Three Bush decisions, all contradicting long-standing Bush positions, dismayed conservatives who care deeply about free speech (he signed campaign finance reform legislation), free trade (he imposed steel tariffs that will be ineffectual without being innocuous) and Israel's freedom (he began speaking the way the State Department
thinks).
You can count me as one of Bush's critis in these areas.
At a Democratic confabulation in Florida, Gore
Gore and those like him are why I don't just say "the hell with it a pox on all of their houses". Also I do like some of what Bush has done, I just don't like the direction he has been going in. If he continues in that direction any vote for him in the future would not be a sign of support as much as it would be voting for the lesser of two evils. I am however not yet ready to call him the lesser of two evils.
The conservatism that defined itself in reaction against the New Deal - minimal government
conservatism - is dead.
Unfortunatly I think this is close to being true. Oh its an exageration, many conservatives do actually want smaller government, but few would want it to be as small as it was before the New Deal, and those that do want it to merely be smaller then it is now don't have the power to impliment that idea.
Of the three Bush decisions that conservatives rightly abhorred, two - imposing tariffs and refusing to veto the campaign finance legislation (he has vetoed nothing in 15 months) - are not likely to establish patterns.
Campaign finance reform is finished for now, and Bush cannot have enjoyed the reaction, here or abroad, to his protectionism.
The most important of his three mistakes - his "evenhandedness" regarding Israel and the terrorist Yasser Arafat - probably is self-correcting:
He knows which delusional advisers mistakenly assured him that if he issued commands to all parties in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he would be obeyed.
Hopefully this is all true. Also I like the fact that he pushed so hard to cut taxes (but its unfortunate that he did not also make them simpler).
His education bill deeply disappointed only those conservatives who mistakenly want education reform driven by Washington.
It didn't deeply disapoint me, but it did disapoint me. It seems more of the old idea of throwing federal money at a problem. Perhaps the money is spent in ways that are slightly more conservative then how Gore would have had them spent but expand the federal government role in education and doing so without supporting school choice (which would at least let some market forces effect education, and which would be more in line with conservative thought then any of his other reforms) does disapoint me.
Tim
Tim |
