Bush's base ill at ease in dissent

[Terri]

Bush's base ill at ease in dissent

Ralph Z. Hallow
Washington Times

Some conservatives are saying now that President Bush's withdrawal of the Harriet Miers Supreme Court nomination was merely an "apparent" victory for conservative critics and only a temporary reprieve for Mr. Bush, whose political base remains ill at ease over a variety of issues not related to the federal judiciary.

These conservatives say Mr. Bush's action on Miss Miers alone will not be enough to heal serious and long-developing rifts largely hidden from public view until the imbroglio over her high court nomination.

One such rift is between determined Bush loyalists on the right and those interest-group leaders who say the conservative movement is larger than either Mr. Bush or the Republican Party.

More (http://www.washtimes.com/national/20051030-123332-8256r.htm)

This is the best article I've seen on the current fight within the Republican Party.

It covers both sides pretty fairly and recognizes that the split may be a lot more lasting than many expect.

[Old Man]

If the President now nominates a "Judge with a track record" that satisfies Republicans and we win the fight to get them appointed, I will credit it to Miers.

I don't believe this has harmed us as a party as much as it harmed the President. I say that because there was such a uproar, it may have given the Republicans in the Senate a lot to think about in 06 and in getting the nation turned away from socialism.

I doubt, before the Miers appointment, they had any idea of how deep the desire for a change in the direction the Court has been leading, lay in the voters. "Fence sitting" may no longer be an option. I hope it isn't. I also wouldn't be suprised to see the "gang of 14" lose a couple of Republicans if this comes down to a fight over the use of a filibuster.

[boudicca]

More and more people are identifying themselves as Conservatives rather than Republicans because they are so disgruntled with the GOP. With a record of being the biggest spenders since LBJ, enacting massive entitlement commitments, growing even bigger government, implementing a roadmap to socialism, supporting LOST, encouraging illegal immigration, CAFTA and a whole lot more, I believe that the GOP is in deep dodo with its base.

I also believe that the DNC will capitalize on GOP failures to rein in spending and Hillary will no doubt toss GOP fiscal irresponsibility at the top of her platform as she matches the stats of of Clinton era vs. the stats of the Bush era. The GOP will not look good. Hell, Hildabeast only has to go to CATO for her platform, where it has already been written. The national debt just topped 8 trillion dollars.

Although Congress hasn't helped, neither Bush nor the GOP have taken any initiative whatsoever to reduce government spending or the growth of government. He never vetoed one spending bill.

The National Center of Policy Analysis recently put out a study that the average American now pays at least 50% of his earnings in Federal, State, sales, real estate, sin, fuel, telecom taxes etc. Many of these taxes are hidden. As a nation, we need to ask ourselves "If the government is consuming at least 50% of average American workers paycheck, has socialism already arrived?"

Folks have become accustomed to depending on the government for everything these days. Personally, I fail to understand why people in the path of hurricanes refuse to even be responsible enough to stock up on water, canned food, meds etc.

I suppose the only difference between the GOP and the Donkeys is that the former offers a slower form of socialism, disguised as free market capitalism.

Disgust has been rampant for quite some time among conservatives who expected a whole lot more out of the GOP than what they got. Miers just drove them over the edge. Nominating Dingy Harry's pick? Whatever the judicial philosophy of Miers, I doubt that it could have been ascertained and accepted with any degree of comfort. I suspect that what made this nominee so offensive is that Bush fully expected that her Evangelicalism alone would satisfy the conservative base.

Isn't this what used to be called the greater fool theory?

[papajaxxx]

<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr class="standard"><td>Quote </td></tr><tr class="standard"><td class="QUOTE">This is the best article I've seen on the current fight within the Republican Party.
[/QUOTE]

Terri:
I agree, excellent article!

<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr class="standard"><td>Quote </td></tr><tr class="standard"><td class="QUOTE">I suppose the only difference between the GOP and the Donkeys is that the former offers a slower form of socialism, disguised as free market capitalism.
[/QUOTE]

It certainly seems that way sometimes!

<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr class="standard"><td>Quote </td></tr><tr class="standard"><td class="QUOTE">I also wouldn't be suprised to see the &quot;gang of 14&quot; lose a couple of Republicans if this comes down to a fight over the use of a filibuster.[/QUOTE]

OM:
I hope this is true. Right now, the gang of 14 is a &quot;big fly in the oinment&quot;.

[kdranch]

This time in history as was the case in 1942 has made all of us unsure, ill at ease and frightened. That is because all the rules we lived by all the things we took for granted before 9-11 have been altered. It seems we see things moving ahead at breakneck speed but have not had the time to digest it all and we feel uncomfortable with the new changes. New rules, new ways of dealing with a different world, one that scares us all. What I am disappointed in with regard to our administration is not telling the American people what our strategic goals are. Staying the course, not backing down is what we get. What we do not get from them is the strategic vision for the future. All of this background noise coming from the news media and the democrats could have been eliminated had the Bush administration stated clearly each and every week why we cannot isolate ourselves from the rest of the world. We are the world's police force, we got that job in 1989 when the cold war ended. All the wars, famine all the genocide happen in the areas of the world that are disconnected from the global economy, those are also the places most favored by transnational terrorists. We need to connect them setting a course for world peace. This is a new strategy, a real departure from the strategy we have lived with for over 50 years. We of course keep our nuclear hedge or Mutual Assured Destruction, but tell me, if a nuclear bomb from a terrorist goes off in San Franciso tommorrow killing a million folks, who do we bomb? MAD does not work for the problem we face today, thus a new strategy was necessary. Can anyone tell me why this administration cannot explain to the american public this new strategy? It is quite frustrating to watch the Dems say and do such unhelpful things and the republicans stand silently by. What we all should know is that given the dems neglect of our security those 8 years of Clinton even though we were attacked many times how can we allow our country to be given back to them. The military calls the Clinton's answer to attacks...&quot;Clinton's driveby&quot;. The Powell Doctrine is dead...&quot;When the guns stop shooting we are out of there&quot;. If we leave those places, the bin Laden types move in, we cannot allow that to happen again. It will be up to us, we cannot be silent, we must understand and help win the peace this world needs. As for the money, I believe in WWII our debt was high, this is WWIV and it will be higher still but we cannot afford to lose this one. We either pay now or pay a bigger price later.

[boudicca]

You make an excellent point. Nations that are busy making and trading widgets are not warmongers because economic prosperity ceases during war. NO successful or prosperous nation desires war nor do their citizens.

Although we have witnessed economic miracles in many nations (mostly Asian), China, India, Japan, S. Korea, Taiwan etc., I believe that the Bush Administration absolutely wishes the same for the troublesome Middle East and the Islamic world. Today, we have Toyota plants and the plants of many other foreign nations in America while American companies establish plants globally. Where this occurs, poverty is slowly eradicated and prosperity expands.

And it's also true that Hindus, Buddhist, Jews and Christians are reasonably tolerant folks wherever they land. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the Islamic world. Here's the real tragedy: Islamic nations are desperate for foreign investment but why would a GM, Toyota, Microsoft, GE or any big multinational corporation invest in a nation torn by religious hostilities and intolerance. Israel thrives while &quot;Arafatistan&quot; languishes in misery and poverty.

Islamic nations cannot even guarantee the security of foreigners (workers beheaded/murdered in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iraq).

Without security, the rule of law and an abundance of tolerance, these folks will be doomed without the inflow of foreign capital, possibly by their own culture and religion.

I wish we could get the message across. It's time for the Muslim world to start acknowledging the reasons for its failures rather than blaming everyone else (Israel, America etc.)

I would love nothing more than to see them prosper in human liberty. But bringing it about is a very difficult endeavor. Bush can only go so far. Removing a tyrant is only the first step and at that point it's up to them to pick up the banner of freedom and run with it. I'm not convinced that they can.

[kdranch]

boudicca, I do believe they can run with it, they already are. The Iraqi's are connected, millions of satellite dishes dot the landscape of Iraq, millions of cell phone users, double digit newspapers, television stations and radio talk shows all this is going on over there. Course we never hear about it and that is a shame. That is my disappointment in our administration. It took us many years, lots of foreign investment and a civil war before we became a unified country. Heck the women here did not get to vote until this last century. Women did not enter the work force here in a big way until the 1960's. We are the source code for globalization, what we do not have is the force necessary to win the peace. But we have learned alot in Iraq and the Pentagon is changing it's force structure from the big nation war scenero to the force necessary for that messy seam between war and peace. The disappointment I feel about our republican congress and senate is that they do not explain this to us. I believe we would not have any recruitment problems with our military if they knew our grand strategy of bringing peace to the world, they love doing this stuff. We saw a glimpse of this new force in New Orleans, they save people and reconstruct that area into a viable community. We are not about empire as so many think. Empire is about maximin rules, things you must do, we give them minimum rules or things you can't do. Give them security and the privite sector will govern itself and start demanding more from their own elected officials. We all need to spread the word, but mostly we need to hear this from our folks in Washington before the dems hyjack and ruin this new grand strategy.

[boudicca]

I really hope your are right and believe me when I say I want you to be right. *It's always been my position that the key to change in the Islamic world is the empowerment of their women. By liberating Muslim women from vitual enslavement, this may help to break-up the brutal macho-tribalism that so permeates Muslim societies. *

I may not be as optimistic as you because I have extensively studied Islam and Islamic societies since 9/11. *Nevertheless, I have always supporte what Bush is doing in Afghanistan and Iraq because getting the Muslim world to understand and accept the concept human liberty is, well, worth a good old college try. *Even so, there exists so many barriers for successful nationhood, including intolerance, archaic systems of justice, too much mullah power, etc., that it will literally required generations overcome what I call cultural tyranny.

Still, Saddam Hussein, despite his penchant for genocide, ran a fairly secular state where, oddly, women had more rights than in most Muslim nations. *Also, literacy rates were quite high in Iraq. *What we have to realize is that most of the violence going on in Iraq is the work of non-Iraqis - Saudis, Palestinians, Jordanians, Syrians, the Iranians etc. These regimes dread a free and successful Iraq. *Why - because they know that a model Islamic nation that is free and prosperous will be bad news for the dictator/mullah club.

Actually, you can also view the situation as an Islamic civil war. *Are the hardcore Islamists going to win (like they seem to win everywhere) or do the Iraqis have the courage to fight for a civilization that once birthed the cradle of civilization. *

I've always personally wondered just how badly Islam harmed Middle East civilization as a 7th century ideology appears to be stuck in the 7th century during the 21st century.

Time will tell. *I desperately want it to work. *Imagine - being a tourist in Baghdad and not worrying about losing your head.

*<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr class="standard"><td>Quote </td></tr><tr class="standard"><td class="QUOTE">I do believe they can run with it, they already are. *The Iraqi's are connected, millions of satellite dishes dot the landscape of Iraq, millions of cell phone users, double digit newspapers, television stations and radio talk shows all this is going on over there.[/QUOTE]

[Terri]

This is a very important article about domestic poltics.

Let's get back on topic in this thread, please.

We have a myriad of threads on Islam.

Please stay on topic.

[kdranch]

Terri: You cannot leave out international politics from the discussion on domestic politics, they go hand in hand. Billions spent here on the new Homeland Security Dept in error I believe. This war is not about what is wrong with us but what is wrong in the world. Had we not had 9-11 and the anthrax scare which was a loss of 700 billion to the worlds economy we would not have spent additional billions for Homeland Security Dept. All that money added another layer of government just what we need. Agricultural funding here is outrageous, we need to stop that and empower bankrupt nations abroad by buying their commodities instead, this alone will help those bankrupt nations become self sufficient and tie them to the rules that govern functioning nations (WHO &amp; WTO). The future of American investment is not so much here it is out there. GM is going to be selling more cars to China this next year than we ever bought in this country. I was quite disappointed when our side nixed any cuts in the budget. They should hear from us all on that. It seems they have no common sense when it comes to pork projects. The president should have made a couple of bully pulpit speeches regarding this, going directly to the people. Reagan useto do that and despite the media he was quite successful. We should make it clear to our representatives we will not support the out of control spending. I have but so far they seem to be deaf. Any suggestions?

[Terri]

Last request, please address the article that began this thread.

The thread was started for that purpose and I will ask you to return to it, KD.

Let's talk about party politics here. There are plenty of threads for other issues.

[Terri]

From the article:
<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr class="standard"><td>Quote </td></tr><tr class="standard"><td class="QUOTE">Mrs. Schlafly says the movement can heal its internal rift and the rift with the president, provided he makes the right moves, beginning with his next Supreme Court nominee.[/QUOTE]

Now that we know the nominee is a solid conservative judge do you think Schlafly is correct?

Can this nominee heal the rift that erupted over Miers?

[Billary2004]

I will be surprised if the gang of 14 allows Alito an inch to move. I hope I am wrong, but the gang and other moderate Republicans can spin this to show that they are acting in a non partisan way and that Bush is stalling the process by nominating polarizing figures. Honestly, the gang of 14 is in love with power and I don't see them giving away any of that power to OK a deserving nominee.

And I'm not sure who mentioned it, but people may claim they are more conservative, but they aren't. More people are demanding more &quot;free&quot; things. Whether it be mandated health care, child care, tax incentives, increased union pay, etc......And that's why we have a pretty liberal Congress. They reflect the mindset of our society.

[Old Man]

<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr class="standard"><td>Quote </td></tr><tr class="standard"><td class="QUOTE"> More people are demanding more &quot;free&quot; things. Whether it be mandated health care, child care, tax incentives, increased union pay, etc......And that's why we have a pretty liberal Congress. They reflect the mindset of our society. [/QUOTE]

I think many people overlook this fact. I believe the majority think a national healthcare plan would help healthcare costs. But, they don't realize it still get paid for, usually through hidden taxes.