|
Reader's Favorites
Media Casualties Mount Administration Split On Europe Invasion Administration In Crisis Over Burgeoning Quagmire Congress Concerned About Diversion From War On Japan Pot, Kettle On Line Two... Allies Seize Paris The Natural Gore Book Sales Tank, Supporters Claim Unfair Tactics Satan Files Lack Of Defamation Suit Why This Blog Bores People With Space Stuff A New Beginning My Hit Parade
Instapundit (Glenn Reynolds) Tim Blair James Lileks Bleats Virginia Postrel Kausfiles Winds Of Change (Joe Katzman) Little Green Footballs (Charles Johnson) Samizdata Eject Eject Eject (Bill Whittle) Space Alan Boyle (MSNBC) Space Politics (Jeff Foust) Space Transport News (Clark Lindsey) NASA Watch NASA Space Flight Hobby Space A Voyage To Arcturus (Jay Manifold) Dispatches From The Final Frontier (Michael Belfiore) Personal Spaceflight (Jeff Foust) Mars Blog The Flame Trench (Florida Today) Space Cynic Rocket Forge (Michael Mealing) COTS Watch (Michael Mealing) Curmudgeon's Corner (Mark Whittington) Selenian Boondocks Tales of the Heliosphere Out Of The Cradle Space For Commerce (Brian Dunbar) True Anomaly Kevin Parkin The Speculist (Phil Bowermaster) Spacecraft (Chris Hall) Space Pragmatism (Dan Schrimpsher) Eternal Golden Braid (Fred Kiesche) Carried Away (Dan Schmelzer) Laughing Wolf (C. Blake Powers) Chair Force Engineer (Air Force Procurement) Spacearium Saturn Follies JesusPhreaks (Scott Bell) Science
Nanobot (Howard Lovy) Lagniappe (Derek Lowe) Geek Press (Paul Hsieh) Gene Expression Carl Zimmer Redwood Dragon (Dave Trowbridge) Charles Murtaugh Turned Up To Eleven (Paul Orwin) Cowlix (Wes Cowley) Quark Soup (Dave Appell) Economics/Finance
Assymetrical Information (Jane Galt and Mindles H. Dreck) Marginal Revolution (Tyler Cowen et al) Man Without Qualities (Robert Musil) Knowledge Problem (Lynne Kiesling) Journoblogs The Ombudsgod Cut On The Bias (Susanna Cornett) Joanne Jacobs The Funny Pages
Cox & Forkum Day By Day Iowahawk Happy Fun Pundit Jim Treacher IMAO The Onion Amish Tech Support (Lawrence Simon) Scrapple Face (Scott Ott) Regular Reading
Quasipundit (Adragna & Vehrs) England's Sword (Iain Murray) Daily Pundit (Bill Quick) Pejman Pundit Daimnation! (Damian Penny) Aspara Girl Flit Z+ Blog (Andrew Zolli) Matt Welch Ken Layne The Kolkata Libertarian Midwest Conservative Journal Protein Wisdom (Jeff Goldstein et al) Dean's World (Dean Esmay) Yippee-Ki-Yay (Kevin McGehee) Vodka Pundit Richard Bennett Spleenville (Andrea Harris) Random Jottings (John Weidner) Natalie Solent On the Third Hand (Kathy Kinsley, Bellicose Woman) Patrick Ruffini Inappropriate Response (Moira Breen) Jerry Pournelle Other Worthy Weblogs
Ain't No Bad Dude (Brian Linse) Airstrip One A libertarian reads the papers Andrew Olmsted Anna Franco Review Ben Kepple's Daily Rant Bjorn Staerk Bitter Girl Catallaxy Files Dawson.com Dodgeblog Dropscan (Shiloh Bucher) End the War on Freedom Fevered Rants Fredrik Norman Heretical Ideas Ideas etc Insolvent Republic of Blogistan James Reuben Haney Libertarian Rant Matthew Edgar Mind over what matters Muslimpundit Page Fault Interrupt Photodude Privacy Digest Quare Rantburg Recovering Liberal Sand In The Gears(Anthony Woodlief) Sgt. Stryker The Blogs of War The Fly Bottle The Illuminated Donkey Unqualified Offerings What she really thinks Where HipHop & Libertarianism Meet Zem : blog Space Policy Links
Space Future The Space Review The Space Show Space Frontier Foundation Space Policy Digest BBS AWOL
USS Clueless (Steven Den Beste) Media Minder Unremitting Verse (Will Warren) World View (Brink Lindsay) The Last Page More Than Zero (Andrew Hofer) Pathetic Earthlings (Andrew Lloyd) Spaceship Summer (Derek Lyons) The New Space Age (Rob Wilson) Rocketman (Mark Oakley) Mazoo Site designed by Powered by Movable Type |
Huh? Bill Kristol has an interesting, but to me an ahistorical piece in the latest Weekly Standard on how the Bush administration must somehow "return" to its first-term partisan roots: ...contrary to the media myth that Bush has been uncompromising and ideological, the strategy that the president has pursued for most of 2005 has been an attempt at accommodation. It has reflected a hope that he could move beyond the polarization of the 2004 campaign and appeal to the middle. It's understandable that Bush would be tempted by such a strategy: Who wants to go down in history as a polarizing president? But the strategy has been a mistake. "...for most of 2005"? I have to ask--on what planet was he during the first Bush term? Bush has been kissing up to the mushy middle since his first presidential campaign, when he proclaimed himself a "compassionate" (read, big-government) conservative. He led a politically-correct war on "terror," in which he refused, until recently, to even recognize it as a war against radical Islamists. He has retained Norm Mineta at the Department of Transportation, who continues to fight sensible airline security policy, waging guerilla bureaucratic warfare against armed pilots, refusing to profile, and perpetuating idiotic confiscations of nose-hair trimmers. He tried to buy the union vote with the steel tariffs, in defiance of free-market principles and against the interests of manufacturers of items with steel content, and the consumers who purchase them. His administration has been weak on the Second Amendment, and even weaker on the First, with his signing of a campaign-finance bill that he said prior to the act was unconstutional, thus being derelict in his duty to defend the Constitution, all to placate the so-called "moderates" and McCain wing of both the Republican and Democrat parties. Between the 2000 election and the 2004 election, Rove became the master of polarization politics. And now, with this year's ill-fated experiment in trying to govern from the middle surely over, polarization along ideological and party lines is a fact of life. Ethics classes won't ameliorate Democratic hostility to Bush. Nor will firing Rove. Nor will keeping a politically correct transportation secretary, or saying that "when someone hurts, the government has to move," or expanding entitlement programs, or nominating cronies without a paper trail to the Supreme Court, or completely dismantling the notion that the Republican Party has any further interest in smaller government. But these are not new--they've been going on since the campaign in 2000. The notion that Bush has ever been some kind of extreme right-wing conservative is laughable to anyone but the hard left (whose views, sadly, have permeated the media). If Bill Kristol's advice is for him to become more of a Reagan conservative, it's good advice, but it's advice that he needed five years ago. Posted by Rand Simberg at November 08, 2005 04:28 AMTrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.transterrestrial.com/mt-diagnostics.cgi/4470 Listed below are links to weblogs that reference this post from Transterrestrial Musings.
Comments
W has always been the best choice between two unimpressive candidates. This includes his time running for Governor. The greatest fear I have is that the Republican Party will prop up another like him for 2008 and to add insult, the Democrats will prop up Hillary. (I'm still shocked at reading Bubba's History and discoverying people actually believe him and his wife). Posted by Leland at November 8, 2005 07:53 AMHe led a politically-correct war on "terror," in which he refused, until recently, to even recognize it as a war against radical Islamists. Well, I don't think that's really true. Bush hasn't talked about it being a war against radical Islamists, of course. But starting with Afghanistan, and then Iraq - stragetically right in the middle of the Islamist bloc - well, it sure looks like he recognizes the war is against radical Islamism to me, and has since very early in the war (if not from day one, or at least whenever the first intelligence as to the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks came in). Posted by Sigivald at November 8, 2005 10:07 AMPerhaps I should have said "publicly acknowledge," rather than "recognize." Posted by Rand Simberg at November 8, 2005 10:24 AMI realized that Norman Mineta was a scum when San Jose airport was renamed "Mineta International". I did not expect to see such braze ass-licking in my lifetime. In Soviet Russia it passed away when their last brutal dictator died in 1953. They did not have any airports named after Khrushchev or Brezhnev. Can you imagine communists having more human decency than Mr. Mineta? And don't give me bullshit that he was unable to put a damper on spontaneous expressions of citizens' enthusiasm for his glorious leadership. SJC management renamed the place precisely because Mineta approved such displays of affections. A year before that, I heard a panel with Jane Garvey on the radio. She was just incredible, inserting "as Secretary Mineta said..." in every other sentence. The woman was the head of FAA, and she had no responsibility _whatsoever_. How can you run a whole agency without making any decisions? Way to surround himself with henchmen. He ran the DOT as if it was the government of North Korea. Post a comment |