Why Conservatives Should Vote for Kerry

From: FranklinJefferson (franklinjefferson_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 10/26/04 

Date: 25 Oct 2004 17:12:56 -0700

A Contrarian View: Why conservatives should not support Bush.

One reason that conservatives have had for supporting the candidacy of
George W. Bush is not that they favor Mr. Bush (many of us have grave
reservations about his policies) but that they worry about a Democrat
victory presaging a sharp turn of the country to the left. But this
is an unfounded fear: it's simply not going to occur. The Reagan
revolution happened, and, regardless of who is elected in November,
it's not about to be undone.
 Actually, a Democrat winning the presidency in November would have
remarkably little effect on policy. Republicans hold both houses of
Congress, and that's not about to change-- in fact, the best estimates
are that the Republican majority in both the house and the senate will
increase. Liberal or not, a Democrat president isn't going to effect
any changes that won't first take a thorough Republican scrubbing.
 There are, in fact, many advantages in having the president and the
Congress elected from opposite parties, and it's argued that America
is strongest when they are. The congress can serve as an effective
anchor on presidential excess, and a skeptical president can cut the
worst of congressional pork-barrel spending. I am not one to argue
that the government shouldn't be trusted... but when one party
controls the government's purse strings, without anybody watching out,
congress always seems to see the public treasury as a great big candy
store. That's when you see pork-barrel spending running out of
control. (It's worth noting that the budget surplus the later part of
the Clinton administration came from a Democrat president held firmly
in check by a Republican congress.)
 But the main reason that conservatives shouldn't support Mr. Bush is
very simple: George W. Bush is not a conservative. When you ignore
his talk, and looking at what he has actually done, you see that over
and over again, George W. Bush has betrayed every ideal that the
conservative movement has.
 The heart and soul of the conservative thinking is fiscal
conservatism: the government should be responsible for how it spends
money. The conservative economic view has always been very simple:
balance the budget, and quit deficit spending. That idea somehow went
out the window when George W. Bush was elected (in fact, suddenly we
are even hearing how deficit spending is somehow good for the nation.)
 What happened to the "lock box," where George Bush said he would put
the budget surplus to save it for social security? The instant he got
elected, he seems to have forgotten his promise.
 The fact is, George W. Bush has run up a record budget deficit-- the
largest deficit in history. And, before you say that terrorism and
the response to the 9/11 atrocity is the source of the unexpected
budget deficit-- look at the data. Only a small portion of the Bush
deficit can be tagged to the 9/11 terrorists. Bragging about
"cutting" taxes while actually increasing government spending at the
same time isn't really a tax cut; it's just increasing the tax next
year. America is about our children, and leaving our children and
grandchildren in debt is not what we mean by "family values."
 The heart of America is our business. Americans aren't afraid to
work... but where are the jobs? A conservative president should be a
pro-business president, but in fact rather than helping business,
American businesses are going out of business; and the ones that are
staying in business are shipping jobs oversees. No matter what Mr.
Bush's advisors may think, ramping up the deficit is not helping the
economy.
Mr. Bush says that education is his priority. This is excellent, but
is the federal government really the right place to reform our
schools? Education needs to be done at the local level-- right at the
level of homes and families-- and not by big-government mandate. The
"no child left behind" laws, stripped of rhetoric, consist of nothing
except new government-mandated standardized tests-- another unfunded
mandate from Washington that our states and cities have to pay for.
Teaching children how to do well on standardized tests-- is what we
want to teach our children? When did conservatism start believing
that the government in Washington is the right place to run our
schools?
 The conservative world view is that the era of Big Government is
over. Ronald Reagan knew that, and for that matter, so did President
George H. W. Bush. But the younger Bush just hasn't gotten the
message.
 Iraq. It goes without saying that America needs to be strong, and
that we should use every means of defending ourselves against those
who detest our freedom and despise our way of life. Destroying the
Taliban, the stronghold of the Al Qaida terrorists, was necessary and
unavoidable; it was required for the defense of America. But invading
Iraq? Long ago, John Quincy Adams wrote, "Wherever the standard of
freedom shall be unfurled, there will [America's] heart, her
benedictions, and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search
of monsters to destroy." It doesn't matter how loathsome a dictator
Saddam Hussein was; America should go to war only with great
reluctance, and as a matter of last resort. America isn't in the
business of nation building. Once, even George W. Bush understood
that. During a debate with then-Vice President Al Gore in 2000, Mr.
Bush said: "I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's
called nation-building . . .. Maybe I'm missing something here. I
mean, we're going to have a kind of nation-building corps from
America? Absolutely not." Apparently to Mr. Bush, it depends on what
the meaning of "absolutely not" is.
 And fear of terrorism is no reason to erode our liberty.
Conservative leader Pat Buchanan said, "It is remarkable how
complacent Americans seem to be, as our freedoms are gradually
restricted, and more and more power and wealth flow to Big Government
to protect us from terrorists." Do we really need the 342-page
Patriot Act, to protect us from terrorism by giving the government
more rights? Has we finally become a place where American citizens
can be picked up and held without lawyer and without charges,
indefinitely? It is worth quoting Benjamin Franklin: "They who would
give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither
liberty or security. " When did we decide that we prefer our security
to our liberty?
 A final reason why conservatives should not support Mr. Bush is that,
quite frankly, he is not merely destroying the credibility of the
Republican party, he is damaging the credibility of conservatives,
period. Is Bush really the person who we want the world to view as
the public image of conservatism? For the last twenty years, Ronald
Reagan has been the image of conservatism in American. Do we want
George W. Bush to be the intellect who will shape conservatism for the
next twenty years? Conservatism can survive a term of Mr. Kerry as
president-- it may even make us stronger and more focussed. But can
conservatism survive another term of Mr. Bush?
 No one will deny that Mr. Kerry is a liberal. But even if he wins
the presidency, he will find a solid Republican Congress, and an
America united. He is no threat to America.
 Bush, a wolf in sheep's clothing, is eroding our economy, our
liberty, and the very standing of our nation in the world. His words
say that he is a conservative. His actions, on the other hand, say
exactly the opposite.

Recommended reading:
Where the Right Went Wrong: How Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan
Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency, by Pat Buchanan

War without end: http://www.theamericancause.org/patthecheney.htm
The Case against Empire:
http://www.theamericancause.org/caseagainst.htm
The war party http://www.theamericancause.org/patthewarpartys.htm

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