If everything seems under control, you're not going fast enough. - Mario Andretti

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

I recently was invited to participate in a survey by John Hawkins of Right Wing News entitled Right-Of-Center Bloggers Tell Us Who Is Screwing Up America.  While I agree with a lot of their choices, I thought that mine were quite a bit different than what most people submitted.

1) George W. Bush
2) The Spineless GOP Congress
3) Michael Moore
4) MoveOn.org
5) Radicalized Christian religious organizations
6) The Mainstream media
7) Apologists for radical Islamists
8) Canadians
9) Illegal immigrants
10) Apologists for illegal immigrants
11) The homeless
12) Unions
13) The United Nations
14) The educational establishment
15) Environmentalists
16) Anyone from San Francisco
17) Emasculated males
18) Anyone who drives a Prius
19) The ACLU
20) Michael Savage

Before I go on, allow me to freely admit that a few of my submissions were done in jest.  I didn’t think people were going to take this as seriously as they apparently did.  With that in mind, however, I think the list over on RWN is quite telling of the current conservative mindset in America.  With the exception of John McCain, who is viewed (often times correctly) as a RINO and a turncoat and a recalcitrant conservative, there isn’t one single “right-wing” person on the list.  This isn’t to say that some weren’t submitted, of course; the final list is only the top 20 submissions.  But I think it’s remarkable that George W. Bush, a person who I am generally favorable towards and supportive of, and who was my immediate first choice, wasn’t mentioned at all.  He’s the most powerful man in the world, for Christ’s sake.  Is there nothing he’s doing wrong that conservatives can find fault with?

I mean, come on.  Can anyone honestly say that Noam Chomsky, a man that 99% of the public has never heard of, is doing more damage to the country than President Bush, who is creating a massive welfare state bureaucracy, and drastically increasing the size and scope of the federal government, all the while cutting taxes and refusing to pay for it?  We’re going to be dealing with Bush’s budget deficits for generations.  Yet to much of the conservative blogosphere this is less of an issue than some douchebag at MIT who writes books read primarily by radical leftists.  (I’d be willing to bet that 90% of all registered Democrats have never heard of, let alone read a book by, Chomsky.)

What about other areas of contention that many conservatives have with Bush?  How about the Patriot Act, the intelligence failures leading up to the Iraq War, some of the poor decisions in prosecuting the war on terror, the failure to secure our borders, the blurring of the line between church and state, federal funding for stem cells, the Terri Schiavo disaster, or any of the other terrible, non-conservative things our president has done over the past five years.  These are all perfectly legitimate areas for conservatives to disagree with the president (as I do, to one degree or another, on many of them) and still be able to retain their bona fides as solid, patriotic conservative Americans. 

Yet Bush didn’t make RWN’s list.  More people were concerned with the corrupting influence of leftie blogger Kos than Bush.  I mean, Al Gore made the list.  Gore!  A guy who lost the presidential race five years ago, and has since gone out on speaking tours and has joined the board of directors of a few corporations.  The guy’s a complete numbnuts, yet he was listed by 7 out of the 47 blogs who responded.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an Al Gore fan by any means.  But how is he screwing up the country, when compared to some of the stunts Bush and the GOP Congress have been pulling lately?  Gore is a total nobody, and apart from the occasional newsworthy event he attends, what the hell influence does he have?  Absolutely none.

I think my larger point here is the sheer myopic view that so many conservatives in this country have of Republican politicians.  Yes, I realize that the political zeitgeist is extremely polarized, and that in times like this there exists a certain circle-the-wagons mentality.  Fair enough.  But John’s question didn’t ask which liberals were screwing up the country, it just asked who.  I’m much more concerned with identifying who is screwing up the country than I am at making sure that the other side takes the blame for it.  It’s the difference between being a “conservative” and a “Republican.” I’m a conservative, and I will vote for anyone of any party who I feel best represents my views, and I will freely point the finger at anyone of any party who I feel is working against the way I think things should be.  A Republican, on the other hand, will always vote Republican, and will always try to find some way to spin any bad event to minimize the damage to their party while maximizing the damage to the Democrats.

I am a conservative.  I am not a Republican. And Bush is doing a WHOLE bunch of stuff that is going to substantially screw up this country for years to come.  I just wish that more Republicans had the intellectual honesty to admit that, and to quit trying to blame everything on them dern lib’ruls.

Update: Allow me to elaborate on one point.  My selections aren’t in any particular order.  Bush and the Congress made numbers 1 and 2 respectively because they, to me, were the most obvious choices as answers to the question.  I just think it’s going to be pretty rough to find anyone making more long-term effects to the country than the president and the Congress, no matter what political party is in power.  So, for example, the fact that I put Canadians over the United Nations was simply because Canadians popped into my head before the UN did, and isn’t the result of some kind of ranking system.  Bush and the GOP were just too obvious not to be my first choices.