Which Republican Group will have the best/worst showing for George Bush. Who will punish him and who will reward him for his policies.
1. anti-government conservatives
2. social conservatives
3. neoconservatives idealists
4. Buchananite Paleoconservatives
5. libertarians
6. pragmatic Nelson Rockefeller-style Internationalists
and for what reason
1. Bush increased Government size and spending
2. Bush tainted the America's international Reputation
3. To create Gridlock between Congress and President
4. To allow the Republican Party to regenerate and come back stronger than ever
5. To set up Bill Owens and/or other Republican for a stronger (Reagan-esqe) Presidency from 2008 through 2020
I don't believe the GOP exists in those categories, so I will say no more about them.
1. Undeniable. If Bush were clever, he'd campaign on how much he will shrink government expenditure to the levels that current revenues allow.
But the more I consider it, the more I realize that Issue 1 is merely a red herring. Big government left-wingers care about Bush's spending increases only insofar as Bush funds the 'wrong kinds' of prescription drug coverage, educational reforms, etc.
What the Democrat left doesn't like to tell is this: for every piece of budget-inflating social legislation Bush has signed, congressional Democrats wanted to spend
billions more.
When a Democrat left-winger speaks of himself as a 'fiscal conservative', he means to increase corporate and all brackets of personal income taxes to cover some of the costs of whatever scheme he's concocted.
2. No real Republican cares about what the French think of this country. "The UN out of the US" is much more popular among real life Republicans.
3. Important to a few Ron Paul-type ideologues, unimportant to the rest, especially now that the US is engaged in a War on Terror.
4. Political parties aren't starfish, or guppies, or any other creature meant to continually lose limbs to a predator. They are hierarchical organizations that place members thereof into positions of governmental authority. The sole pupose of a political party is to WIN ELECTIONS. This goes for any party, not just the GOP.
5. Only the fool thinks that by sabotaging the current leadership, some other 'more perfect' leadership will arise later. The Democrats didn't sacrifice Clinton in 1998; The GOP, against your hope, will not sacrifice George Bush in 2004.
