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September 10, 2008
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It’s an amazing phenomenon. If you have
spent any time talking to Republicans over the past year, you likely
noticed something. Former Bush supporters now hate George W. Bush.
But that's not what's amazing.
What's amazing is this: they have turned against George W.
Bush, but they haven’t even considered turning against the
conservative agenda he implemented. This is because – as we saw
clearly at the GOP Convention, and has been voiced by McCain’s
advisors – with Republicans, everything is personal.
So far, Barack Obama has tried to play
on that by tying John McCain to the unpopular Bush. But in doing
so, Obama set himself up with a bit of a problem – what if people
decide John McCain isn’t President Bush.
What the Obama camp has meant to say,
but for some reason avoided saying explicitly, is that like George
W. Bush, John McCain is a staunch conservative. And, my fellow
Americans, George Bush has not been the problem. In fact, he has
been incredibly successful in implementing the conservative agenda.
The problem has not been Bush, its been conservatism.
Conservative economics hands all the
money to people who already have a lot and promises they’ll give
back some and make jobs, but all they do is buy more BMW’s and
Mercedes. This is why now, while Ford, GM, and even Toyota sales
are down massively, BMW and Mercedes sales remain strong. From
US News and World Report:
"...GM sales "plummeted 26.7 percent in July
from a year ago," and the automaker's "adjusted loss per share
was four times greater than market expectations." Ford saw a
14.9 percent decline, while Chrysler suffered a 29 percent drop
despite a surge in lease deals ahead of an August 1 deadline for
Chrysler dealerships to stop leasing vehicles.
"The picture among the Big Three's big Japanese rivals was
mixed. Toyota sales slid 18.7 percent and Honda sales dropped
9.2 percent, ...
"Autoblog
notes that MINI saw an adjust daily sales rate growth of 14.9%
in August, despite the fact that the BMW division is
essentially sold-out of cars for 2008 and now only selling
pre-ordered 2009 models.
Mercedes-Benz also reported some sales
growth.
Auto Spectator credits strong sales of "the volume-leading
C-Class and highly acclaimed
E-Class model lines" for the sales increase, which pushed
Mercedes sales almost 12% higher than last July.
Nissan managed with huge incentives on trucks to get
some sales, but you get the idea: even the wildly popular,
fuel-efficient Toyotas are in demise, but luxury cars are selling
out and soaring.
Conservative economics believes the
government shouldn’t provide oversight – they call this
‘deregulation.’ We see the results of this playing out with
collapse after collapse of economic giants, from Bear Stearns to
Fannie and Freddie, brought down by what can only be attributed to
is unrestrained gluttony allowed by the anti-regulation conservative
government.
Conservative foreign policy is and has
always been short-sighted and small-minded. It claims victory when
we help Saddam Hussein defeat Iran in the Iran-Iraq War, only to end
up costing us more down the road. It is bravado and bluster without
thought, and it is disastrous. (See:
"Pyrrhic Victory" Officially Renamed "Bush Victory")
Conservative social policy has led us to
be the nation with more of our citizens in prison per capita than
any other nation on the face of the Earth. More than ANY nation.
(See:
U.S. incarcerates more
than any other nation:
report | U.S. | Reuters)
Think about that. The land of the
free? Nope. Here people are regulated beyond functionality, locked
up left and right, while business are free to run rampant. 1
in 100 of us are in jail or prison.
That’s conservatism, and that’s been the
problem, not George W. Bush. All he did was enact the policies that
everyone from John McCain to Mitt Romney to Ronald Reagan embraced.
But for some reason Barack Obama has
declined to do what Ronald Reagan did in making “liberal” a bad word
and go after ‘conservatism.’ And so at the Republican convention,
as speaker after speaker stood up to claim that what’s happening in
Washington is really ‘liberal,’ as Romney asserted, or when people
saw a personality and a story that differed from that of George W.
Bush, all they had to say was, “I like these two better,” and that
freed McCain-Palin from the Bush burden.
Had Obama been making the case against
conservatism, each step McCain has made – including the choice of
Palin – would have been disastrous. McCain would have been aligning
himself more and more with the problem, conservatism. Instead, with
Bush and Washington dubbed the problem, McCain had an easy way out.
To defeat McCain-Palin, Obama has to
begin not just tying John McCain to George W. Bush, but to the
disastrous conservative policies that have brought America to where
it is. He should acknowledge that George W. Bush wasn’t a failure
at all. In fact, he should trumpet George Bush as a great success –
a great success in enacting the conservative agenda, the same one
that John McCain and Sarah Palin embrace.
It is not enough to say, “He voted with
George Bush 90 percent of the time.” If you’ve noticed, the McCain
doesn’t talk about who Obama has voted with, he talks about Obama
having “the most liberal voting record in the Senatre.”
Well, when is Barack Obama going to
stand up and say, “You know, that’s right – and that’s exactly what
America needs right now. For years, we’ve allowed the idea that
conservatism is good and liberalism bad to dominate the American
conversation – and this is where it’s gotten us. George Bush, with
a conservative-controlled Congress for six years, finally got to
fully enact the conservative agenda. And, at last, America can see
that it is a disaster – similar to Communism, it is an overly
idealistic agenda that doesn’t play out in reality.
Instead of “John McCain and George
Bush,” the Obama-Biden ticket have to begin to do what a generation
has waited for, make it, “McCain, Palin, Bush, and the disastrous
conservative agenda they all embrace, which has wrecked America.”
As of today, liberal is still a bad word and conservatism stands
unscathed as the universally accepted correct agenda. The GOP still
assails liberals and Obama’s liberalism. If Obama wants to win,
it’s time for him to take the obvious stand and say, “You’re darned
straight I’m a liberal, thank God – and I’m here to save America
from the disastrous conservatism that’s run us into the ground.”
He’s said this without using the
“C”-word so far. Unless he hits directly at the “C”-word,
conservatism, he will continue to find himself frustrated by his
inability to attach McCain-Palin to George W. Bush in voters’ minds.
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