When you look at Pappy (George H.W.) Bush’s record it isn’t inspiring with respect to conservatism.
The S&L bailout.
Failure to prosecute Democrat Speaker of the House Jim Wright and House Majority Whip Tony Coehlo who resigned from office. Both were heavily implicated in the S&L scandals.
Failure to prosecute the Keating Five, five US Senators deeply involved in influence peddling and accepting questionable contributions from actors in the S&L scandals. Four of the Keating Five were Democrats. The fifth was John McCain. McCain’s political career should have ended then but the Republican establishment protected him.
Breaking his “No New Taxes” pledge. Essentially he was forced to do this because of the increase in deficit spending cause by the S&L bailout. If he had let the S&L’s go through normal bankruptcy, instead of pouring billions of taxpayer dollars into bailing out the investors and Wall Street banks holding the bad loans, raising taxes would not have been an issue.
Failure to secure the southern border. The “one time” amnesty during the Reagan administration was supposed to have been followed with tight border enforcement. Pappy Bush, like his son George W. later, failed to aggressively seal the border allowing millions of illegals to stream across the border and effectively giving Bill Clinton and excuse for lax border enforcement during his 8 years.
NAFTA and WTO. Bush, the globalist, was a big proponent of opening up the US market to other nations by ending tariffs and quotas. NAFTA negotiations began in the Bush administration and the agreement was signed under Clinton. Ross Perot was proved correct in talking about the “great sucking sound” these trade agreements would cause as US jobs were sucked out of the country. We’ve seen the deindustrialization of the US, and skyrocketing trade deficits, since Pappy Bush’s vision of free trade was implemented. The transfer of US manufacturing to China, resulting from the elimination of tariffs and quotas, has also funded the rise of China to superpower status and a great future strategic threat to the US. Since the Bush I administration millions of US jobs have been lost, the US industrial infrastructure has been gutted, and the disposable income of the average American household has declined, while income disparity has increased. All-in-all his trade policies were a disaster for the nation and the average working person.
Desert Storm. The US provided the mercenary army to force Sadaam Hussein’s troops out of Kuwait and protect Saudi Arabia from invasion. The Saudi’s repaid us by funding Al Qaeda, and other Islamic terrorist organizations committed to destroying the US. The Saudi’s have also funded the building of thousands of mosques in the US and Muslim outreach efforts to convert prisoners in US prisons to Islam.
He signed the Immigration Act of 1990 which increased legal immigration by 40%, most of these immigrants from 3rd would countries.
He signed the extension of the Clean Air Act. He signed the Americans with Disabilities Act. He appointed David Souter to the Supreme Court.
Bush I was a corporatist globalist statist having more in common with the Democrats in Congress than the conservatives in his own party.
Very well written, and I include in this, your home page!