Posted on 05/15/2004 10:50:40 AM PDT by wagglebee
Most Americans long ago stopped believing that George W. Bush is what he claimed to be during the 2000 presidential campaign: a compassionate conservative.
But is George W. Bush a conservative at all?
The answer might seem self-evident to progressives who have spent the past four years recoiling at the reactionary agenda the Bush Administration has advanced on everything from the environment to the courts, global warming to gay marriage. But while few people would confuse George W. Bush for a liberal, whether the policies he's championed qualify as traditionally conservative is by no means clear.
"Historically, conservatism in the United States has meant support for small government, balanced budgets, fiscal prudence and great skepticism about overseas adventures," notes Clyde Prestowitz, a former Reagan Administration official who back in the 1960s was among the young Republicans supporting Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, a conservative standard-bearer. "What I see now is an Administration that's not for any of these things."
While there are plenty of Republicans who would take issue with Prestowitz's definition of the term, a growing number of conservative thinkers and policy-makers have begun to echo this view, as thumbing through the pages of the conservative press makes clear. Hungry for hard-hitting criticism of the Iraq war? You're as likely to find it these days in publications like The National Interest, a conservative foreign affairs quarterly, and the recently launched American Conservative as in publications on the left. Want a rundown on the billions in government subsidies that the Bush Administration has lavished on corporations even as it claims to champion laissez-faire economics? Look no further than the website of the libertarian Cato Institute, which bristles with such information. How about sober analyses of the multibillion-dollar budget deficits the Administration has overseen? There's no better source than the staid, conservative business press.
Of course, disagreement among conservatives in America, a term that encompasses everyone from followers of Pat Robertson to admirers of Milton Friedman, is hardly unprecedented. Yet the fissures that have emerged of late are different, pitting not only social conservatives against economic ones (a familiar rift within the GOP) but realists against neoconservatives, supply-siders against deficit hawks, proponents of limited government against defenders of what looks to some like a curious form of Big Government Republicanism. In some ways, moreover, these fissures cut deeper, for they are rooted not merely in tactical disputes about how to advance a shared agenda but in basic disagreements about what being a conservative in America actually means.
Does it mean fighting messianic wars to spread America's values into the far corners of the world? As the body bags continue to pile up in Iraq, a growing number of establishment conservatives have begun to voice doubts. Does it mean ramming through tax cuts at a time when the nation faces an array of new threats and challenges? Not to those conservatives who take the notion of fiscal responsibility seriously.
Interviews with an array of conservative thinkers and policy-makers reveal a rising disquiet on these matters among people who have spent most of their lives proudly identifying with the Republican Party and the philosophy for which they've long assumed it stood. At the root of their discomfort is a feeling not that the Bush Administration is too conservative but that it has forsaken the guiding principles of conservatism--prudence, caution, restraint--to pursue an agenda that is messianic and radical. To these dissenters, it is an agenda that seems less a fulfillment of classic conservative principles than an exercise in hubris reminiscent of the ideological excesses of another era, the 1960s, only with the shoe on the other party's foot.
(Excerpt) Read more at thenation.com ...
Is Bush One of Us? Well, he certainly is a good American if that is what this rag is asking.
The question is not is he one of us, but is he one of them!
The answer is no, therefore he is with us, and I with him!
Ops4 God Bless America! and George W Bush (4 More Years!)
This a piece of pure rat fantacy. It is the kind of evil donkey psyops crap they will put out over and over until November. It is designed to divide us. Please don't post shiite like this.
I'm still waiting for all those conservative judicial appointments. Bush hasn't fought for them worth a damn.
Bush isn't a conservative. That said, he's worlds better for a conservative than any candidate the Democrat party has offered in decades.
A centrist Bush is better than a centrist Kerry.
Wow, when such a conservative rag as the Nation asks this question, we must be doomed. Doomed!
Forgot to point out : The Nation? Pulleeeze!!!!!!
Silly rats, tricks are for kids.
Reactionary <<-- is the term "progressives"(socialists) always use to describe intelligent alternatives to tyranny.
Bush has found a way to alienate just about everyone. The liberals will never ever vote for him because of his clear morality. The real conservative base is beyond dissapointed in him because he hasn't eliminated a single federal departement, and has grown the government. The only thing less conservative than Bush has been the republican controlled congress. They are so terrified of having the media and liberal elits give them the gingrich treatment, that the just wallow around in mediocraty.
Not going to happen. In order to wage this war Bush has to "compromize" with the Dems on domestic spending. The warfare and welfare state go hand in hand.
They're both globalists.
Did we have 9/11 four years ago and the aftermath to deal with?
Nice try though, Uncle Joe Stalin is clapping from his hell fire.
I agree, but there are still judicial appointments and what about Medicaid?
Bush is not a conservative, but we are stuck with him. He's the best thing we've got going. I would also accuse him of being a flip-flopper just like Kerry. Will I vote for him? Yes. Did I mess up voting for him in the 2000 primary? Absolutely. I share the blame. Then again, Mr. anti-Christian John McCain might be our president if we didn't vote for Bush. So I don't know. It is what it is. Hopefully we will get a better representative next time.
I like President Bush, I'm just afraid he and his team really have a competence problem. Oddly enough, Rumsfeld retains my confidence, he needs to find a way to stop antagonizing the Army though, or he's about to get a second fragging, and the next one will be lethal.
Exactly the NAtion is a socialist rag pretending to be conservative, they are more Global minded than George W.
Some of these posts look to me like Bolshevik operative's disguised as Freepers. We will check this out from the OPs Corps, Over!
Ops4 God Bless America!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.