A Conservative Party No More

Not much posting yesterday, because I'm somewhat sick. Don't read this too closely or you might catch it.

Anyway read an interesting article yesterday entitled "Why Conservatives must not vote for Bush," by Doug Bandow, a self described Reaganite Conservative. In it, he acknowledges the pretty self evident truth that a vote for President Bush is, in many cases, more important as a vote against Senator Kerry. But he says that this attitude might not be entirely justified, particularly in the area of fiscal policy.

Moreover, whatever the personal preferences of a President Kerry, he could spend only whatever legislators allowed, so assuming that the GOP maintains its control over Congress, outlays almost certainly would rise less than if Bush won reelection. History convincingly demonstrates that divided government delivers less spending than unitary control. Give either party complete control of government and the treasury vaults quickly empty. Share power between the parties and, out of principle or malice, they check each other. The American Conservative Union's Don Devine says bluntly: "A rational conservative would calculate a vote for Kerry as likely to do less damage" fiscally.

Maybe so, respond some conservatives, but how about the Bush tax cuts? The president tells campaign audiences: "They're going to raise your taxes; we're not." But even here the Bush record is not secure. Bruce Bartlett of the National Center for Policy Analysis points to the flood of red ink unleashed by the administration and predicts that tax hikes are inevitable irrespective of who is elected in November. That is, Bush's fiscal irresponsibility could cancel out his most important economic success for the GOP.

The article is well worth reading, and strikes me as pretty balanced. He does point out areas where an old-school conservative will see better results with a second term for President Bush.

Round The Horn Part -3.5 A Trip to Deadwood

Howdy Partners, as promised today we have our special cowboy edition of Round the Horn, so settle in and well see what the open range offers up.

Why coming 'cross the plains is Gamer's Nook with a story about flesh-eating robots. T'aint political but shore is interesting.

Happy Furry Puppy Story Time is riding round the bend with a stagecoach full of potential slogans for President Bush's campaign; if you get there soon you can vote for the one you like the best.

The Yellow Doggeral Democrat looks ready to draw his irons and gun down a statement made by a certain polecat earlier this week.

And looky here, there's Rooks Rant with a tall glass of Saspirilla and some tough questions for the President Bush hombre.

Let's just step in this watering hole, Ricks Cafe Americain, for a glass of moonshine and a troubling redaction by our Justice Department.

archy is riding in on a silver mustang, hops down and delivers an interesting critique by a Republican of the Republican Party, and with a hearty hi-ho spaghettio he's off.

Heading by the old Telegraph office, we get a message from Echidne of the Snakes on framing and how it is used to craft political discourse.

bloggg comes out of the bank, with both six shooters blasting away and has some a curious e-mail she received on a day in the life of Joe Republican.

Finally as we leave the dusty little town of Deadwood we pass by Boot Hill, where, in the last rays of the afternoon, we see a short but moving tribute to intellectual snobbery, carved by The Invisible Library.

And that's it for cowboy week here at Make me a Commentator; tune in next week, when will present the list in some other interesting and amusing way. Possibly as a space show.

Another Take

The New York Times editorial page has some further commentary on the Vice President's comments yesterday.

At the very best, Mr. Cheney was speaking loosely and carelessly about the area in this campaign that deserves the most careful and serious discussion. It sounds to us more likely that he stepped across a line that the Bush campaign team had flirted with throughout its convention, telling his audience that re-electing the president would be the only way to stay safe from another attack.

There is a danger that we'll be hit again no matter who is elected president this November, as President Bush himself has said on many occasions. The danger might be a bit less if the current administration had chosen to spend less on tax cuts for the wealthy and more on protecting our ports, securing nuclear materials in Russia and establishing an enforceable immigration policy that would keep better track of people who enter the country from abroad.

Good questions.

The War on Islam

Cal Thomas, like many liberals, has issues with the terminology of the War on Terror. Many liberals criticize that terminology as extremely vague; placing us in a state of war for the rest of our lives. Will we ever really eliminate all the world's terrorists? Parenthetically, you might spare us the tired rejoinder "So you are saying we should do nothing." There's a lot of room between doing nothing and declaring an impossible and infinite war.

Cal Thomas also feels that the War on Terror is too vague a term. "It's long past time to ditch political correctness and identify the enemy, which is not disembodied "terrorism" but radical Islamists who commit terror in the perverted name of their god."

He does remind us all that John Kerry may well get the Muslim vote so I guess that's something we should all be concerned about, and he closes his article suggesting that there is no evidence of moderate or peaceful Muslims.

What's nice about Mr. Thomas is that he doesn't proscribe any action to correct this problem. He just let's you know that Muslims are evil, they are voting for Kerry, and we should declare war on them. But he leaves it up to the individual to decide how to interpret that. There's no danger in that vagueness, because I'm sure all of Mr. Thomas's readers will know exactly what he means when he says declare war on (radical) Islam.

At least I hope they will.

A Quote from the Republican Vice Presidential Nominee

It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States.

If only those awful Democrats would quit politicizing the War on Terror. Then Zell Miller would have stayed in the Democratic Party. If we Democrats really loved our country, the way Dick Cheney loves his country, we would either disband, or work out a system where President Bush could be the presidential candidate from both parties. Liberalism has no place in a post 9/11 world; there is no such thing as honest disagreement in a post 9/11 world. In a post 9/11 world you either support President Bush and the Republican Party or you support the Terrorists.

Kind of makes you feel guilty even looking at my weblog, doesn't it? But take a moment and consider that this is America. America is a Democracy (I know it's not a pure democracy, but it was founded on Democratic policies and that's what I mean), and if we are to fight terrorism, to fight any war we need to do it as a Democracy. Which means that disagreeing with President Bush is what those who disagree with him are supposed to do.

Another consideration. If Vice President Cheney really feels this strongly about the issue, would it really be responsible, from their point of view, for President Bush and he to actually allow President Kerry to take office if he wins the election?

Got this from Echidne of the Snakes who got it from Atrios who got it from ABC News.

Convention Blues

Sydney H. Schanberg writes an excellent article for the Village Voice on the tone of the Republican Convention. He makes one particularly good point about the $87 Billion that I've thought but haven't expressed very well.

Senator Miller, a conservative Democrat from Georgia who recently threw his support to President George Bush, again and again smeared Democratic candidate John Kerry and his party's leadership as unpatriotic and therefore unfit?all the while insisting that he wasn't questioning anyone's patriotism, just "their judgment." His tone was brutal and sneering.

"For more than 20 years, on every one of the great issues of freedom and security, John Kerry has been more wrong, more weak, and more wobbly than any other national figure. . . . As a senator, he voted to weaken our military. And nothing shows that more sadly and more clearly than his vote this year to deny protective armor for our troops in harm's way, far away."

I realize politicians of all parties twist history every which way to their benefit, but wasn't it the Bush administration that sent the troops into Iraq without enough body armor or armor for the sides of their battle vehicles? Casualties rose as a result. Soldiers' parents went on the open market back home to buy state-of-the-art body vests with ceramic-plate reinforcement, and then shipped them to their sons and daughters in Iraq. Not until early this year did the Pentagon begin to fill the gap. No part of this failure had anything to do with a vote by Senator Kerry.

This is a question that isn't asked very often and certainly isn't answered. Why did our troops go to Iraq without protective armor in the first place?

Of course, we know the answer; the Bush administration appears to have believed the cakewalk scenario where our soldiers wouldn't face too much danger. And they wanted to minimize the cost of the war for various reasons. So they did it on the cheap, and our soldiers and our soldiers families have paid the price.

For all of this, the article isn't manifestly critical of the President; indeed, it's a call for the President to reject the ideological blinders and negative campaign and reread and absorb the speeches of Franklin D. Roosevelt that he claims to admire.

In that spirit here is a selection from a speech President Roosevelt made on February 23, 1942, in remembrance of Washington's Birthday.

Here are three high purposes for every American:

First. We shall not stop work for a single day. If any dispute arises we shall keep on working while the dispute is solved by mediation, conciliation or arbitration-until the war is won.

Second. We shall not demand special gains or special privileges or advantages for any one group or occupation.

Third. We shall give up conveniences and modify the routine of our lives if our country asks us to do so. We will do it cheerfully, remembering that the common enemy seeks to destroy every home and every freedom in every part of our land.

This generation of Americans has come to realize, with a present and personal realization, that there is something larger and more important than the life of any individual or of any individual group-something for which a man will sacrifice, and gladly sacrifice, not only his pleasures, not only his goods, not only his associations with those he loves, but his life itself. In time of crisis when the future is in the balance, we come to understand, with full recognition and devotion, what this Nation is, and what we owe to it.

Voting! It's what's for dinner!

Jonah Goldberg, in his column today, takes on a spate of recent books about voting patterns.

The big book is, of course, "What's the Matter with Kansas" in which Thomas Frank criticizes the people of Kansas's choice to vote against what he considers their economic interest. For a good and somewhat critical review of the book, check out this article at Salon. He also takes on an article by Mr. Larry Bartels that suggests that many Americans are like Homer Simpson, voting for a big tax cut for Mr. Burns because taxes are too high, even though Simpson himself won't ever get a tax cut.

Both these arguments, as Mr. Goldberg points out, assumes that cultural issues are unimportant compared to economic issues. "People vote - or at least should vote - based upon the kind of country they want their kids to live in. And that means they vote on more issues than narrow economic interest, however defined."

Well and good, and I happen to think that a consideration of social issues has it's place in deciding who to vote for. What Mr. Goldberg won't touch, however, is the relative importance the Bush Presidency places on those issues. After four years of the Bush Presidency, the wealthy who supported him have had their economic needs met and then some. They've received massive tax cuts (and the promise of future tax cuts), weakened Government regulatory power, an impotent Environmental Protection Agency, no crackdown on offshore banking, and so on and so forth. The only major economic goal President Bush hasn't delivered good progress on is drilling in ANWR.

Meanwhile on the social side of the net, President Bush has managed to get some extremist judges put on the bench (although it should be noted that such judges are as determined to protect big business as they are to end abortion). And he has done some faith based initiatives. And he's talked about supporting an marriage protection act. Oh and the stem cells; he's conflicted about them.

So personally I have to wonder if the people of Kansas who are voting on these big social issues are getting a lot of bang for their buck? As compared to, say, the wealthy and the corporations who support President Bush. A more cynical man than myself might make reference, once again, to the old bait and switch.

Jonah Goldberg also seems a bit conflicted on whether people should vote or not. Early in his article he makes the statement, ". . . I'm the sort of curmudgeon who thinks voting should be more difficult and there should be less of it." That statement puts Mr. Goldberg in an interesting quandary; he is chiding the Democrats for not trusting the people to vote their interests while admitting that he doesn't entirely trust the people to vote for their interests.

The Power of Mythology

Continuing from Paul Krugman's great article, let's look at another aspect of Republican Mythology. The myth of the "liberal media."

I hear some of you saying already, "Wait a minute, are you saying that there is no liberal bias at all?" Oh, there probably is a little. My old theory was that the media skewed a little left on social issues and a little right on economic issues, and I think that still might hold. But the mythology of the "liberal media" has nothing to do with that.

I've praised the Daily Howler enough that you should all know what I think of it. Well, on Friday, they outdid themselves with a few succinct paragraphs that analyze this problem and give, what seems to me, a very workable solution.

Forty years ago, the GOP did something quite smart; it began to develop a meta-narrative to explain its place in the world. That meta-narrative is Liberal bias, a pleasing tale the GOP recites to explain all unpleasant events. (You saw Bush do it last night.) Voters have heard about "liberal bias" for decades. Any time an event occurs which puts the GOP on the defensive, hacks haul out this pleasing excuse. And they've learned to use this old script quite well.

The time has come when our uncaring Democrats have to start telling the truth to the people. But what meta-narrative should the Dems tell? They need to tell an accurate narrative: Every four years, Republican hacks make a joke of our lives, inventing strange stories about the Dem candidate. They distract; they deceive; they direct us to trivia; they make a joke of our public discussion. It's perfectly clear that our Big Major Dems don't really care if this costs them elections. But will these lazy, feckless pols ever defend the rights of the public? Will they ever show that they actually care when a joke is made of our White House elections? On Wednesday night, the Bush camp was lying in voters' faces in those speeches by Miller and Cheney. And the DNC plainly doesn't care - doesn't bother debunking the charges, doesn't bother explaining the process. As long as they get to sell us their cook books, the whole thing is just fine by them.

The DNC needs a meta-story - the Republicans keep making a joke of your discourse. But to tell a story, again and again, DNC honchos have to believe it - and care. We see no sign that they really do care, and that explains our quadrennial clowning. Clearly, the Washington press doesn't care. Does the DNC care? Let them prove it.

I couldn't agree more. One of the more frustrating things about this campaign is watching republicans tell the same discredited stories over and over again. Senator Kerry's $87 Billion for example. Or Kerry being the most liberal senator in the Senate. Or Senator Kerry's voting against weapon systems (parrotted by Zell Miller at the RNC). How many different ways are there to explain the deceit? And why aren't the people who tell such transparent falsehoods embarrassed or ashamed? Where are our people to hit back. Why doesn't the "liberal" media discourage such blantant disregard for the truth?

I don't know, I guess there aren't any answers to those kinds of questions.

Mythology

Why is mythology so important? Because even the most ardent atheist wants to find some meaning in reality. We all want the comfort of knowing that our lives matter. And so all of us, to a certain extent, create comforting fictions to protect ourselves from the harsh realities of life. This isn't 100% a negative thing. If a person believes themselves to be a kind person they will sometimes then work to actually become a kind person.

How does this play back into Presidential politics? Well Paul Krugman writes another great article at the New York Times today about the mythology of President Bush's war.

What is clear is that whenever political debate turns to Mr. Bush's actual record in office, his popularity sinks. Only by doing whatever it takes to change the subject to the war on terror - not to what he's actually doing about terrorist threats, but to his "leadership," whatever that means - can he get a bump in the polls.

One thing I've noted is that when you talk to the actual substance of that "leadership," President Bush often comes up short. He's gotten tough with the terrorists? He supports the military? He upholds American honor? He has a firm resolve?

He's gotten tough with the terrorists saying that he doesn't really care if we capture Bin Ladin or not and admitting that the War on Terror may not be winnable. And of course his surrogates often remind us that we will be hit again (which, to be fair, is perfectly accurate).

Well, he supports the military by favoring a lot of cuts in military benefits and veterans benefits. He castigates Senator Kerry for voting against weapon systems that his Vice President also voted against.

Upholding American honor means, in this case, ignoring the objects of much of the rest of the world and invading Iraq anyway. An invasion that, to put it kindly, probably hasn't gone the way President Bush would have liked.

His firm resolve is, frankly, looking more and more like simple stubbornness and unwillingness to change. I remember how he answered the question of whether he had made any mistakes.

I hope I -- I don't want to sound like I've made no mistakes. I'm confident I have. I just haven't -- you just put me under the spot here, and maybe I'm not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one.

At any rate, the rest of Krugman's article is thought provoking, and well worth checking out.

The Old Bait and Switch

The prevalence of President Bush's negative and attack based campaigning is a truism, despite some people, like David Limbaugh's, attempts to deny it. In his latest article, Mr. Limbaugh attempts to deny the self evident fact that the President and (particularly) the Vice President are running a very negative campaign by suggesting that Kerry was negative first and more viciously.

This issue matters, because the media are using the lie that Bush started the attacks as a foundation for Kerry to go nuclear against President Bush with impunity -- certainly with their full blessing. But Democrats have been personally attacking the president for four years.

You see the switch? He didn't use the phrase Senator Kerry has been attacking the President personally for years/ Nope, it was Democrats that have been attacking the President personally for years.

Limbaugh then dissects Senator Kerry's response to the Republican National Convention. Kerry finally responded to the personal attacks by President Bush and Vice President Cheney and their surrogates by tackling the Vietnam issue head on. In a scathing statement, Kerry said the following.

For the past week, they attacked my patriotism and my fitness to serve as Commander-in-chief. Well, here's my answer. I will not have my commitment to defend this country questioned by those who refused to serve when they could have and by those who have misled the nation into Iraq.

The Vice President called me unfit for office last night. Well, I'll leave it up to the voters to decide whether five deferments makes someone more qualified to defend this nation than two tours of duty.

Strangely enough this isn't the part of Senator Kerry's speech that David Limbaugh chooses to dwell on. I guess he realizes that focusing on this issue won't make his guy look very good. So instead he talks about Iraq and pretends that this is the big counter punch.

Senator Kerry, throughout his campaign, has been critical of the President's decision to lead us into war in Iraq. So this let's Limbaugh make fun of the media for pretending that Senator Kerry's criticisms of the Bush Iraq policy are something new. Kind of cheap, but better than admitting what Kerry's counter-punch was really all about.

And, it goes without saying, that claiming your opponent has engaged in a reckless foreign policy initiative by deceiving the American people about the costs and the rationale is not a personal attack. I suppose I wouldn't blame President Bush for taking it personally, but it's not. It's an attack on President Bush's policy decisions. That is a long way from suggesting that Senator Kerry is a coward and a braggadocio, casting aspersions on the service he gave to his country.

New Format

Here is the new Format, for a little while anyway. For those who want to read articles from last week I suggest following this link to get the old format.

New Quote

And, as always, a new Quotes Page.