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Today, Antle and Continetti open their weeklong debate with a discussion of the president's fiscal policy. Later in the week, they'll discuss foreign interventionism, the religious right and more.
Matthew,
Bob Dylan sang to an ex-lover, "I ain't sayin' you treated me unkind/You could have done better but I don't mind/You just kinda wasted my precious time." The poet laureate of the right's least favorite decade could have written similar words about conservatives' unrequited love for George W. Bush. The president's second term has been a domestic-policy bust.
At least in the first term we got tax cuts (set to expire in 2011, by which time we'll either have a president who voted against them or has campaigned on repealing them) and some modest but real pro-life achievements, especially the ethically defensible line Bush drew on taxpayer-funded embryonic stem cell research (which the next president will likely favor crossing). That gave us something to balance against the largest new entitlement since the Great Society, a bigger increase in discretionary spending than LBJ, No Child Left Behind, Sarbanes-Oxley, the highway bill, the farm bill and the earmarks explosion.
The second term has been even worse. Social Security reform, which would have more than made up for Bush's spending sins, was last seen on the bridge to nowhere. Tax reform didn't even make it that far. Bush blew his vaunted political capital on "comprehensive" immigration legislation and Harriet Miers. Thus, conservatives scored two victories fighting against Bush.
Bush deserves credit for putting John G. Roberts Jr. and Samuel A. Alito Jr. on the Supreme Court (even if he might have preferred Miers and former U.S. Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales). Most of his lower-court appointments have also been stellar. Conservatives can look back wistfully and say, "At least we'll always have judges."
Having finally discovered his veto pen, Bush could have picked a big fight with the Democrats on spending. Instead, he proposed the first $3-trillion federal budget just five years after submitting the first $2-trillion budget. He has no more space for recess appointments that will excite the right. There isn't much left to do besides beat the Democrats in their FISA game of chicken and run out the clock. We can't even look forward to the end of his presidency, because his successor will likely be worse.
Things could have been different. The idea behind big government conservatism was supposed to be that we'd get some reforms in exchange for all this new spending. But school choice mostly dropped out of No Child Left Behind. We got a limited expansion of health savings accounts to wash down that huge prescription drug benefit. Now we're a day late and trillions of dollars short.
We got the big government. So where's the conservatism?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind.
Jim
W. James Antle III is associate editor of the American Spectator.
James,
For the sake of argument, I am going to try to defend the Bush administration's domestic record from a conservative standpoint. As your post makes clear, this is no easy task. But why not try anyway?
The $3-trillion president
Matthew,
Bob Dylan sang to an ex-lover, "I ain't sayin' you treated me unkind/You could have done better but I don't mind/You just kinda wasted my precious time." The poet laureate of the right's least favorite decade could have written similar words about conservatives' unrequited love for George W. Bush. The president's second term has been a domestic-policy bust.
At least in the first term we got tax cuts (set to expire in 2011, by which time we'll either have a president who voted against them or has campaigned on repealing them) and some modest but real pro-life achievements, especially the ethically defensible line Bush drew on taxpayer-funded embryonic stem cell research (which the next president will likely favor crossing). That gave us something to balance against the largest new entitlement since the Great Society, a bigger increase in discretionary spending than LBJ, No Child Left Behind, Sarbanes-Oxley, the highway bill, the farm bill and the earmarks explosion.
The second term has been even worse. Social Security reform, which would have more than made up for Bush's spending sins, was last seen on the bridge to nowhere. Tax reform didn't even make it that far. Bush blew his vaunted political capital on "comprehensive" immigration legislation and Harriet Miers. Thus, conservatives scored two victories fighting against Bush.
Bush deserves credit for putting John G. Roberts Jr. and Samuel A. Alito Jr. on the Supreme Court (even if he might have preferred Miers and former U.S. Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales). Most of his lower-court appointments have also been stellar. Conservatives can look back wistfully and say, "At least we'll always have judges."
Having finally discovered his veto pen, Bush could have picked a big fight with the Democrats on spending. Instead, he proposed the first $3-trillion federal budget just five years after submitting the first $2-trillion budget. He has no more space for recess appointments that will excite the right. There isn't much left to do besides beat the Democrats in their FISA game of chicken and run out the clock. We can't even look forward to the end of his presidency, because his successor will likely be worse.
Things could have been different. The idea behind big government conservatism was supposed to be that we'd get some reforms in exchange for all this new spending. But school choice mostly dropped out of No Child Left Behind. We got a limited expansion of health savings accounts to wash down that huge prescription drug benefit. Now we're a day late and trillions of dollars short.
We got the big government. So where's the conservatism?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind.
Jim
W. James Antle III is associate editor of the American Spectator.
Is anyone a 'real' conservative?
James,
For the sake of argument, I am going to try to defend the Bush administration's domestic record from a conservative standpoint. As your post makes clear, this is no easy task. But why not try anyway?
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