Q&A Friday #20: Do Conservatives Disagree With Bush About Anything?

05 Aug, 2005 by John Hawkins

Question: “to conservatives, is bush infallible?

as a liberal, it seems like almost everything he does is wrong but i can admit to a few things he’s done with which i agree or don’t care about. i certainly wouldn’t back clinton 100% or even 75% (carter was before my time but i’d probably have said the same about him).

but i’ve never seen a right-wing website (or even a thread comment, and i’ve probably read hundreds or even thousands) where any conservative admitted that they disagreed with Our Leader on any topic. it just seems weird that his decisions have amazingly matched the way all republicans feel about every issue.

so i guess i expect one of three answers:

a) he is never wrong about anything
b) he is wrong but we don’t admit it because that would encourage the democrats (a reasonable position in today’s climate)
c) i’ve disagreed with him about X, Y, and Z.” — by j0e

You know, it’s not unusual to hear that sort of odd claim from liberals, “Oh, you conservatives never disagree with Bush about anything.”

Well, maybe it just doesn’t register because the criticism of Bush is coming from the right ideologically or because the Bush bashing on the left-side of the blogosphere is relentless to the point of being obsessive, but people on the right have hammered Bush on a variety of issues.

Just to give you a few examples right off the top of my head, I have criticized Bush on this very blog for:

— Deficit spending.
— His immigration policy.
— Imposing steel tariffs.
— Imposing tariffs on Canadian lumber.
— For signing the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill.
— Increasing funding for the National Endowment of the Arts.
— For being willing to sign the Assault Weapon Ban.
— For the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill.
— For getting the Federal government more involved in education.
— For increasing the size of government.

I’m sure I could pad that out a bit if I wanted to spend some time pouring through the archives, but those are enough examples to make the point.

If that’s not enough criticism for you or the issues don’t suit you, well, — we’re conservatives — we don’t agree with liberals on most issues. So that’s just how it is and how it’s going to continue to be…