Posted on 03/29/2002 3:08:59 PM PST by TLBSHOW
WASHINGTON --
It looks as if President Bush 's honeymoon is over. He's fine with the American people -- his personal approval rating is still in the 80 percent range -- but his own natives, Republican movement conservatives, are already restless.
Like Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan before him, Bush is already being branded as an appeaser of liberals and a sellout on a range of issues dear to the right-side hearts of many of his party's faithful. These are, it must be mentioned, impossible people who, more often than not, prefer to lose on principle than win through compromise.
They hate Washington and all it stands for, which is compromise and government of all the people. Unfortunately for them, presidents, even their own, have to work in this town -- and that means compromising, however reluctantly, with the opposition in Congress and the vast bureaucracies of governance and liberal constituencies.
Like baseball, it happens every spring. This year, even with overwhelming conservative (and liberal, too) support of the president in our officially undeclared war on terrorism, there are the right's gripes of the moment:
The president from Texas, lusting for Hispanic votes in his own state and in California, is too friendly with Mexico, pushing amnesty for illegal immigrants from south of the Rio Grande and San Diego.
He has sold out free-traders by imposing old-fashioned tariffs on the import of foreign steel -- or he is just chasing Democratic voters in Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
He may have been holding his nose when he did it, but he signed the campaign-finance reform bill pushed by Democratic senator Russell Feingold of Wisconsin and apostate Republican senator John McCain of Arizona.
As part of the war effort, he is advocating a 50 percent increase in the United States' minuscule foreign aid program. This one rebukes conservatives who were determined to set in stone the idea that there is no connection between poverty in the poor regions of the world and hatred and terrorism directed at the richest of nations, the United States.
He is pushing Israel to compromise in its endless war against the Palestinians in the occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank.
He is pushing education policy and legislation that would increase federal influence in states, counties and towns across the country -- a big no-no to movement conservatives.
He is not pushing tax cuts the way he did during the campaign, partly because war and educational reform cost huge amounts of taxpayer revenues. Most of this was bound to happen, and any ideological president, Republican or Democrat, is eventually forced to betray campaign promises and core constituencies. The only difference this time is that because of continuing public support for military action (and its high costs), Bush is beginning to take more flak from his own kind than from the loyal opposition.
In the conservatives' favorite newspaper, The Washington Times, political columnist Donald Lambro began a news analysis last week by saying: "President Bush's about-face on trade tariffs, stricter campaign-finance regulations and other deviations from Republican doctrine is beginning to anger his conservative foot soldiers but does not seem to be cutting into his overall popularity -- yet."
John Berthoud, president of the National Taxpayers Union, puts it this way: "We're very disappointed about these new tariffs on steel and lumber. That's two new tax hikes on the American people. ... There's a concern among our members that in his effort to build and keep this coalition for the war, which is certainly needed, he's given Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and the forces of big government a free pass."
Phyllis Schlafly, president of the Eagle Forum, added: "He's been getting a pass from us until now, but the amnesty bill is what tipped it over for us. I agree with Sen. Robert Byrd (a Democrat). This is 'sheer lunacy.' ... A lot of people thought Bush's education bill was terrible. But we didn't rant and rave about it because we wanted to support him on the war. That's changed. The amnesty bill is the hot issue out here. It's out of sync with what grassroots Americans want."
Finally, Stephen Moore, president of the conservative Club for Growth, said: "The danger for us is that Bush may begin to take the conservatives for granted, and you are seeing some signs of that happening with the steel tariff decision, foreign aid and other spending increases in the budget."
So it goes. There is nothing new about this. In the 1970s, William F. Buckley and other movement conservative leaders publicly "suspended" their support of President Richard Nixon because of what they considered his liberal moves toward welfare reform, tariffs and other issues considered part of the liberal domestic agenda -- to say nothing of his reaching out to communist China.
But in the end, Nixon kept them in line by pushing the war in Vietnam beyond reasonable limits. George Bush could accomplish the same political goal of uniting conservative support by continuing to push the war on terrorism into far nooks and crannies of the whole world.
ROTFLMAO!
BUSH'S REAL OPPOSITION:LIBERAL LEFT WHINERS WITH A SOCIALIST COMMUNIST AGENDA FOR THE WORLD
AND THEN THERES THE U.N.
I have to tell you that not being aligned, is rather "liberating".
I put off switching to unaffiliated until I came across a letter that Ward Connerly sent me. I had sent him an email when he had threatened to leave the party. In the email he used Reagan's quote about the Democrats -- "I didn't leave the party. It left me."
I switched that afternoon. It was melancholy, mostly because the Republican party is such an unbelievable disappointment.
Now don't be melodramatic. I liked my $600 tax cut, for example. And killing Kyoto. See, there's things he's done that we like.
What I actually wish is that the President would take that 80%, and harness the 70% of Americans who want our Federal Government to take some serious steps in dealing with the problem of Illegals. That would be some serious coalition building.
But I wish in vain, apparently.
Some other good ones out recently: John Adams and older: The Federalist Papers, Common Sense and other bios on Jefferson, Franklin, George Mason (Bill of Rights), Hamilton
God our young history is a rich one and full of dashing characters.
As far as the triumph of true conservatism, I think my wife is wiser than I am on that one. She believes that the pendulum will swing back to the right eventually, but it's going to get mighty ugly before it happens. In fact, it may not happen in our lifetimes (we're almost 40). Just my luck...we have to live through this crap and we don't get to live in the Age of Enlightenment that will surely follow.
I think there's a bigger war being fought here. I blame all of this on that Italian Communist idiot Gramsci, who said that Marxism will triumph over Capitalism by infiltrating the institutions on which society rests, such as education and culture. On the other side are the so-called Toquevillians, who believe in the principles espoused by de Toqueville. The Gramscians are clearly winning, but we have some good people on our side, such as Bill Bennett and the Olin Foundation. I think Bush is doing a great job of advancing the Gramscian cause, and that pisses me off too.
But, like I stated to LS, while I may in the future still cast my votes for the GOP candidate, to take that for granted is pure folly on the part of the GOP leadership. And for mainstream Republicans to continue to trash disenfranchised republicans that hold to principled conservative values is equal folly. But who said we didn't have the choice to engage in folly.
It has been my experience over the past two years that I did not make a mistake in becoming a "non-aligned" voter. But to each his/her own. These are choices we all get to still make on our own, so far.
Just think if the two major political parties did ever merge we could have our own version of a Nationalist Socialist Party. Hmmmmmm, seems there already was one of those in recent history.
Hmm. Those who disagee with those who are giving Bush the benefit of the doubt (which he earned by virtue of his character)--IOW, the Bush-bashers--claim the Bush supporters are blind loyalists, marching in lockstep with Dubya because he's a Republican, unwilling to evaluate each situation on the merits, too politicized to stand on principle . . . all the while we're supposed to accept everything printed in The Washington Times as true, righteous, and principled? Never question anything printed in The Washington Times? Never agree that even a liberal might make a worthy point or useful observation now and then? Now THAT'S orthodoxy!
I dont even want to talk about the culture that is even a worse situation...who controls the media, teachers, academia and writers, the booracracy....liberals, liberals, liberals, egad
I'm an inside-the-beltway type. What I see is GWB kicking the Rats' behinds. Not to mix my animal metaphors, but there are so many cows being born by cornered Democrats, that you walk down the halls and all you hear is mooing behind their closed doors.
Yep, it's getting tiring.
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