Bush the Conservative
Reagan Made Compromises Too
By Dan McLaughlin Posted in Republicans — Comments (32) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
There is, as there ought to be periodically in any movement, some soul-searching to be done after yesterday's setbacks, and I agree with the general view that for the most part, with only limited exceptions, Republicans suffered at the polls less for what we believe in as conservatives than for the failure to live up to those ideals.
But in our haste to blame the leaders of the party, let us not overstate the case. I hear it said sometimes that President Bush is somehow not really a conservative. Now, it is true that Bush has not governed as a small-government conservative, and the cause of smaller government is certainly an important one for conservatism. President Bush has failed to stand up for conservative principles on a few other fronts, and it is right for us to point that out. But conservatism is a philosophy, not an all-encompassing litmus-test-intensive ideology, and it has many different elements (I have a long-brewing essay on that topic that I should try to finish some time over the next several weeks). As I said the other day, Bush is the second-most-conservative president we have had since Coolidge, and he has taken principled stands on a number of key conservative priorities and stuck by them, notably on national security and war, lower taxes, and the nomination of conservative judges. And his doing so won him election in 2000 and re-election with a majority of the voting public in 2004.
In 2008, we will again run candidates for the White House and Congress who are conservatives in broad outline and on key priorities, but who may compromise on some specific issues. Perhaps, as is quite likely, they will offer different compromises than President Bush has. I can live with that, if the compromises are ones I can live with. Getting back to first principles is important and worthy, even necessary. But we should not pretend that absolute purity will be necessary to do so, or even feasible in rebuilding a majority coalition and winning national elections.
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Bush the Conservative 32 Comments (0 topical, 32 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
It seems to me that virtually every war we have fought in the 20th century has been fought by libs (WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam). Conservatives do not believe that the US is the world's protector and should not be throwing wars, invasions, etc around. Bush has been conservative on taxes, judges, and social issues, but has not been a very good salesman of his policies and success and thus deserves much of the blame. Finally, Bush is not a small government conservative, of which many of us are and which is going to be something that history will hold against him.
if you think that the correct conservative course of action is to sit there and wait for the next attack. If you think that the correct action is to prevent the next attack then you're going to come up with a different solution.
BTW, I don't know what the statement
every war we have fought in the 20th century has been fought by libs (WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam).
is supposed to convey. The whole idea of Democrat wars didn't make much sense back when Bob Dole flung the concept about and it doesn't make much sense today. I'm open to discussion about the wisdom of World War I, but if you are making a case that Pearl Harbor, the invasion of South Korea, and the war in South Vietnam were brought on by have a Dem in office or that we should have stayed out of those wars I think you have a hard row to hoe.
that the correct conservative action is to wait until attacked, then retaliate with a vengance, which is why I can support the Afghanistan response, but not Iraq. While I will agree that WWII was definitely thrust upon us, the other 3 are definitely questionable at best. WWI was purely Wilsons baby and our involvement really did nothing to turn the tide in that war, which was essentially over by the time we got boots on the ground. The Korean War was another choice, made by Truman to act as world cop and although the outcome (a propserous South Korea) has been good to us, that does not justify the reasoning at the time. Vietnam (of which my Father is a vet, Marine Airwing), was completely unnecessary and accomplished very little (other than creating a bunch of really annoying hippies). I am still of the mind that a conservative should wait to be attacked and that acting as world cop is a much more liberal position.
of your conservatism right now.
Sitting around waiting to be attacked is not a good policy and certainly not when my family may be part of the casualty count. Really, you're saying 9/11 was the culmination of a successful conservative foreign policy.
Korea involved a sovereign nation, with US troops stationed in it, being attacked by another nation. American troops assigned to KMAG were killed on the first day of the attack. We had been involved in Vietnam since early in the Eisenhower administration and it, too, involved a sovereign nation with which we had a security treaty, SEATO, being attacked by a hositle neighbor. If you think it was worthless, I'd like you to explain that to the Laotians, Cambodians, and Vietnamese slaughtered in the aftermath. Ooops, you can't. They are all dead.
Are you arguing that US interests were advanced by Vietnam, as it turned out? If so, you are the first I have heard claim that the helicopters flying away from the roof of the embassy in Saigon represented the culmination of a foreign policy success, rather than a debacle. As it turned out, I would say it was far worse than worthless; it was enormously costly to our country in more ways than I can easily name.
If you are saying that there were US interests worth fighting for, and that we could and should have won, i can understand.
and to point.
Read the thread.
Be registered for longer 33 minutes and 59 seconds before you address something this stupid to me.
I'm secure enough in my intellectual bona fides that I'm not going to get in a flame war with you. If it makes you feel better about yourself to call my question stupid rather than simply answer it, that's fine. I will leave it where it lays, because I'm secure enough in my own intellect that I don't need to boost my ego by calling other people stupid.
maybe one day you'll exhibit those "bona fides" for the rest of us.
I only call comments stupid when they are. In this case you obviously couldn't be bothered to actually read an entire exchange and had to jump in and make a fool of yourself. If you had read the exchange then there wouldn't be a question for me to answer.
As to "flame wars" I don't know where you think you are but there aren't "flame wars" here or none that last long anyway.
I found your comments on Vietnam unclear, if not outright incoherent. I thought the most tactful thing would be to ask you exactly what it was you were trying to say about Vietnam.
There's no need to get abusive. It really reflects badly on both you and the site. For your sake, I hope you don't treat the people who work with you like this.
I fail to see how he needed to compromise on many issues such as 'No Child Left Behind' (one of the most socialist things that have been done), how he has failed to control spending, taken up issues such as internet gambling, capaign finance reform, lack of vetos, the prescription drug benefit plan, failed to have a true plan for social security, and many more.
It seems like people will take two directions after this election. Either make excuses for the establishment, or look where we went wrong and how we have strayed from out roots.
Why is it Bush's fault that he didn't veto the laws passed by a Republican Congress? Atleast half the blame has to be placed on the Republican leadership and members of Congress. I think the truth is that the congress fell into the hands of moderates and mavericks. Sure the administration is to blame aswell, but McCain and the others carry just as much blame.
He said he would come up with prescription drugs - and try to reform federal education. George W. Bush seemed to think that when something's promised on the campaign trail, he should deliver on it. Horror of horrors.
Too bad that conservatives decided to kneecap him in 2005 and 2006 over some of those efforts.
Well if he is 'Bush the Conservative' why did he promise to deliver non conservative issues on the campaign trail.
Frankly, I'd rather have Clinton-level taxation and spending, i.e. balanced, than only get half a conservative deal - i.e. low tax but high spending.
Low tax and low spending really go hand in hand. You can't sensibly have one without the other. Getting the conservative deal or the liberal deal are both better than getting what we've got, a mismatch that pumps up the deficit.
Some people say Reagan showed 'deficits don't matter'. I think Reagan showed a lot of things, but that wasn't one of em.
Basically what I'm saying is moderate tax-and-spend is better than Bush-style borrow-and-spend, medium-to-long-term.
Agree/disagree?
Borrow the heck as much as you can when interest rates are low. Additionally, a lot of our debt is going to foreigners, as the dollar continues to devalue, repaying that debt is, essentially, easier.
For example, say the Chinese are the ones lending us the money. We pay them back in dollars, not yuan. When the yuan is free to float (it is no longer pegged to the dollar, but not floating yet, moving towards a float) it will greatly appreciate vs. the dollar (probably move from 8-1 to 1-1) and with that it would be like paying back 12.5 cents on the dollar. Now that's a good deal for us.
Just as every cop is a criminal, and all the sinners saints - Sympathy for the Democrats
"For example, say the Chinese are the ones lending us the money. We pay them back in dollars, not yuan. When the yuan is free to float (it is no longer pegged to the dollar, but not floating yet, moving towards a float) it will greatly appreciate vs. the dollar (probably move from 8-1 to 1-1) and with that it would be like paying back 12.5 cents on the dollar. Now that's a good deal for us."
Not a good deal for us, simply a bad deal for the chinese.
We probably won't be paying it back in cash, but with more debt, that makes it a good deal for us.
Just as every cop is a criminal, and all the sinners saints - Sympathy for the Democrats
No country has ever devalued its way into lasting prosperity. Strong economies are built the way we and the Germans once did it - by maintaining a strong currency, which encourages investment and savings. Devaluation encourages disinvestment and consumption, which are bad for the economy long term, and which are exactly what we are seeing today.
for Britain after WWII.
Just as every cop is a criminal, and all the sinners saints - Sympathy for the Democrats
The British post WW2 economic policies, with currency controls, limitations on moving money out of the country, etc., stand very nearly alone as a shining example of how to destroy a country with pin headed economic policies. They went on the ropes with the Socialist economic policies following the war, and didn't turn it around until Thatcher reintroduced them to the free market.
If you think British post WW2 policy is an example to follow, suffice it to say that we couldn't disagree more.
we aren't following all of that.
Just as every cop is a criminal, and all the sinners saints - Sympathy for the Democrats
If you start devaluing your currency, people with accrued wealth want to move their wealth out of your currency. The currency and investment outflows create problems for the central bank so limitations on currency movements follow. It happens all over when currencies get devalued - if you don't believe me, try moving money out of Argentina today.
Read your economic history - currency devaluations are a short term fix, but no country has ever devalued its way to lasting prosperity.
What rebuilt the British economy after WW2 was Margaret Thatcher's free market policies and lowered tax rates, after forty years of postwar economic decline.
Consumption taxation is far less harmful to the economy than income or capital gains taxation. The taxation share of GDP isn't as important as the type of taxes used to raise it.
The second issue is the cost of debt... if you can finance deficits cheaply, then doing so isn't such a big deal.
Building up a debt under one set of circumstances.... then having the rug pulled out from under us by a change in rates. It just seems like a very unconservative gamble to me.
What we spend it on is primary. The problem with Bush is not necessarily the AMOUNT of money being spent, it's that the reach of government keeps growing.
NCLB is nothing more than a complete federalization of primary and secondary education. We graduate kids who can't read so we need to spend more. CRAP.
Prescription drug benefit is an extension of entitlements by a guy who wants to control entitlements. Huh? And, oh gee, the bill for the legislation tripled within a month of it's passage. Give me a big fat break.
Harold keeps whining about conservatives "kneecapping" Bush. I completely disagree, but maybe he deserved it.
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If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?
Though today is venting day,
let not our judgement go astray,
we live to fight another day!
You can say over and over again that Bush is a conservative, and make the questionable claim over and over again that he is the second most conservative President of recent times, but repetition doesn't make it so.
Since getting elected, the Bush administration has run up more debt than all 42 Presidents who went before - combined. Worse, that debt is held by foreigners, which is not a good thing, because if they decide to quit buying our debt for any reason, we are screwed economically. (And for those who say, the Chinese wouldn't do anything that would hurt them as well - you forget at your peril that they don't hew to financial quarter or four year term time frames. If it serves a long term strategic advantage, they will take the short term pain. Need I point out that the Chinese are still a communist derived dictatorship and no friends of ours?) As a direct result of Bush administration policies, we do not control our own fate, something that has not been true of this country for a very long time.
We are entangled in a foreign land war in Asia with no exit strategy in sight. Jumping into the war was reckless at best, and real conservatives, by temperament, are not reckless. Measure twice, cut once, get embroiled only when you are sure you know what you are doing. Maybe it was a place we needed to fight, maybe it wasn't, but no one can deny that we have failed to achieve our goals.
Versus other major currencies, your dollars are worth about 65 percent of what they were when Bush took office. Again, this is not good, and it is not conservative. As third world countries like Argentina have proved over and over again, no one has ever devalued their way to lasting prosperity. Why invest in a country where your investment will be worth less tomorrow due to currency shifts alone? It encourages disinvestment and runaway consumption, which, if you have paid any attention, is exactly what we are experiencing.
Entitlement programs have grown exponentially under Bush. Conservatives don't grow the size of the federal government. They shrink it. We had both houses of Congress and the Presidency, something that may not happen again in our lifetimes, and with sites like this doing nothing more than repeating Karl Rove talking points, we grew the government more than any recent Democrat.
Kleptocracy took hold in Washington. It's not a conservative agenda point to let the government fisc be looted, not even by friendly corporations. If you don't think it happened, sit back and wait - the Democrats are now going to be able to hold hearing, and you will see the evidence of what happened to a lot of that Iraq money laid on the table.
What's going down now is bigger than party loyalty. This country is in danger on many fronts - not just from terrorists, but economically, and in terms of our ability to lead the other nations of the world according to the kind of values this country has always represented.
Putting on blinders won't help the country. We need to face reality, and clean up the mess made by Bush and Company. It isn't going to be easy.
About the only truly Conservative thing Bush did was two conservative Supreme Court picks. The second of those, Alito, was despite, not because, of Bush, let us not forget.
We also would have had more conservatives on the circuit courts if he had dropped some of the unconfirmable picks with non-ideological baggage (e.g., Haynes in CA4) and replaced them with equally or more conservative picks.
He thinks and governs like a reformed Trotskyite converted to Christianity and free markets. I wonder if he was a Communist in his heart in his youth, because he fits the profile of a neocon rather well.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.
but is tactically inept. That may be more of the fault of close advisors - Rove & Card (before he left) specifically.
Just as every cop is a criminal, and all the sinners saints - Sympathy for the Democrats