Op-Ed Contributor: The Vital Republican Center By CHRISTIE WHITMAN

Now … many moderate Republicans feel even less certain of their place in the party. When President Bush, arguably one of the more conservative presidents in recent history, is under attack from the right wing of the party for his proposal regarding immigration and migrant workers, is it any wonder moderates feel out of sync?
It doesn’t seem to matter to conservatives that moderates share their views on the vast majority of those bedrock principles that have always been the foundation of Republicanism: smaller government, the power of free markets, a strong national defense. Because we disagree on a few issues, most notably a woman’s right to choose, many conservatives act as if they wish we moderates would just disappear. …

I also often had to battle extremists within my own party. I remember a Republican leader in Congress telling me not to use the word “balance” when talking about environmental policy — it implied that we were giving too much away to the environmentalists. Moderate voters who are concerned about the environment were often left frustrated.

Former New Jersey governor and EPA head, Christie Whitman is writing about the trouble moderate Republicans have getting acceptance from the Radical Right (whom she incorrectly identifies as conservatives). Tell us about it, Christie. mjh

See also: Conservatives Against Bush
GOP Wins the Hypocrisy Trophy

CNN.com – Cabinet members defend Bush from O’Neill – Jan. 12, 2004

In the book, ”The Price of Loyalty,” by former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind, scheduled for publication Tuesday, O’Neill says administration officials discussed plans to go to war with Iraq as early as their first weeks in office.

He also compares Bush’s presence at Cabinet meetings to ”a blind man in a room full of deaf people.” …

An interview with O’Neill aired Sunday night on the CBS program “60 Minutes.”

In it, O’Neill said the Bush administration was eyeing an invasion of Iraq “from the very beginning” — months before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, that administration officials said changed their strategic perspective. …

“For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is a really huge leap,” O’Neill said in the interview.

“We didn’t listen to [O’Neill’s] wacky ideas when he was in the White House, why should we start listening to him now,” said a senior official. The official said he informed Bush of O’Neill’s comments but declined to describe the president’s reaction.

Suskind said he interviewed hundreds of people for the book, including several Cabinet members who gave him their accounts of meetings with the president, their notes and documents. …

O’Neill also told Time magazine he never saw evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq –Bush’s primary justification for the U.S.-led invasion of the country in March.

None have been found, although searches have turned up evidence of continuing research on banned weapons.

O’Neill predicted that his former colleagues — one of whom has already tried to paint him as a disgruntled former employee with a “tin ear” for politics — would hit back.

“These people are nasty and they have a long memory,” O’Neill told Time.

More apt would be that Bush is a deaf man in a country full of blind people. mjh

Justices Refuse to Review Case on Secrecy and 9/11 Detentions

The case that the justices declined today to review, Center for National Security Studies v. Justice Department, 03-472, pitted two fundamental values against each other — the right of the public to know details of how its government operates versus the government’s need to keep some information secret to protect national security.

With today’s refusal by the justices, the last word in the case apparently belongs to Judge David B. Sentelle of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In his opinion for the 2-to-1 majority on June 17, he noted that courts had always shown deference to executive branch officials in the field of national security.

“The need for deference in this case is just as strong as in earlier cases,” Judge Sentelle wrote in the opinion that was joined by Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson and reversed a lower court finding. “America faces an enemy just as real as its former cold war foes.”

Judge David S. Tatel offered a blistering dissent last June. “By accepting the government’s vague, poorly explained allegations, and by filling in the gaps in the government’s case with its own assumptions about facts absent from the record, this court has converted deference into acquiescence,” he asserted.

Notice a court stacked with Republicans said we should trust the President and the Supreme Court, which appointed this President, agrees. Checks and balances? mjh

Judges
* Judge Sentelle was appointed United States Circuit Judge in October 1987. [by Reagan]
* Judge Henderson was appointed United States Circuit Judge in July 1990. [by Bush’s dad]
* Judge Tatel was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals in October 1994. [by Clinton]

Dean is McGovern. Or so some say. By this, they want to say Dean is too liberal for America. They also want to predict a devastating loss for Dean and the Democrats.

This simpleminded analogy completely ignores that Dean isn’t nearly as liberal as his enemies and earliest supporters want to believe. Still, let’s extend this analogy.

Bush is Nixon. Now, at first blush, this is MUCH easier to accept. Except, don’t forget Nixon’s environmental actions — all of which Bush would undo. Ironically, Nixon is too liberal for today’s Radical Right. But the shifty eyes are similar, though Nixon never looked so blank.

Cheney is Agnew. Agnew was the original angry white male who did much to beat the Media into submission (those “nattering nabobs of negativism” are now thoroughly embedded by Bush). Agnew used “liberal” as an obscenity, though he was a pornographer of conservatism. Agnew, the petty crook, resigned in scandal if not shame. Cheney’s going to slip away in secret, laughing all the way to the bank.

Certainly, there is a very similar idea at work within the Republican Party 32 years later: fear is the key to power. Nixon told us to be afraid of crime and thugs (meaning people who wanted to end the war by taking to the streets). Bush is leading us in another endless war, not against poverty (what, are you a commie?) or crime or drugs but terror. None of this “we have nothing to fear but fear itself” (some Democrat said that).

Bush is Nixon. Let’s imagine Bush finally wins election. How long before the many, many things he has done in a secretive manner finally come to light? How long before impeachment proceedings? How long before the great shame comes again?

Iraq is Vietnam. No, we don’t have nearly the tolerance for dead (almost 500) or wounded (almost 10,000 — have you heard that yet?) or the willingness to just accept what the government says. Vietnam brought down Johnson. Maybe Bush is Johnson!

The big picture visionaries see more in our future-past: Bush’s (re)election will begin a Republican era to last as long as the Democrat’s New Deal-Great Society (the fruits of which are taking far less time to destroy).

Dream on. The Depression and World War II united Americans in support of their government. The Civil Rights Movement proved that government has a vital role in improving our lives, of assuring our rights that don’t seem so self-evident anymore. In the process, no one slandered “liberalism” as un-American.

Bush isn’t FDR. And the Radical Right isn’t the future of America. mjh

www.mjhinton.com/dumpbush/

Mark Fiore makes light (sort of) of Bush’s clear tendency to schedule potentially controversial matters when they won’t be noticed, like signing the equivalent of Patriot Act II on the same day Saddam Hussein was captured — who noticed? mjh

Weekenders 1/7/04

The Stump Speech: Edwards Promises a Positive Vision and to Change the ‘Two Americas’ By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD, NYTimes

Voters say, ” `You haven’t been in politics all your life, you haven’t even been in Washington that long, how in the world are you going to change this country?’ ” Mr. Edwards said here. ”Here’s my question to you: You think people who have been in politics all their lives, have been in Washington for decades, you think they’re going to change America?”

Mr. Edwards portrays doubts about him as the work of cynics and of the privileged whom he is campaigning against.

He says that when he was young, the son of a mill worker, the doubters said of him: “You really think you’re going to college? You’re going to be a lawyer? How in the world is that ever going to happen?”

“Then, when I walked into courtrooms and these armies of these big corporate lawyers, much older and more experienced than me, they would be in there and they’d say, `What’s that young fellow doing in here? What? Does he think he’s going to take us on?’ And over and over and over I won those fights.”

“How many times in your life has somebody said something like that to you? Think about that for a minute.”

Mr. Edwards cites his 20 years as a personal injury lawyer suing corporate America as proof he is tough enough to challenge Mr. Bush, seeking to answer doubts among some voters. “We need somebody who has been fighting these fights and winning these fights their whole lives,” Mr. Edwards said.

Op-Ed Columnist: The God Gulf By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, NYTimes

America is riven today by a ”God gulf” of distrust, dividing churchgoing Republicans from relatively secular Democrats. A new Great Awakening is sweeping the country, with Americans increasingly telling pollsters that they believe in prayer and miracles, while only 28 percent say they believe in evolution. All this is good news for Bush Republicans, who are in tune with heartland religious values, and bad news for Dean Democrats who don’t know John from Job.

So expect Republicans to wage religious warfare by trotting out God as the new elephant in the race, and some Democrats to respond with hypocrisy, by affecting deep religious convictions. This campaign could end up as a tug of war over Jesus.