Posted on 02/02/2004 2:15:54 PM PST by quidnunc
By the end of 2003, after months of falling popularity and an unceasing barrage of criticism from Democratic presidential aspirants, George W. Bush suddenly seemed to be leading a charmed life. His surprise visit to U.S. troops in Baghdad over the Thanksgiving holiday introduced a note of high confidence and inspiration. Two weeks later, the world was treated to footage of a helpless and disheveled Saddam Hussein in American custody. Although attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq continued, their ferocity diminished amid promising signs that the battle to rebuild Iraq and fight terrorism elsewhere was on course. Within days of Saddam Husseins capture came the announcement that Muammar Qaddafi had agreed to open his program for amassing nuclear weapons to international inspection. That same week, France, Germany, and Russia, persistent opponents of the Iraq war, acceded to American requests to forgive a portion of Iraqi debts. By mid-December, a CBS poll showed 59 percent of Americans approving of the way the President was handling Iraq the highest level since early July.
At home, there was still more good news for the White House. In late November, the Commerce Department reported that the economy had grown at a startling 8.2 percent in the third quarter the highest level in nearly two decades and a figure that exceeded even the most optimistic projections. There followed a cascade of other positive economic announcements. Inflation and interest rates were at their lowest point in decades. Productivity was historically high. Housing starts were soaring. Manufacturing, only recently thought to be disappearing from the America landscape, hit its highest level in twenty years.
Congress, meanwhile, had passed a bipartisan overhaul of Medicare that, while highly controversial, was clearly a political victory for the President. Flush with this legislative success, in late December the White House released word that it was considering an overhaul of Social Security and possibly re-establishing manned flight to the moon.
Is everybody happy, then? Hardly. For one thing, not since Richard Nixon has there been a Republican occupant of the White House who has provoked such naked antipathy from his political enemies on the Left. Bill and Hillary Clinton generated their own fevered response from the angriest and most conspiratorial corners of the Republican Right. But what is striking about todays liberal hatred of George Bush is not how shrill it is, but rather how even the most extreme outbursts have been fully embraced by mainstream Democratic politicians and journalists.
But criticism of the President has not been confined to Democrats or the Left. For the past year, a chorus of dissent has arisen as well among some conservative pundits and intellectuals the very group one might have thought would rush to the defense of a President under assault by his liberal antagonists. In a particularly harsh and surprising condemnation, the talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh told his listeners in December that Bushs legacy to the nation would be the greatest increase in domestic spending, and one of the greatest setbacks for liberty, in modern times. This may be compassionate, warned Limbaugh, playing on Bushs 2000 campaign slogan, but it is not conservatism at all. To be sure, conservative discontent with President Bush is likely to have few if any political consequences in the short term; unlike his father before him, George W. Bush will win the Republican nomination unopposed. Despite grumbling among some conservatives in the House of Representatives, no splinter group of disaffected Republicans seems set to take on the cause of Bushs Democratic opponent the way some embraced Clinton in 1992. Still, Bushs ability to remain a popular Republican President while causing so much dismay on both Left and Right does demand an assessment of the direction in which he has been taking the GOP and the country. Should he be reelected this fall, he will remain not only a controversial figure but possibly one of the most consequential Presidents we have had in the modern era.
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(Excerpt) Read more at commentarymagazine.com ...
The only federal ban on abortion was signed by President Bush. Have you read Post #4 on this thread yet? No President has ever been more pro-life than President Bush.
Also, this 3rd Party talk is nonsensical. Permit me to tell you a bit about 3rd Parties from firsthand experience.
Here in Alabama, the top donors to the Libertarian Party are two Democratic Party trial lawyers. They don't donate their sums to get Libertarians elected, but rather, they do it because the LPA takes 5 Republican voters for every 3 Democrats who cross over to vote for them. Thus, funding the LPA is a cheap investment to sap almost 1% of Alabama's Republican vote advantage away.
In politics it is very difficult to move a block of voters, and a 1% statewide shift is normally very expensive to accomplish, but funding the LPA does it for the Dems here in Alabama year after year.
The arguments that they use are seductive, however. "Vote your principles," they say. "Break the 2 Party system," they promise.
But here's reality: the only people who get elected are those who raise tremendous amounts of money.
If you want to compete against President Bush in the Republican primary, for instance, it would take hundreds of millions to even be competitive. Since no current challengers can raise such funds, he's left without viable Republican competition. Ditto for the Democrats.
On the other hand, winning a 3rd Party nomination can often be done for less than one million Dollars...a fact that betrays just how little chance they have to do anything.
In other words, if a 3rd Party is to be taken seriously enough for you to consider voting for it, then it needs to show that it can raise hundreds of millions of Dollars.
Otherwise, you are voting for an under-funded Party that has no chance of winning nationally.
Which means that you are falling for the Democrats' plan to siphon votes away from Republicans.
Lenin and Marx called such people "useful idiots." I find that term a bit harsh, but it does show the contempt that the Left has for your so-called "principles."
You claim to be pro-life. How will you feel when President Kerry or worse, Mr. Planned Parenthood Doctor Dean himself wins the White House?
Because that's what voting 3rd Party means. It means that you are willing to see a pro-abortion Democratic Party President in office during the very next few years when as many as 5 lifetime Supreme Court Justices are going to be retiring (and will need to be replaced by whomever is sitting in the Oval Office).
Take the first item about continuing the lawsuit against MicroSoft, that's false. The Bush administration settled that lawsuit.
Take his second item from Post #103, "$10 billion military reserve fund for the Pentagon" as a supposedly "SOCIALIST WELFARE PROGRAM" or as a "POLITICAL BOONDOGGLE." As if defense spending was welfare. Oh please...
And so on and so forth, on down to his last item, $500 million for our anti-missile system...as if defending the U.S. from rogue states engaging in nuclear blackmail was a "boondoggle."
Every claim identified in Post #103 is a fabrication, not a fact.
No, I'm simply pointing out that your so-called "facts" are anything but true. Every claim identified in Post #103 is a fabrication, not a fact. See Post #125, for instance.
But hey, that's only the anti-Bush list that you take pride in spamming around on those threads that you desire to gum up with your posts...so why should you be concerned with mere "truth?!"
Pot, kettle, etc.
Aren't you the trust worthy one...
< /SARCASM >
No problem at all if you've never read the Constitution.
This surveillance of Latin Americans began September 25, 2001, exactly two weeks after the terrorist attacks. On that date the U.S. Department of Justice awarded ChoicePoint a 67-million dollar contract for providing information on Mexico and other Latin countries. Though the contract expires July 31, 2005, the government enriched Choice-Point to the tune of another 11 million dollars on April 8, 2002.
So your assertion that all the links are fabricated is in fact, a lie.
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