Why Conservatives Should Boot Bush
If my contention that George W. Bush is a seriously delusional religious fanatic, just like Osama bin Laden, is not enough to convince you to cast your vote for someone else, consider this:
Conservative Reaganite Doug Bandow writing for Salon.com outlines why true conservatives must vote against George W. Bush. [If you are not registered with Salon.com, you can watch a one-minute ad to get a free day pass. Reading this entire article is worth the short wait.]
Republican partisans have little choice but to focus on Kerry’s perceived vulnerabilities. A few high-octane speeches cannot disguise the catastrophic failure of the Bush administration in both its domestic and its foreign policies. Mounting deficits are likely to force eventual tax increases, reversing perhaps President Bush’s most important economic legacy. The administration’s foreign policy is an even greater shambles, with Iraq aflame and America increasingly reviled by friend and foe alike.
Quite simply, the president, despite his well-choreographed posturing, does not represent traditional conservatism — a commitment to individual liberty, limited government, constitutional restraint and fiscal responsibility. Rather, Bush routinely puts power before principle. As Chris Vance, chairman of Washington state’s Republican Party, told the Economist: “George Bush’s record is not that conservative … There’s something there for everyone.”
Even Bush’s conservative sycophants have trouble finding policies to praise. Certainly it cannot be federal spending. In 2000 candidate Bush complained that Al Gore would “throw the budget out of balance.” But the big-spending Bush administration and GOP Congress have turned a 10-year budget surplus once estimated at $5.6 trillion into an estimated $5 trillion flood of red ink. This year’s deficit will run about $445 billion, according to the Office of Management and Budget.
Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation reports that in 2003 “government spending exceeded $20,000 per household for the first time since World War II.” There are few programs at which the president has not thrown money; he has supported massive farm subsidies, an expensive new Medicare drug benefit, thousands of pork barrel projects, dubious homeland security grants, an expansion of Bill Clinton’s AmeriCorps, and new foreign aid programs. What’s more, says former conservative Republican Rep. Bob Barr, “in the midst of the war on terror and $500 billion deficits, [Bush] proposes sending spaceships to Mars.”
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Moreover, whatever the personal preferences of a President Kerry, he could spend only whatever legislators allowed, so assuming that the GOP maintains its control over Congress, outlays almost certainly would rise less than if Bush won reelection. History convincingly demonstrates that divided government delivers less spending than unitary control. Give either party complete control of government and the treasury vaults quickly empty. Share power between the parties and, out of principle or malice, they check each other. The American Conservative Union’s Don Devine says bluntly: “A rational conservative would calculate a vote for Kerry as likely to do less damage” fiscally.
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For some conservatives, the clincher in favor of Bush is the war on terrorism. Kerry, with more war experience than the current president and vice president combined, “resembles Neville Chamberlain,” says Nugent. Answering his own hysterical question, “Why do terrorists want Kerry to win?” David Keene of the American Conservative Union says Kerry would submit to terrorists and “lead the free world to a second Munich,” only this time with al-Qaida instead of Adolph Hitler.
Yet Bush’s foreign policy record is as bad as his domestic scorecard. The administration correctly targeted the Taliban in Afghanistan, but quickly neglected that nation, which is in danger of falling into chaos. The Taliban is resurgent, violence has flared, drug production has burgeoned and elections have been postponed.
Iraq, already in chaos, is no conservative triumph. The endeavor is social engineering on a grand scale, a war of choice launched on erroneous grounds that has turned into a disastrously expensive neocolonial burden.
Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, contrary to administration claims, and no operational relationship with al-Qaida, contrary to administration insinuations. U.S. officials bungled the occupation, misjudging everything from the financial cost to the troop requirements.
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The final conservative redoubt is Bush’s admirable personal life. Alas, other characteristics of his seem less well suited to the presidency. By his own admission he doesn’t do nuance and doesn’t read. He doesn’t appear to reflect on his actions and seems unable to concede even the slightest mistake. Nor is he willing to hold anyone else responsible for anything. It is a damning combination. John Kerry may flip-flop, but at least he realizes that circumstances change and sometimes require changed policies. He doesn’t cowardly flee at the first mention of accountability.
Some onetime administration supporters have grown disillusioned. [Andrew] Sullivan observes: “To have humiliated the United States by presenting false and misleading intelligence and then to have allowed something like Abu Ghraib to happen … is unforgivable. By refusing to hold anyone accountable, the president has also shown he is not really in control. We are at war; and our war leaders have given the enemy their biggest propaganda coup imaginable, while refusing to acknowledge their own palpable errors and misjudgments.”
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.
Nothing.
Whew! Could a die-hard leftist liberal be more damning?
Hat Tip to Radley Balko for this link.
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