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.
After that it is hard to tell where people would really stand.
But quite frankly, I was taught to stand for what I think is right regardless of what the polls say. Didn't you ever get lessons like that as a kid, or did your parents tell you to go do whatever makes/keeps you popular.
Compromise isn't a dirty word when one is trying to work out the details of how to do the right thing, but the Right Thing shouldn't be negotiable. Signing bills that step on the Constitution is NEVER the Right Thing.
When one has Conservatives as opposition, as the title suggests, one should realize that he is totally out of step with them. Totally.
By the way, since when did it become acceptable for you to criticize fellow Republicans?;-)
Just kidding. Not trying to start another thread war.
Bush has at least had the honesty to tell these people they were not getting "loans" anymore, but "grants,"---but only if they met certain conditions (which none of them will meet.) At that point, we'll see if he intends to hold them accountable.
However, are you going to say that all foreign aid is wrong? I think that the money we gave to France and Greece and Turkey and Italy from 1947-1949 basically saved Europe from internal communist revolutions at the polls.
Now, I agree that you can easily get too involved. But we are paying the price for not getting INVOLVED enough in the Clinton years. Meanwhile, the Brigadiers' notion of a "fortress America" in an age of jets, rockets, and nukes, is pure idiocy.
I know you are kidding but I am sick of this conservative president being held to a mythological standard of Ronald Reagan that is both historically inaccurate and is being perpetrated by the same John Birch Society wing of the political right that demonized Reagan.
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.
Now with regard to what the 1986 TRA was supposed to accomplish, wasn't it supposed to be revenue neutral with business taxes being increased in return for "dramatically reduc[ing] income tax rates for all Americans."
Also, the more you keep posting on this, the more I keep recalling the other "hikes" involved. Note the end of the investment tax credits, which DRAMATICALLY increased the real tax in investments.
I consider all the handout programs ---SSI, foodstamps, WIC, Medicaid, free health clinics and hospitals, CHIPS, Headstart, free daycare, TANF and all the many others welfare. Just ending or renaming them doesn't get the people out there working or have girls stop having babies out of wedlock. It seems now we're going to be taxed to provide a 50% increase in global welfare programs.
We have a conservative President? What happened to GWB?
Very well stated. Thank You. Unlike numb minds that believe "compromise" is the way to achieve a more Constitutional Republic, I prefer to Stand on Principle. Many more "compromises" and we can label the U.S. "Gone" and replaced by the Party that Lies the best.
In the Words of Our Presidente' (father, son, no difference) -----
"Please don't ask me to do that which I've just said I'm not going to do, because you're burning up time. The meter is running through the sand on you, and I am now filibustering." George Bush Sr., in 1989
"The senator has got to understand if he's going to have he can't have it both ways. He can't take the high horse and then claim the low road." George W. Bush, in Feb. 2000"
Hardly necessary, when so many master strategists in the White House are perfectly capable of doing it themselves.
And losers have no effect on policy or legislation.
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