Bush Holds Fast to Stem-Cell Veto Threat

Newday, AP ^ | 7/29/05

[AntiGuv]

Oh, you're right. The environmental policies as well. The whole Ginsburg reference just falls into the religion category (which covers right-to-life & same-sex marriage, etc). So, here's the scorecard so far as I can tell.

Budgets: liberal
Entitlements: liberal
Immigration: liberal
Foreign Policy: liberal
Education: liberal
Taxes: moderate
Religion: conservative
Environment: conservative

OK, the liberalism is still winning. What issue areas am I missing?

[Dane]

LOL! The budget deficit is coming down and most of the growth has been in defense and homeland security, and someone who proposes social security reform is liberal, and someone who basically gives the finger to the UN is liberal, and someone who gives the teacher unions fits is liberal.

I don't know what your smoking, but I suggest you lay off it for a while.

[msnimje]

Let them have embryonic stem cells. If they are relatively worthless as you assert with great vigor, people will stop using them in short order without government interference -- a win/win in my book

I agree but we should not lose sight of possible and even probable ulterior motives. It may very well have nothing to do with recovery but rather making destroying embryos acceptable.

[Central Scrutiniser]

Hope no one you know dies in the future from something that stem cell research might cure.

Medical science needs to move on, if the US doesn't do it, other nations will.

[Dane]

Hope no one you know dies in the future from something that stem cell research might cure.

Or die because someone who may have been a brilliant scientist and made great scientific strides was aborted.

[nopardons]

Clinton did worse than nothing, when terrorist assaulted us. He was offered bin Laden three times and each time he refused to take him.When the WTC was bombed in '93 and the culprits caught, Clinton ignored it.

There are so many other differences, as to be mind boggling; but then, you must first have a mind to boggle.

[AntiGuv]

I am not referring to the deficits. If I were I'd combine "budget" with "taxes"; what I was referring to is spending and the size of government. Spending and the size of government has increased under Bush at a rate rivalled only by Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" and Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal" - those icons of liberal socialism.

Nation-building is liberal. We are committed to the largest nation-building experiment ever undertaken by the US (the post-WWII endeavors were national rebuilding - a difference in kind). The Bush proposals for social security reform are essentially indistinguishable from the Clinton era mumblings - or from Senator Moynihan's ideas.

You have bought into the Hysteric Left's rhetoric that Bush is some extremist rightwinger. He's not. It was the UN that gave Bush the finger, not the other way around. The Left is just anti-Bush, period. Most of that is defined by little more than the Culture War - which I've already covered. Most people these days vote on nothing else but that. So long as the politician is on their side in the Culture War, the rest can be rationalized.

I'll add two more categories to the above.

Budgets: liberal*
Entitlements: liberal
Immigration: liberal
Foreign Policy: liberal
Education: liberal
Taxes: moderate*
Military: moderate
Law Enforcement: conservative
Religion: conservative*
Environment: conservative*

The asterisked categories are the ones meaningfully distinguishable from the Clinton administration (the GOP Congress actually put the reins on spending back then..).

[nopardons]

Then so was Ronald Reagan a socialist. Remember the "JUST SAY NO" and " HANDS ACROSS AMERICA" feel good stuff? And at least, unlike Reagan President Bush hasn't raised taxes, pulled our military out, at the very first our troops were killed ( Ba la the desertion of Lebanon), not given BLANKET IMMUNITY to every single illegal living here, which Reagan did and he hasn't played the minority game, sticking a more or less unknown woman ( O'CONNOR ) into a high position, just so he could be the first president to have a woman in such a high position.

[AntiGuv]

OK, I think I'll move the foreign policy part to moderate instead, even though it's indistinguishable from Clintonite policies (Eastern Europe then; the Middle East now):

Budgets: liberal*
Entitlements: liberal
Immigration: liberal
Education: liberal
Foreign Policy: moderate
Taxes: moderate*
Military: moderate
Law Enforcement: conservative
Religion: conservative*
Environment: conservative*

So, that seems to make Bush a very balanced moderate. Right back where the debate started! =)

[Dane]

Nation-building is liberal. We are committed to the largest nation-building experiment ever undertaken by the US (the post-WWII endeavors were national rebuilding - a difference in kind). The Bush proposals for social security reform are essentially indistinguishable from the Clinton era mumblings - or from Senator Moynihan's ideas

Uh the post-World War II were nation building, the fascists in Germany and Japan were replaced with democracies and provided a defense against communist hegemony.

Clinton never proposed social security reform and Bush's proposals may be a reletively small step but they're a step in the right conservative direction(How dare he according to antiguv).

[Lee Stetson]

Your assertion is totally without basis.
Useless research continues unabated as long as federal grant money is available. Multiple audits and analysis of federal grant recipients shows that "research scientists" will study any unproven or disproved assertion as long as there is grant money to be had to study it. To give credence to the thought that these money-grubbing frauds we call scientists have any thought about the usefulness of their "studies" is to perpetuate the liberal spending philosophy we are working to eliminate in this congress.

[AntiGuv]

I suppose. But then again the post-WWII activities were nation-building. In fact, just a few short years ago during the Kosovo & Bosnia debates it was exactly the Marshall Plan that the liberals would bring up to favor their nation-building. Now, nary a word from them about that. Which brings me back to the point that the leftists are just knee-jerk Bush haters no matter what he does.

(A) Social Security folds into entitlements as a whole. (B) Bush's signature is on the huge Medicare prescription drugs entitlement. (C) The only - and I mean only - conservative position on entitlements is complete privatization. (D) One might argue that this is a politically untenable position, and one would be right, but don't delude yourself into thinking that makes a liberal position (socialist entitlements, with a fraction secured in private investment) a conservative one. (E) I don't remember the Clinton rhetoric precisely, but I do distinctly remember that private investment options were regularly mentioned. What the Dems wanted iirc correctly is federally-required private accounts on top of Social Security - the same position they still have.

[GeronL]

Frist is not opposed to government healthcare. He proposed a semi-government health system just last year if I remember. Something about forcing companies to pay into a fund for the poor.

[GeronL]

Your almost totally right, and I posit that the Republican Party is more fragile right now than the Democrat Party. If Bush had chosen a moderate for the Supreme Court, the GOP would no longer be one party.

[sydbas]

Bush isn't a moderate. He's mostly a liberal.

Yea right! President Bush is pro-life, pro-gun, pro-lower taxes, pro-military. Sure sounds liberal to me. You can complain about spending all you want, as we all do, but you can't deny President Bush is strong on the points I mentioned and those points are definitely not liberal.

[AntiGuv]

I would tend to agree. My personal view is that the GOP is indeed more fragile right now because the course of the past four years has been fundamentally defined by 9/11. The Republican 'big tent' has been held together by the War on Terror and the GOP has coasted along in many ways building a majority on that. As I see it, even socialists realize they can no longer collect their socialist benefits if they're dead. =)

But, getting back to the point, some have said that the Democrats are still in a September 10 mindset. That very well may be true, at the very least in the sense that what motivated them on 9/10/2001 is pretty much the same as what motivates them today. By contrast, some percentage of the Republican majority (and this includes independents and even crossovers voting Republicans) are motivated by post 9/11 concerns.

The question at hand is how large a percentage, and how long will that prevail. I don't know the answer, and there's probably no way to really tell. Who knows what a world where 9/11 didn't happen would look like. What is true though is that if the trend continues - i.e., the trend toward reversion back to 'normal' if you'd like - then there are obvious lines of fracture in the Republican Party between the economic conservative wing and the social conservative wing of the party.

The Democrats don't really have a comparable division. They are pretty much for the most part both social & economic liberals.

The problem with the Republicans IMHO is that they've lost their bearings. Once upon a time conservatism was essentially defined as limited federal government. Everything else pretty much folded under that umbrella. That is no longer the case, and that is the source of the instability in the Republican Party. A "small government" constitutionalist was essentially both an economic and a social conservative. Such people are getting harder and harder to find..

[AntiGuv]

OK, I confess that I was being a bit facetious. I regard Bush as a centrist, or a moderate if you prefer. The Right generally regards him as a conservative and the Left generally regards him as a fascist. In my view, Bush is very much a centrist.

[AntiGuv]

PS. The questions one should ask oneself are: "Why am I a conservative?" or "Why am I a Republican?" Too often these days, when someone is asked either question they don't answer it. Instead, they answer with: "This is why I'm not a Democrat." That's the heart of the problem in my view..

[BigSkyFreeper]

The questions one should ask oneself are: "Why am I a conservative?" or "Why am I a Republican?" Too often these days, when someone is asked either question they don't answer it. Instead, they answer with: "This is why I'm not a Democrat."

Too often many will cite one small aspect of any administration, rake them over the coals over it, and feel good doing it. To be perfectly honest, no Republican administration in recent history has ever truly been Conservative, Reagan included. In this day and age, he'd be considered Liberal on his stance with Mexico, thereby making him more or less a "centrist" by too many folk's political yardsticks.

[AntiGuv]

First of all the illegal immigration problem has changed dramatically since the 1980s. In 1985, there were an estimated 2.7 million illegals in the U.S. Now there are an estimated 12-15 million.. Secondly, this type of statement is merely a recipe for inaction. Third, I hardly cite one small aspect of the administration. I am objecting to everything from their profligate spending to their dramatic expansion of the federal government to their nation-building foreign policies to their trillion dollar expansion of socialist entitlements to their open borders policy to their unfair trade agreements.