Registered: Aug 2000
Location: In a Blue, Blue State
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conservativesagainstbush.com

Interesting developement. I've read and heard on rightwing radiotalk shows recently that Bush acts more like a democrat than a republican.

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: In a Blue, Blue State
Posts: 12547

Bush is losing support on right
Bob von Sternberg, Star Tribune

Published September 20, 2003 CONS20

The criticisms of President Bush aren't surprising: He's bungling the war in Iraq; his budget deficits are disastrous; he's trampling civil liberties; his spending plans are misguided.

But the source of those criticisms is: They're increasingly coming from conservatives.

Think tank studies, op-ed columns, talk radio callers and opinion polls show conservatives' disenchantment with Bush's policies and priorities has been climbing, although nowhere near as much as it has among liberals. And although those dismayed conservatives might rally round him in next year's presidential election, his campaign aides are keeping a close eye on the trend.

"I hate to say they've got nowhere else to go, but I think most conservatives will stick with the president," said former Rep. Vin Weber, who is co-chair of Bush's reelection campaign in Minnesota and four other states. "Conservative voters across the country will conclude backing the president is imperative. Of course, it's impossible not to have a few dissident voices."

One of those voices belongs to Daniel Cragg, a college student from Eagan who in June launched a Web site called conservativesagainstbush.com "to propound the conservative principals this administration has forsaken."

The site has been averaging about 200 hits a day, Cragg said. "The idea is to get the word out about how far off track he's gotten," he said. "A lot of people are mad about what's going on."

Evidence of grumbling on the right can be gleaned from recent polls.

A Star Tribune Minnesota Poll this month found that 31 percent of self-described conservatives gave Bush a thumbs down for the way he's doing his job. That was up from 9 percent who disapproved in April, days after the fall of Baghdad. The current disapproval rate among conservatives is the highest the Minnesota Poll has recorded in Bush's presidency.

Conservatives' displeasure has been growing nationally too. A recent ABC News poll found that 23 percent of conservatives nationwide disapprove of the job Bush is doing, up from 14 percent in April.

Such sentiments (along with considerably higher disapproval ratings by moderates and liberals) shouldn't be surprising, Weber said. "We've come off a summer of difficult news, what with the economy and the post-war," he said. "If those things were to continue and deepen, you'd start to worry. But the opposite is true."

Besides, no president satisfies every member of his political base all the time.

Minnesota conservatives' disapproval of Bush's performance has seesawed, from as low as 3 percent immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks to 18 percent 10 months later. (And it's a bipartisan phenomenon: Witness the fact that a month after Bill Clinton became president, 19 percent of liberal Minnesotans disapproved of his performance.)

"Every successful Republican president, including Ronald Reagan, ends up criticized by a number of voices on the right who complain he's not pure enough," Weber said. "Any compromise is unacceptable to them, but it's impossible to govern the country with rigid ideological principles."

A similar point was made by Mitch Pearlstein, who heads the Center for the American Experiment, a Minneapolis-based conservative think tank. "There are indeed conservatives out there who will complain about any officeholder who's not doing precisely what they want him to do," he said. "These are early seeds of disgruntlement, but they're still very faint."

Fuming

Conservatives universally praise Bush's relentless tax cutting but have little good to say about the growth in government programs, spending and budget deficits.

Pointing to this year's projected $455 billion budget shortfall and proposals for a Medicare prescription drug benefit, Club for Growth president Stephen Moore wrote this month: "Imagine that Al Gore and a Democratic Congress were doing all this profligate spending. Would conservatives stand for it? . . . Fiscal sanity is in retreat, under a solidly Republican regime."

Federal spending last year grew by 7.9 percent, the highest in a dozen years. Much of that is because of increased military and homeland security spending in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, but a double-digit increase in Medicaid spending has contributed to the growth.

Cato Institute president Edward Crane fumed to the New York Times this summer that Bush's "fiscal record is appalling -- spending is out of control. The fiscal record of the Bush administration makes Clinton look downright responsible."

Research recently published by the Brookings Institution, a liberal-leaning think-tank, showed that the true size of the federal workforce stood at 12.1 million in October 2002, up from 11 million in October 1999.

Despite the Bush administration's claim that it has shrunk the federal workforce, reductions have been more than offset by "off-budget" jobs paid for with federal contracts and grants, the study found.

An analysis last spring by the Cato Institute compared spending during the first terms of Bush and Reagan and found that spending grew in 11 categories under Bush and four under Reagan. While spending on education, training, employment and social services shrunk by 32.6 percent under Reagan's watch, it has grown by 26.8 percent under Bush's.

Assessing Bush's record, conservative columnist Andrew Sullivan recently wrote: "The Bush administration is actually a big government liberal administration on fiscal policy. It likes spending money; it takes on big projects; it's quite content to borrow 'til the fiscal cows come home."

Some conservatives have blasted Bush for his quiet acquiescence in the wake of the Supreme Court's recent ratifications of affirmative action and gay rights. Others have complained that he has not attempted to restrict the number of abortions performed in the United States.

Conservatives of a libertarian bent have railed against the Patriot Act and what they see as its threat to trample civil liberties. And conservatives with isolationist beliefs have blasted the war and occupation of Iraq.

Prominent among these is erstwhile Republican and former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan. Now editor of the American Conservative magazine, his lead editorial in the current issue concludes that "the Bush administration's prosecution of the war on terror has gone terribly, terribly wrong."

Twin Cities talk show host Jason Lewis has occasionally gotten an earful from conservatives fed up with one or another of Bush's policies.

"It's uneasiness, not open revolt," he said. "There's a limit to conservatives' patience, but I don't think it's going to be a huge problem in the election."

In many ways, Lewis said, Bush's domestic policies resemble his father's, who was famously unable to hold onto conservatives' allegiance.

The saving grace for the younger Bush is his tax-cutting zeal and his war on terror, Lewis said. "Without the specter of war right now, Bush would be getting many of the same criticisms his dad got," he said. "Plenty of criticisms on the spending side are warranted, but the war on terror trumps all of that."

http://www.startribune.com/stories/587/4108353.html

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Hilbert Space
Posts: 35561

I asked in politicas a while back whether Bush was going to get into trouble with the right (for acting the pinko swine) and at that stage most thought, as I recall, that he was doing OK with them. Seems inevitable that some in the right will get pissed off with him, but their choice is, in practice, Bush again or a democrat instead and I would imagine that they'll still prefer the first option.

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Registered: Jan 2002
Location: UK
Posts: 13002

When you look at Bush's domestic policies it's almost laughable to argue that he is right wing.

If I had any power of influence in the US I would scrap Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for a start. I never thought that the US would have a capitalistic system that effectively rewards business failure. I'd also crush the closed shop Union power base and the level of power organised labour has... some decent strike legislation to limit Union ability to organise walk outs would be very useful. The US should also end it's socialistic tendency towards internal protectionsim of markets where it is unable to compete..... basically I would force Free Trade on the US and make it compete for it's dominating position some more.

Actually, if the Democrats really want to take Bush on, it is on those issues where US domestic policy is so horrendously left wing that it ought to begin.

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Beyond Mason-Dixon Line
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quote:

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Originally posted by Phil
. . . If I had any power of influence in the US I would scrap Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for a start. I never thought that the US would have a capitalistic system that effectively rewards business failure. . . .

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Registered: Sep 2003
Location: Knoxville, TN
Posts: 413

bush is not a classical conservative at all as it has been pointed out. in terms of how he has expanded government, increased the power and influence of the executive branch, and how he has managed to usurp many of our civil liberties, hes NOT acting in a manner that is common among classical conservatives. i thnk that his 'compassionate conservativism' consists of exemplifying everything that is said derogatory of liberal economic policy, expansion of government, and proposed economic changes and reforms. yet bush keeps his big links with the corporate sector alive and well.

basically bush exemplifies the worst traits of liberals and conservatives. bush is not doing well, and he can not afford to lose the support of his conservative constituants

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Registered: Jan 2002
Location: UK
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quote:

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Originally posted by J E B Stuart
[color=violet]Phil, what do you think Chapter 11 is?

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Registered: Aug 2000
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I always thought bankruptcy protection should be respoected in cases of excessive personal debt (proper mitigating circumstances reviewed to screen out the dum asses with a taste for Vegas) but the extention of a citizen's protection to a corporate entity is a load most uneccessary.
As are many of the citizen's rights which have been extended to corporate entities.

On another note:
The army is getting sick of Bush too, albiet for different reasons.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showart...=15&ItemID=4225

LOS ANGELES -- George Bush probably owes his presidency to the absentee military voters who nudged his tally in Florida decisively past Al Gore's. But now, with Iraq in chaos and the reasons for going to war there mired in controversy, an increasingly disgruntled military poses perhaps the gravest immediate threat to his political future, just one year before the presidential elections.

From Vietnam veterans to fresh young recruits, from seasoned officers to anxious mothers worried about their sons' safety on the streets of Baghdad and Fallujah, the military community is growing ever more vocal in its opposition to the White House.

"I once believed that I served for a cause: 'To uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States'. Now I no longer believe that," Tim Predmore, a member of the 101st Airborne Division serving near Mosul, wrote in a blistering opinion piece this week for his home newspaper, the Peoria Journal Star in Illinois. "I can no longer justify my service for what I believe to be half-truths and bold lies."

The dissenters - many of whom have risked deep disapproval from the military establishment to voice their opinions - have set up websites with names such as Bring Them Home Now. They have cried foul at administration plans to cut veterans' benefits and scale back combat pay for troops still in Iraq. They were furious at President Bush for reacting to military deaths in Iraq with the phrase "bring 'em on".

And they have given politically embarrassing prominence to such issues as the inefficiency of civilian contractors hired to provide shelter, water and food - many of them contributors to the Bush campaign coffers - and a mystery outbreak of respiratory illnesses that many soldiers, despite official denials, believe is related to the use of depleted uranium munitions.

"It is time to speak out because our troops are still dying and our government is still lying," Candace Robison, a 27-year-old mother of two from Krum, Texas, and a politically active serviceman's wife, told a recent protest outside President Bush's Texas ranch. "Morale is at an all-time low and our heroes feel like they've been forgotten."

How deep the anti-Bush sentiment runs is not yet clear, but there is no doubt about its breadth. Charlie Richardson, co-founder of a group called Military Families Speak Out, said: "Our supporters range from pacifists to people from long military traditions who have supported every war this country has ever fought - until this one.

"Many people supported this war at the beginning because they believed the threat from weapons of mass destruction and accepted the link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qa'ida ... Now they realise their beliefs were built on quicksand. They are very angry with the administration and feel they've been duped."

Most of the disgruntlement expressed in the field has of necessity been anonymous, so Tim Predmore's counterblast in the Peoria Journal Star felt particularly powerful. Having been in the army for five years, he is just finishing his tour of duty in Iraq. He wrote that he now believes the Iraq war was about oil, not freedom, "an act not of justice but of hypocrisy.

"We have all faced death in Iraq without reason or justification," he added. "How many more must die? How many more tears must be shed before Americans awake and demand the return of the men and women whose job it is to protect them rather than their leader's interest?"

Less visible, but no less passionate, has been the ongoing voicing of grievances over the internet. A prominent military affairs specialist, David Hackworth, keeps a website filled with angry reflections on conditions in Iraq for both the military and the local civilian population, and the government that put the troops there. "Imagine this bastard getting away with such crap if we had a draftee army," runs one typically scabrous anti-Bush line from Mr Hackworth.

More considered analysis is also available online, such as this reflection from a 23-year-old serving in the US Air Force, who wonders what the Iraq mess is going to do to the future of the US military: "The powers that be are destroying our military from the inside, especially our Army.

"How many of these people that are 'stranded' (for lack of a better term) in Iraq are going to re-enlist? How many that haven't deployed are going to re-enlist ... how many families are going to be destroyed?" he asked.

One big rallying point for the critics is the Pentagon's budget plan, which proposes cutting $1.8 billion (£1.1bn) from veterans' health benefits and reducing combat pay from the current $225 a month to $150, which is where it stood until the Iraq war began in the spring. The budget will not be finalised until later this month, and the White House - embarrassed by editorials in the Army Times and by news stories in the mainstream press throughout America - says it won't insist on the combat pay cutback.

Another rallying point is the lack of official explanation for more than 100 cases of respiratory illness in the Middle East. According to the Pentagon, 19 soldiers have required mechanical ventilation and two have died. Military personnel believe the use of depleted uranium may have played a part in this mystery illness.

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Registered: Sep 2000
Location: Kansas City
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As much as Zmag would love to believe that the army no longer supports Bush, there's nothing quantitative in that article to support the conclusion it draws. Yeah, there are unhappy soldiers in Iraq. There were plenty the first time, too...and in Vietnam, Korea, Germany and the South Pacific, France, Cuba, Mexico, Georgia...the existence of unhappy enlisted men is not itself evidence of a trend throughout the ranks. War or no, the only Democrat who'll pose a respectable challenge to Bush among military voters is Clark.

Intriguing that Zmag thinks that Bush's vote totals in Florida were "decisively" larger than Gore's, though.

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Upstate NY
Posts: 10121

quote:

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Originally posted by CHiPsJr
Intriguing that Zmag thinks that Bush's vote totals in Florida were "decisively" larger than Gore's, though.

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Registered: Jul 2001
Location: NYC
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Every vote is "decisive."

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Hilbert Space
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The fact that he won Florida was the 'decisive' thing. But I guess that the single vote that pushes you past your opponent is decisive in the normal sense.

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Originally posted by CHiPsJr
Intriguing that Zmag thinks that Bush's vote totals in Florida were "decisively" larger than Gore's, though.
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Yeah well since the Kathy Harris vote purge is common knowledge, as well as one or two other "impediments" along the way, I guess the author felt no need to rehash old issues (Gore as a loser personally and politically) in the face of new ones.
But for a quick 'z' refresher:
http://www.zmag.org/QandA.htm
http://www.zmag.org/Sustainers/cont.../13flanders.htm
http://www.zmag.org/lacksween.htm
http://www.zmag.org/palast.htm

And the pick of the bunch for media, recounts, and such:
http://www.zmag.org/Sustainers/cont...24schechter.cfm

But as for the issue of Bush's legitamacy, there is no such thing as a legitimate bastard and that is my call.

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As much as Zmag would love to believe that the army no longer supports Bush, there's nothing quantitative in that article to support the conclusion it draws.
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http://www.zmag.org/content/showart...=15&ItemID=4226

For the past six months, I have been participating in what I believe to be the great modern lie: Operation Iraqi Freedom. After the horrific events of September 11 2001, and throughout the battle in Afghanistan, the groundwork was being laid for the invasion of Iraq.

"Shock and awe" were the words used to describe the display of power that the world was going to view upon the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. It was to be an up-close, dramatic display of military strength and advanced technology from within the arsenals of the American and British military.

But as a soldier preparing to take part in the invasion of Iraq, the words "shock and awe" rang deep within my psyche. Even as we prepared to depart, it seemed that these two great superpowers were about to break the very rules that they demanded others obey. Without the consent of the United Nations, and ignoring the pleas of their own citizens, the US and Britain invaded Iraq.

"Shock and awe"? Yes, the words correctly described the emotional impact I felt as we embarked on an act not of justice, but of hypocrisy.

From the moment the first shot was fired in this so- called war of liberation and freedom, hypocrisy reigned.

After the broadcasting of recorded images of captured and dead US soldiers on Arab television, American and British leaders vowed revenge while verbally assaulting the networks for displaying such vivid images. Yet within hours of the deaths of Saddam Hussein's sons, the US government released horrific photographs of the two dead brothers for the entire world to view. Again, a "do as we say and not as we do" scenario.

As soldiers serving in Iraq, we have been told that our purpose is to help the people of Iraq by providing them with the necessary assistance militarily, as well as in humanitarian efforts. Then tell me where the humanity is in the recent account in Stars and Stripes (the newspaper of the US military) of two young children brought to a US military camp by their mother in search of medical care.

The two children had, unknowingly, been playing with explosive ordnance they had found, and as a result they were severely burned. The account tells how, after an hour-long wait, they - two children - were denied care by two US military doctors. A soldier described the incident as one of many "atrocities" on the part of the US military he had witnessed.

Thankfully, I have not personally been a witness to atrocities - unless, of course, you consider, as I do, that this war in Iraq is the ultimate atrocity.

So what is our purpose here? Was this invasion because of weapons of mass destruction, as we have so often heard? If so, where are they? Did we invade to dispose of a leader and his regime because they were closely associated with Osama bin Laden? If so, where is the proof?

Or is it that our incursion is about our own economic advantage? Iraq's oil can be refined at the lowest cost of any in the world. This looks like a modern-day crusade not to free an oppressed people or to rid the world of a demonic dictator relentless in his pursuit of conquest and domination, but a crusade to control another nation's natural resource. Oil - at least to me - seems to be the reason for our presence.

There is only one truth, and it is that Americans are dying. There are an estimated 10 to 14 attacks every day on our servicemen and women in Iraq. As the body count continues to grow, it would appear that there is no immediate end in sight.

I once believed that I was serving for a cause - "to uphold and defend the constitution of the United States". Now I no longer believe that; I have lost my conviction, as well as my determination. I can no longer justify my service on the basis of what I believe to be half-truths and bold lies.

With age comes wisdom, and at 36 years old I am no longer so blindly led as to believe without question.

From my arrival last November at Fort Campbell, in Kentucky, talk of deployment was heard, and as that talk turned to actual preparation, my heart sank and my doubts grew. My doubts have never faded; instead, it has been my resolve and my commitment that have.

My time here is almost done, as well as that of many others with whom I have served. We have all faced death in Iraq without reason and without justification. How many more must die? How many more tears must be shed before Americans awake and demand the return of the men and women whose job it is to protect them, rather than their leader's interest?

Tim Predmore is a US soldier on active duty with the 101st Airborne Division, based near Mosul in northern Iraq. A version of this article appeared in the Peoria Journal Star, Illinois

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Registered: Apr 2001
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Thimbles for fucks sake, read something other than zmag everyonce in a while.

__________________

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taste the fucking rainbow

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Registered: Sep 2000
Location: Kansas City
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QUANTITATIVE, Thimbles. IE: no numbers. Plenty of complaints from unhappy soldiers. No statistical information to back up their claim that these complaints constitute a widespread trend in the military.

Give me three days and a press pass, and I'll provide you with ten pieces of scientific testimony that an ice age is imminent, along with five quotes from Bush administration employees that the government is about to declare war on eggplant. That doesn't mean either is indicative of a broader trend.

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Registered: Aug 2001
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You are well aware that it would be pretty much impossible to take a poll like that of US serving military. We are to a large extent at the whim of the media and what they report, apart from those of us who actually get to talk to sizeable numbers of people who have been serving in Iraq (I guess that funkyrooster gets to talk to the most). We have to trust the journalists and their editors, which is unfortunate as they are mostly not trustworthy on issues upon which they have taken an editorial line (bottom of that pile I'd put Murdoch's media empire, but not far below people like the Daily Mirror).

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Registered: Sep 2000
Location: Kansas City
Posts: 7504

quote:

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Originally posted by Smug Git
You are well aware that it would be pretty much impossible to take a poll like that of US serving military. We are to a large extent at the whim of the media and what they report, apart from those of us who actually get to talk to sizeable numbers of people who have been serving in Iraq (I guess that funkyrooster gets to talk to the most). We have to trust the journalists and their editors, which is unfortunate as they are mostly not trustworthy on issues upon which they have taken an editorial line (bottom of that pile I'd put Murdoch's media empire, but not far below people like the Daily Mirror).

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Last edited by CHiPsJr on 09-23-2003 at 04:17 PM

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Registered: Aug 2001
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In the first zmag article, the bit at the end about cutbacks to veteran's benefits is something that I would have thought poses more threat to Bush's popularity with the military than them having to hang around in a hot place getting shot at. As you say, we have no way of judging the extent to which dissatisfaction is an issue in the part of the US military serving in Iraq, and consequently judging the threat that it would pose to Bush's chances of re-election.

As for the second article, it is the opinion of one man serving in the US military, so it doesn't have pretensions to be an actual piece of journalism. I imagine that we all know that you could get any view expressed in that way, as you say.

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