Bush...Again?

[smartnsassy]

On the Republican side of the campaign, there's a mixed bag of strengths and weaknesses under the Bush banner. On the one hand, his great strength is national security and defense -- especially progress in the war on terror and the liberation of Iraq and Afghanistan. On the other hand, his great weakness has been runaway domestic spending -- this in spite of the GOP's platform rhetoric advocating limited government. The other strengths and weaknesses of the Bush juggernaut depend on whether you're a moderate or a conservative.

The absence of a Republican challenger in the primaries allows President Bush to make his appeal to the center. This is a luxury he didn't have when running against John McCain in 2000, but these moderate swing voters are essential to his re-election prospects. Mr. Bush's M.O. for appealing to centrist voters is plain to see: Adopt the pet issues historically held dear by Democrats (who never really advanced the issues, but held them for political fodder), and give them a Republican spin. These would include Medicare prescription-drug coverage for seniors, mammoth funding increases for public education (while abandoning his insistence on private educational vouchers), and vast expansions of deficit spending.

While the President may be accused of cutting ties with his conservative base, it would be more accurate to say that this administration's policies have been decidedly...indecisive. For instance, while the President has swung to the center on a number of issues, he has in some cases taken a more conservative tone: three successive tax-cut packages, defense revitalization, scrapping the economically devastating (and illegal) steel tariffs imposed early in his administration, thankfully shunning the Kyoto Protocol, banning partial-birth abortion, and defending heterosexual marriage.

Another key factor in President Bush's prospects for re-election will be the ongoing economic recovery, specifically the GDP-growth rate and unemployment figures compared to January, 2001. One potential problem for the President is the high percentage of structural (permanent) versus cyclical (temporary) job loss from the recent recession in comparison to previous economic downturns. This reality will make it especially difficult to achieve, between now and election day, employment numbers comparable to those at the time of his inauguration.

Equally crucial to the President's second-term hopes is the response of his conservative base to last week's immigration-reform proposal -- a response which has thus far proved decidedly negative. However, if the positive shifts in public opinion in Texas and Arizona are any indication, the President may be able to overcome initial conservative resentment toward a plan derided as amnesty for illegals. Likewise, while Democrats will criticize the immigration plan as "not enough" and "an election-year conversion," those all-important swing voters are likely to respond favorably.

http://www.federalist.com/papers/04-03_paper.asp

 

[shereads]

Deleted

 

[lewdandlicentious]

I hate politics!

I only did this to get as many threads with my name on, at the top of the list!!!!

 

[Pure]

Smart and Sassy,

Part of being smart, and certainly part of being sassy would be NOT to function as Xerox service for the federalist intellectual elite folks.

They say,

[Bush may appeal to centrists {!} by]
mammoth funding increases for public education (while abandoning his insistence on private educational vouchers)

I've heard nothing about this. I'd heard public ed. was falling apart, and its functioning in poorer areas vastly sabotaged by the mostly moronic 'no child left behind' legislation of the Bush that the school system left behind.

Oh, and another part of being 'smart' is occasionally to cite evidence for your or your fed pals' claims, from sources that just might be acceptable to those of us to the left of Ann Coulter.
How about some here, on the vast and expensive improvements GWB is making to public education in the US.

J.

 

[KarenAM]

One must always be careful to consider one's sources, particularly those who self-identify. Being in many ways conservative myself, I look with dismay at how the term has come to mean blind praise and obedience to the president.

Let's look at the article closely:

1. Lots of patriotic pictures with flags and such. This is an old ploy designed to appeal to the emotions of folks like me who love the flag and the country.

2. Defining your opposition. A big part of winning any debate is controlling the debate and putting words and ideas into the mouths of your opponents. Note here we have:

Democrats have, for decades, structured their "ends justify the means" campaigns around discontent and deceit. As a result, their legions of lemmings are ushered off the cliff by pseudo-intellectual "progressives" -- those with a visceral hatred for George Bush and just about anything else to the right of Dennis "Department of Peace" Kucinich.

These Demo-gogues hate the military, and they hate the idea of defending our nation against such enemies as Jihadi terrorists -- much less without UN permission. Indeed, they hate the very idea of spending money on a missile-defense system, when the same money could instead be earmarked for lemming-luring largesse. Of course, to ensure an adequate supply of largesse, they also hate tax cuts.

Demo-gogues hate religious zealots, too -- a "zealot" being defined as anyone who acknowledges the existence of a Supreme Being -- as well as "rich" folks, rural folks, suburban folks, conservative black folks, gun-owning folks, private and home-schooling folks who undermine the NEA's propaganda machines, SUV-driving folks, and pretty much any folks that have anything to do with free enterprise -- especially those affiliated with small companies.

Most of all, though, Demo-gogues hate haters -- a "hater" being defined as anyone who dares challenge their Left-constituency agenda -- especially those hateful heterosexual white males and traditional family folks who'd rather celebrate Christmas than "diversity." The Demo-gogues hate young abstinent folks and little unborn folks, too, as well as anything that threatens their eco-theological idolatry. ANWAR oil exploration and nuclear-energy development are hateful things indeed, as is the very notion that global warming may be the result of natural geologic and atmospheric cycles rather than the burning of fossil fuels. (We at The Federalist are actually quite pleased with the consistency of our thermonuclear furnace -- given that it heats our planet from a distance of 93,000,000 miles.)

This, then, is the house that hate built; the house where political campaigns are built around what is bad rather than what is good.

So very clever. Start out by calling them "Democrats", thereby lumping all members of the Democratic party into one group, all of whom believe exactly the same things, which the article then defines for us. Follow this up with a shift and call them by the insulting term "Demo-gogues". Then associate them with bad things, in this case "hate"; make this their sole motivation, thereby implying that "conservatives", being diametrically opposed to them, are motivated solely by love.

Note particularly that no citations are given; how do we know that these things are true of the Democrats? How can we check to see if the author isn't just making this stuff up? Well, we really can't, can we?

3. Follow this up by making an absolute claim about the one area where Bush's supporters feel the most confident: national security. Use loaded language like "liberation", but conveniently sidestep the debate over the issue of WMD's, questions of the integrity of the White House, and the weakening of our relationships with several key allies. Make sure to associate the war in Iraq with the war in Afghanistan, knowing that more Americans support the Afghanistan campaign than the Iraq one, thereby creating an "all or nothing" perspective on both, implying that you can't support the Afghanistan war without supporting the Iraq one.

Acknowledge the president's weakness with runaway spending, but avoid details like the deception over prescription drug costs, etc.

4. Then argue that the president is actively pursuing a centrist agenda by pointing out that he has addressed issues like Medicare and education, but avoid the fact that he has failed to adequately fund his own education initiative and that there is evidence that he knowingly mislead Congress on the costs of his Medicare program. And again, accuse the Democrats of using such issues as political fodder, and even associate deficit spending with the Democrats, despite the fact that the last Democratic administration produced record budget surpluses.

5. The article assumes that all conservatives agree about certain core "issues", notably:

...he has in some cases taken a more conservative tone: three successive tax-cut packages, defense revitalization, scrapping the economically devastating (and illegal) steel tariffs imposed early in his administration, thankfully shunning the Kyoto Protocol, banning partial-birth abortion, and defending heterosexual marriage.

Not all conservatives agree with the president on these issues. In the view of many conservatives tax cuts must be associated with responsible budgets, for example. And many conservatives, as believers in small government, do not believe that it is the role of government to make social policy in such things as defining marriage.

6. Finally, in an attempt to sound balanced, the article closes with an assessment of some of the president's weaknesses, notably job loss and immigration policy. Neither gets much attention, and, as with the rest of the article, "facts" are given (upswings in public opinion in Texas and Arizona) without citation.

In sum, I find the article unconvincing and an insult to the principles of conservatism and American democracy, which requires that voters be given the tools they need to make truly informed decisions on election day. Its use of ad-homenim arguments and its lack of citations make it ultimately nothing more than a blatant attempt to manipulate the reader rather than provide a basis for effective and productive dialogue.

And it's the kind of thing that is going to make me vote for Kerry.