Originally posted by: Whoozyerdaddy
Originally posted by: Craig234
Originally posted by: Whoozyerdaddy
Originally posted by: Tab
Topic Title: Conservatives, I'd like a few moments of your time...
Topic Summary: Concerning Scott McClellan...
Why conservaties? Dubbya isn't a conservative. He isn't running a conservative administration. So why address this thread to conservatives?
Because the people who call themselves conservatives overwhelmingly supported George Bush for president.
Many have criticized him since, as I and others predicted.
Few have admitted personal error, ironically in contrast to conservative 'principles'.
In other words, you 'conservatives' have shown you are not to be trusted with the vote. You gave us Reagan, too, and you still even think he was good in many cases.
The rest of us are getting a bit sick of watching the right-wing corporatists get elected with their enablers who think they're 'conservatives' who then say "oh we didn't mean THAT".
Until you can realize you're being manipulated, just as the religious right is being manipulated (with their leaders often part of the problem), why are you complaining?
Let people who knew Bush was bad all along pick next time.
:shocked: Are you serious? Elitist much? Are you going to sit there and ignore all the nut-jobs that liberals have elected over the years to national public office?
Sure, conservatives were lured in by the whole conservative concept that Dubbya put forth. Yup.. we were fooled. I've said many times what a crap president he turned into. But given the alternative who else was a conservative going to vote for? It's not like people like you would ever vote for anyone who didn't sound off on
your ideals. His second election wasn't so much about conservatism as it was about that elitist goofball Kerry. I don't know if you can blame conservatives as a whole considering all the independents who had to vote for him to get him elected twice.
Reagan was a good president. AND he was not the product of conservatives alone. If you'll recall, he won two of the biggest landslide elections in US history. Ever heard of a Reagan Democrat? Conservatives didn't pick Reagan... Everyone picked Reagan.
It's not worth responding to a post that throws around the word 'elitist' for holding people accountable for making a disastrous choice for president.
IMO, liberals haven't ever elected or even nominated a 'nutjob' for president, while the Republicans repeatedly have. Below that office, you can find problematic people for both.
You talk about who conservatives could possibly have voted for given the choices, as if they *had* to choose the disaster who said a few things they like over Gore and Kerry. That's somewhat the problem you have, the fact that those voters were unable to see the fact that Gore and Kerry were far better choices because of their ideological blinders and inability to see Bush's using them for what it was.
I'll bet you can see it a lot more clearly when it comes to Bush's using the religious right; in exchange for his dropping a few code words in speeches and acting proud to be 'one of them' he got their rabid political support (with the wheels greased by some payola for the church leaders through 'faith-based' programs). But while you can see it more clearly with them, it's the same technique with 'conservatives'.
As for what kind of president Reagan was, he was terrible. He appointed evil, bad, and/or incompetent people who did bad things. The environment suffered under James Watt, our legal protections suffered under Edwin Meese, our foreign policy suffered under William Casey and others.
His presidency was responsible for the first skyrocketing deficits where apparent prosperity and therefore political popularity for the moment was charged on a credit card against the future financial health of the nation; his presidency set new lows in many ways for our nation partnering with the worst death squads and many terrorists in the world, from the nun-raping and murdering Arch-Bishop assassinating death squads who killed thousands of innocents in El Salvador (under the oversight of scumbag Eliot Abrams, who is now back in power under George Bush), to the terrorist army we formed, the contras, who regularly assassinated local leaders and such to pressure the citizens to vote out Noriega (the very definition of terrorism) - terrorists who Reagan had the unbelievable gall to say were "the moral equivalent of our founding fathers". He damaged unions, paving the way for a decline to the middle class. We need not even go much into his administration's illegal trading of arms through Israel (creating the power for Israel to blackmail us and at least make us owe them, and big surprise, there we were with US Marines helping them invade Lebanon, until he withdrew after the bomb which killed 249). But acts such as his unjustified invasion of Grenada simply over the fear that it would set an example to other southern nations that they had choices are further wrongs.
About the only things he had going for him were his dangerously innocent-appearing grandfatherly facade to his the terrible policies, and his keeping Paul Volcker in place.
I happen to think Reagan actually had some admirable personal qualities, but I can't extend the credit to his presidency, where they don't appear much.
Reagan was yet another of the misguided righties, whose entry into politics was primarily based on his resentment of the taxes he had to pay as a movie star, with his direct entry being the issue of his recording a speech album arguing against the creation of Medicare, an issue which John Kennedy supported, and won.
He became California's governor over one issue - the outstanding Pat Brown of Caligornia's golden age was against the death penalty, a dark side of the California voters.
Reagan was too short-sighted to see Gorbachev for what he was, a revolutionary Soviet leader who opened the door for historic progress, a door Reagan slammed in his face.
Gorbachev at the time said that Regan had lost a unique historic opportunity. He did. In the meantime, Gorbachev was the great leader of the era, peacefully ending the USSR.
When the US found out to its surprise what had happened, they raced to say Reagan did it. 'Didn't Reagan criticize communism? Ya, then he was behind its end!'
He was a disaster.
Edit: How did I forget to mention as I planned Reagan's making our relations closer to Saddam at the height of his human rights violations (the same ones Republicans cite to defend the Iraq war today), and his encouraging Iran to have an aggressive war against Iran, a very evil policy leading to the longest major war of the 20th century with schoolchildren gassed and a million casualties.