Bush as Nixon

[ilpostino]

DAILY EXPRESS
Domestic Disturbance
by Reihan Salam


Printer friendly

Only at TNR Online | Post date 07.28.03
E-mail this article

The Bush administration has frequently been described as "more Reagan than Reagan," whether as fulsome praise or as fiery condemnation. Both men are unapologetic conservatives and both are best known for championing an assertive American role in the world, a position Bush came to relatively late in the day and that Reagan had held from the start of his political career. Still, the comparison is misleading. If anything, Bush is more Nixon than Reagan--not because of allegations of deceit, but because Bush, like Nixon, increasingly uses his foreign policy as a weapon in the domestic culture war.

more...

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=express&s=salam072803

[Itascapark]

1. I'm sorry but

that's an insult to Nixon.

[JackSwift]

2. And an insult to Reagan

who was in fact a compassionate conservative. When Reagan heard that the super rich were paying no taxes after his tax cuts, he pushed through the alternative minimum tax, the bane of wealthy conservatives to this day. Reagan could and did actually meet and hear about little people and feel something, although he rarely did anything more than for just that one person. I don't mean to apologize for Reagan's generally conservative policies, but it is unfair to him to compare the Shrub to him.

The Shrub, on the other hand, claims to be a "compassionate conservative", but doesn't meet with anyone who doesn't agree with him, doesn't do anything for poor people except shift the debt burden to them, send them to die for oil, etc. They guy is a malignant narcissist.

[Kahuna]

3. Compassionate conservatives don't kick people off of..

disability and kick them out of mental institutions. Thereby, increasing homelessness to all time high levels. They also don't cut lunches for poor school children.

[JackSwift]

4. Okay

there isn't a such thing as a compassionate conservative in America, but Reagan was far closer than the sociopath Bush

[mndemocrat_29]

5. Bush

I cannot defend the actions of past presidents like Reagan and Nixon (along with Republicans like Bush's father or Gerald Ford), but put any of them on a ballot with Shrub and I'll pretty much pick anybody over our current president.

(Though our Democracy has really run afoul when I have to chose between Reagan and Bush. Nightmares!)

[diamond14]

6. reagun tauted 'ketsup' as 'vegetables' for kids school lunches

the minimum school lunch requirements include a 'vegetable', and reagun said it was OK to use 'ketsup' to fill that requirement, thereby earning his "Cheap-labor conservatives" kids'lunch contractors BIGGER money at kids nutritional expense...

'Cheap-labor Conservative' reagun had more than 100 of his staff indicted and convicted for criminal conduct...including major scandals in stealing government money intended to provide assistance to kid's lunches, housing, education, the mentally ill, the sick.

reagun fired all the air traffic controllers who had diabetes, in one executive order...reagun just suddenly decided that people with disabilities were unsafe...he personnaly made certain that nobody with a disability could work in the federal government, rolling through it, firing scientists, industrial hygienists, engineers, and just about everyone he could find under his "they're not safe" idea...it took years of lawsuits to return the people with diabetes to air traffic towers and other people with diabilities to their jobs...sadly many good experienced (and safe) people simply left...it was reagun's viciousness toward those least able to defend themselves that led to the Americans with Disabilities Act...

the whole flood of our defense dollars into the corrupt defense contractors pocket (who charge hundreds of dollars for simple tools that you can buy for a few bucks at home depot)...this all started under reagun...and they honed their skills in coups, money and drug connections, and selling of arms to third-world countries...turning our defense into one of the most obscence, self-promulgating machines of insane death and destruction for profit world-wide...it's called 'defense' but we are no longer doing that...that's just the title of the biggest most profitable private contractors in world history...selling death for big corporate profits...and doing nothing to defend us on 9/11 or now...

the only reason that bush* cabal is still out of jail: the 'cheney' policy of "no release of any government documents", stonewall it forever if asked. Those little 'freedom of information' requests turn up their crimes...

[ilpostino]

7. Correction

The releasing of mental patients in California was a joint effort by Reagan on the Right and individual rights advocates on the Left who felt people who were harmless were virtually being incarcerated against their will.