For advocates of liberty, free enterprise and a noninterventionist foreign policy, the Bush administration has been a great disappointment, to say the least. In fact, President Bush has done more to expand the Welfare-Warfare State than any president since LBJ.
For nearly three years, the Bush administration has given us more “velvet fascism”–more federal spending on healthcare and education, massive federal deficits, more debasement of the currency, more federal bureaucracy with establishment of the Department of Homeland Security, more trade protectionism, and massive surveillance of the American people. (We did get a tax cut that was accompanied with more rules and regulations, complicating the tax code even more.) And, the Bush administration launched an invasion of at best a third rate military power that was not a threat to the national security of the United States.
Despite policies that are anathema to many rank-and-file Republicans, Republican Party loyalists, hangerons and their media mouthpieces apparently are going to go all-out next year help reelect George Bush to a second term in the White House. Why?
From a simple Republican perspective, the answer is Bush is “our guy” and therefore he should be reelected. A more accurate analysis is that big government conservatism, the belief that big government can be used for “conservative ends”, is the new paradigm of the Republican Party.
What are these “conservative ends”? In short, it is a “guilt” free welfare state at home and extensive military intervention abroad to plant “democracy” in currently infertile nations. As we are now seeing events unfold in Iraq, the Bush administration has bumbled into the greatest sand trap in history.
Here is a compilation of President Bush’s reelection “resume”.
While some of the President’s resume apparently has been compiled from a left-wing perspective, it nonetheless captures the essence of how George W. Bush’s has turned his back on limited government.
On the media front, the talking heads on both radio and television that support President Bush are doing exactly what the Clintonites did during the late 1990s, defending “their guy” at every possible opportunity. In addition, the current crop of Bush sycophants, are calling critics of the president un-American, unpatriotic, and worse. That’s why listening to Rush, Hannity, O’Reilly and others has become unbearable.
Independent thinking requires media pundits to question the political establishment, not mouth the White House’s talking points. Talk shows, with very few exceptions, have become propaganda outlets for the political establishment. That’s why the Internet has become the most important communications medium in human history.
What then should Republicans who want a limited government in Washington do in next year’s presidential election? Should they hold their noses and vote for President Bush next year? Should they vote for a third party candidate? Or should they stay home?
As of now, a vote for President Bush is a vote for bigger and bigger government. Unless, President Bush does a “180” in the next few months, a Democrat in the White House in 2005 maybe just what congressional Republicans need to act and vote like Republicans in a Dean administration.
“Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.”