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Repubs Hanging Bush Out to Dry

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Anonymous

Guest
Neoconservatives Say 'Blame Bush,
Not Us' for Iraq Disaster

Middle American News

As Iraq slips into chaos and the U.S. government tries to limit the damage from what appears to be the greatest military blunder in American history, the powerful neoconservative intellectuals and political operatives who pushed for and advocated the Iraq invasion are scrambling to shift the blame for the war's failure to President Bush.

In a series of exclusive interviews to be published in Vanity Fair magazine, neocon advocates of the Iraq war say the Bush administration's incompetence is responsible for a shattered Iraq that could erupt into civil war and spread instability throughout the Middle East.

Richard Perle, former chairman of the president's Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, told David Rose of Vanity Fair back in February of 2003, "Iraq is a very good candidate for democratic reform." That was a month before the invasion. "It won't be Westminster overnight, but the great democracies of the world didn't achieve the full, rich structure of democratic governance overnight. The Iraqis have a decent chance of succeeding," he said.

He has since changed his mind. Now he is shocked at the behavior of the Iraqis.

"The levels of brutality that we've seen are truly horrifying, and I have to say, I underestimated the depravity," he told Rose in an interview to be published next month.

Perle told Rose that the central cause of the unfolding Iraq catastrophe is a dysfunctional White House under President George Bush.

"The decisions did not get made that should have been. They didn't get made in a timely fashion, and the differences were argued out endlessly.... At the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible.... I don't think he realized the extent of the opposition within his own administration, and the disloyalty," said Perle.

He now says invading Iraq maybe wasn't such a good idea, after all.

"Could we have managed that threat [that Saddam Hussein would give terrorists nuclear, chemical or biological weapons] by means other than a direct military intervention? Well, maybe we could have."

Neocon theoretician and Pentagon insider Kenneth Adelman, another staunch advocate of war, also served on the Defense Policy Board. He argued in an article for the Washington Post in February 2002, "I believe demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk."

But now he sings a slightly different tune.

"I just presumed that what I considered to be the most competent national security team since Truman was indeed going to be competent. They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the post-war era..." Adelman told Rose.

Adelman believes invading Iraq was still a good idea, but that Bush's people didn't do a good enough job. "The policy can be absolutely right, and noble, beneficial, but if you can't execute it, it's useless, just useless," he said.

Adelman said Bush and the people who executed the war policy weren't "serious people."

Rose said he spent "the better part of two weeks" in discussions with the neocon war advocates. Rose said "all of them have regrets, not only about what has happened but also, in many cases, about the roles they played."

Frank Gaffney, a founder of the neocon Center for Security Policy and war proponent, says the fault in Iraq lies with President Bush.
Bush "doesn't in fact seem to be a man of principle who's steadfastly pursuing what he thinks is the right course. He talks about it, but the policy doesn't track with the rhetoric, and that's what creates the incoherence that causes us problems around the world and at home," he said.

David Frum, another war advocate and former Bush speech writer and columnist for the neoconservative National Review, said he thinks President Bush just didn't really believe in the ideas behind his policies.

"I always believed as a speech writer taht if you could persuade the president to commit himself to certain words, he would feel himself committed to the ideas that underlay those words. And the big shock to me has been that although the president said the words, he just did not absorb the ideas. And that is the root of, maybe, everything," he said.

Michael Rubin, war advocate and former staffer in the Pentagon Office of Special Plans and Coalition Provisional Authority, blames Bush explicitly for the chaos in Iraq.

"Where I most blame George Bush is that through his rhetoric, people trusted him, people believed him. Reformists came out of the woodwork and exposed themselves," he said. But because Bush failed to match rhetoric with action, Bush failed the reformers, he believes.

Perle says the chaos and catastrophe of Iraq isn't his fault, and shouldn't be blamed on the neoconservatives who advocated the invasion. "Huge mistakes were made, and I want to be very clear on this. They were not made by neoconservatives, who had almost no voice in what happened, and certainly almost no voice in what happened after the downfall of the regime in Baghdad. I'm getting damned tired of being described as an architect of the war. I was in favor of bringing down Saddam. Nobody said, 'Go design the campaign to do that.' I had no responsibility for that," Perle insisted.
 

Steve

Well-known member
Neoconservatives Say 'Blame Bush,

what are Neo Conservatives......?

"Neoconservatism is a political movement, mainly in the United States, which is generally held to have emerged in the 1960s, coalesced in the 1970s,

The prefix neo- refers to two ways in which neoconservatism was new. First, many of the movement's founders, originally liberals, Democrats or from socialist backgrounds, were new to conservatism. Also, neoconservatism was a comparatively recent strain of conservative socio-political thought. It derived from a variety of intellectual roots in the decades following World War II, including literary criticism and the social sciences."

would we expect anything less form liberals?
 

passin thru

Well-known member
damage from what appears to be the greatest military blunder in American history

An assumption (liberal bias) that is just that on their part assumption which puts the whole argument......................meaningless
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Steve said:
Neoconservatives Say 'Blame Bush,

what are Neo Conservatives......?

"Neoconservatism is a political movement, mainly in the United States, which is generally held to have emerged in the 1960s, coalesced in the 1970s,

The prefix neo- refers to two ways in which neoconservatism was new. First, many of the movement's founders, originally liberals, Democrats or from socialist backgrounds, were new to conservatism. Also, neoconservatism was a comparatively recent strain of conservative socio-political thought. It derived from a variety of intellectual roots in the decades following World War II, including literary criticism and the social sciences."

would we expect anything less form liberals?

According to many of the "true conservative" groups including the John Birch Society- most of President Bush's administration are neocon Republicans....Much of his Defense Dept was made up of what are now being called neo-cons...

Heres a list that source watch identifys as neo-con Republicans...Kind of looks like a "whos who" of the current administration..

Neo-conservatives/list also known as Neo-cons

Elliott Abrams (PNAC)
Ken Adelman
Richard Armitage (PNAC)
John David Ashcroft
Fred Barnes
Gary Bauer
William J. Bennett (PNAC)
Jeffrey Bergner (PNAC)
John Bolton (PNAC)
Max Boot
Ellen Bork
Paul Bremer Lewis Paul "Jerry" Bremer III
David Brooks
Shoshana Bryen
Stephen D. Bryen
Zbigniew Brzezinski
Stephen A. Cambone
Eliot A. Cohen
Midge Decter
Paula J. Dobriansky (PNAC)
Thomas Donnelly
John Doolittle
Douglas Jay Feith
David Frum
Francis Fukuyama (PNAC)
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. (PNAC)
Reuel Marc Gerecht (PNAC)
Newt Gingrich
Joshua Goldberg
Owen Harries
Bruce P. Jackson
Michael Johns
Robert Kagan (PNAC)
Zalmay Khalilzad (PNAC)
Jeane Kirkpatrick
Henry Kissinger
Neal Kozodoy
Charles Krauthammer
Irving Kristol
William Kristol (PNAC)
Michael Arthur Ledeen
Jay Lefkowitz
I. Lewis Libby a.k.a. "Scooter"
Michael H. Mobbs
Joshua Muravchik
Rupert Murdoch
Richard J. Neuhaus
Michael Novak
Martin Peretz
Richard N. Perle (PNAC)
Daniel Pipes
Norman Podhoretz
Howard Raines
Peter W. Rodman (PNAC)
Karl Rove
Donald H. Rumsfeld (PNAC)
Richard Mellon Scaife
Gary J. Schmitt
William Schneider, Jr. (PNAC)
Abram N. Shulsky
Robert W. Tucker
Harlan Ullman
Vin Weber (PNAC)
Paul Dundes Wolfowitz (PNAC)
R. James Woolsey, Jr. (PNAC)
David Wurmser
Meyrav Wurmser
Dov Zakheim
Karl Zinsmeister
Robert B. Zoellick
Retrieved from "http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Neo-conservatives/list"
 

Steve

Well-known member
Heres a list that source watch identifys as neo-con Republicans...Kind of looks like a "whos who" of the current administration..

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Neo-conservatives/list

"It was also intended as a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the Bush administration'"

funny how a "source with bias against Bush" is considered reputible?

guess you should always check your sources......

If you're wondering what happened to the "Disinfopedia," our wiki-based "encyclopedia of people, issues and groups shaping the public agenda," it hasn't disappeared. We've just renamed it. It's now called SourceWatch.

Launched in March 2003, the Disinfopedia has grown rapidly to include more than 6,000 articles about PR firms, think tanks, industry-friendly experts and many of the other individuals and institutions that play an important role in shaping public opinion and public policies. We're very happy with the way supporters of our work have stepped forward to contribute information and insights to the project. Along the way, however, we began to hear complaints about the name, which some people felt sounded too "paranoid." Others pointed out that as the Disinfopedia grew, it came to include a range of people and organizations, some of which are indeed guilty of deceptive practices, but not all.

Total Disinformation Awareness

I think that these are legitimate criticisms. I am the person who coined the name "Disinfopedia." It was intended in part as a reference to the Wikipedia, a free, online, wiki-based encyclopedia that runs on the same software. It was also intended as a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the Bush administration's ill-fated Total Information Awareness program. Our original logo for the Disinfopedia, which you can see here, even mimicked the TIA's own logo, with its all-seeing eye. Instead of the words "total information awareness," the logo proclaimed that we were seeking "total disinformation awareness." It seemed at the time like a fun inside joke,
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Oldtimer said:
Steve said:
Neoconservatives Say 'Blame Bush,

what are Neo Conservatives......?

"Neoconservatism is a political movement, mainly in the United States, which is generally held to have emerged in the 1960s, coalesced in the 1970s,

The prefix neo- refers to two ways in which neoconservatism was new. First, many of the movement's founders, originally liberals, Democrats or from socialist backgrounds, were new to conservatism. Also, neoconservatism was a comparatively recent strain of conservative socio-political thought. It derived from a variety of intellectual roots in the decades following World War II, including literary criticism and the social sciences."

would we expect anything less form liberals?

According to many of the "true conservative" groups including the John Birch Society- most of President Bush's administration are neocon Republicans....Much of his Defense Dept was made up of what are now being called neo-cons...

Heres a list that source watch identifys as neo-con Republicans...Kind of looks like a "whos who" of the current administration..

Neo-conservatives/list also known as Neo-cons

Elliott Abrams (PNAC)
Ken Adelman
Richard Armitage (PNAC)
John David Ashcroft
Fred Barnes
Gary Bauer
William J. Bennett (PNAC)
Jeffrey Bergner (PNAC)
John Bolton (PNAC)
Max Boot
Ellen Bork
Paul Bremer Lewis Paul "Jerry" Bremer III
David Brooks
Shoshana Bryen
Stephen D. Bryen
Zbigniew Brzezinski
Stephen A. Cambone
Eliot A. Cohen
Midge Decter
Paula J. Dobriansky (PNAC)
Thomas Donnelly
John Doolittle
Douglas Jay Feith
David Frum
Francis Fukuyama (PNAC)
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. (PNAC)
Reuel Marc Gerecht (PNAC)
Newt Gingrich
Joshua Goldberg
Owen Harries
Bruce P. Jackson
Michael Johns
Robert Kagan (PNAC)
Zalmay Khalilzad (PNAC)
Jeane Kirkpatrick
Henry Kissinger
Neal Kozodoy
Charles Krauthammer
Irving Kristol
William Kristol (PNAC)
Michael Arthur Ledeen
Jay Lefkowitz
I. Lewis Libby a.k.a. "Scooter"
Michael H. Mobbs
Joshua Muravchik
Rupert Murdoch
Richard J. Neuhaus
Michael Novak
Martin Peretz
Richard N. Perle (PNAC)
Daniel Pipes
Norman Podhoretz
Howard Raines
Peter W. Rodman (PNAC)
Karl Rove
Donald H. Rumsfeld (PNAC)
Richard Mellon Scaife
Gary J. Schmitt
William Schneider, Jr. (PNAC)
Abram N. Shulsky
Robert W. Tucker
Harlan Ullman
Vin Weber (PNAC)
Paul Dundes Wolfowitz (PNAC)
R. James Woolsey, Jr. (PNAC)
David Wurmser
Meyrav Wurmser
Dov Zakheim
Karl Zinsmeister
Robert B. Zoellick
Retrieved from "http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Neo-conservatives/list"

Heres what Wikpedia has on (PNAC)-- this has been/and is one of the main groups behind the US taking over Canada and Mexico by the formation of the North American Union....
And Econ Cheney is on this list....
:wink:

The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) is an American political neo-conservative think tank, based in Washington, DC co-founded by William Kristol and Robert Kagan. The group was established in early 1997 as a non-profit organization with the goal of promoting American global leadership. The chairman is William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard and a regular contributor to the Fox News Channel. The Executive Director and chief operating officer has been Gary J. Schmitt. The group is an initiative of the New Citizenship Project, a non-profit 501c3 organization that has been funded by the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation and the Bradley Foundation.[1]

Present and former members include prominent members of the Republican Party and the Bush Administration, including Richard Armitage, William J. Bennett, Jeb Bush, Ellen Bork (the daughter of Robert Bork), Dick Cheney, Zalmay Khalilzad, Federal Grand Jury Indictee Lewis "Scooter'" Libby, Richard Perle, former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz. Many of the organization's ideas, and its members, are associated with the neoconservative movement. PNAC has seven full-time staff members, in addition to its board of directors.

Critics allege the controversial organization proposes military and economic space, cyberspace, and global domination by the United States, so as to establish — or maintain — American dominance in world affairs (Pax Americana). Some have argued the American-led invasion of Iraq in March of 2003 was the first step in furthering these plans.
 

Steve

Well-known member
a non-profit organization with the goal of promoting American global leadership.

and thats' bad?

what is wrong with US being leaders?

Critics allege the controversial organization proposes military and economic space, cyberspace, and global domination by the United States, so as to establish — or maintain — American dominance in world affairs

are they the same critics that support multiculturism? and all that other PC crap?
 

Econ101

Well-known member
Steve said:
a non-profit organization with the goal of promoting American global leadership.

and thats' bad?

what is wrong with US being leaders?

Critics allege the controversial organization proposes military and economic space, cyberspace, and global domination by the United States, so as to establish — or maintain — American dominance in world affairs

are they the same critics that support multiculturism? and all that other PC crap?

They mean U.S. corporations running the world.

Do we have to spell it out fer ya?

I didn't know Bill Kristol was on the list. I kinda respected him.

These guys want to run the world through their alliances with big business. It is plain old fascism.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Econ101 said:
Steve said:
a non-profit organization with the goal of promoting American global leadership.

and thats' bad?

what is wrong with US being leaders?

Critics allege the controversial organization proposes military and economic space, cyberspace, and global domination by the United States, so as to establish — or maintain — American dominance in world affairs

are they the same critics that support multiculturism? and all that other PC crap?

They mean U.S. corporations running the world.

Do we have to spell it out fer ya?

I didn't know Bill Kristol was on the list. I kinda respected him.

These guys want to run the world through their alliances with big business. It is plain old fascism.

Call it what you want- but its definitely tearing the Republican party apart...The old Republicans and true conservatives are not buying into it....
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
reader (the Second) said:
Fascinating, I had read excerpts of the Vanity Fair article. The neo-cons turn on Bush and the right wing turns on the neo-cons. But if we were to go back 4 years, these guys would be heroes to y'all. This is pure revisionism. It was clear from the outset that IF there was not WMD in Iraq, it would be foolish to go in because we weren't going to be able to extract ourselves from a sectarian nightmare -- Geez, that's just what happened. Anyone with knowledge of the Middle East would have known that the sectarian forces there were much stronger and more brutal than in the former Yugoslavia. Tribalism, feudalism, religious schisms, you name it.

I supported the war because I believed the administration had proof of WMD and we know that Saddam supported the Palestinian suicide bombers financially. How long before he aimed WMD at other countries or before somehow they fell into the hands of al-Qaeda? Few would have supported the war if they had known that there was not WMD in the kind of quantity and continual production that it would have been found by now.

Once we were in, the tactics were another sign of an administration that didn't really understand what they were dealing with and listened only to their own advice.

I watched Ollie North on the neo-con Robert Murdocks FOX News TV channel tonite :wink: :lol: -- and this is the first night I saw "doubt" in Ollies face- and he admitted that 4 years ago he never expected us (the US) to be in such a situation and Iraq in such chaos...
 

Steve

Well-known member
The old Republicans and true conservatives are not buying into it....

how is it that when I explain that those republicans that held true to thier conservative values are not just johnie come lately converted liberals, you trot out a few liberal sites and say I'm wrong....yet make a comment that bolsters my point,...when commenting to a liberals post?




Armitage is a "prime example".......he couldn't keep his mouth shut in the lead up to the Iraq war......yet when critics were attacking the Bush Admin on policy and tactics he shut it tighter then a old misors safe door........


He was the cause of the leak......yet held that information until exposed......what was " his agenda"......?
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
The old Republicans and true conservatives are not buying into it....

Steve

how is it that when I explain that those republicans that held true to thier conservative values are not just johnie come lately converted liberals, you trot out a few liberal sites and say I'm wrong....yet make a comment that bolsters my point,...when commenting to a liberals post?


Is Gary Benoit or the John Birch Society a bunch of Commie Liberals too...I suppose The New American is a Liberal Rag under your supposed clear cut conservative- liberal definitions :wink: :lol:

Don't matter to me- but it looks like the Republican Party has scattered to the 4 winds...

----------------------------------

Demopublicans vs. Republicrats
by Gary Benoit
The New American




Despite the notion that an ideological chasm separates the national Republican and Democratic parties, the record shows that there is little difference between the two.
When pundits and politicians give us their expert opinion about the battle between Republicans and Democrats in the November 7 congressional elections, they generally describe the opposing forces as occupying opposite sides of a giant political divide. The Republicans, they say, occupy the conservative high ground — or low ground, depending on the perspective of the commentator — while the Democrats occupy the liberal low ground — or high ground. Of course, since the mainstream media are liberal, the Democrats are usually portrayed as occupying the higher ground.

The Republican Party has been associated with conservatism and the Democratic Party with liberalism since at least the days of FDR. Over the years, the institutional power exercised by these major political titans has ebbed and flowed. During the presidency of Lyndon Johnson, the Democrats controlled not only the White House but both houses of Congress. At other times the government was divided, with neither party controlling all three bodies. But in recent years, the Republicans have controlled all three.

Until now. As we write, about two weeks before the elections, public opinion surveys indicate that the American people have grown increasingly dissatisfied with the Republicans — so much so that the Republicans could lose their majority control of the House and perhaps even the Senate.

The discontent with Republicans has been fueled by the growing unpopularity of the Iraq War and by the association of Republicans with President Bush, whose public approval ratings have been plummeting. The disclosure of Congressman Mark Foley's sexually explicit instant messages to underage male congressional pages has also harmed Republicans' election prospects. All of these factors have combined to create a perfect storm for beleaguered Republicans.

Discontent with the war has become so severe that even some Republican congressmen have tempered their support for President Bush. "GOP's Solidarity on War Is Cracking," proclaimed a Los Angeles Times headline on October 20. The Times article noted that "on the campaign trail, 'stay the course' is a nonstarter, even among Bush's staunchest allies," and that "GOP candidates are breaking with the White House over how long troops should remain in Iraq." Many voters are angry, and their mindset is to vote the bums out of office. "People are not voting for the Democrats on this issue," Pew Research Center director Andy Kohut said. "They're voting against the Republicans."

This issue of The New American will be mailed to subscribers just one week before the elections, so when you read these words you may know if the gathering storm clouds threatening Republicans will sweep enough of them out of office to put Democrats in charge of the House for the first time since the "Republican Revolution" of 1994. The Senate too may fall to the Democrats, though that's less likely. It is the prospect of a new "Democratic Revolution" that has caused pundits and politicians alike to assign great weight to this year's congressional elections. After all, they say, a "Democratic Revolution" would radically alter Congress.

Or would it? Despite the often-repeated notion that a huge ideological chasm separates the Republican and Democratic parties, the record shows that there is little difference in substance between the two. Consequently, there is little reason to expect that a "Democratic Revolution" would lead to a radical ideological shift. This would be true even if a Democrat-controlled Congress were not to operate in a divided government, which obviously it would since George W. Bush would still be president.

The Record in Brief

Even Americans who are not immersed in politics generally understand that conservatism is the philosophy of limited government and low taxes, while liberalism is the philosophy of a larger, more activist government. Bush revisited these contrasting philosophies when he observed at an October 19 campaign stop in Pennsylvania: "Republicans have a clear philosophy: We believe that the people who know best how to spend your money are the people that earn that money, and that is you. The Democrats believe that they can spend your money better than you can." Rhetoric aside, the Republicans have proven themselves to be very capable of spending other people's money, which is not to say they should have spent the money in the first place or that they spent it well.

If the Republican-controlled Congress were truly pursuing a policy of fiscal conservatism, it should have at least slowed down the increase in federal spending compared to the increase in spending during the Clinton era, if not cut spending in the absolute sense. Instead, federal spending has actually increased at a faster rate with George W. Bush in the White House than it did when Bill Clinton was president.

The federal government spent $1.409 trillion in 1993,* the year liberal Democrat Bill Clinton became president. Over the next eight years, federal spending grew at an annualized rate of 3.6 percent, reaching $1.863 trillion in 2001, the year George W. Bush became president. For the fiscal year ending last September 30 (fiscal year 2006), the federal government spent $2.654 trillion, for an annualized growth rate of 7.3 percent with George W. Bush in the White House.

It must be kept in mind, of course, that spending would have increased faster than it actually did during the Clinton years if Clinton could have gotten the Congress to support all of the spending he wanted, such as his "Hillarycare" socialized-medicine proposal. But it must also be kept in mind that George W. Bush has also called for spending increases, and those increases have not been limited to the Iraq War. Moreover, with a Republican president advocating big-government programs in everything but name, many Republican congressmen have supported spending they traditionally would have opposed.

For example, President Bush successfully lobbied congressional Republicans to support a new federal entitlement program providing prescription drug coverage to Medicare recipients. When Congress passed the legislation in November 2003, the program was supposed to cost $400 billion over 10 years, an amount that seemed gargantuan to many Republicans. But with the Bush administration solidly behind it, many of those same Republicans voted for the new entitlement program, believing that the GOP-backed version of the legislation would be better than a Democratic alternative with an even heftier price tag. Now, however, the same program, which has turned out to be more expensive than expected, is projected to cost $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years.

President Bush has also pushed for, and gotten, large spending increases for other non-defense programs. For the Department of Education, for instance, a cabinet-level department that conservatives had once rightly opposed on the grounds that schools should be locally controlled, federal spending more than doubled in five years, rising from $35.7 billion in 2001 to an estimated $84.0 billion in 2006. For international assistance programs — a.k.a. foreign aid, another program conservatives have traditionally opposed — spending climbed from $11.8 billion to an estimated $16.3 billion during the same time period.

It is true that this year's deficit turned out to be much less than the administration originally forecast last February — $248 billion as opposed to a projected $423 billion — and President Bush was quick to tout that progress. In his October 11 speech about the economy and the budget, Bush boasted that "the difference is because we have a growing economy, and the difference is because we've been wise about spending your money."

The fact that a reputedly conservative president can point to a $248 billion shortfall as good news is a powerful indicator of just how out of control U.S. fiscal policy has become.

Dime's Worth of Difference?

Back in 1968, George Wallace ran for president as a third-party candidate claiming there was not a dime's worth of difference between the Republicans and the Democrats. If the difference then amounted to less than a dime, the difference would probably be comparable to a nickel or a penny today, since what differences have existed between the two parties have actually narrowed. Or, if a dime's worth of difference still exists today, it is because in some areas the Democrats have actually displayed more conservatism than the Republicans, turning upside down what has historically been the case since the days of FDR.

Incredible? Not according to this magazine's biannual Conservative Index, which rates every U.S. representative on the identical set of 10 key House votes, and every senator on the identical set of 10 key Senate votes, regardless of party affiliation. Though The New American has never tailored the Conservative Index to make one party look good and the other party look bad, the Republicans as a whole have always scored higher than the Democrats — until now.

In the latest Conservative Index in our October 30 issue, the Democrats in the House came out on top with an average score of 55 percent versus the Republicans' average score of 42 percent. On the other hand, in the Senate the Republicans still maintained the role of the more conservative of the two parties, with an average score of 65 percent versus 38 percent for the Democrats.

If the Conservative Index rated congressmen based on "neo-conservatism" as opposed to traditional conservatism, most Republicans would have earned high scores. Neo-conservatism, the "conservatism" of the Bush administration, is, like liberalism, a philosophy of big government and foreign intervention. But the Conservative Index rates congressmen based on the traditional definition — "adherence to constitutional principles of limited government, fiscal responsibility, national sovereignty, and a traditional foreign policy of avoiding foreign entanglements."
In the post-9/11 world, and with a neo-conservative in the White House, it is the Republicans and not the Democrats who have been more supportive of measures violating basic liberties for the stated purpose of combating terrorism. In the October 30 Conservative Index, for instance, most Republicans supported and most Democrats opposed the Military Commissions Act, which truncates the rights of defendants deemed "unlawful enemy combatants" (see House vote #39 and Senate vote #39 in that index). Also, most Republicans supported and most Democrats opposed the National Security Agency's warrantless electronic surveillance program, which violates the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable searches (see House vote #40).† President Bush lobbied hard for both pieces of legislation. But not all Republicans went along. In fact, the only two congressmen who earned 100 percent in either the House or Senate in the latest index were both Republican: Rep. Ron Paul of Texas and Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina.


Republicans have also been more supportive of the war in Iraq than Democrats, though both parties supported Bush's decision to launch an offensive war against Iraq in the first place. The growing quagmire in Iraq has been blamed on Bush's supposed go-it-alone foreign policy, despite the fact that the stated purpose of our intervention was to disarm Iraq of its reputed weapons of mass destruction pursuant to UN resolutions. The president also plunged the nation into the crucible of war without the constitutionally required declaration of war, and he has kept the troops there long after the alleged WMDs were not found, for the purpose of nation building.

This is the policy of liberalism or neo-conservatism. It is not the policy of traditional conservatism, which includes avoiding foreign quarrels, going to war only when necessary to defend America and her citizens, and even then obtaining a declaration of war from Congress. Though liberal Democrats have now become highly critical of the Iraq War, they do not support a noninterventionist foreign policy any more than the neo-conservatives do. Recall the Vietnam War during the Johnson presidency, and our interventions in the Balkans and Haiti under Bill Clinton.

Though President Bush has been able to persuade most Republicans to support his Iraq policy to date, that support is not as solid as it once was. Indeed, though the president has been very successful in getting Republicans to support his policies in general, he has not been successful in every instance. In December 2005, for example, most Republican representatives voted for immigration reform legislation that lacked the guest-worker/amnesty legislation that Bush and many Democrats strongly advocate. On the other hand, last spring Bush was able to convince enough Republican senators to come on-board to get a guest-worker/amnesty bill through the Senate.

President Bush was also able to twist enough Republican arms to get Congress to pass the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), a NAFTA-type agreement for the United States and Central America that will entangle our country in another regional arrangement as part of a step-by-step process to submerge the United States in a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) modeled after the European Union. Another step in the process is the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) for North America, jointly announced by President Bush and his counterparts from Canada and Mexico at a March 2005 summit in Waco, Texas. The SPP "partnership" is being implemented step by step, without congressional approval, and if allowed to proceed unchecked its implementation will lead to opening our already porous U.S. border that the president gives lip service to securing.

Fortunately, many conservative Republicans have grown increasingly irate with the direction President Bush and the Republican leadership are taking their party. "Conservatives are as angry as I have seen them in my nearly five decades in politics," Richard Viguerie, president of ConservativeHQ.com, wrote in the October Washington Monthly. "I would guess that 40 percent of conservatives are ambivalent about the November election or want the Republicans to lose."

Viguerie explained: "The Big Government Republicans in Washington do not merit the support of conservatives. They have busted the federal budget for generations to come with the prescription-drug benefit and the creation and expansion of other programs.... They have expanded government regulation into every aspect of our lives and refused to deal seriously with mounting domestic problems such as illegal immigration.... And they have sunk us into the very sort of nation-building war that candidate George W. Bush promised to avoid." Viguerie's opinion piece for Washington Monthly was one of seven from "prominent conservatives" who, in the words of that publication, "dare[d] to speak the unspeakable: They hope the Republicans lose in 2006."

Looking for Real Conservatives

The record speaks for itself: neither George W. Bush nor most congressional Republicans are genuinely conservative. But neither are liberal Democrats. Many American voters — both liberal and conservative — want the Republicans who have been in control out of office. But simply replacing neo-conservative Republicans with liberal Democrats will not clean up the mess in Washington since liberal Democrats are part of the problem. Admittedly, many congressional Democrats may now oppose some of Bush's dangerous proposals for amassing presidential power, but how would these same congressmen vote if Hillary Clinton or another like-minded Democrat were to be elected president two years from now?

In the meantime, gridlock in a divided government could impede the accumulation of more power in the executive branch. But how much of that gridlock would be genuine — and how much would be political theater — when both major parties serve the same power elites? As Lou Dobbs explained in his CNN.com commentary posted on October 18: "I don't know about you, but I can't take seriously anyone who takes either the Republican Party or Democratic Party seriously — in part because neither party takes you and me seriously; in part because both are bought and paid for by corporate America and special interests.... Political, business and academic elites are waging an outright war on working men and women and their families, and there is no chance the American middle class will survive this assault if the dominant forces unleashed over the past five years continue unchecked."

Dobbs added that "those elites treasure your silence, as it enables them to claim America's future for their own." But if the problem is bipartisan, who is there to vote for who has a realistic chance of winning, outside of a rare exception such as Ron Paul? The only way to solve that problem is to wake the town and tell the people and get them involved, election year and nonelection year alike. Once the political climate is changed, many Republicans and Democrats will adjust their rhetoric and actions in order to keep themselves electable, and if they don't they will be replaced on election day by other candidates who do offer their fellow citizens a choice and who may or may not be Republicans or Democrats.
 

RoperAB

Well-known member
Im just wondering if the Iraq ciil war is all part of the plan? Example the only way your ever going to have peace over there is when most of them are dead. This way the islamofachist kill themselves and its not American comiteing genocide. If the Neo-Cons planned this out I say its a job well done.
Anyway the war isnt lost yet, but yes Old Timer I have noticed a long time ago the way Ollie North has been disassociating himself from it or at the very least not talking about it.
BTW Econ or anybody else who has doubts about Pearl Harbor you should watch Ollie this Sunday on Fox. War Stories is doing a show on it. I know what he is going to say but it takes a long time to explain why the mind set back then was not to trust the new tech of radar. That and they confused the Japs with their own planes because nobody expected the Japs to dare to do something like what they did.
BTW Econ , depleted uranium is also used in the armor of our troops. It saves more lives than it ever takes.
 

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