{"id":60,"date":"2005-10-06T09:07:34","date_gmt":"2005-10-06T15:07:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/?p=60"},"modified":"2005-10-05T15:14:40","modified_gmt":"2005-10-05T21:14:40","slug":"neither-compassionate-nor-conservative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/nada\/dump-duhbya\/neither-compassionate-nor-conservative\/","title":{"rendered":"Neither Compassionate Nor Conservative"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bush Says He’ll Press <\/p>\n

Ahead With Broad Political Agenda – New York Times<\/a>
\nBy RICHARD W. STEVENSON
\nPublished: October 5, 2005<\/p>\n

WASHINGTON, Oct. 4 <\/p>\n

– President Bush said Tuesday that he still had “plenty”<\/strong> of political capital and that he intended to spend it on <\/p>\n

battles over government spending, energy policy, Social Security and other issues that have so far proven difficult for him. …<\/p>\n

“I’m still a conservative, proudly so, proudly so,” Mr. Bush said<\/strong> in response to a question about whether he could <\/p>\n

still claim that identity after presiding over a rapid increase in the size and cost of the government.<\/p>\n

The <\/p>\n

Right’s Dissed Intellectuals<\/a> By Harold Meyerson<\/p>\n

You could cut the disappointment with a knife. “This is the moment for which <\/p>\n

the conservative legal movement has been waiting for two decades,” David Frum, the right-wing activist and former Bush speechwriter, <\/p>\n

wrote on his blog a few moments after the president dashed conservative hopes by nominating Harriet Miers to succeed Sandra Day O’Connor <\/p>\n

on the Supreme Court. …<\/p>\n

In one fell swoop, Bush flouted both his supporters’ ideology and their sense of <\/p>\n

meritocracy.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Worse, he bypassed the opportunity to demonstrate their intellectual seriousness — conservatism’s <\/p>\n

intellectual seriousness. …<\/p>\n

But the conservative intellectuals have misread their president and misread their country. Four and <\/p>\n

a half years into the presidency of George W. Bush, how could they still entertain the idea that the president takes merit, much <\/p>\n

less intellectual seriousness, seriously?<\/strong> The one in-house White House intellectual, John DiIulio, ran screaming from the <\/p>\n

premises after a few months on the job. Bush has long since banished all those, such as Army chief of staff Gen. Eric Shinseki, who <\/p>\n

accurately predicted the price of taking over Iraq. Yet Donald Rumsfeld — with Bush, the author of the Iraqi disaster — remains, as do <\/p>\n

scores of lesser lights<\/strong> whose sole virtue has been a dogged loyalty to Bush and his blunders<\/strong>. Loyalty <\/p>\n

and familiarity count for more with this president than brilliance (or even competence) and conviction.<\/p>\n

Cynical <\/p>\n

Conservatism<\/a> By Robert J. Samuelson<\/p>\n

George W. Bush entered the White House preaching “compassionate conservatism,” but he may <\/p>\n

leave known for cynical conservatism<\/strong>. … In practice, Bush has taken the most self-serving aspect of modern liberalism <\/p>\n

(its instinct to buy public support with massive government handouts) and fused it with the most self-serving aspect of modern <\/p>\n

conservatism (its instinct to buy support with massive tax cuts). …<\/p>\n

Spend more, tax less. That’s a brazen political strategy, <\/p>\n

not a serious governing philosophy. …<\/p>\n

The outlook is for tokenism. Just what conservative values Bush’s approach embodies is <\/p>\n

unclear. He has not tried to purge government of ineffective or unneeded programs. He has not laid a foundation for permanent tax <\/p>\n

reductions. He has not been straightforward with the public. He has not shown a true regard for the future. He has mostly been expedient <\/p>\n

or, more pointedly, cynical.<\/p>\n

\"smile\"CNN.com – Bush military bird flu role slammed – Oct 5, <\/p>\n

2005<\/a><\/p>\n

A call by President George W. Bush for Congress to give him the power to use the military in law enforcement roles in the <\/p>\n

event of a bird flu pandemic has been criticized as akin to introducing martial law<\/strong>….<\/p>\n

Gene Healy, a senior <\/p>\n

editor at the conservative Cato Institute, said Bush would risk undermining “a fundamental principle of American law”<\/strong> by <\/p>\n

tinkering with the act, which does not hinder the military’s ability to respond to a crisis. …<\/p>\n

Bush began discussing the <\/p>\n

possibility of changing the law banning the military from participating in police-type activity last month, in the aftermath of the <\/p>\n

government’s sluggish response to civil unrest following Hurricane Katrina.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bush Says He’ll Press Ahead With Broad Political Agenda – New York Times By RICHARD W. STEVENSON Published: October 5, 2005 WASHINGTON, Oct. 4 – President Bush said Tuesday that he still had “plenty” of political capital and that he intended to spend it on battles over government spending, energy policy, Social Security and other … Continue reading Neither Compassionate Nor Conservative<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dump-duhbya"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}