Mod's you might as well mark this one flamebait cause it is going to get hot.
As the provocative title suggests, Conservatives should vote for John Kerry.
Now before you flame me or roll your eyes hear me out. My radical thesis is derived from a few key facts concerning both Bush and Kerry. First and foremost,
Bush is not a Conservative. I'll start by defining Conservativism.
Traditional Conservatism, at least in the U.S., can be defined as consisting of 3 principles.
1. Small, non-intrusive Government.
2. Fiscal Responsibility. Government should live with-in it's means.
3. Caution. An Avoidance of massive change.
Bush holds none of these positions. In fact, he holds just the opposite.
I'll start with small, non-intrusive government.
Since Bush came into office he has consistently favored big government solutions and has yet to veto any bill that has passed his desk. Consider the following facts:
1.Even though we now have GOP control of the White House, the Senate and the House, the bloated $2.25 trillion federal government has grown more rapidly on President Bush's watch than it did under Clinton.
2.Social welfare programs under George W. Bush have grown by $96 billion in just two years, versus $51 billion under six years of Clinton, according to economist Stephen Moore of the Club for Growth.
3.Pork-barrel spending rose by 21.6% from 2001 to 2003 according to CAGW President Tom Schatz.
4.Aided by a Republican-controlled Congress, President Bush is on track to become the first chief executive since John Quincy Adams in the 1820s to complete a full term without vetoing one bill.
(For the above 4 items and more:
http://www.alanchapman.org/libertyvault/gwb.html)
5.Has increased welfare substantially in what is probably historically the greatest expansion of Medicare
ever.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/12/08/national1142EST0534.DTL
6.Huge education spending bill (i.e. Federal Local School Board Bribery Act) which liberal Democrats love that doesn't mention a word about choice or local control.
7.Food stamps for immigrants.
8.Largest spending bill in American History. The first to exceed 2 trillion dollars.
9.The Airport Security Bill that completely takes control of over 28,000 screening jobs. Now it seems that they don't even have to be high school graduates either. The big difference, they can't be fired.
10. 100 million for welfare moms.
11.Hugely Expanding Clinton's Amercorps boondoggle that all conservatives railed against.
12.Kowtowing to law breaking illegal immigrants by proposing amnesty. Speaking of illegal immigrants who sneak across the border; "And we've got to respect that, seems like to me, and treat those people with respect," he added. "I remind people all across our country: Family values do not stop at the border."
13.38 Billion for a new Homeland Security bureaucracy that allots a 20% increase for border control. Guess what. It goes to our problematic Canadian border, with not a dollar spent on the Mexican border. Read it for yourself.
14.The Orwellian "Patriot Act" that gives Federal authorities carte blanche to rifle through all of your digital communications and essentially, rob your house without notice.
15.71.5 billion over 10 years for government health care.
16.Not releasing appropriate documents on Clinton and FBI corruption.
(Source for the above 11 quotes:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/618938/posts)
If the above doesn't convince you that Bush is in favor Big Government I don't know what will. Oh wait, here is something that will scare Small Government conservatives sh#tless(and me too!). You can't possibly call G.W. Bush a small government conservative after reading the following.
Quote: "President Bush’s little-publicized New Freedom Commission on Mental Health has proposed comprehensive mental-illness screening for all Americans. If this proposal is carried out, which is Bush’s intention, no adult or child will be safe from intrusive probing by “experts,” backed by drug companies, who believe that mental illness is woefully underdiagnosed and therefore that many millions of people ought to be taking powerful and expensive psychiatric drugs. Schools and doctors’ offices will become quasi-psychiatric monitoring stations."
Quote: "Rep. Ron Paul of Texas tried to forbid the federal government from funding mental-health screening, but the House turned down his amendment to the appropriations bill for the Department of Health and Human Services. Paul, a physician, said the program was a usurpation of parental rights, pointing out that parents can already be charged with child abuse for refusing to give their children Ritalin for alleged attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. He said, “Psychotropic drugs are increasingly prescribed for children who show nothing more than children’s typical rambunctious behavior.Many children have suffered harmful effects from these drugs.”"
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0410b.asp
http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20041016-115126-9840r.htm
As for Fiscal Responisbility, the general consensus amoung economists are that Bush's economic policies are deeply flawed and contributing to the lack-luster recovery.
From the Economist(hardly a left-wing newspaper):
Quote: "In an informal poll of 100 academics, conducted by The Economist, Mr Bush's policies win low marks. More than 70% of the 56 professors who responded to our survey rate Mr Bush's first-term economic policies as bad or very bad. Fewer than 20% give positive marks to Mr Bush's second-term economic agenda, and almost six out of ten disapproved. Mr Kerry hardly got rave reviews either, but his economic plan still fared better than the president's did. In all, four out of ten professors rated Mr Kerry's economic plan as good or very good, but 27% gave it negative scores. "
Quote: "Despite their diverse assessments of today's economy, the professors are overwhelmingly critical of the central plank of Mr Bush's economic policy—tax cuts. More than seven out of ten respondents say the Bush administration's tax cuts were either a bad or a very bad idea, and a similar proportion disapproves of Mr Bush's plans to make his tax cuts permanent. By contrast, Mr Kerry's plan to roll back the tax cuts for people with incomes over $200,000 wins the support of seven in ten of them."
http://www.economist.com/world/na/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3262965
A letter to the president from about 200+ leading economists, including over 50 from Havard Business School, Bush's alma mater, have denounced his policies as dangerous.
Quote: "As professors of economics and business, we are concerned that U.S. economic policy has taken a dangerous turn under your stewardship. Nearly every major economic indicator has deteriorated since you took office in January 2001. Real GDP growth during your term is the lowest of any presidential term in recent memory. Total non-farm employment has contracted and the unemployment rate has increased. Bankruptcies are up sharply, as is our dependence on foreign capital to finance an exploding current account deficit. All three major stock indexes are lower now than at the time of your inauguration. The percentage of Americans in poverty has increased, real median income has declined, and income inequality has grown.
The data make clear that your policy of slashing taxes – primarily for those at the upper reaches of the income distribution – has not worked. The fiscal reversal that has taken place under your leadership is so extreme that it would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. The federal budget surplus of over $200 billion that we enjoyed in the year 2000 has disappeared, and we are now facing a massive annual deficit of over $400 billion. In fact, if transfers from the Social Security trust fund are excluded, the federal deficit is even worse – well in excess of a half a trillion dollars this year alone. Although some members of your administration have suggested that the mountain of new debt accumulated on your watch is mainly the consequence of 9-11 and the war on terror, budget experts know that this is simply false. Your economic policies have played a significant role in driving this fiscal collapse. And the economic proposals you have suggested for a potential second term – from diverting Social Security contributions into private accounts to making the recent tax cuts permanent – only promise to exacerbate the crisis by further narrowing the federal revenue base."
http://www.openlettertothepresident.org/
There are quite a few nobel prize winner's in that list as well, notably William F. Sharpe and Joseph E. Stiglitz.
I would suggest giving it a good read and think twice about whether you can call a president who spends like it is going out of style a fiscal conservative. Conservative's should exercise restrain and show caution when they spend. This man has yet to veto a single spending bill that has passed his desk. Our government is not living with-in it's means and is putting our future as well as the future of our children on charge card.
And to all of those out there that don't think that deficits matter I give you this:
Quote: " A significant contributor to the deficits in both years is the interest the government pays on this debt: approximately $318 billion in FY '03, and likely more than $360 billion in FY '04. The entire FY '04 budgets for NASA and the Departments of Interior, Energy, Justice, Homeland Security, Housing & Urban Affairs, Transportation, Labor, Education, and Agriculture together total $378 billion, about the same as the interest payment on the national debt."
http://people.howstuffworks.com/election-issue4.htm
Our payment on debts is seriously crippling our ability to fund our government. We spend insane amounts of money on our interest from our debt and ignoring the deficit we have will only make this worse. If we pay down the debt we will have more money to spend on goverment programs like Homeland Security to defend us from terrorists, or to make tax cuts and give money back to the middle-class.
The final segment of Conservativism is caution, and an avoidance of massive change.
Boy, oh boy, does Bush not fit this one. I could mention the massive Medicare reform or his insane Tax-cuts-are-the-solution-to-everything approach to the economy, but since I've already dealt with those I'll probably move on to his single most daring move, the Iraq War. I'm not going to argue that we shouldn't have gone into Iraq(yet), but I will point out the complete lack of caution and disregard for the warnings issued during the build-up to war.
A lot of Republicans, including John McCain, have criticised the administration's handling of the war citing looting and lack of police operations have lead to an increase in lawlessness that has allowed the terrorists to breed.
What most people don't know is that plans to account for these contingencies were drawn up in 1999. They sat unused and the man who drew them up is more than a little pissed:
Quote: "So early in 1999 he ordered that plans be devised for the possibility of the U.S. military having to occupy Iraq. Under the code name "Desert Crossing," the resulting document called for a nationwide civilian occupation authority, with offices in each of Iraq's 18 provinces. That plan contrasts sharply, he notes, with the reality of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S. occupation power, which for months this year had almost no presence outside Baghdad -- an absence that some Army generals say has increased their burden in Iraq.
Listening to the administration officials testify that day, Zinni began to suspect that his careful plans had been disregarded. Concerned, he later called a general at Central Command's headquarters in Tampa and asked, "Are you guys looking at Desert Crossing?" The answer, he recalls, was, "What's that?"
The more he listened to Wolfowitz and other administration officials talk about Iraq, the more Zinni became convinced that interventionist "neoconservative" ideologues were plunging the nation into a war in a part of the world they didn't understand. "The more I saw, the more I thought that this was the product of the neocons who didn't understand the region and were going to create havoc there. These were dilettantes from Washington think tanks who never had an idea that worked on the ground."
And the more he dwelled on this, the more he began to believe that U.S. soldiers would wind up paying for the mistakes of Washington policymakers."
http://sf.indymedia.org/print.php?id=1668144
Just so you know, this guy isn't some liberal hippy peace-nik. He is a retired marine who was in the service for 35 years and thinks:
Quote: " "I'm not saying there aren't parts of the world that don't need their ass kicked,""
The guy has also been in touch with the intelligence community even after he was retired and from what he heard the analysts weren't convinced there was any threat:
Quote: "Though retired for nearly two years, Zinni says, he remained current on the intelligence through his consulting with the CIA and the military. "I did consulting work for the agency, right up to the beginning of the war. I never saw anything. I'd say to analysts, 'Where's the threat?' " Their response, he recalls, was, "Silence.""
I'd suggest reading the above article. It is rather eye-opening.
Here is another one from Zinni that is also worth reading:
Quote: "General Anthony Zinni, former commander of Middle East Central Command, says the Iraq war was "a big mistake" and there was no plan for the reconstruction."
http://www.international.ucla.edu/print.asp?parentid=11162
He is also not alone is his assesment of the failures of this adminstration to proceed with caution.
Quote: "President Bush is hearing increasingly bleak warnings that the U.S. occupation of Iraq is heading for failure — from Republican and Democratic members of Congress, current and former officials and even some military officers still on active duty."
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0523-08.htm
(Note: If anyone objects to me using commondreams here because they are too liberal I'll gladly link you to the original latimes article. However, you'll need to register to view it which is why I'm using commondreams and not latimes as a on-line source.)
But if you think this isn't enough to convincingly argue that this adminstration lacks caution I'll refer you to the mother of all whoopers:
Quote: "The same intelligence unit that produced a gloomy report in July about the prospect of growing instability in Iraq warned the Bush administration about the potential costly consequences of an American-led invasion two months before the war began, government officials said Monday.
The estimate came in two classified reports prepared for President Bush in January 2003 by the National Intelligence Council, an independent group that advises the director of central intelligence. The assessments predicted that an American-led invasion of Iraq would increase support for political Islam and would result in a deeply divided Iraqi society prone to violent internal conflict.
One of the reports also warned of a possible insurgency against the new Iraqi government or U.S.-led forces, saying that rogue elements from Saddam Hussein's government could work with existing terrorist groups or act independently to wage guerrilla warfare, the officials said. The assessments also said a war would increase sympathy across the Islamic world for some terrorist objectives, at least in the short run, the officials said. "
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/09/28/MNG5D904AB1.DTL
The Bush Administration
knew about these risks and yet they choose to ignore them in favor of invading. Their recklessness has costed us dearly in Iraq and shown that reasoned consideration of the facts is the last thing on their mind.
But even if all of this is true why would a conservative vote for Kerry? I can't seriously argue that Kerry is more conservative than Bush, but that doesn't mean that a vote for him is not in keeping with conservative principles. You see, the problem with Bush is that he is so extreme he has polarized the party. Long-time Republican supporters are looking in askance at a leadership that puts most liberals to shame in the size and scope of it's spending. Quite a few long time Republican's are voting for Kerry, not because of his principles, but because a Bush defeat in 2004 would help signal the end of the neo-conservative reign and allow the moderates to wrestle control back to a more Small-Government kind of Republican party.
Here is an article from American Conservative magazine describing just that:
Quote: "It is, instead, an election about the presidency of George W. Bush. To the surprise of virtually everyone, Bush has turned into an important president, and in many ways the most radical America has had since the 19th century. Because he is the leader of America’s conservative party, he has become the Left’s perfect foil—its dream candidate."
Quote: "Bush has behaved like a caricature of what a right-wing president is supposed to be, and his continuation in office will discredit any sort of conservatism for generations. The launching of an invasion against a country that posed no threat to the U.S., the doling out of war profits and concessions to politically favored corporations, the financing of the war by ballooning the deficit to be passed on to the nation’s children, the ceaseless drive to cut taxes for those outside the middle class and working poor: it is as if Bush sought to resurrect every false 1960s-era left-wing cliché about predatory imperialism and turn it into administration policy. Add to this his nation-breaking immigration proposal—Bush has laid out a mad scheme to import immigrants to fill any job where the wage is so low that an American can’t be found to do it—and you have a presidency that combines imperialist Right and open-borders Left in a uniquely noxious cocktail.
During the campaign, few have paid attention to how much the Bush presidency has degraded the image of the United States in the world. Of course there has always been “anti-Americanism.” After the Second World War many European intellectuals argued for a “Third Way” between American-style capitalism and Soviet communism, and a generation later Europe’s radicals embraced every ragged “anti-imperialist” cause that came along. In South America, defiance of “the Yanqui” always draws a crowd. But Bush has somehow managed to take all these sentiments and turbo-charge them. In Europe and indeed all over the world, he has made the United States despised by people who used to be its friends, by businessmen and the middle classes, by moderate and sensible liberals. Never before have democratic foreign governments needed to demonstrate disdain for Washington to their own electorates in order to survive in office. The poll numbers are shocking. In countries like Norway, Germany, France, and Spain, Bush is liked by about seven percent of the populace. In Egypt, recipient of huge piles of American aid in the past two decades, some 98 percent have an unfavorable view of the United States. It’s the same throughout the Middle East"
Quote: "If Kerry wins, this magazine will be in opposition from Inauguration Day forward. But the most important battles will take place within the Republican Party and the conservative movement. A Bush defeat will ignite a huge soul-searching within the rank-and-file of Republicandom: a quest to find out how and where the Bush presidency went wrong. And it is then that more traditional conservatives will have an audience to argue for a conservatism informed by the lessons of history, based in prudence and a sense of continuity with the American past—and to make that case without a powerful White House pulling in the opposite direction.
George W. Bush has come to embody a politics that is antithetical to almost any kind of thoughtful conservatism. His international policies have been based on the hopelessly naïve belief that foreign peoples are eager to be liberated by American armies—a notion more grounded in Leon Trotsky’s concept of global revolution than any sort of conservative statecraft. His immigration policies—temporarily put on hold while he runs for re-election—are just as extreme. A re-elected President Bush would be committed to bringing in millions of low-wage immigrants to do jobs Americans “won’t do.” This election is all about George W. Bush, and those issues are enough to render him unworthy of any conservative support"
http://www.amconmag.com/2004_11_08/cover1.html
This paticular piece right here is definately worth reading:
Quote: " That's it, I've had it.
I've been a registered Republican since I pulled my first lever in a voting booth, and I've voted as a loyal Republican for Republican candidates consistently every year. I am 55 years of age. I am considered a right-wing Christian conservative and strict constitutionist who knows the Framers of the Constitution expected strict adherence to that original document unless and until it is amended.
You don't get much more conservative and constitutionally-minded than I am, and that is why I just cast my Oregon vote-by-mail ballot for Democrat John Kerry as the next president of the United States. So did my wife -- and she's a very independent thinker. I know there are thousands of lifelong Republican/Independent conservatives who are going to do the same thing on November 2nd, because they've written and told me so."
http://www.sierratimes.com/04/10/20/carlworden.htm
I won't quote too much more of the above as you must read it for yourself. He really rips into Bush and his reckless disregard for civil liberties. The piece above should really appeal to any libertarians in the crowd.
To continue the support from the right for Kerry I give you the Economist(hardly a left-wing newspaper):
Quote: "With a heavy heart, we think American readers should vote for John Kerry on November 2nd
"
http://www.economist.com/printedition/displaystory.cfm?Story_ID=3329802
John Eisenhower - Republican for 50 years. Voting for Kerry.
Quote: "The fact is that today’s “Republican” Party is one with which I am totally unfamiliar. To me, the word “Republican” has always been synonymous with the word “responsibility,” which has meant limiting our governmental obligations to those we can afford in human and financial terms. Today’s whopping budget deficit of some $440 billion does not meet that criterion.
Responsibility used to be observed in foreign affairs. That has meant respect for others. America, though recognized as the leader of the community of nations, has always acted as a part of it, not as a maverick separate from that community and at times insulting towards it. Leadership involves setting a direction and building consensus, not viewing other countries as practically devoid of significance. Recent developments indicate that the current Republican Party leadership has confused confident leadership with hubris and arrogance.
In the Middle East crisis of 1991, President George H.W. Bush marshaled world opinion through the United Nations before employing military force to free Kuwait from Saddam Hussein. Through negotiation he arranged for the action to be financed by all the industrialized nations, not just the United States. When Kuwait had been freed, President George H. W. Bush stayed within the United Nations mandate, aware of the dangers of occupying an entire nation.
Today many people are rightly concerned about our precious individual freedoms, our privacy, the basis of our democracy. Of course we must fight terrorism, but have we irresponsibly gone overboard in doing so? I wonder. In 1960, President Eisenhower told the Republican convention, “If ever we put any other value above (our) liberty, and above principle, we shall lose both.” I would appreciate hearing such warnings from the Republican Party of today. "
http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_showa.html?article=44657
Iconoclast. Hometown paper of Bush. Supported him in 2000. Supports Kerry instead.
Quote: "The publishers of The Iconoclast endorsed Bush four years ago, based on the things he promised, not on this smoke-screened agenda.
Today, we are endorsing his opponent, John Kerry, based not only on the things that Bush has delivered, but also on the vision of a return to normality that Kerry says our country needs."
http://www.iconoclast-texas.com/Columns/Editorial/editorial39.htm
I could go on, but frankly there is no need. Real conservatives are waking up to Bush's dangerous idealism and contempt for principles the Republican party once stood for. He is a Big Government Conservative and the threat of him ruining the Republican party and our country is causing conservatives to cast their vote in favor of Kerry. Not necessarily because of his policies, but because he will allow a return to normalcy. With a GOP controlled senate, he can do little harm. Bush, however, can do far greater harm. His fiscal irresponsiblity and eagarness to use government to solve whatever crisis comes along clearly marks him as not a conservative and not worthy of a vote from principled conservatives.
@Slight-OT
For those true believers out there who still like Bush, here is a little satire for you.
http://gadflyer.com/articles/?ArticleID=249
