Republicans and conservatives need to recognize Bush is NOT one of them. He is either the leader of the Radical Right or their dim-witted tool — it doesn’t matter which is true. He is changing everything as fast as he can. mjh

Bush’s Budget for 2005 Seeks to Rein In Domestic Costs

As he completes work on his budget, Mr. Bush faces criticism from conservatives, who say he has presided over a big increase in federal spending, and liberals, who say his tax cuts have converted a large budget surplus to a deficit.

Total federal revenues have declined for three consecutive years, apparently the first time that has happened since the early 1920’s. But in those years, from 2000 to 2003, total federal spending has increased slightly more than 20 percent, to $2.16 trillion last year.

Brian M. Riedl, an economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said: “President Bush is not focusing on his fiscal conservative base right now. He’s trying to position himself in between conservatives in Congress and the Democratic Party. It may be good politics, but it’s bad policy, a lost opportunity to get runaway government spending under control.”

This is a small piece of a very long article that attempts to analyze historical and current differences between Democrats and the neo-cons running the Bush administration. A lot of attention is paid to Dean and Clark. mjh

The Things They Carry By JAMES TRAUB, NYTimes

A poll conducted in November by the nonpartisan PIPA-Knowledge Networks found that 42 percent of Americans said that the president’s handling of Iraq decreased the likelihood of voting for him, versus 35 percent who said it had increased the likelihood. Another poll taken around the same time found that a majority of respondents believed that President Bush is ”too quick to use our military abroad” and that he practices a ”go-it-alone foreign policy that hurts our relations with allies.” Earlier, Democracy Corps, a Democratic polling and policy organization headed by the consultants James Carville and Robert Shrum and the pollster Stanley B. Greenberg, published a study with the following conclusion: ”When Democrats put out a clear message on national security, it now plays Bush’s post-9/11, post-Iraq message to a draw.”

It’s not just the war in Iraq that prompted these hopes of realignment; it’s the Bush administration’s penchant for bellicosity, its barely concealed contempt for the United Nations and for many of America’s traditional allies, its apparent confusion about how to deal with North Korea. Even some traditional internationalist Republicans believed that the Bush administration had abandoned many of the central tenets of the last several generations of national security policy while squandering much of the global good will that came in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Today’s Headlines

On Jan. 4, 1965, President Johnson outlined the goals of his ”’Great Society” in his State of the Union address.

Given a second term, Duhbya will proclaim ”The era of the Great Society and the New Deal are over!” mjh

Op-Ed Columnist: Running on Reform By DAVID BROOKS

The Republican Party has a problem this election year. It’s the governing party, but it lacks a governing philosophy.

The G.O.P. used to have a governing philosophy: reducing the size of the state. This was a useful goal because it was the one thing all Republican factions could agree upon. …

But reducing the size of government can no longer be Republicans’ animating principle. …

[T]he main reason reducing the size of government can’t be the party’s animating principle is that Republicans have no credibility on this subject. … Now Republicans control everything, and over the past three years the size of government has still increased, not even counting the war on terror.

Republicans have learned through hard experiences that most Americans do not actually want their government sharply cut. Voters are skeptical of government, but they elect candidates who promise solutions for their problems, not ones who tear down departments. …

With its old governing philosophy obsolete, the Republican Party is adrift domestically. …

Meanwhile, corporate lobbyists have jumped into the vacuum. If principles aren’t going to guide the Republican Party, the opportunists are happy to take control.

The Former Governor: As the Race Turns Hot, What About Dean’s Collar? By RICK LYMAN

Friends and former employees of Dr. Dean say his temper can indeed flare, although of greater concern to campaign aides is the occasional crisis created by his speaking too quickly on the issues. Even that, he and his top aides say, is not as detrimental as his opponents might hope: as long as he talks straight and from the heart, he said in an interview in Iowa not long ago, voters will overlook a little roughness around the edges.

“What people are responding to is that I believe in what I’m doing and it’s not calculated,” he said. “That’s a quality you can’t fake. People can tell the difference.”

The greater danger, a number of aides say, might be trying to muzzle him. Dr. Dean maintains that one reason many Democrats have not connected with voters in recent years is that they allow their message to be filtered through layers of focus groups and skittish pollsters.
“He hasn’t yet got the filter completely in front of his face,” Mr. Rogan said. Though some of those around him are urging that he do so, “his attitude is, `If I do that, I’ll be just like them.’ “

Govs 4, Senators 0. Tough Odds By E.J. Dionne Jr.

Four of our last five presidents — Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Clinton and George W. Bush — came to the presidency as active or former governors. The clichés about why are well-rehearsed: Governors have executive experience, they exude leadership (or at least they’re supposed to) and they are outsiders (or at least try hard to look that way). Both Clinton and Bush took potshots at their party in Washington when doing so was useful. They were picking up from Carter, the outsider pioneer. Dean is carrying on the tradition.
Most presidents since 1900 have come from governorships (the recent four plus William McKinley, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt) or the vice presidency. Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson all ascended to the Oval Office when the president died. Richard Nixon’s last public office before president was vice president. When he resigned in 1974, his vice president, Gerald Ford, took over. The first George Bush won in 1988 after two terms as veep. William Howard Taft and Herbert Hoover were Cabinet secretaries, and Dwight Eisenhower was a war hero and college president. As Gephardt supporters prefer not to note, the last president to rise from the House was James Garfield in 1880.

The complete article is a good overview of Kucinich. mjh

Challenging Bush: Past Defeat and Personal Quest Shape Long-Shot Kucinich Bid

Dennis J. Kucinich was 33 when, having been drummed out of the Cleveland mayor’s office, he set out on what he calls his ”quest for meaning.” His city was in financial default — the embarrassment of the nation. His political career was in tatters, his bank account dangerously low. Not even the radio talk shows would hire him.

So he left the Rust Belt in the winter of 1979, headed west to California and, eventually, New Mexico, to write and think. There, in the austere beauty of the desert outside Santa Fe, he sought out a spiritual healer who, he says, led him on a path toward inner peace. “That,” Mr. Kucinich said, “is where I discovered that war is not inevitable.”

Now, after a stunning political comeback that culminated with his election to the House of Representatives in 1996, Mr. Kucinich — the boy mayor who was so bombastic he fired his police chief live on the 6 o’clock news — is seeking the White House, on a platform of “nonviolence as an organizing principle of society.” He wants to pull out of Iraq, sharply reduce the Pentagon budget and establish a cabinet-level Department of Peace.