Bush the Conservative?

I’ve often wondered what makes President Bush a conservative. The president probably has some of the most conservative support in the history of this country. But what about him or his policies is actually conservative? Conservatives are generally governed by their responsibility of fiscal matters. Most conservatives are also stereotypically distrustful of government, hence the saying the smaller the government the better. Conservatives are also typically led by the belief that foreign policy ends at the waters edge, which requires our borders to be secured.

Of those three items I mention, only the last slightly fits Bush’s style or political ability, but even that item really doesn’t fit all that well and doesn’t explain why the Libertarian Party is actually growing in ranks, strength and really the only party calling for greater border security while also opposing the war in Iraq. The Libertarian Party fits the mold of the third item more accurately than the current neocon controlled Republican Party...CLICK CONTINUE READING FOR MORE

Surely it’s not Bush’s opposition towards gay marriage and abortion that merely make him a conservative. Or is it? Because even with that, Bush is on record as saying privately that he doesn’t oppose gay marriage, and does not want to “bash gays.” That brings us to abortion. Is it too simple to think that the opposition to abortion is the only requirement to be considered a conservative? Well, maybe I am making that sound way too simple.

So let’s focus on the first three that I listed: fiscal responsibility, smaller government, foreign engagement as a whim and not a necessity with secure borders at home.

A fiscal conservative Bush is not. I do not see how anyone can possibly argue that George Bush is remotely close to being a fiscal conservative. In less than two years Bush took the largest surplus in the history of America and turned it into the largest deficit in the history of America. Many argue that the war on terrorism is the reason for the deficit, but Bush does not even include war expenses into the budget, so the deficit that Bush has incurred is around 300-400 billion dollars. If the war expenses are added to that, because Bush keeps them separate, then the deficit becomes 500-600 billion dollars.

The main reason for the deficit has nothing to do with fiscal responsibility but entirely with fiscal irresponsibility. President Bush is the first wartime president in history to never enhance revenue in order to pay for the war. Those in defense of the president will say that my last sentence is a fancy way of saying taxes should be raised, but that’s not what I’ve said at all. But, cutting taxes for the wealthiest of Americans surely has done nothing to help the war effort either. The only thing Bush has done on the cheap is the investigation into the failures of 9/11 (a measly $7 million) and the funding for arts education in America. Ironically, the uncalculated increase in revenue that Bush so desperately needs is coming from taxes paid by the middle class and working poor. That almost sounds like it should belong in Bush’s moral values stump speech. After all, budgets are moral documents.

To the dismay of many good conservatives Bush has also increased the size of government more so than any president since FDR. If one considers smaller government much more responsive to the people then Bush is definitely not your man. The size of government also correlates with fiscal matters-- the larger the government the larger the expenses, and more taxpayer money going to fund bureaucracy. And I’m not just talking about Homeland Defense; I’m talking about the airline industry and the intelligence community, which still can’t seem to agree on which direction to go after 9/11. Don’t fiscal conservatives always say that throwing a bunch of money at a problem doesn’t solve anything?

Before Bush took office in 2001, he couldn’t name (much less pronounce) the names of leaders/dictators to some of the most important leaders/dictators on the world scene today. The one name Bush was sure of was Saddam Hussein. Call it a whim or vengeance, but the present situation in Iraq is the result of one of the most incoherent foreign policies in Western civilization. While Bush takes his third vacation of the year, hundreds of thousands of men and women are deployed, and some have been for years and onto their third tour, to somehow engage an enemy that gains strength from a vacationing president and a foreign policy that ignores friends and reality. Even with the deployment of our military, one of the most serious threats facing this country are our porous borders. Can any conservative agree with Bush’s policy on defending and securing our borders? How can the defense of your own backyard be anything but a conservative issue?