Re: Why Conservatives Should Vote for Kerry

From: Steven P. McNicoll (roncachamp_at_earthlink.net)
Date: 10/26/04 

Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2004 00:23:52 GMT

"FranklinJefferson" <franklinjefferson@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:735b8de2.0410251612.72a9776c@posting.google.com...
>
> 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
>

The subject is "Why Conservatives Should Vote for Kerry". You offered no
reason for a conservative to vote for Kerry.

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