the latest American Spectator
Probably the worst of the political magazines of opinion and bloviating, the latest issue of American Spectator nonetheless is of interest due to its collection of articles of Conservatives expressing their angst at the Bush Administration, with the additional extension to the Republican Congress as means to innoculate Bush.
Weird little tidbits. William A Rusher, of Blurry Conservative Think Tank that looks like all the other think tands, tells us that the Republicans should have nominated Ronald Reagan over Richard Nixon in 1968. I smirk at the forgotten political climate of 1968, and the re-entrenching of political realities for the sake of your own personal political aggrandizement. What would you do for a Hubert Humphrey victory — in a year that the Democratic Party imploded — thus further frustrating the Republican Party? As for the Conservative Movement… that would be two straight defeats for your precious candidate. You endure patience after the defeat in 1968 to Humphrey, and maybe you’ll succeed in getting Reagan into the White House… in maybe 1976, or — Horror of Horrors! 1980!!!
What that has to do with Bush is the suggestion that Nixon frustration is the same as Bush frustration. After all, “Nixon’s planned surrender of Vietnam was the policy of the extreme left, which the Democratic Party had defeated at its 1968 Convention.” So says Angero Codevilla. See… right now, by trying to appease the various Iraqi forces — who are, to our horrors, not Jeffersonian Democrats by nature and have a completely different culture than ours — and by succumbing to Realism — Bush is selling out Vietnam all over again!
On the domestic front, Robert Novak groans that Bush has pushed aside the initiative in pushing “tax reform” — the prize jewel of the Conservative Movement which would end the Income Tax, have this magical sales tax… and by the way that would pretty much mean the average American is paying a greater share of the tax burden, but never mind that. The “Tax Reform” Committee which Bush mentioned at the State of the Union speech is, apparently, being dominated by John Breaux, who is the “former Senator from Louisiana who seldom gave the Republicans a vote when it counted.” Damned it. I thought John Breux was the former Corporate Democrat, who skipped out on Barack Obama’s speech to dance with lobbyists at the Democratic Convention, and seldom gave the Democrats a vote when it counted. Oh, and by the way, Bush’s failure with the Social Security Reform Bill was in never having actually passed out a plan, and thus we have “the loss of the opportunity to expand the Republican base through massively increased stock ownership was squandered.” Huh. Was that the purpose of Social Security Privatization? Why didn’t Bush sell it like That?
Stephen Moore bashes the “Eisenhower — Ford — Dole Republicans who resisted tax cuts and worhsipped balanced budgets at all costs”, wanting us to keep on cutting taxes… at the price of balanced budgets, but he never bothers to mention that part of the equation. And everyone wonders why the heck the size of Government has increased.
Just go ahead and elect Hillary Clinton, and whether you like it or not you’ll get everything you want in government. She’s probably “conservative enough”, right? With the advantage of being a Democrat who once had a “Ms.” as a title — so she can be bashed with impunity, unlike Bush.