By Popular (Okay One) Demand (Read, Polite Request)
Mr. Chris Crawford of Jacksonville has requested in comments to this Bill post has requested a discussion with some reasonable Bush supporters. Well, I fancy myself such, and I’ll gladly discuss my reasons. I want to run this particular comment Tacitus style. Please be polite, no profanity (unless it’s funny and not ad hominem), et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, okay, that’s a hilliarous set of requests coming from yours truly, but I’ll do my best to be cordial. Perhaps we can get the same going from the Kerry supporters among us. Ruff (even if you are a non-voting felon)? Flog? Should I be looking at you guys? All right, my Bushpinions after the break.
Huzzah! Here we go, in handy list format:
1) Let me preface this by saying that I do not support all of Bush’s policies. He’s wrong on stem-cells, abortion, gay marriage, the damnable Medicare give away, the damnable Dept. Of Homeland Security [and it’s even got a really lame title], and John Ashcroft. I also think he’s grown the size of federal government too much, and done a piss-poor job vis a vis trade policy. I’m not exactly sure the man has a good grasp on Federalism, but that’s a discussion for another time. Those are the negatives, as I see them…there are others but mostly of the niggling detail variety.
2) I think Bush is right on the things that matter most to me, though. That is, taxes and terrorists. I think marginal tax rates in the US are too high on individuals across the board, and I think the Bush tax cut did a great job of reducing that burden. Steve Verdon, Steve Antler, Don Luskin, and a whole host of other people who are smarter than me have covered this in some detail and at great length. I’ll even give that rich people benefited the most from the reduction in rates, but then again rich people pay most of the taxes, so I don’t really see a problem with that. I’m not sure if I buy Grover Norquist’s “starve leviathan” hypothesis, but I don’t see how reducing the tax burden across the board is a bad thing. Bush’s tendency toward protectionism is sort of worrying, but I think there’s a big enough free-trade element of the Republican party left to counter balance a lot of it. And, besides, big labor always goes Dem anyway, so there’s no point in courting the AFL-CIO and their brand of neo-Mercantilism.
As far as terrorists are concerned, I’m definitely of the “find them and kill them” school of thought. I think it should’ve been happening since the 1970s, but Carter, Reagan, GHW Bush, and Clinton all dropped the ball very severely. It certainly should’ve started after the first WTC bombing, or the embassies, or the USS Cole, but didn’t. As far as I’m concerned each of those is a declaration of war against the US, and the instant you do that, your life if forfeit. Maybe that’s not the most PC opinion in the world, but if you think of the US as the Great White Satan, chances are our continued existence is mutually exclusive, and I’m okay with somebody else taking the fall. I also don’t buy that terrorism is our fault, at all. Terrorism is the fault of, well, terrorists and the horrible dictatorships that spread their lies and give them recruits. Hating the US distracts the masses from the fact that, hey, those Mullahs have it pretty good and our lives suck, what’s the deal? It’s a classic diversion from the real problem: theocratic, despots or oligarchs.
And that’s the reason I’m behind both the Iraq war and the Afghanistan war. If we can succeed in establishing functional democracies in those nations by working with the locals who aided our overthrow of two of the world’s worst regimes, we can give a decent alternative example to the rest of the Arab world. Iran is ripe for a change, and I wish the students there all the best. The Middle East was once the bastion of civilization, even as recently as the early 20th century, and it’s sad state can be undone. I’m optimistic about a sort of democratic domino theory, and hopeful that it succeeds. This is also Bush’s opinion, so he and I agree on that and, with the taxes thing, well, that secures my vote.
3) I’d vote for Kerry if I trusted him, at all, to do what I think is the right thing in Iraq. Over thirty years in the Senate, and Kerry has voted against every major defense package that’s come across his desk. He came back from Viet Nam and called his comrades in arms war criminals in front of the US Senate. I’m not attacking his record of military service, I’ll leave that up to his former boat mates, but he did testify to certain things when he was with Viet Nam Veterans Against The War and his testimony coupled with his voting record give me no confidence, what so ever, in his interest in maintaining a strong military. As a person who believes that the military is one of few duties of government, that’s important to me. During peace time I might settle for gridlock, that’s why I voted for Gore in 2000, but there’s a war on. Kerry is essentially running the Mondale platform (I’m going to raise your taxes and make the government bigger, dammit!) but it’d never get through a Republican controlled congress, but I think he’d do exactly the wrong thing with Iraq…if he managed to make his mind up about it at all.
So, for the above reasons, I’m going Bush in the fall. Which doesn’t really matter anyway, because I live in Texas now and it’s not like GWB isn’t going to win here. The electoral college may be pretty genius, as it makes small states actually matter in an election, but some places are certainly easily predictable. Anyway, that’s the pocket synopsis of my Bush vote, play nice kids. Play nice, self.
