Posted on 05/13/2002 3:12:19 PM PDT by TLBSHOW
On Monday's show, the Doctor of Democracy made a sad diagnosis: "If the Reagan Revolution is not dead, then it's dying." If there was a model that the Bush administration used in establishing itself, it was the Reagan presidency. But now Bush is advancing the Democrats' most liberal agenda items - something particularly frustrating at a time when Bush's popularity would make it easy for him to recruit new conservatives.
Many of you have been critical of Rush's reactions to Bush's actions on spending over the recent months, and we took more calls of this sort on Monday - people who'd convinced themselves that the farm bill made sense or that Bush had some grand strategery at play. Now, Rush could throw his beliefs out the window for a day or two and say things that you might want to hear - like when he endorsed Clinton back in 1992 - but that's not what he does.
Rush can only give you his honest reaction, even when he doesn't like those reactions. That's honesty, folks, and it goes to disprove a key criticism many of the nation's liberals have made of Rush over the years. They've said that Rush is a party hack, and that he'd support the Republican Party no matter what they did. They charged that the EIB Network was simply a tool, that we were in daily contact with the powers that be to get marching orders. Well, that has pretty much been dispelled here: Rush is disgruntled.
However, I am contunually wondering just why it is important to get another term and a Republican House and Senate if the end result is just more big government! I freely admit to being conflicted.
If Algore had been elected, we would have 30,000 more government employees in "airport security", we would have had Campaign Finance Reform, we would have had a massive government give-away in a Farm Bill. We would have effectively had "open borders". We would have had "steel tariffs" to prop up the steel unions. We would have had a massive influx of funding into "public education".
We voted for George W. Bush and guess what?
Think where our country will go if the Supreme Court gets any more 'activist.'
I'd have to second that. I was down on EIB for years, complaining that Rush was just a Republican Party mouthpiece. His recent statements have got me reconsidering.
What is so admirable in sincerely principled men is commitment to truth. I sit here in absolute amazement at people who have gone so far as to say that, essentially, "winning" the Senate and "keeping" the House justifies doing just about anything.
Without a doubt, President Bush has done some great and good things since his election, but I think Rush's point (and it's well taken) is that that performance doesn't exempt the President from genuine criticism. I'm totally baffled by people that exhibit barely controlled hatred for those that criticize Bush.
When I get into these combat conversations with Bush zealots, I like to remind them that Bush courted my vote with conservative talk. Having obtained it, am I worthless to him now? (until 2004, I guess)
Anyone who criticizes Bush for the EXACT, and I mean EXACT same things we railroaded Clinton over is now a "hater" and in favor of "Hill and Bill". I know that I"M not saying I "hate" Bush or any such stupidity; I'm saying that I'm genuinely and profoundly angered and frustrated over his recent flip-flop on the Middle East and this massive Farm Bill.
If that makes me pro-Clinton, well then...so be it if that's how folks want to construe it. As for me and my house, we are trying to observe the same principles that caused us to vote for Bush in the first place.
Isn't this the kind of rhetoric liberals use to describe conservatives? I thought conservatives were SUPPOSED to stick to their ideology, SUPPOSED to try and preserve the conservative principles that helped get us where we are... but now you want Rush to become a flip-floppy, unprincipled waffler who becomes more and more PRO-BIG-DADDY-GOVERNMENT? Why, that'd make him just like all the other sheeple in America, slowly accepting increased taxation and reduced freedom, accepting Republican budgets that break the bank and ramp up Big Government spending in key liberal areas -- Health, Education, and Welfare.
So you're upset at Rush because he's being TOO GOOD of a conservative? Maybe YOU need to re-evaluate what a 'conservative' is, instead of just accepting the creeping involvement of government into EVERY facet of your life.
BTW, I think Rush is a big fat windbag most of the time, but I respect the fact that he hasn't completely given in to the complete liberalization of our culture and leaders (and I'm a Libertarian, for goodness sake). I'd think more Conservatives would applaud such efforts, but evidently not.
This "neo-con" is for giving paleos like you a vicious right-hook on the left side of your face for telling bald-faced lies.
By the way, Israel has nothing to do with this thread. Why bring it up? Hmmm?
From the Cato Institute. Farm spending has actually dramatically increased starting in 1998 with huge emergency supplemental farm spending. I guess if they're going to spend my tax dollars to subsidise farming I'd just as soon they be up front about it and pass the bill and sign it publically vs sneaking in the emergency spending while we're not paying attention.
Perhaps you didn't pay close attention. Yes, he said that people should work a 40 hour week. That's typically a five day a week job. However, he allowed as to how "two days in education or training" could be substituted.
Now, I've seen very many examples of "education and training" the government way. It's expensive and, in most cases useless. So we are trading welfare benefits to creating another "government training bureaucracy". Great.
Thank you, Trib, for posting what should be painfully obvious to most folks. You are absolutely correct. If these things had taken place with a GOP controlled House and Senate, I'd be looking at Dubya funny as well. But this is not the case.
Losing the Senate was HUGE!
We still can't get around the fact that the new Farm Bill represents a 70% increase over the cost of continuing existing programs. Any way you look at it, it's a boondoggle.
From Reason online: For 70 years, the government has been shoveling money into rural America to prop up that most cherished of institutions, the family farm. Like most government programs, this has produced an unbroken record of failure. As columnist Robert J. Samuelson notes, the percentage of Americans tilling the soil has fallen from 21 percent of the population in 1929 to 2 percent today, even as the same amount of land is devoted to farm production.
I'm afraid it's true that taxation is meant exactly for abuse of power; that's the whole reason to have taxes instead of user fees. The power to tax is the power to destroy precisely for that reason. In the hands of Democrats and Republicans that power will always be abused.
Yeah! And all this b*tchin' at Bush would be exponentially more productive if it were directed at Dashle et al.
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