Bush garners unprecedented opposition from government & conservative ranks

[Boyo_Jim]

First there was former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

Then former anti-terrurism czar Richard Clarke.

John J. DiIulio Jr., former head of the president’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, is quote in Esquire as saying about the Bush White Hoyse, “What you got is everything, and I mean everything, being run by the political arm. It’s the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis.”

Conservative Congressman Bob Barr was quoted in the Washington Times as saying,

Kerry isn’t a supporter of terrorism any more than I am, just because we both raised some questions about whether some things in the Patriot Act go too far…
The Fourth Amendment is a nuisance to the administration, but the amendment protects citizens and legal immigrants from the government’s monitoring them whenever it wants, without good cause — and if that happens, it’s the end of personal liberty.

George Will hasn’t endorse Kerry, but he’s been pretty regular trashing the Administration’s policies toward Iraq.

Now comes a group of 26 former high ranking government officials who have banded together under the name “Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change” , and “will explicitly condemn Bush’s foreign policy, according to several of those who signed the document.” This from an LA Times article. By my count, at least 20 of the 26 served in Republican Administrations dating back to Nixon. They also don’t endorse Kerry, but they do endorse getting tid of Bush.

I’ve never seen anything like this, except in the final few months of the Nixon presidency.

I’m sure there are others bailing out that a brief Googling has not turned up.

[tremorviolet]

Shouldn’t this be in GD? Seriously, I wanna see the hard core right wingers responses to this. The administration’s rebuttal is just pathetic.

[Boyo_Jim]

@tremorviolet

Shouldn’t this be in GD? …

I hope not. I’m merly expressing my opinion, and I almost put it in MPSIMS. I stay away from GD, because by and large the people in there of any stripe forget that they are expressing opinions and not cold hard facts. That’s where the die-hards lurk, and I’m not one of them.

[TVeblen]

@Boyo Jim

I’ve never seen anything like this, except in the final few months of the Nixon presidency.

I can’t recall anything like this against an incumbent, one-term president during a campaign for reelection. Even if it’s just rumblings of moderate Republicans trying to take back their party this isn’t a bad thing at all.
Very interesting.

Veb

[tremorviolet]

@Boyo Jim

I hope not. I’m merly expressing my opinion, and I almost put it in MPSIMS. I stay away from GD, because by and large the people in there of any stripe forget that they are expressing opinions and not cold hard facts. That’s where the die-hards lurk, and I’m not one of them.

I’m not either but I find their responses interesting (I lurk in GD but don’t feel the need to post since there’s often not that much debate going on) since the hard-core will go to such extreme lengths to rationalize away anything that criticizes the current administration. And no one’s started a thread about this there yet. But surely it won’t be long…

[Boyo_Jim]

@TVeblen

I can’t recall anything like this against an incumbent, one-term president during a campaign for reelection. Even if it’s just rumblings of moderate Republicans trying to take back their party this isn’t a bad thing at all.
Very interesting.

Veb

Yes, I suppose my analogy wasn’t very appropriate, as Bush is apparently not on the fast track to impeachment.

Veb, if you feel that moving this to GD would liven things up, feel free to do so. All this time I’ve been here, I still can’t really get a grasp on the difference between the two, other than the stridence of the posters.

[TVeblen]

@Boyo Jim

Veb, if you feel that moving this to GD would liven things up, feel free to do so. All this time I’ve been here, I still can’t really get a grasp on the difference between the two, other than the stridence of the posters.

The line is blurry sometimes. By the forum description IMHO is the place for “frank exchanges of views on less-than-cosmic topics.” Ergo political threads really can fit in either place, depending on the tone they’re taking. (Personally I view most of politics as public theater, therefore often more comic than cosmic.)

Since this isn’t getting much activity here I’ll go ahead and move it to **Great Debates". Who knows, maybe the most rabid partisans on both sides will treat it gently. To live is to hope.

Movin’ it on over…

TVeblen

[BrainGlutton]

This is shaping up to be an election as close as 2000, and the bitterest, hottest election since 1968. Bush’s problem in this election is that Kerry is going to be able to count on the votes of practically all Democrats and practically all liberals and leftists. There’s the “We wuz robbed!” factor – they Dems are still smarting from the abominable outcome of the 2000 election. They’re not just out for victory, they’re out for revenge, and they are going to turn out for Kerry in unprecedented numbers. Nader is in the race but he is not going to play the role he played in 2000. In fact, he might actually steal votes away from Bush! (See the GD thread I just started: “Nader and Buchanan find common ground?” – http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=261070) Bush, on the other hand, is not going to be able to count on all the conservatives or even all the Republicans.

Some conservatives are fiscal conservatives. They will hate Bush because he has cut taxes, spent like a drunken Bonesman, and racked up the most whopping federal deficit since the Reagan Administration.

Some conservatives are isolationist conservatives. They will hate Bush because he has led us into an avoidable war, and a bloody and expensive post-war quagmire from which there is no obvious way we can extricate ourselves.

Some conservatives are states’-rights decentralists and government minimalists. They will hate Bush because he has only expanded the size and cost and power of the federal government.

Some conservatives are civil libertarians. They hate will Bush because of the PATRIOT Act and the Department of Homeland Security and Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and . . .

Some conservatives are anti-immigration nativists. They will hate Bush because he has amnestied millions of illegal-alien guestworkers.

Some conservatives are good-government moralists. They will hate Bush because he is a Goddamned stinking liar – even after his supposed conversion to Christ.

Some conservatives are militarists and/or military veterans. They will hate Bush because he is a draft-dodging coward – running against a genuine war hero.

In the final analysis, the only conservative constituencies Bush can really count on are the neoconservative foreign-policy warhawks and the social-religious conservatives. And some of the warhawks are also military veterans, and some of the religious conservatives are also fiscal conservatives, government minimalists, decentralists, isolationists, and/or nativists; Bush’s religiosity might not be enough to tilt the balance.

Bush is toast. May he be burnt toast.

[Apos]

Ah, but Bush has that all figured out. He’s apparently trying to encourage American bishops to deny communion to anyone that votes for Kerry. We’ve come a long way since when Kennedy had to claim that the Pope had no power over him to when the President tries to bully the Pope into campaigning for him.

[rjung]

Diebold, folks, Diebold. They’ll make the “retired Jewish ladies voting for Buchanan” in 2000 look like amateur hour by comparison.

[BobLibDem]

It’s the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis

God, I love that line!

I hope the conservatives do wrest control of the GOP from the neocons. It may take a humiliating defeat by GWB this year in order to accomplish that. But I think the nation was much better served by a Republican party that espoused fiscal restraint as opposed to the neocons who believe the only good deficit is a huge deficit. It was also better served by cool headed leaders that approached war as only a last resort and didn’t treat the armed forces as agents for their personal vendettas. Give us back the old Bob Dole- Richard Nixon- John McCain GOP and one of these days they may nominate someone I’d consider voting for.

[sqweels]

Quote:
It’s the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis

God, I love that line!

My new monniker for Bush is “Gilligan the Hun”.

[BrainGlutton]

@BobLibDem

God, I love that line!

I hope the conservatives do wrest control of the GOP from the neocons. It may take a humiliating defeat by GWB this year in order to accomplish that.

Better still the GOP should split into four parties: An enlarged Libertarian Party, a religious-right party (perhaps an enlarged Constitution Party), a Buchanan-style nativist paleoconservative party (the America First Party), and a remnant Republican Party which would be more purely (and more obviously) the party of big business and neocon foreign policy. Something for everyone.

[elucidator]

And this just in…

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040614/ap_on_el_pr/diplomats_letter_4

“Angered by Bush administration policies they contend endanger national security, 26 retired U.S. diplomats and military officers are urging Americans to vote President Bush out of office in November…”

“…Prominent members include retired Marine Gen. Joseph P. Hoar, commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East during the administration of Bush’s father; retired Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., ambassador to Britain under President Clinton and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Reagan; and Jack F. Matlock Jr., a member of the National Security Council under Reagan and ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987 to 1991.
“We agreed that we had just lost confidence in the ability of the Bush administration to advocate for American interests or to provide the kind of leadership that we think is essential,” said William C. Harrop, the first President Bush’s ambassador to Israel, and earlier to four African countries…”
Drip, drip, drip…

[BobLibDem]

@BrainGlutton

Better still the GOP should split into four parties: An enlarged Libertarian Party, a religious-right party (perhaps an enlarged Constitution Party), a Buchanan-style nativist paleoconservative party (the America First Party), and a remnant Republican Party which would be more purely (and more obviously) the party of big business and neocon foreign policy. Something for everyone.

Oh heavens to Betsy, that would be disaster! The result of that would be a Democratic super-majority in Congress and the White House. As much as I endorse Democratic ideology, this unfettered power would quickly corrupt the Democrats.

[BrainGlutton]

@BobLibDem

Oh heavens to Betsy, that would be disaster! The result of that would be a Democratic super-majority in Congress and the White House. As much as I endorse Democratic ideology, this unfettered power would quickly corrupt the Democrats.

Well, I think the Democrats should also split into four parties: A neoliberal party with ideology of Clinton and the DLC; a socially conservative, working-class populist party; a leftist social-democratic party; and an enlarged Green Party. Something for everyone.

[rjung]

Eight political parties? Scheduling the Presidential debates will be a major headache.

On the plus side, it’d make it darn near impossible for any one party to get a majority in Congress, which ought to help in making the politicians actually negotiate with each other.

@elucidator

“Angered by Bush administration policies they contend endanger national security, 26 retired U.S. diplomats and military officers are urging Americans to vote President Bush out of office in November…”

Carnak the Magnificent predicts that the Bush apologistas will spin this by saying Bush knows more than the diplomats and officers do. :rolleyes: He gives 2-1 odds that a line like “we’re living in a new, post-9/11 world” will be invoked in the defense.

[Zagadka]

Don’t forget, “he’s obviously just selling out and making it up.”

[tremorviolet]

@rjung

Carnak the Magnificent…gives 2-1 odds that a line like “we’re living in a new, post-9/11 world” will be invoked in the defense.

Wait, are we being whooshed? That’s exactly the line the neo-cons are taking:

A Bush administration ally said that the group failed to recognize how the Sept. 11 attacks required significant changes in American foreign policy. “There’s no question those who were responsible for policies pre-9/11 are denying what seems as the obvious — that those policies were inadequate,” said Cliff May, president of the conservative advocacy group Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

“This seems like a statement from 9/10 people [who don’t see] the importance of 9/11 and the way that should have changed our thinking.”

source page

[Boyo_Jim]

Here’s my fav quote from the group of 26:

“Our view is that the President Bush administration has chosen American domination of the world as in our best interest,” Harrop said.
“We don’t think that’s going to work.”