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

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.

Terrorists, American or Arab, are a threat to humanity and deserve no protection afforded to non-combantants.

The obvious answer to your comment and the obvious problem with your idea is "How do you tell?" How do you know that someone is a terrorist deserving of punishment? In this country we have a prescribed method to do that. Whether it is terrorism or any other crime, we have prescribed due process to make the decision. The executive branch in NOT PERMITTED to make the decision on its own.

I think that is a very good idea since otherwise we are all subject to arbitrary arrest because some bureaucrat does not like us or we say inconvenient things about them.

Isn't it obvious how out of hand things will get almost immediately if the executive branch can jail anyone without recourse?

No one is a terrorist until a jury tells me so!

"Life is always a trade off. It is clear to me that the odds of me and my family meeting up with a terrorist are vanishingly small. The odds of having a run-in with an Ashcroft JBT is far greater..."

There you go again. Here you are blaming Ashcroft for a precedent set back to WW2 times with the Geneva Convention.

Look kid, I've already explained to you that Bush didn't invent the treatment of enemy combatants...yet you persist in pretending that Bush and Ashcroft are your boogeymen.

That sort of dishonesty has no place in civilized society.

Either correctly place the blame on the Geneva Convention rather than on the harmless Patriot Act, or else leave this forum.

"Did any previous administration ever pick up a citizen off the street and lock him away without trial? Not since Lincoln did we have such an evil administration capable of such outrageous behavior. Stop blaming the Geneva convention. The president should know the rare cases when that applies and the everyday situations where due process applies. Jose Padilla is a kidnap victim and George Bush is the head of the gang holding him. Ashcroft is the Capo."

Sheesh, you're probably about to hyperventilate.

Yes, starting with FDR, American citizens who were in the employ of our enemies...have been arrested in their apartments, on the street, in bars...as well as shot on the battlefield, captured by our military, etc.

Of the more than 1,000 U.S. citizens who fought for NAZI Germany against the U.S., I'm aware only of trials for ten of them. The rest were either killed on the battlefield or held as POW's.

But at least 8 of those 10 were classified as "enemy combatants" by U.S. law due to the Geneva Convention.

This meant that they were given no legal protections, unlike what we give to recognized POW's.

Enemy combatants are those spies and saboteurs who wear no recognized military uniform (or carry military ID), by the way...something that was agreed upon worldwide even before GWBush was born. They are not entitled to trials. You can give them a trial if you want, but you don't have to, legally...much in the same way that you can bomb U.S. citizens without giving them trials...IF they are fighting against U.S. forces or working with or in enemy facilities. You don't stop a battle to give due process.

And *all* of your juvenile anger is misdirected, logically, by the way. Even if you got your way and a Libertarian magically became President, the same Geneva Convention would still be the supreme law of our land due to Article 6 of our Constitution, combined with the fact that the Geneva Convention has been legally signed and ratified here.

So even if you got your way, which you won't, you'd still be stuck with the same problem.

So the *key* here is to fight the right battle, which is as dirtboy pointed out above in this very thread...to either reform the Geneva Convention globally or to limit American officials' powers under it domestically.

But I can't believe that an ideologue such as yourself could ever bring yourself to focus on the root of any problem.

All that I can picture in that line of thinking is that you will continue to tilt at nonsensical windmills in some Quixote-esque crusade.

Perhaps you actually think that if you yell loud enough at a popular domestic target that you'll somehow win converts to your 3rd Party cause, or maybe you have other reasons for yelling at Bush and attempting to deflect criticism away from the Geneva Convention, but whatever your motivation has become, it isn't very likely to accomplish anything of note simply because you are focusing away from the core target.

So long as the Geneva Convention remains unchanged as supreme law of this land (per Article 6), enemy combatants are not entitled to trials. Of course, neither are POW's (heck, you'll probably blame Bush for that, too), but at least POW's have some protections from being shot on sight. Enemy combatants have no such protections, legally.

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