Quote:
Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I didn't mean to suggest that Bush was opposed to ensuring that the elderly can get adequate health care. But the program adopted bears very little resemblence to the ways that conservatives has usually advocated achieving this goal -- e.g., the fact that the program was more expensive than the Democratic alternative.
You suggest that Bush places policy before politics. A true test of this would be to find an instance where Bush has made a political sacrifice in the name of conservative policy. Off the top of my head, I can't think of one. (Although the question is tough, because Bush has taken as a lesson of his father's presidency the need to keep the conservative base happy, so he often seems to act conservatively for political reasons rather than for principle, as when he nominated Alito.) For example, he barely talked about Social Security reform during the '04 campaign, only to throw himself behind it after he had been elected and would not face the voters again.
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I think the invasion of Iraq. The politically wise thing to do would have been to wait until after the elections to invade (like he did with Social Security). I know there was concern that Hussein would Gas our troops and with twenty thousand body bags coming home it would be hard to get reelected.
But Bush felt he had to go in sooner than later, so he went in. But that is why this stuff about WMDs is so ridiculous. The administration's worst fear was the Saddam would use chemical and biological weapons. That is why all the threats about massive retaliation and forcing everyone within a thousand miles of the front lines to have a full body chemical suit ready to put on in thirty seconds.
My fraternity brother who is a Lt. Col. said that his biggest problem during the war was all the false alarms for chemical attacks. Three to four times a day his entire battalian had to stop and put on those stupid suits. The understanding was that if you lost one solider to a gas or chemical attack (because they did not have their suit at the ready) you could kiss your career good bye.
But my friend said they could have been in Baghdad a week earlier if they weren't so paranoid about chemical and biological attacks.
