Chris from TwoBabes points out this posting from Glenn Greewald about the actual ideology of the Bush cheerleader crowd.We here at WMD are Bush supporters, but we're conservatives first and foremost. We've had our differences with the administration and say so when we think the President has gone off the reservation.
I'm not going to get in to a full blown analysis of the piece, but Greewald falls in to the trap that a lot of us do...he is looking at the world from a pre-9/11 viewpoint. For instance, his point about the FreeRepublic folks having an issue with Clinton using the FISA court to spy on American citizens. The problem that I have with this sort of "gotcha" is that we weren't fighting a war on Clinton's watch...our enemies were, but we weren't. And that isn't to say that I totally buy Greewald's (or Free Republic's for that matter) argument in regards to Clinton. If Clinton used the program to spy on American citizens who were communicating with an enemy of the state, then I really have no problem with that whatsoever. My problems with Clinton have nothing to do with this subject...
Back to the point...what is a conservative? Matt from Lincoln Logs and I were having this very discussion yesterday. I think there is room for discussion on the subject and I really think the time for such a discussion is now...
Mark's Remarks
I think the key issue here is laid out in Fred Barnes's book Rebel in Chief, which I really will get around to reviewing here on the site soon. In it, he notes that while Bush's goals are conservative, very often his methods are not. In fact, Barnes coins a term used sporadically to classify Bush as a Demand Side Conservative, as opposed to the Reagan/Friedman model of Supply Side conservative. Bush seeks to eliminate the demand for government and more programs through sweeping changes like Medicare, etc.,which in theory would achieve conservative goals in the long run; while the Supply side conservative tends to say, just get rid of the supply of government money, starve the government out of existence. I guess they are akin to the "feed a cold, starve a fever" debate. I think that is the key contention, and I would recommend Barnes's book to anyone trying to understand how Bush can call himself a conservative with some of the programs he is pitching. While I do not agree with a few of them, I can understand the modus operandi, even though I disagree with it.
