A Weblog of Centrist Voices in American Politics
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A Weblog of Centrist Voices in American Politics | |
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March 18, 2005Damn CentristsSome interesting discussion going on. Michele is having buyers remorse about supporting Bush
and Rox Populi picked up on this comment
but BOPnews says No. No. No. Enough with the damn "centrists". BOPnews is right to the extent that centrist means "wimp," someone who is too ready to compromise and is that always the loser in a negotiation. Centrists need to be willing to way away from the table when negotiating with those on the extreme. Posted by rickheller at March 18, 2005 08:13 PMComments
Rick: This is a bit off topic....sorry. But kudos to you for linking to female political bloggers. There seems to be this bizarre idea floating around that if one is female..one can't write political commentary worthy of being linked to. It's good to see that you disagree. Posted by: carla at March 18, 2005 09:52 PMWhat noninterventionist policies? Posted by: praktike at March 18, 2005 10:24 PMHoward Dean was a centrist governor and is a centrist Democrat now that he is running the DNC. Those people who chose to read the newspaper stories and listen to Rush rather than research Dean's policies during his 12 years as governor are misinformed. Governor Dean ran to the left in his presidential campaign but even so he continually spoke of balanced budgets and his 100% rating from the NRA to progressives who supported him. Many of his supporters may have been on the far left but he never was. The scream doesn't make him a liberal. Conservatives can scream too. :) Posted by: Mike at March 19, 2005 05:15 AMI don't know about buyer's remorse becaue I didn't think I was going to be pleased about everything Bush did after the election when I voted for him, but I definetely understand where Michele is coming from. IMO, we where going to be talking about security being the reason that Bush won the election, but the wing nuts are winning that argument and it has increased their political capitol. I also thought that the second term would be without Donald Rumsfeld which IMO would have been a good thing. I also agree with Michele on Social Security... I have gone from being a supporter of private accounts to a skeptic, and that is because of the approach that the administration has taken. I think David Posen is right... Private Acccounts are the "desert" and we have to fix the "spinach" first. Because of the administration's refusal to except alternatives that would increase revenue and avoid increasing the size of the deficit, and it's insistance on making private accounts the central theme of the debate, the issue has become increasingly polarized. It has occured to me that this is what they have wanted all along and it is also exactly how Bush won re-election, but even if if the strategy may still work in the short term, in the long term I agree with Chris Whitman that we are worse off, as is evident with what is currently going on with Medicare. Ditto on Iraq, also. The lack of any sign of an exit strategy is increasingly becoming depressing. Like Michele, I am not saying I would have voted for Kerry, but I am not feeling right now that the President had done anything since his re-election that has justified my vote. Posted by: Mathew at March 19, 2005 10:17 AMfrom BOPnews: If you want people to vote for you, it helps if they believe you're going to the mat on their behalf.. But they didn't "vote for you"!! So their plan is to get all the non-voters to vote because they lean democratic liberal. Is that the Dean strategy? Now didn't we have an INCREASED turnout this election and didn't the REPUBLICAN candidate get more votes overall and even increase his percentage among young voters (the one's who tend not to vote). This is a great strategy for the Republican party. Maybe BOPNews should change to GOPNews. BTW, I've noted a significant change in tone in GW on both the foreign and domestic fronts. (Starting to remind me a bit of his Dad but with the "vision thing") I've assumed it "maturity" and "legacy-seeking". I've certainly heard grumbling from the right about this change. And yet it seems to go unnoticed from the left. Just like the Republicans who couldn't see when Clinton did some "REpublican-like" things (e.g. "End welfare as we know it"). Posted by: c3 at March 19, 2005 01:10 PMI don't understand the noise about Dean as the DNC chair. He's been in the office for one month now and what major news has he made? I'll give you that I don't visit DNC site but he made more news campaigning for the office than he has since taking it. I think the Democrats played this perfectly. Instead of having Dean complaining about the DNC from the outside, they brought him inside the camp. He's now caged and quiet. Posted by: EG at March 19, 2005 01:53 PMEG; He's now caged and quiet. An interesting description of a national party chair. Posted by: c3 at March 19, 2005 04:27 PM "Caged and quiet" I love it! Actually, I guess I'm one of those that thought Howard Dean brought more to the debate than John Kerry. I'm not saying that from the Tom DeLay side of the Republican Party either...I truly think a race between Bush and Dean might have been more interesting. Yes, the guy may have gone a little bonkers for a few weeks there, but it's not fair to judge someone's entire political career on one scream. I guess I don't have buyer's remorse. I voted for Bush because I thought he was the most qualified of the two. I didn't like him. I don't support all of his policies, but I would rather have had him that John Kerry. By the way, I considered voting for Kerry, but I just can't support someone who can't make up their mind exactly what they believe in. That bothered me about Kerry. Posted by: AH at March 19, 2005 05:28 PMThe obvious: to the partisans and wingers, it's not about good government, or the greater good. Not even remotely. It's about winning at any cost. For us or against us. You're either one of Us or one of Them. And unless you toe the party line, you're one of Them. Dissent is verboten. Heretic burnings held nightly, twice on Sundays with the matinee. To centrists, we're all Us. Even Them. :-) Posted by: Tully at March 19, 2005 06:50 PMTully, You said it perfectly. I guess that's what really distinguishes us on this board...no one is calling anyone "un-American" or "commie", etc because of a differing opinion. They may be a "snake in the grass", but they are still American...lol. Posted by: AH at March 19, 2005 07:20 PMIlyka was absolutely right. Unfortunately we had no choice but vote for Bush. If Bush fucks up the economy we will survive. We have lived through economic downturn before. President Kerry would have gone soft on terrorism/Iraq. That would mean the end. 2004 was a no-brainer—hold your nose and vote Bush, hope for better choices next time. Posted by: Alf at March 20, 2005 01:30 PMhold your nose and vote XXXX, hope for better choices next time The story of my career as a voter. Applying your finger to your nose while voting is also known as "picking a winner." Posted by: Tully at March 20, 2005 01:38 PMKerry would have gone soft on terrorism? Gawd. It's statements like that which verify for me that so many Bush voters are stupid. Yeah...beat me...hurt me...make me feel like a female blogger. But it's true. Posted by: carla at March 21, 2005 01:36 AMKerry would have gone soft because he has no principles other than self aggrandizement. He would have caved to the Deaniac faction which would have lead to a weaker America. Posted by: Alf at March 21, 2005 07:21 AMIt astonishes me to no end the sorts of assumptions people are willing to make about future behavior based on rhetoric. I know I'm in a small minority, but I don't think our foreign policy behavior would have been much different had Kerry won, although his rhetoric would have different in some instances. Notably, Victor Davis Hansen spoke at length making this case. (Sorry, I don't have a cite, but I'm near certain it was him...) First, most of Kerry's rhetorical prescriptions about what to do regarding Iraq were practically identical to what we were already doing anyway. And during the campaign, this was a criticism of Kerry that came from the right! 2nd, and more important, any President's actions are usually constained by circumstances. During the campaign, many on the left suggested Bush would continue on a rampage of additional imperial invasions. This never seemed especially likely to me due to our obviously finite military resources, and it doesn't seem likely now. So all along, I've expected that regardless of who won, we'd get "stay the course in Iraq, no new invasions" foreign policy. The only difference would have been in the speeches. Posted by: bk at March 21, 2005 09:46 AMActually, I based my opinion of Kerry on his 20 years in the senate. Look at the record. This is not a man we want at the switch. Posted by: Alf at March 21, 2005 12:29 PMAlf: If you're seriously basing your opinion on Kerry's Senate record...then you should know he would have taken the national security of the United States extremely seriously. And frankly he could do no worse than Bush has. The one thing Kerry articulated that he would do differently is work toward a more open foreign policy to engage our allies rather than give them the finger, as Bush had done in his previous four years. And what's Bush been up to lately besides cutting brush in Crawford and sticking his nose into the Schiavo case? Running around Europe making nice with allies he'd formally been flipping off. If you voted for Bush because you think that Kerry would have been soft on National Security...my diagnosis as given several comments above stands.
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