What’s Going on with Right Wingers?
There’s something remarkable going on in the “true” conservative wing of the Republican party, and not many are paying attention.
Here are some notable developments of late: President Eisenhower’s son endorsed Mr. Kerry; Mr. Patrick Buchanan, in his latest book, essentially argues that the Republican party has been hijacked; and now, Mr. Bob Barr, of Clinton Impeachment fame, is debating whom he’ll vote for in the upcoming election:
“Now we have the election of 2004. For the first time in my voting life, the choice in the race for president isn’t so clear And, among true conservatives, I’m not alone.
What’s making the contest so difficult? It’s certainly not that both candidates are so conservative that we have a choice of riches. It’s not even that John Kerry is sort of right wing compared to George W. Bush. The incumbent clearly is the more “conservative” of the two.
But the concerns for many conservative voters — concerns that may cause them not to vote for Mr. Bush on Nov. 2 — fall generally into three categories: fiscal, physical (as in the physical security of our nation) and freedom (as in protecting our civil liberties).
When Bush became president Jan. 20, 2001, he inherited an enviable fiscal situation. Congress, then controlled by his own party, had — through discipline and tough votes — whittled down decades of deficit spending under presidents of both parties, so that annual deficits of hundreds of billions of dollars had been transformed to a series of real and projected surpluses. The heavy lifting had been done. All Bush had to do was resist the urge to spend, and he had to exert some pressure on Congress to resist its natural impulses to do the same. Had he done that, he might have gone down in history as the most fiscally conservative president in modern times.”
[...]
“The oft-repeated mantra that “the terrorists made us spend more” rings hollow, especially to those who actually understand that increases in nondefense discretionary spending are not the inevitable result of fighting terrorists. It also irritates many conservatives, whether or not they support the war in Iraq, that so much of defense spending is being poured into the black hole of Iraq’s internal security, while the security of our own borders goes wanting.” [October 12, 2004]
Mr. Barr concludes with:
“Hmmm. Who’s the Libertarian candidate again?”
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You may read the full post at: http://www.bobbarr.org/default.asp?pt=newsdescr&RI=564
