Mar 08 2008
Time To Assess Our Failed Conservatism
Want to know why conservatism is on the rocks? I claim it is the purity wars where some claim superiority over all others, and emphasize their ‘true conservatism’ by calling their so-called allies names like ‘traitor’ and ‘RINO’. This all stems form the inability to lose one’s case with honor and maturity in a democracy. For example, this kind of crap is not going to unite the conservative coalition, nor is it a way to demonstrate stability and respect for allies who should be aligned to protect this nation and oppose the insanity of liberalism and the progressives:
The failure of the Bush presidency is the dominant fact of American politics today. It has driven every facet of Democratic political strategy since early 2006, when Democrats settled on the campaign themes that brought them their takeover of the House and Senate in November 2006. Nothing–not even the success of the American troop surge in Iraq–has altered or will alter the centrality of George W. Bush and his failed presidency to Democratic planning in the remainder of 2008.
Bush has not failed if you look at his results. From tax cuts to protecting the unborn embryo from being a lab experiment Bush has progressed conservatism quite far. The failure has been those on the right who are too impatient and too obsessed with one subject to admit the country is much better off after Bush than it would have been under Gore or Kerry.
Dems always will oppose Bush so what does it mater if they oppose him now? When did the GOP bow to the opinions of the left? It was those in the conservative coalition who stabbed Bush in the back (and now don’t have the self confidence to admit maybe they over reacted) that keeps Bush from being seen as the success he is. If the historic GOP voters rallied around Bush and said “good job, given all the challenges and forces aligned against you here and abroad” Bush’s ratings would be back above 50%. Won’t happen – it means admitting the hyperbole of the past was misguided, and few folks have the wisdom to admit error.
The failure of the conservative movement is not Bush – it is those who decided they would split the coalition because Bush could not wave a magic wand in a time of war and national threat and (a) stop all abortions or (b) deport all illegals or (c) stop the GOP Congress from over spending. And it is one whopper of a failure since it has led to the real chance Clinton or Obama are being seriously considered to run this country into the ground.
If you start with Bush as a failure you have lost me – I don’t care if it comes from liberals obsessed with surrendering to al-Qaeda instead of standing by our President or from Conservatives in Exile obsessed with diverting our security forces to track down nannies and gardeners. If Bush is a failure because he did not bow down to someone’s demands then that someone is just going to go into another fit of frustration as the nation ignores their personal views under the next President. Reality will never conform to their wishes which means they will always be in a fit of anger – which makes that person too dodgy to ally with or to worry about. Which makes them the failure – not Bush who did change reality and make this country and world a better place.
Addendum: Just wanted to add one last point. If anyone thinks admitting the Dems were right and that Bush was failure will help McCain or any conservative win is seriously misguided. It is admitting Dems are right that gets Dems elected. Duh.
Terrye, why is it that you can disagree with Bush on some policies but when conservatives do, they are “blaming Bush” and “refusing to assume responsibility for our own mistakes”?
Vince:
The Bush administration has been the most pro Israel administration in history and they have never said Israel did not have a right to defend herself.
And they have never said that Israel had to “give” anything to Hamas. In fact Bush refused to even meet with Arafat, which was a huge departure from Clinton. How can Israel “give” statehood to anyone? That is not what this is about.
I have seen some posts at powerline that give the indication that Bush is supposed to instruct Israel to destroy the Pals or something, or at the very least to stay in a state of perpetual war with them forever and ever, but the truth is no one is going to force a peace on either Israel or the Palestinians until both parties are ready to let that happen. In the end they will decide what happens there.
The idea that Rice or Bush has betrayed Israel is absurd. I just do not believe it.
75:
No one is asking for blind allegiance. But calling the man Jorge and accusing him of treason is a far cry from just disagreeing with him. Accusing him of siding with the Islamists against Israel is not just having a different point of view.
I don’t recall any of the conservatives in this group saying any of the things you’ve attributed to us today.
And btw 75 I am not a victim. I have just noticed that more and more people are calling themselves Democrats and I do not think that is good thing. Maybe you do. Maybe the idea that the Republican party is a minority party is what you want. I do not think that is good thing, especially now. Pointing out that calling people names does not draw them to your side, is not playing the victim, it is just a fact.
75:
I never said they did. I was talking about Aj’s post and his overall point.
BTW, most people who know me consider me conservative.
As far as that is concerned I have heard AJ call himself a conservative. Maybe part of the problem is that when I say “right” I mean right wing. That is not always the same thing as conservative. For instance, there is the whole Ron Paul phenom. Where would a guy like that belong?
And by the way 75, I have been commenting at AJ’s for a long time, most of the people here know what my views are.
Terrye,
And a great deal of them are rejecting liberalism and moderatism (hmm) so what’s your point?
Oh, we’re all aware you’ve commented here a long time.
The amusement I’ve received reading your thoughts is one of the reasons I opted to comment myself. It certainly didn’t take me “a long time” to see you are no conservative.
AJ has told us he’s an independent, not to mention, I’m sure he can speak for himself.
Constant whining and blaming others is “playing the victim” whether you actually are one or not. Slipping the “name calling” card into every post is just more of it and frankly, childish.
And you’ll have to explain your “minority party” posting because frankly, it makes no sense.
She has no point. She just blathers on and on in this forum about whatever AJ tells her to. A regular parrot and it would appear, a painfully desperate one.
Terrye,
Let’s make this simple. Name calling is name calling…just because one person thinks their chosen name is not as offensive as another is a matter of opinion and does not excuse the name calling.
People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones…It must be pretty drafty in yours.
The Bush administration has been the most pro Israel administration in history
Indeed.. which is what makes his betrayal even more bitter. It is also why I lament his 2nd term.
and they have never said Israel did not have a right to defend herself.
Yes they have. Calling for restraint. Calling for them to be mindful of the “impact” their defenses have on the “piece process”.
And just the other day, as the blood was flowing in Jerusalem, Bush called Olmert and made Olmert make a public statment that Israel will still engage in the Piece Process.
Lets not forget that Bush also made Israel allow HAMAS to stand for office in the last round of palestinian elections.
All these disasterous 2nd term decisions are made in the context of the trust he built with them in the 1st term. It’s almost Trojan Horse-ish. It’s a disgrace.
Do you know how much money we’re giving to the Palestinians , that they then take and devote to terrorism? The weapons we give them that HAMAS gets their hands on? The training of thier forces by our FBI and military?
The Palestinians need to be CRUSHED not have thier military improved! Jewish blood is on our American hands.
And they have never said that Israel had to “give†anything to Hamas.
Oh? So what do you call making Israel back down from forbidding Hamas to run for office ?
What do you call it when Israel is forced to give various things to the alledged “moderate” terrorist Abbas and then it ends up with Hamas?
In fact Bush refused to even meet with Arafat, which was a huge departure from Clinton.
Arafat is long dead. The Bush of that time is not the Bush we have now.
How can Israel “give†statehood to anyone? That is not what this is about.
What are you talking about? What do you think Rice and Bush are pushing Israel to come to an agreement with the Palestinains for? To create the Palestinian state… Before the end of Bush’s term.
To see how demented this is.. this is news on the night of the attack in Jerusalem.. it’s like Bush and the State Department are desperate for these talks to happen even though it should be obvious to everyone the Palestianians dont want peace.. they want to kill the Jews
The impotent Israeli government and our nutty demands for a peace process is tearing apart the Israeli people.
The idea that Rice or Bush has betrayed Israel is absurd. I just do not believe it.
It doens’t require belief. It does require some objectivity, which seems to be something beyond your ability.
This news story has just come out. Once again, the US interferes with what Israel is doing and as a result, Hamas gets the victory:
Iranians, Syrians among those killed by Israeli strike on Gaza
JERUSALEM — Israeli military intelligence chief, Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin told the Cabinet on March 2 that an air force strike killed several Iranian, Lebanese and Syrian instructors sent to improve Hamas’s military and missile capabilities.
Yadlin said the death of the instructors marked a serious blow to the Hamas regime
…
On March 3, Israeli troops, amid U.S. criticism, left the Gaza Strip in a move hailed by Hamas as a major victory.
…..
[And this is the worst part… all the prepation Israel did.. and we , our government, UNDERMINES them. We are killing Israel]
On Feb. 26, military intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin briefed the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on the repercussions of the two-week breach in the Egyptian-Gaza border, which enabled 700,000 Palestinians to enter Sinai. Yadlin said the Hamas regime was significantly bolstered by the influx of specialists and weapons in the Gaza Strip in January and early February.
Israeli Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi said Hamas has been using civilians to transport missiles. Ashkenazi told the Cabinet that Hamas was found to have placed a Katyusha rocket in the wagon of an elderly man.
On March 2, Hamas continued to fire the BM-21 Grad rocket, a Katyusha variant, into Israel. Several of the 122 mm rockets, with a range of more than 20 kilometers, landed in the southern Israeli cities of Ashkelon and Netivot.
Officials said the Cabinet led by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been discussing a full-scale invasion of the Gaza Strip and the destruction of the Hamas regime. They said Defense Minister Ehud Barak has won approval from most of the Cabinet.
“We have to be organized for it to get more serious, because the big ground operation is real, tangible,” Barak said.
Officials, however, said Olmert would not decide to resume the ground operation in Gaza without approval from the United States.
“When the green light is given for the Israel Defense Forces to go in with its full force,” Barak said, “the goals will be first of all, halting Kassam fire; second, reducing weapons smuggling from Egypt; third, weakening Hamas rule, and, under the right circumstances, overthrowing the Hamas government, and, in the long term, complete severance from the Gaza Strip.”
This is a timely article , titled: The Politics of a Failed Presidency
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/857bstgi.asp
The article outlines a common pattern to three major policy areas: Social Conservatism, Fiscal Conservativism, Foreign Policy Conservativism.
In all three areas, the same pattern exists. And notice the pivot point is just as the 2nd term starts:
[These are just excerpts, the article is very long]
“What does seem clear is that defective policy judgments and bad political decisions, particularly in the immediate aftermath of his reelection, show every sign of undoing one of the president’s more impressive policy achievements. Once again, the pattern is excellent initial judgment, strong will, fair to decent early execution, culminating in distraction and in an ultimate failure to finish.”
We’ve seen how this worked to undo or render negligible some of his bravest and most innovative domestic moves, such as the first-term tax cuts and the faith-based initiative. The same failure to follow through demoralized Bush’s supporters and threatened his achievements in foreign policy as well.
…
[This agrees with what I’ve been saying all year… Rice is a disaster]
What caused this kind of progress to peter out, to be de-emphasized or put aside? One factor, surprisingly, was that Bush’s second-term secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, was more deferential to outside and internal opponents of Bush’s policies than was her openly skeptical predecessor, Colin Powell
…
[I’ve been saying this all year too… we may doing good in Iraq, but everywhere else is a disaster and our work in Iraq is going to be squandered becasue Iraq will never be stable as long as Iran is ruled by the Mullahs]
In terms of the political debate, all this leaves the president with just about the worst of all worlds. If you share the president’s premise that Iraq is only one front, albeit an important one, of a much larger global conflict, an improved Bush grade on Iraq is dwarfed by failures and humiliating retreats virtually everywhere else, most visibly Iran and North Korea. If you share the mainstream Democratic storyline that Iraq was a blunder and diversion from capturing Osama bin Laden and annihilating al Qaeda, the survival and consolidation of al Qaeda’s high command in western Pakistan and the continued strength of Taliban forces in Afghanistan are further confirmation of the blunder, modified not at all by the recent success of General Petraeus. If you agree with those a bit further left, that the global war on terror is nothing but a bumper sticker, seemingly contrary evidence in such widely disparate places as Gaza, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Somalia, Pakistan, and Afghanistan simply proves that most of the anti-American unrest in the Arab and Islamic world stems from our Iraq invasion, our partiality to Israel, or some combination of the two, in which case a quick retreat from Iraq is just as necessary as it was before the arrival of General Petraeus.
Vince,
Well spotted. What article do you think I was linking to in the post????
LOL
I didn’t make the connection.
The Bush presidency, by any honest measure, has achieved historic success:
• Liberating 50 million people and reshaping the ME
• foiling terrorist attacks on our country
•Stopping nuclear trafficking in the ME
• implementing a prescription drug plan for seniors that is market based
• marvelous judicial nominees
• preventing public financing of ESCR, both dehumanizing and a waste of money, leading to breakthroughs in ASCR
• Supporting Israel in the face of Israel hatred here and in Europe
• Implementing a tax cut that brought us out of a recession that began under Clinton.
I suspect we are all using our own prisms to measure how “conservative” the others are.
Just because a conservative wants the immigration problems solved in a less simplistic way than ,say, Tancredo, hardly makes him a liberal. Everyone in a coalition has his priority issues and must compromise on those of lesser importance to advance his priorities.
Some Republicans like Hegel, Collins and several others make no pretense of conservatism and have undercut Bush all along. So the Parties are just a bigger coalition .
I still think the two party system is more flexibly than a multi party system because it can get more done without “confidence votes” and fatal compromises.
I think history will be very kind to Bush, proven to be an excellent leader of judicious response when thrust into greatness. But I think that’s why conservatives are particularly vocal when he strays. I think Bell’s commentary would be closer to the mark had he considered the “perception of failure” rather than actual failure. The Dems and their media have promoted “failure” from the very first day he entered office and unfortunately, a large part of our population believes it. Reagan too, was misjudged by the very same hacks.