Editorial: Fading faith in Bush regime
An editorial
October 26, 2004
George W. Bush spends much of his time on the campaign trail attacking
his Democratic challenger for the presidency, John Kerry. And Bush's
favorite claim is that Kerry is a liberal.
So does that mean that Bush is the conservative candidate?
Not exactly.
Certainly, all the Republicans insiders - in Washington and Wisconsin -
are backing Bush. But what of the true believers? What of genuine
conservatives who favor cautious foreign policies, fiscal responsibility
and the defense of basic liberties? What of the Barry Goldwater/Ronald
Reagan conservatives?
In steadily increasing numbers, they are abandoning Bush.
Conservative commentator and former Republican presidential candidate
Pat Buchanan's American Conservative magazine, which has been harshly
critical of the Bush administration's military adventures abroad, will
not be backing the president this year. "Unfortunately," the latest
issue declares, "this election does not offer traditional conservatives
an easy or natural choice and has left our editors as split as our
readership."
Scott McConnell, one of the publication's editors, wrote, "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 cliche about predatory imperialism and turn it into
administration policy."
McConnell, who urged a vote for Kerry, concluded that "George W. Bush
has come to embody a politics that is antithetical to almost any kind of
thoughtful conservatism."
The American Conservative is not alone in questioning Bush's ideological
credentials. A dozen Republican-leaning newspapers that backed Bush in
2000 have refused to do so this year. The Seattle Times; the Portland
Oregonian; the Daily Camera in Boulder, Colo.; the Daily Tribune in
Columbia, Mo.; and Florida's Bradenton Herald are among the battleground
state dailies that backed Bush four years ago but support Kerry now.
Others have simply announced that they are sitting out the election
because, despite their historic Republican leanings, they cannot again
support George W. Bush.
"Bush Has Gone Astray," declared the headline of the editorial that
appeared last week in the Winston-Salem Journal, a North Carolina
newspaper that has backed every Republican presidential nominee since
1968.
The conservative Tampa Tribune, a Florida newspaper that strongly
endorsed Bush in 2000, has abandoned the GOP nominee this year with an
announcement that "we are unable to endorse President Bush for
re-election because of his mishandling of the war in Iraq, his record
deficit spending, his assault on open government and his failed promise
to be a 'uniter, not a divider' within the United States and the world."
Genuine conservatives, like genuine liberals, understand that there are
times when it is necessary to put principle ahead of party. That is
happening this year as honest conservatives put aside partisan pressures
to declare that George Bush is neither a sound president nor a sound
conservative.
.
|
