[Sir Gawain]

I wonder if Fred Steeper is a freeper. :-D

[al_possum39]

I'm with you. I think Bush agrees as to the source of the problem but disagrees with the solutions proposed up til now. Nothing wrong with that.

[Merovingian]

Buhhhwaaahhhhhh! You mean Rush did not force Georgie to reverse himself??????? LOL

[Ben Ficklin]

Rush is confused. Read the article again. There two climate reports. The NAS report was completed in June 2001.

[Huck]

You never know. Maybe he's the one creating all those "Freep These Poll" threads.

[HoosierFather]

The Bush bashers just don't get it. GWB calls them as he sees them with alot more data and information at hand than the likes of Rush. You have to admit that there is some serious scientific disagreement about this issue (reality of it, causes, extent of damage, etc) of global warming and it seems that GWB is trying to stake out a reasonable middle ground (rather than simply ignoring the issue). From everything I have read, first-and-foremost, GWB wants to protect the economic impact that the liberal left, tree-hugging, envoronmental wackos would like to inflict unilaterally on the US. But, GWB cannot completely discount the data out there suggesting that the environment is decaying (hence the need for some funding to study/monitor it in greater detail). To me his is staking out a position that acknowledges a potential problem, that submits a resonable plan of study and voluntary reductions to US corporate polluters, and that holds to first principles of not destroying the US economy for the sake of the environment. And, by the way, this is good politics in that it diminishes another Dim/Greenie issues for this Fall and 2004. The soccer moms, who now really trust this guy after 9/11, should think this is a very reasonable approach. Remember, GWB is not just the President for the red states and the Rush Limbaugh's of the world. He has to take everything into account for the good of the nation.

[gaspar]

No, Rush has been consistent, seeing the Kyoto Accord for what it is, an attack on capitalism. Secondly, I wonder if Bush could answer the following: Which is the predominant factor in global warming, the increased output of solar energy over the last decade, or human activity?

[Moonman62]

Will he stand his ground on anything?

He seems firm in his commitment to expand the size and cost of the federal government. He'd probably use his veto pen if that got threatened.