Posted on 01/20/2004 10:41:23 PM PST by JustPiper
The big loser in the Democratic presidential caucuses in Iowa wasn't Howard Dean. It wasn't Dick Gephardt. It wasn't even Al Sharpton who managed to attract about .5 percent of the vote.
The big loser was George W. Bush.
Only one thing can explain the bizarre positions taken by the White House before this week – an overconfidence that President Bush would be facing Howard Dean in his re-election bid this November. Karl Rove's polling must have made the president's political advisers so cocky about the race that they felt invulnerable.
What else could explain the president doing the following:
proposing a politically unpopular amnesty program for illegal aliens;
raising spending on domestic programs by bigger percentages than any of his predecessors, including Democrats;
proposing a vague manned mission to Mars without providing even the least compelling reasons, goals and objectives?
Bush has made many other mistakes in his term, but these whoppers are very recent gaffes made leading up to an election year.
Iowa should provide a wakeup call.
Instead of facing an angry Democrat out of touch with mainstream American values and temperament, Bush may well be facing a seasoned, smooth, mature political pro in John Kerry.
I wonder if he is up to that challenge.
How about a Kerry-Edwards ticket?
I believe if the election took place today, that ticket would have an excellent chance of beating Bush.
I say this as a dispassionate observer, a political analyst. I will not vote for either Bush or Kerry, or any other Democrat seeking the nomination.
But I think it's worth noting we are witnessing the self-destruction of a president – much like his own father self-destructed politically when he broke his "read my lips" pledge.
The latest polls show Bush in a tight race for re-election even before it's clear who his opponent might be.
As a result, Bush finds himself in a statistical dead heat with the opposition nine months before the election. When matched against an unknown Democratic presidential candidate, Bush squeaks out a 48 percent to 46 percent victory. On the question of who is most trusted to handle the nation's major problems, Bush is virtually even with Democrats, ahead 45 percent to 44 percent – down from an 18-point advantage Bush enjoyed nine months ago.
Americans think the Democrats would do a better job on domestic issues – the economy, prescription drugs for the elderly, health insurance, Medicare, the budget deficit, immigration, even taxes.
And why shouldn't they?
Here's the way this presidential race is shaping up: Bush will propose spending $18 billion fighting AIDS in other countries. The Democrat will up the ante to $25 billion.
Bush will propose spending 10 percent more on domestic giveaway programs. The Democrat will up the ante to 20 percent.
If it is conceded that more spending is good, a Republican will lose every single time.
And that's just what Bush has conceded with his phony, so-called "compassionate conservatism," that is really no more than old-fashioned tax-and-spend liberalism.
Bush gained no advantage with the public for his prescription-drug plan. He gained no ground with his bid to legalize millions of illegal aliens. He gained nothing from his attempt at inspiring Americans to join a new space program with a goal of a manned Mars landing. And his domestic spending increases, under attack by his own Republican base, have not served to win new independent or Democrat voters.
In fact, a CBS News poll showed similar drops for Bush support – notably over his plans on immigration.
If Bush were deliberately throwing this election, he couldn't do a more masterful job of losing votes, breaking bonds with his constituency and losing touch with his base.
If ever there was a time for a third party to emerge with some alternative ideas, 2004 is it.
Gee, just on one issue "principled Conservatives" abandon him and say he's not being a "true Conservative"! LOL
Good.
You ain't the sharpest knife in the drawer are you. LOL That is the last third of your name to be confirmed.
They tend to be socially conservative and care about things like the budget and the borders and jobs when they need the votes of every-day conservatives. If they can win without us, they'll support corporate greed, everytime.
If the Republicans don't need to tend to their base for re-election, things nobody wants like non-citizens taking jobs will be ignored.
At this juncture, GWB is opting for supporting marriage to keep his religious right base in line. That's pretty sly, since civil unions will be settled in the courts, and the state shouldn't be involved in marriage beyond granting civil unions anyway...it's a religious issue.
Then there is the pro-abortion funding of Planned Parenthood and support of UNESCO. Don't forget the attack on freedom of speech by signing the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Regulation bill.
Your reconstruction of this issue is untrue. Bush ran business-wing candidates against incumbent conservative Republicans in the primaries when he was governor, and he's doing it again (so we are told/promised/threatened) in the case of Tom Tancredo. The business-wing crowd did it in California, too, bringing in Arnold Schwarzenegger when McClintock and the conservatives could have won it outright by themselves.
The business wing pushes conservatives out of the party, and then guys like you come around and sneer that the conservatives aren't "loyal", when it was trimmers like Kay Bailey Hutchison who turned their backs on the conservatives to begin with on issues like abortion. Kay didn't need to trim on abortion, she just agreed with NARAL and NOW, so she decamped on the conservatives in the Texas GOP (a whole damn bunch of people, and you know it!!!) and then got in a snit when they called her on it at the state convention.
Yacht Clubbers feel free to decamp whenever they want and not stick by the platform, but when they're running the committees, everyone else has to bellyfeel the Kool-Aid or we aren't "loyal", we're rat-weasels who are going to run out and support the Socialist Workers Party -- well, just keep saying that until it comes true! Is that better than doing something for the conservatives and meaning it?
Or is it just that you think that real conservatives are a bunch of below-the-salt, not-rich-enough-for-prime-time, polyester-clad Unwashed fit only to bring your car around? And that you have to break it off in them every chance you get, because your class-snottiness and amour-propre demand it? Do you think some old guy in a black suit isn't good enough to merit your loyalty back, is that it? Is that your idea of party loyalty, and of how to treat American citizens who don't belong to the People Like Us Club? And after Ronnie Reagan and his brown suits [Egon von Furstenburg, on haberdashery: "A man in a brown suit will never be taken seriously."] brought you pinstripers back from howling in the wilderness in 1980?
As far as "defending marriage", what's Bush doing holding conversations with the Log Cabins? What is there to talk about with those guys? Single-sex marriage? Repealing sodomy laws? He was doing it in 2000, then he appointed a Loggie to be his AIDS guy when he didn't have to do that. Why? Are the 2.5% of the electorate who are gay a big swing constituency now? Are they going to back Bush on partial-birth abortion? On school vouchers? Come on!
You're too dismissive, Tex.
I can't tell you how many times I've looked around on election nights, when things were hanging by a chad, and tried to catch the eye of the Mister Confident Predictions of whatever campaign we were working on. Every vote is needed, and this idea of trading off a bloc to capture another is high risk. The Dems have been very clever, the way they have neutralised the gun issue so Southerners can vote according to tradition. And I don't think the amnesty issue is going to disappear in a couple of weeks. Our prime minister fought and won an election by being tough on illegals and our Labor Opposition's polling tells them not to dare go hard against it. I see a lot of similarities with that, Stateside. All it would take would be some kind of last minute scandal, manufactured by the Dem machine and set running by their media, to shave a heap of points off the President's lead later this year. Anyway, we'll see. I've got this thread bookmarked as 'Tex's Predictions', so we can review as required. :) Cheers, By
No he wasn't. He was born with it in his brain.
Here, allow me to help you out! Bump it often, and add your own Socialist Rhetoric while you're at it. Your hatred of those of us on the right is more and more glaring every single day. Pummel away, I'm not hiding. Blackbird.
You are so right. Joe needs to get out more. Every one of the "horrible mistakes" is highly popular with one or more segments of the electorate.
Just wait, later this year Joe will cite these same mistakes of Bush as pandering to voters instead of alienating them.
Until about 6-10 thousand years ago we functioned in face to face, small groups. Competing for food and power resulted in a constant effort for one group to do in another. This has been so hard-wired into our psychology that even very simple social psychology experiments can show how readily even fictional small groups will punish other groups with unbelievable fury and consequences.
Usually, there is always an in-group morality and quite a different out-group morality. By now you probably think this just a piece of crap; however, see Adams and Hogg's book on "Social Identity Theory: Constructive and Critical Advances (1990)." Also, contrast Deuteronomy 15:7-10 (in group morality) with Deuteronomy 24:21-22 (out group morality).
The upshot of this is that when we strongly identify with a group there is an atavistic tendency to resort to inapplicable, small group behavior. Hence, there is a tendency to feel and act in a deplorable way to the "out group."
Pesident Bush has inadvertantly slipped into this real quagmire--manifest hostility to the Mexican illegals. The emotions are powerful, not rational and dangerous. I credit him with trying to make an effort here. All previous Presidents have either made light of the problem, ignored it or in the case of President Reagan changed the law. IMHO the President has taken this effort on full well knowing it will cost him respect and votes.
What is usually suggested on these and other pages is a macho, macho send them back. Remember, there are 8-10 million of them and they came here to work and most do. It is morally hard to become angry and punitive (on an individual not a group basis) with someone whose chief failing is they want to participate and produce to feed themselves and their families.
Ezola Foster? Ardent conservative. Fill me in.
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