Yep… centrist driven by political expediency and pragmatism. Not that there’s anything wrong with it. But no libertarian. He might “lean” libertarian relative to the late Paul Wellstone, but that is pretty meaningless.
I just can’t let this go without comment. I am only familiar with W’s medicare prescription drug plan, and then only peripherially, but I perceive the criticisms of it to be that it is a boon to big Pharma – not the little guy. Now, as the son of a left leaning college educator with a lot at stake in the NCLB debate, I can say that, although federal funds for education are appreciated, W’s proposed method of doling them out is widely panned as faulty and poorly conceived. If a liberal president were to increase the defense budget for the armed service by pinning the amount of funds recevied for each platoon on performance in PT tests, it wouldn’t be fitting to call his defense spending somtething that should make conservatives “quite happy.” What of this and Clinton? Only to point out that Clinton probably offered a lot more to Republicans and conservatives than W offers to liberals and Democrats.
No, it’s a massive expansion of an entitlement program. That’s something straight out of the Democratic playbook.
The NCLB Act was mainly written by Ted Kennedy, so I don’t think you can accuraely say it’s “W’s proposed method.” If anything, it’s “W and Ted Kennedy’s proposed method.”
Perhaps, but this may have more to do with the fact that Clinton was dealing with a Congress controlled by the opposition party. Up until earlier this month, Bush was not. However, the things he has done in education, Medicare, and government spending were much more liberal than conservative. The only other major thing he has done (cut taxes) was conservative, I’ll grant you.
Despite Renob’s response (which wasn’t much of one, frankly), I think whole bean got it exactly right. Bush’s policies are more of a caricature of liberal programs than actual ones. The new Medicare drug entitlement was just a giveaway to Big Pharma…poorly conceived and essentially designed to aid in the general plan to try to force senior citizens off of the public part of Medicare into the private insurance plans (which, by the way, are apparently considerably less efficient). See here. (Disclaimer: the author is a 2nd cousin…or something like that…of mine.)
Shagnasty:
I would dearly love to see what kind of cite you can pull out for this ridiculous assertion.
Yes, because whole bean gave so much more analysis than I did. :rolleyes:
I’ll admit they are a hybrid of liberal ideas and some conservative ones. However, the idea of expanding an entitlement program is certainly not conservative. The idea that the federal government would take on yet another obligation to our seniors is not conservative. Liberals may quibble with how it was designed, but the idea behind it is a liberal one, not conservative.
Was I the only one lucid in the early 1990’s? I was in college but I was neutral on Clinton even though I got to meet him at a speech twice in a few hours. Hillary was promoted for a time as Bill’s co-president. It wasn’t a one-time or subtle thing so I feel a little odd digging up a cite on demand for someone who somehow missed the whole phenomenon.
Nevertheless, here is an article about Hillary in Mother Jones that has such a quote. You can google the rest for yourself because this is silly.
“The source of the strong feelings goes all the way back to when we were introduced to her as Bill Clinton’s copresident,” says Nora Bredes, director of the Susan B. Anthony Center for Women’s Leadership in Rochester, New York.
It was mentioned, although I think not “heavily”. Link
I guess it was the “when he first got into office” that I was really skeptical about. I can see him saying something along those lines early on the campaign trial to demonstrate, I dunno, how strong he was on women’s issues. But there’s no way he said anything remotely like that while he was President…or at least I’d be shocked if he did.