[quote]Charlie wrote:
To address a point that was raised earlier.
Yes Bush won by the greatest number of votes ever cast for an incumbent. Those are just raw numbers. If looked at in terms of percentages, it was only a 3% margin, the narrowest margin ever (hell even Truman who was totally written off won by 5%). Bush won because the Democrats (Bless their leftist instincts) abandoned the middle of the political spectrum. That is where most of the American voting public lives.
It afforded the Religious Right the opportunity have their numbers count. But I suspect that if Bush had truly been more in line with the traditional Republican Philosophy, the margin would have been much greater.[/quote]
This was an extremely good post up until this point. But I don’t see how the next point fits.
[quote]Charlie wrote:
At the convention before the last election, Bush trotted out all the moderates of the party (Guiliani, Pataki, Schwartzenegger) and got an immediate 11 point bounce. That part of the party resonates with the moderate voter. [/quote]
These guys are moderates who represent smaller government? Schwarzenegger was, but since his ill-conceived ballot initiatives he has retreated a lot from his fiscal conservatism, which leaves him as neither fiscally nor socially conservative. Pataki hasn’t ever been a fiscal conservative that I can recall. Perhaps Giuliani was as compared to his predecessor and successor in the mayor’s office, but given that comparison it’s no slam dunk, and I don’t recall him forcefully taking a position on fiscal issues – he’s a law-and-order conservative, with a liberal view of other social issues.
What Bush did was trot out Schwarzenegger and Giuliani, who are popular for individual reasons (I don’t think Pataki was part of the equation) nationally. It also gave the Republicans more of a “big tent” look in terms of social issues, precisely because they are more liberal on social issues.
Did anyone get on the stage advocating cutting pork or non-defense government expenditures? Maybe I missed that part.
[quote]Charlie wrote:
I believe in a smaller government, fiscal responsibility (balanced budgets), keeping taxes down and staying out of peoples private lives. These are the traditional values of the Republican Party. These resonate with the moderate voter which happens to be a rather large pool of voters.
Bush believes in none of these and he scares the hell out of me. [/quote]
I agree with most of this, though a few nits. I don’t think you can argue that Bush hasn’t been for keeping taxes down, even if you are of the opinion it’s not sustainable – the spending side of the equation is the problem.
Secondly, the Republican party hasn’t necessarily been for keeping the government out of people’s private lives – that’s a traditional dividing line in the party actually, with the libertarian-leaning Republicans differing from the social-conservatives on many issues – say, for instance, drug laws.
Where I think Bush II had truly screwed the pooch, as they say, is in growing government and giving in to increased government spending in order to buy votes as a “compassionate conservative.” Apparently compassionate means spendthrift.
