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.
Lets all hope he is just like them in that he wins two terms.
I wouldn't call Churchill a liberal. But I wouldn't call him the great man that the "historians" have painted him either. He did his own brand of selling out.
If the Israelis are so liberal, then why do they keep electing leaders who talk tough? It's the leaders who, once they get into office, soften and give in to the peace talkers (AKA terrorist sympathizers).
This fall as long as we don't fall for the rat trap, and let disillusion set in, we will take it all and send the democrats packing to the sewer hole they came from.
Otherwise, he kept his promise on tax cuts; he kept his promise on advancing SDI; he kept his promise (much to my dismay) about "no child left behind" (and there IS some competition in that bill, and if you are a good conservative, you know that all we need is a crack and we win); and he has kept his promise to revive the military. All that, without a friendly senate, and while fighting a war. I call that a pretty successful first two years.
The only ones inducing any apathy on my part are those in the administration (including Bush and Ashcroft) who are simply ignoring the many serious crimes committed by the last administration and its party members the last 9 years. I ask you ... just how "conservative" does a republican have to be in order to believe in upholding the laws where election tampering (the Riady non-refund), privacy violations (Filegate) and murder (Ron Brown and possibly Vince Foster) are concerned? Are there ANY more important laws than those that protect the sanctity of our election process, those that protect individual privacy and those that protect people from being murdered for political gain? What are we fighting the war on terrorism for if not to protect those laws? I ask you ... why isn't Ashcroft even INVESTIGATING those crimes? NO EXCUSES.
"Like Ronald Reagan, who managed to preside in relative secrecy over $90 billion in 'revenue enhancements' after the well-publicized 1981 tax cuts, Bush has some bipartisan support for his antitax posture."
-- Time magazine, December 4.
Historical Precedents
Remember the term "revenue enhancement?" OMB Director David Stockman and President Reagan used it to avoid having to talk about a tax increase. Everyone knew a tax hike was being proposed, but the phrase allowed the Reagan White House to say it was doing something different.
There have only been 4 presidents in 20 th century of 2 in the 19th that changed our nation. Im the 19th century Jackson and Lincoln were the only ones that had a real impact as president. In the 20th century Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Reagan were the only ones with big impacts. All the rest did little if anything to change anything.
To make a big change a president needs one of two things, an opposition party willing to give him what he wants, or a depression or war to give him huge support.
FDR had both the Depression and WWII and he used it to move the nation to the left. The Democrats were certain that Reagan's program would fail, so they gave it to him so he would fail. Much to their dismay Reaganomics did not fail.
Bush could do as Clinton did and do next to nothing. Why do yoiu think Bill let Hillary do health care? Bill Clinton knew it was going to fail, so he let Hillary take the heat. For 8 years Clinton did little but hang on to the Status Quo. He knew that was all he could do. That is what most Presidents do.
To make a change a president needs a cooperative other party, or 60 votes in the senate. To have a shot at 60 senate votes a party must come close to geting 60 percent of the voters to vote for their parties senate Candidates. A president to do anything major has to have people who will support him with filibuster breaking votes.
That means the President has to get 10 percent of the voters that are left of center to vote for his Senate Candidates. It should be obvious that to get to 60 percent you have to have at least 10 percent that is left of center. Once a Pressident has that magic 60 votes in the Senate and control of the house he can make a real impact.
Andrew Jackson did it with the votes of emigrants. Lincoln did it with the civil war. Teddy did it with the huge help of the media. FDR with a depression and war. Reagan did it with Democrats that thought his plans would fail and defeat him in 1984.
Now Dubya is trying to use his war approval to get that magic 60 votes. If he fails we might has well have had Bill or Hillary for another 8 years. For with a Republican house and a tied senate, next to nothing can happen except a good chance a Democrat will be President it in 2008.
The only way to get to 60 percent is to get 10 percent of the voters that are left of center to vote for your party. Then claim those left of center people supported right wing plans. If a President can get it done and it works, the center moves by 10 percent. Then the Republicans could be a majority like the democrats were from 1932 to 1952.
There is no way the right has ever had more than a third of the votes. There is no way the left has every had more than a third of the votes. The party that does the center best while leaning left or right wins. Since 1932 that has almost always been the Democratic party.
I mean, it's common sense that with those deficits in 1985, we were not about to get any more tax DECREASES. The "loopholes" that Reagan agreed to in the long run were quite harmful, but only to segments of the economy, not to everyone. Still, it was a tax increase.
Didn't we learn the value of the surprise attack from the attack on Pearl Harbor? Even the very genesis of some of our most modern weapons (stealth fighters and bombers) came from those who were our enemies at the time (it was a paper by a Russian radar engineer in 1962 that was seen by a guy at Lockheed ten years later).
Conservatives must choose which they will learn from our political enemies: incrementalism or ruthlessness. I personally choose incrementalism. It's easier on my conscience (sorry, but I find the idea of the politics of personal destruction to be grossly abhorrent). Choose one of those items to go withthe fact we have ideas that work.
Because quite frankly, if we do NOT learn incrementalism or become ruthless, we will lose.
Bush is even planning to increase food stamps for programs and reverse what few Conservative things Bill Clinton did ---like sign the welfare reform bill which limited food stamps. Bush hasn't turned around any of those EO's Clinton was signing like crazy, the compromise on fetal stem cells was something Bill Clinton would do. And CFR shows Bush cares little for the Constitution.
The issue whether I am giving democrats and the media what they want is irrelevant to me. They would have no ammunition in their arsenal if Bush hadn't given it to them in the first place.
You mean like undoing welfare reform and adding millions to the food stamp programs? Incrementalism like making the federal government interfering in education more than ever? Incrementalism like handing amnesties to everyone who chooses to flaunt our laws?
In 1986 Congress passed and President Reagan signed a landmark and heroic piece of legislation: the 1986 Tax Reform Act. The 1986 TRA closed economically inefficient tax loopholes and dramatically reduced income tax rates for all Americans.
The result of the 1986 Tax Reform Act was to create a simple two-rate income tax system: 15 percent and 28 percent. It should be emphasized that the 1986 TRA was a bipartisan measure and was sponsored by Democrats Rep. Richard Gephardt and Senator Bill Bradley and Republicans Rep. Jack Kemp, and Senator Bob Packwood, with important contributions from the now Chairman of this Committee, Bill Archer.
Here is the link. I am pretty familiar with Stephen Moore's opinion on tax cuts and tax increases and he is certainly isn't calling what Reagan did in 1986 a tax increase.
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