BS: More conservatives against Bush

Subject: BS: More conservatives against Bush
From: Nerd
Date: 10 Sep 04 - 01:13 AM

Doug Bandow, former special assistant to President Reagan, current senior fellow of the Cato institute says this:

Those who still believe in Bush have tried to play up comparisons with Ronald Reagan, but I knew Reagan and he was no George W. Bush. It's not just that Reagan read widely, thought deeply about issues and wrote prolifically. He really believed in the primacy of individual liberty and of limited, constitutional government.

In his farewell address to the nation on Jan. 11, 1989, Reagan observed: "I wasn't a great communicator, but I communicated great things." Even when politics forced him to give way, everyone knew what he stood for. Bush's biggest problem, in contrast, is not that he is a poor communicator. It is that he has nothing to communicate. Victory over terrorists, yes -- but then what American really disagrees with that goal? Beyond that there is nothing.

"Government should never try to control or dominate the lives of our citizens," Bush says. But you wouldn't know that from his policies. He has expanded government power, increased federal spending, initiated an unnecessary war, engaged in global social engineering and undercut executive accountability. This is a bill of particulars that could be laid on Lyndon Johnson's grave. No wonder "Republicans aren't very enthusiastic about" Bush, says right-wing syndicated columnist Robert Novak.

Although anecdotal evidence of conservative disaffection with Bush is common -- for instance, my Pentagon employee neighbor, a business lobbyist friend, even my retired career Air Force father -- for many the thought of voting for John Kerry remains simply too horrific to contemplate. And this dissatisfaction has yet to show up in polls. Fear of Kerry, more than love of Bush, holds many conservatives behind the GOP.

Yet serious conservatives must fear for the country if Bush is reelected. Is Kerry really likely to initiate more unnecessary wars, threaten more civil liberties and waste more tax dollars? In any case, there are other choices (e.g., the Libertarian Party's Michael Badnarik, the Constitution Party's Michael Peroutka and even Independent Ralph Nader).

Serious conservatives should deny their votes to Bush. "When it comes to choosing a president, results matter," the president says. So true. A Kerry victory would likely be bad for the cause of individual liberty and limited government. But based on the results of his presidency, a Bush victory would be catastrophic. Conservatives should choose principle over power.

The full op-ed piece, which is very long and detailed, is here

Subject: RE: BS: More conservatives against Bush
From: Nerd
Date: 10 Sep 04 - 01:26 AM

Tucker Carlson says this:

[...] By November 2000, my view of Bush had changed substantially. I still strongly preferred him to Gore, who even before he grew a beard struck me as far too odd to be president. But I was less convinced I knew what Bush believed. After months of covering the campaign, I still didn't understand what "compassionate conservatism" meant, much less what Bush thought about America's role in the world. Not that it seemed to matter at the time. It was a virtually issue-free election. I had trouble imagining that much was at stake.

Then came September 11. Bush's approval ratings immediately soared to unbelievable heights. Yet the attacks initially made me sorry I'd voted for him. For most of that day, as my wife and children stayed inside our house listening to the roar of fighter jets overhead, and black smoke from the Pentagon hovered above our neighborhood, Bush failed to return to Washington. My family sat unprotected a few miles from the scene of a terrorist attack; Bush hid in a bunker on some faraway military base.

It infuriated me, as did the subsequent excuses from White House spokesmen. There was a risk in coming back, they said. Of course there was. That's the point: Leaders must take risks, sometimes physical ones. Bush should have elbowed his Secret Service detail out of the way and returned in a display of fearlessness to his nation's capital. I found it distressingly revealing that he didn't.

Then, a little more than a week later, Bush redeemed himself. His address on September 20 to a joint session of Congress wasn't simply a good speech. It was a nearly perfect one, possibly the greatest delivered by any president in American history. Bush seemed calm, resolute but not bellicose—completely, reassuringly in charge. His stammers and tics had disappeared.

[...]

Over the next few months, however, Bush slowly reverted to the man he had been. He wasted critical momentum tinkering with the Department of Homeland Security, as if the obvious response to 9/11 was bureaucratic reshuffling. His administration alienated even potential allies by responding to the slightest criticism in a tone that fluctuated between high-handed and contemptuous.

And then, of course—famously, fatally—Bush began planning for a war in Iraq. It was obvious from the beginning what was happening. Bush intended to topple Saddam Hussein. He said as much, in public, repeatedly. But it was still hard for me to believe it. This was the next step in the new war on terror Bush had described on September 20? At the time, he promised to avenge 9/11 with a campaign "unlike any other we have ever seen." But a conventional invasion of Iraq, with tens of thousands of American soldiers driving north in tanks through the desert toward Baghdad? We had definitely seen that before.

[...]

As he has managed and mismanaged the war in Iraq, Bush has proved stubborn, uncommunicative, and slow to adapt to changing realities. His enemies cite these qualities as evidence of Bush's arrogance. But Bush isn't inflexible because he's arrogant. He's inflexible because he's weak.

And it is because he is weak that we invaded Iraq. Bush may have been uncertain about how to fight terrorism after the fall of the Taliban, but many of those around him were not. Years before, they had concluded that an Iraq without Saddam would lead to a more stable, less dangerous Middle East. Against compelling evidence to the contrary, Bush accepted their judgment.

I believe this was a colossal error—made in good faith, but a mistake nonetheless. It will be hard for me to vote for a man who has done something so reckless.

And that's a problem, because unless you believe that the threat from Islamic extremism has been seriously overhyped—and I don't—John Kerry isn't really an alternative. So it's Bush or no one. That will be my choice on November 2. I still haven't decided which will get my vote.