Subject:  Dear Conservatives Upset With the Policies of the Bush Administration (by Ralph Nader) |
Author:
 chadi
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Date Posted: 08:28:05 04/04/04 Sun
Friday April 2, 2004
Dear Conservatives Upset With the Policies of the Bush Administration
There is an old saying in southern American politics which goes like this: 'you dance with those who brung ya.' Have the corporate Republicans in Washington forgotten 'who brung ‘em?' That question is being intensely discussed in conservative-libertarian Republican circles and writings.
Many conservative Republicans are feeling these days that the Washington, D.C. Republicans are taking them for granted. You know what happens when that happens – you get taken! The first basic sign of a platform fissure between the conservative base and the big business Republicans came with the 2002 Texas state Republican Party platform which requires candidates to read every page and initial that it has been read. In an October 2, 2003 letter I asked President Bush whether he supports this platform. This defiant document announces over twenty domestic and foreign policies diametrically opposed to what the Bush Administration is doing or not doing.
Since that time the sources of conservative upset have become more pronounced. Conservative Republicans are furious with the Washington, D.C. Republicans for fiscal irresponsibility on a scale that, to them, would have been unimaginable even for Democrats. From inheriting a budget surplus in January 2001, the Bush Republicans have produced nearly half of a trillion dollars in annual deficits, ballooning the national debt and rocketing the annual debt service payments each year to about $318 billion—paid for by your taxes.
Already, around 30 conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives are in near revolt, despite the iron grip of Rep. Tom Delay (Rep. Texas), having voted against the Medicare-drug bill and its enormous subsidies to the drug industry and other companies. Even so, these legislators did not know at the time that the cost was $540 billion, not the $400 billion that was communicated to Congress by the Bush Administration over the objection of their chief actuary, late last year. Other budgets that can have any relation to national or homeland security are rising in all directions and are out of control according President Bush’s own Office of Management and Budget Analysis which is trying vainly to subject them to some cost-benefit rigor.
Besides federal deficit spending as far as the eye can see, there is the accompanying growth under Republican rule of so many subsidies to corporations that the government does not even have a catalogue of their costs. Conservative Think Tanks and other studies estimate costs of hundreds of billions of dollars annually in all their complex versions—cash transfers, bailouts, handouts or grants, giveaways, loan guarantees, loan forgiveness, tax expenditures and so on. In 1999, Cong. John Kasich (Rep. Ohio), then chair of the House Budget Committee and a critic of wasteful military spending held the first Congressional hearings on corporate welfare. Afterwards he threw his hands up in despair at getting the Republican leadership to take his warnings seriously. He retired from Congress in 2000. Conservatives were vociferous in their criticism of the pending energy bill, which has passed the House, for its $50 billion in subsidies to the profitable fossil fuel and atomic power industries. Using taxpayer money to pay companies to make a bigger profit is not in accordance with conservative principles.
Many conservatives believe that the Patriot Act is too extreme a law and is a threat, as the Texas Republican Party implied, to our domestic liberty under the 'guise of preventing terrorism.' Big Government surveillance, unannounced sneak and peak searches of citizens’ homes and businesses, and the rise of legions of government snoopers rub genuine conservatives the wrong way. Moreover, they hear President Bush making statements supporting a more extremist Patriot Act II and renewing the most liberty-suppressing provisions of Patriot Act I when it is up for renewal in 2005.
Our country’s local, state and national sovereignties are important to conservative Republicans. These sovereignties are being undermined by NAFTA, the World Trade Organization, and large U.S. corporations who are turning their back on America. The Texas Republican Party platform demands withdrawal from these autocratic systems of international governance that pull America down and 'outsourcing' the jobs of American workers who often are required to train their substitutes before being laid off by the multinational corporation.
One of the most precious traditions of local self-rule has been our public schools. The Bush administration, through the so-called 'No Child Left Behind' law has seized power in the form of federal regulation of local school districts beyond the nightmarish alarms of many conservatives. The federal government can punish schools, close them down and sanction them in other ways if the notorious multiple-choice standardized tests are not scored high enough. These misguided tests distort education with an 'over-emphasis on high-stakes standardized test and the subsequent impact on student learning, curriculum and teaching' according to Citizens for Quality Assessment. They go on to note that among the problems this leads to are excessive time on narrow test preparation, de-enrichment of the curriculum, excessive use of financial resources for testing and false accountability. Bush’s regulatory demands on local governments are also an unfunded education mandate.
It may be a surprise to some liberals that many conservatives are just as outraged at the corporate crime wave represented by the shenanigans of Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, Wall Street firms, mutual funds and others whose tops corporate crooks have looted or drained trillions of dollars from small investors, workers and pension holders. Many a 401K pension plan was seriously depleted or shredded in the process. They don’t have to watch Lou Dobbs on CNN to want tough prosecution, conviction and incarceration of these corporate outlaws. Instead the Bush Administration keeps tiny law enforcement resources and even tinier willpower that declines to put more federal cops on the corporate crime beat.
On these and other issues, the national Republican Party is turning its back on millions of conservative and libertarian Republicans without whom the Party could not win its elections. What’s more, the Party leaders in Washington are not listening to the increasing reality that more and more conservatives are furious with the Bush Administration and its domination by corporatists. I once noted to William Bennett that 'Big business is on a collision course with conservative principles.' He agreed. Certainly he has demonstrated this point in his less than successful attempts to have his Party take on the giant media issue of corporate commercial violence and pornography especially directed to children with its subversion of family values, parental discipline and wholesome childhoods. What has Mr. Bush said about this worsening exploitation on our public airways, cable channels and videos? Do decent people even have a right of rebuttal on the same media?
In a lead editorial by the Wall Street Journal, January 30, 2004, the authors wrote what they must believe is the ultimate criticism: 'Republicans took a rare whack at spending in 1995, but ever since they have been hard to distinguish from Democrats.'
What to do? It depends on your depth of disappointment with the national Republican Party. In the numerous states that are going easily for President Bush, you can vote for the Ralph Nader independent candidacy for the Presidency. This will send them a message that you will no longer be taken for granted. If you are beside yourself with a sense of the deep betrayal of conservative philosophy by the national Republican Party in Washington, D.C., you may wish to vote for the Nader ticket regardless of the state in which you reside. I have been for a long time noting the overlapping agreement between more and more conservatives and liberals on the above noted issues facing America. Sure they disagree on other matters, but the specific areas of agreement are very substantial, pretty fundamental and deserving of some individual voter messaging in the upcoming elections.
In 1992—I went up to New Hampshire before the primary date and spent about 10 days of intensive campaigning for a none-of-the-above option on each ballot line. I met with thousands of New Hampshirites in civic and school auditoriums in town after town saying that if they did not like any of the candidates on the ballot, they could write in my name as None Of The Above. Write-ins are made difficult by the authorities in that state. Nonetheless, of the thousands of votes I received, 51% were Republicans and 49% were Democrats. In the year 2000, exit polls reported that 25% of my voters would have voted for Bush, 38% would have voted for Gore and the rest would not have voted at all. A poll this March in New Hampshire showed I had the support of 8% of all voters -- 10% of Independents, 9% of Republicans and 4% of Democrats.
I hope you will consider joining our Independent campaign for President.
Sincerely,
Ralph Nader
Nader for President 2004, © 2004
http://www.votenader.org
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