Is Bush a Conservative? (Warning – opening this thread forfeits your right to gripe at me!)

Commentary Magazine ^ | February 2004 | Daniel Casse

[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 Hussein’s 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 today’s 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 Bush’s 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 Bush’s 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 Bush’s Democratic opponent the way some embraced Clinton in 1992. Still, Bush’s 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.

-snip-

[Sir Gawain]

So you feel free to post a list with proven fabrications

P.S. In case you didn't get the message, you didn't prove jack. One (1, uno) incorrect link doesn't mean squat, buddy. Now you can go and claim every one of those linked news stories is a lie, or you can go bother someone else with your inflated ego. It makes no difference to me. I'm sure you'll stay around longer so you can continue to impress yourself.

[Southack]

"You point to the out of date story regarding Microsoft as your only defense. Keep living in your fantasy world. All those news stories are wrong I tell ya! LOL"

No, you've simply not grasped the concept of what I've said.

I did NOT claim that your stories were themselves untrue (although, clearly your claim about Bush continuing Clinton's lawsuit against MicroSoft is untrue, as that case was settled by the Bush Administration).

What I said was that your stories were not "SOCIALIST WELFARE PROGRAMS" or "POLITICAL BOONDOGGLES" as you claimed.

That's your fabrication, not the actual stories themselves (Again, the MicroSoft claim expected).

Thus, all of your *claims*, but not necessarily your stories, as idenitifed in post #103 are fabrications.

[Sir Gawain]

Oh, so I should make a disclaimer that I disagree with the military spending being on the list. I've done it before. I agree with the president on foreign policy. The domestic items on the list are what my focus is on.

[Southack]

Before you can mentally comprehend what I've told you, you are going to have to understand the *difference* between your claims from that of the stories themselves that you posted.

For instance, you posted the story that Bush approved $500 million for deploying our missile defense system in Alaska.

That *story* is probably spot on true.

However, you *claimed* that such spending was both socialist welfare as well as a political boondoggle.

That *claim* of yours is false. Spending money to deploy a nuclear missile defense system is neither a boondoggle nor socialistic welfare.

Alas, this concept (that there is a difference between your *claims* from that of your posted *stories*) may be too much for you to grasp.

Sigh...

[Southack]

"Oh, so I should make a disclaimer that I disagree with the military spending being on the list. I've done it before. I agree with the president on foreign policy. The domestic items on the list are what my focus is on."

You disagree with spending on domestic border control (i.e. matching up illegal alien detainees with their Mexican voter registrations), training our pilots in passenger-jet firearms useage, homeland security, and smallpox vacinations?

Those items are in your list, where you claim that they are socialist welfare and political boondoggles. See below for a brief glance back into your list...

• [source] $8 million for firearms training for commercial pilots.
• [source] U.S. government purchased data on Mexico’s 65 million registered Voters.
• [source] $37.5 million in federal funds to Georgia for "homeland security."
• [source] $100 million to help states run their smallpox vaccination programs.
  

[Sir Gawain]

I disagree with the multitude of items listed that are not related to the defense of our nation. So rather than trimming the list to precisely fit my opinion, I posted the whole thing. Next time I'll strip out the Libertarian arguments. Will that make you happy?

[Southack]

Sticking to the facts will certainly improve your argument. I encourage you to do that very thing.

[Sir Gawain]

Cute.

[Celtman]

Abraham Lincoln was a third party candidate.

[Milligan]

Republican party was established in 1852. How can you say Abe was a third party candidate?

[Celtman]

Republican party was established in 1852.

Precisely.

[Mike4Freedom]

and reflect upon how little criticism has been leveled at Democratic Party President FDR during WW2 for executing the American citizens who were brought back to the U.S. by German U-boats to conduct sabotage here.

Jose Padilla and today's concept of enemy combatant is closer to FDR's interment of all Japanese-Americans or Lincoln's arrest of political opponents (including newspaper editors that opined against the civil war). Yes you do not hear much criticism of either, one Democrat, one Republican, because they have been annointed as greatest presidents of their generation.

In Libertarian literature, there is plenty of criticism of both.

[Southack]

and reflect upon how little criticism has been leveled at Democratic Party President FDR during WW2 for executing the American citizens who were brought back to the U.S. by German U-boats to conduct sabotage here.

"Jose Padilla and today's concept of enemy combatant is closer to FDR's interment of all Japanese-Americans..."

Noooooooo. No. No. No. Jose Padilla is much closer to FDR's arrests and executions of the American citizens who were sent back to the U.S. on NAZI U-boats to conduct sabotage here on U.S. soil during WW2, just as Padilla planned to do with his dirty bomb.

And you have no shame. Didn't you make the wild-eyed claim that Bush freaking *INVENTED* the term "enemy combatants," not even realizing that's what FDR coined in WW2 for people like those above-mentioned sabotuers...a term that was internationally recognized by the global Geneva Convention in 1947?!

You Libertarians crack me up. You've yet to grasp history much less current geo-politics.

[Mike4Freedom]

Specify where has Bush violated the Bill of Rights.

I listed specific violations in post 31 of the First, Fourth and Fifth amendments plus a promise to violate the second amendment when the AWB comes up for renewal.

When Ashcroft was touring the nation to sell the Patriot Act, he claimed that judicial review was always required. You were supposed to believe that normal search warrant rules (probable cause) still applied. NOT SO! Warrants can be issued by the FISA court, not a court of record and the standard in NOT probable cause but pretty much cause the government says it has something to do with terrorism. It has already been used in domestic criminal investigations that clearly had no relation to terrorism. The Patriot Act, signed by Bush is a Fourth Amendment violation. He also asked that it be renewed in his just given State of the Union address.

I know that the word 'conservative' has lost all its meaning now but Bush does not meet any past definition of the word unless you go back to Feudal times and label the advocates of maintaining Feudal rule as conservative.

[Mike4Freedom]

Jose Padilla is much closer to FDR's arrests and executions of the American citizens who were sent back to the U.S. on NAZI U-boats to conduct sabotage here on U.S. soil during WW2, just as Padilla planned to do with his dirty bomb.

Those German saboteurs actually had a trial, if only a military tribunal, and there was evidence against them. Jose has had no trial or even a charge, just gossip about his plans. Applying the words 'enemy combatant' in his case is a novel application of a dangerous concept. Just think what a wild, big government leftist could do with this precedent.

I think that I have identified here a major difference between libertarians and conservatives. You'all (pro-war conservatives) seem to live for the moment. You are willing to bend rules to solve the crisis of the moment without regard to the long term consequences. That is 'the end justifies the means'.

Libertarians look ahead and are unwilling to sell their future and their kids future for near term issues.

[Southack]

". Applying the words 'enemy combatant' in his case is a novel application of a dangerous concept."

You're still misssing historical reality, i.e. that this concept isn't new or "novel."

You've got 4 types of people, per the 1947/48 Geneva Convention of a half-century ago:

#1. Civilians (i.e. those non-combatants who are not engaged in spying, sabotage, open combat, direct military support, and carry no military ID and wear no military uniform),
#2. Warriors (i.e. those uniform-wearing, or military id carrying government agents whose armed forces are *recognized* by international treaty),
#3. POW's (i.e. those in groups #1 and #2 who have been captured on the battlefield), and
#4. Enemy Combatants (i.e. those spies and sabotuers who do not wear recognized military uniforms, wear military ID's, yet engage in spying, subversive activities, combat, and sabotage in violation of international treaties).

So whether you are talking about the U.S. citizens that Hitler sent to the U.S. during WW2 to sabotage our industrial plants, or that you are talking about Jose Padilla returning to the U.S. to detonate a dirty bomb, you are referring to people who fall into group #4 as defined more than half a century ago.

I.e. NOT a "novel" concept.

And the difference between libertarians and conservatives is NOT as you claim that somehow you libs are looking at the long term while conservs are viewing only short-term gains...but that you libertarians want to ideally change the way things are...and the way that things have been established over past decades to instantly conform to your pure principals...whereas conservatives are attempting to play with the currently in-use rules (see above).

[Mike4Freedom]

or that you are talking about Jose Padilla returning to the U.S. to detonate a dirty bomb, you are referring to people who fall into group #4 as defined more than half a century ago.

The key question here is: How do you know that the government's statements are true? Given that they will not submit their charges to the legal system for testing under the long established rule of due process, trial by jury, etc I think that anyone should seriously doubt the validity of the rumors leveled against him. (It is only a charge if you do it formally. Whatever we know about Jose Padilla rises only to the level of rumor.)

[Southack]

"The key question here is: How do you know that the government's statements are true?"

No, it is you who are missing the point.

That isn't the "key" question. That's a humanitarian, important question, but it doesn't even play into the rules that have been established since back during and shortly after WW2.

The Geneva Convention says that enemy combatants are NOT entitled to trials. They are NOT promised attorneys.

Per the Geneva Convention, such battlefield combatants can be given instant battlefield justice, up to and including being SHOT ON SIGHT.

You libertarians have had decades to challenge the Geneva Convention, yet you have not done so. Failing to challenge the key international law in this matter, you libertarians instead pretend that the Geneva Convention was never signed by the U.S., such that there is no such thing as an "enemy combatant."

In post after post you Libertarians lie, as shown in this very thread, claiming that Bush, of all people, invented the term "enemy combatant" in the last 3 years rather than correctly admit that this group of enemies has been identified and codified into recognized international and U.S. law since WW2.

That's not how the world works. You can't just pretend that some U.S. laws and U.S. signed/ratified International Treaties don't exist. You can't just wish away the existing rules that are in play. You can't just lie to pretend that Bush invented rules in the last 3 years, when the reality is that these rules have been around for more than half a century.

[Mike4Freedom]

That's not how the world works. You can't just pretend that some U.S. laws and U.S. signed/ratified International Treaties don't exist.

Are you really claiming that a treaty that relates to the law of war trumps the constitution when it comes to locking up native born citizens, that it can be the excuse for denying them due process?

Not in this country! There are NO exceptions to due process allowed here-please read the Fifth Amendment. Any president who thinks that he can write a letter to the Secretary of Defense and thereby lock a citizen up indefinitely, and to hell with due process, deserves to be in jail himself, for kidnapping.

[PBRSTREETGANG]

Is Bush a Conservative?

Is the Pope Italian?