If You Are a True Conservative You Must Reject Bush

By William Hare

The word conservative is derived from conserve. To conserve is to behave prudently. In a political context the word conservative is linked to tradition, to move with caution, operating in lockstep with tried and true propositions and fundamental concepts whose validity have been proven over time.

This form of traditionalism has been jettisoned by the new wave of Bush so-called conservatives. Bush initially ran for the presidency touting himself as a “compassionate conservative.” This is done with the understanding that the word conservative in a current context, standing by itself, contains a negative connotation.

By adding the word “compassionate” voters are meant to receive a note of assurance that Bush is a leader who, while following conservative principles, does so with the interest of all the people, someone who is as concerned with what is happening in the lives of middle class citizens as with the wealthy. Bush’s record as a Texas governor and in four years in the Oval Office refutes the label and the presumptions Republicans hope the broadest number of Americans will attach to it.

Conservative Republicans were frequently known to use the term “pork barrel” over excessive expenditures they believed were outside the realm of prudence and were designed to curry favor with small groups of people at the expense of the greater number of Americans. If this term, odious in the eyes of traditional conservatives, does not apply to Bush than what does? In four years of office Bush has set a record by taking a healthy surplus provided by his predecessor Bill Clinton and left America $7.4 trillion dollars in debt by factoring in future accruals.

John Eisenhower, a retired general, Ambassador to Belgium and son to two term Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower, became so thoroughly disenchanted with the Bush Administration that he changed his registration from that of previously lifelong Republican to Independent and announced his intention to vote for John Kerry.

“The fact is that today’s ‘Republican’ Party is one with which I am totally unfamiliar,” Eisenhower explained. “To me, the word ‘Republican’ has always been synonymous with the word ‘responsibility,’ which has meant limiting our governmental obligations to those we can afford in human and financial terms. Today’s whopping budget deficit ... does not meet that criterion.”

Clyde Prestowitz was a former counselor to the Secretary of Commerce in the Reagan Administration. He refers to the conservative appellation the Bush Administration has applied to itself as “frankly Orwellian.” Asserting that conservatives “have always and everywhere believed in fiscal responsibility” Prestowitz puts the current White House occupant in a polar opposite context. “Conservatives pay down debt rather than adding to it,” Prestowitz exclaimed. He sees the Bush approach as “completely at odds with such thinking.”

The brilliant political thinker acknowledged to be the father of conservatism is Edmund Burke, who left his native Ireland as a young man to flourish in London as one of Britain’s leading social science theorists as well as a distinguished Member of Parliament. Burke’s political philosophy was buttressed on a foundation of evolutionary growth built on fundamental concepts that had endured for centuries.

When the American colonists’ stirrings toward independence were debated in Parliament Burke was sympathetic toward their objectives. When, a few years later, revolutionary stirrings were vociferously heard in France, Burke became concerned that the governmental change aspired to by the forces of what he believed were forces of radical rather than orderly transition, Burke felt compelled to address his concerns in the work for which he is best remembered, “Reflections on the Revolution in France.”

Burke in his masterful work warned about the dangers of overthrowing tradition and reverting to mob rule. The excesses of post-revolution France were captured in historical fiction by Charles Dickens in “A Tale of Two Cities.” Would Burke have approved the Bush rush to war on trumped up evidence excessively repeated for propaganda effect? Would he have considered the Cheney-Bush junta’s initiative as part of orderly tradition, as embodied in his definition of conservative thought?

John Eisenhower confronted the issue of the Bush Administration’s approach to foreign affairs. “Responsibility used to be observed in foreign affairs,” Eisenhower said. “That has meant respect for others. America, though recognized as the leader of the community of nations, has always acted as a part of it, not as a maverick separate from that community and at times insulting towards it. Leadership involves setting a direction and building consensus, not viewing other countries as practically devoid of significance. Recent developments indicate that the current Republican Party leadership has confused confident leadership with hubris and arrogance.”

Under Republican President Theodore Roosevelt and his innovative Secretary of the Interior Gifford Pinchot a vigilant conservation policy of preserving America’s natural beauty was enacted. Former Secretary of the Interior Morris Udall, who also served as a Democratic congressman from Arizona, decried recently the changes that have overcome Republicans in today’s Washington. “What could be more conservatism than conserving America’s wildlife, its parks, and its monuments?” Udall told Bill Moyers recently. “When I was in Washington Democrats and Republicans used to work together. Unfortunately that doesn’t happen anymore.”

George Bush adopted a shameful policy of allowing corporations to make arrangements through which they pay for the right to pollute the atmosphere. Meanwhile he proposes a Clear Skies initiative that embodies deceptive labeling, providing his major corporate contributors to pollute the skies while the Bush propaganda machine trumpets fictitious progress. Is this a traditional conservative posture?

The Republican Party used to proudly invoke the name of its first president, Abraham Lincoln. It is understandable why the term “Party of Lincoln” is no longer heard. The radical right that has taken over the Republican Party has used the race card shamelessly to divide Americans. George Bush was exploiting racial fear and division when gratuitously criticizing affirmative action in student the student selection process at the University of Michigan. He blatantly misrepresented the school’s point allocation system at a time when there was a divisive federal lawsuit was being litigated.

The Bush Faith Based Initiative has discriminated against Jewish and Muslim institutions, which have received no funding while racist and anti-Catholic Bob Jones University has received significant funding. This funding stands in violation of current civil rights laws.

President Eisenhower, a popular two-term president, is a name currently missing from the Republican lexicon. This is no surprise in view of his lacerating criticism of preventive war, a hallmark of the neoconservative doctrine propounded by Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, which they conveniently renamed “preemptive war,” which it is not and actually embodies self-defense. In Eisenhower’s memorable farewell address he warned about the “unwarranted influence of the military-industrial complex.”

Eisenhower’s warning applied to future tragic boondoggling such as Dick Cheney serving as a corporate shill for Halliburton, of which he was CEO prior to becoming vice president. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is now investigating Halliburton over the awarding of a no bid contract to provide a variety of services in Iraq.

The Cheney-Bush junta took advantage of a law enabling no bid contracts to be awarded under a “war emergency” exception that did not actually apply. Other companies sought to submit bids but never received the opportunity. Halliburton meanwhile jacked up the price of gas beyond that other companies were charging in Iraq while billing federal taxpayers for meals to service personnel that were never served.

A fundamental area where Bush egregiously broke his promise was when he stated frequently during the 2000 campaign and after assuming office that he would “change the climate of Washington” so that more cooperation and civility would reign. The sharply partisan House Majority Leader Tom DeLay introduces legislation without giving Democrats an opportunity to see it and confer with Republican members. This is the same Tom DeLay who, when shamelessly gerrymandering Texas congressional districts to his advantage, used the Department of Homeland Security to locate Texas Democratic legislators who fled the state to foil his Machiavellian designs.

Democrats and Republicans at one time cooperated on legislation in the public interest. President Eisenhower developed a positive working relationship with Texas Democrats Sam Rayburn, Speaker of the House, and Lyndon Johnson, then serving as Senate Majority Leader. When then President Johnson secured passage of the milestone 1964 Civil Rights Act it was with the cooperation of Republican Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen of Illinois.

In George Bush’s Washington intense political division sparked by his supporters has prevailed. Grover Norquist, a tax advocate on whom Bush closely relies for support, was asked what he thought about bipartisan cooperation. He referred to what was once a time-honored tradition as akin to “date rape.”

The conservative tradition established by Edmund Burke in England and carried forward in the latter half of the twentieth century by American political philosopher Russell Kirk rejected the “shot across the bow” antagonistic radical right wing agenda that highlights confrontation rather than discussion and negotiation advanced by angry partisans such as Karl Rove and Tom DeLay. Conservatives believe in paying as you go and eschew huge deficit accumulation. The prudence in economic issues extends to caution in foreign affairs as well. Preventive war is the antithesis of fundamental conservatism.

While it is certainly possible to vote for George Bush and call yourself a conservative, in reality you are trampling conservative doctrine and embracing a radical right wing fundamentalism that defies productive American tradition by breeding contempt domestically and in the world community of nations. If you fool anyone in this endeavor it will be yourself.

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