Oddball Wrote:Besides, Bush isn't a socialist, he is a reactionary.

More socialist than i want in a president.

joebordenrebel Wrote:Sorry, Mo. I was pressed for time. I'll answer your post in a more coherent fashion after class.

Only if you really want to. Personally, I'd rather chat about other topics besides what Pinera may, or may not, have done in the 1970s.

UCBearcats1125 Wrote:

MaumeeRocket Wrote:

joebordenrebel Wrote:I'd just like to hear, in your own words, why YOU are planning to vote for George W. Bush.

(and let's all try really hard to keep this as civil as possible)

Im voting voting for Nolan, Bush=Socialist :D

If one were to look solely at federal government spending, the Bush Administration was decidedly more, shall we say, "left wing" than the Clinton Administration (w/ GOP Congress).

From Doug Bandow of the Cato Institute:
(Full article <a href='http://www.fortune.com/fortune/investing/articles/0,15114,611869,00.html' target='_blank'>here</a>.)

Quote:Republicans have long claimed to be fiscal tightwads and railed against deficit spending. But this year big-spending George W. Bush and the GOP Congress turned a budget surplus into a $477 billion deficit. There are few programs at which they have not thrown money: massive farm subsidies, an expensive new Medicare drug benefit, thousands of pork-barrel projects, dubious homeland-security grants, expansion of Bill Clinton's AmeriCorps, even new foreign-aid programs. Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation reports that in 2003 "government spending exceeded $20,000 per household for the first time since World War II."

Complaints about Republican profligacy have led the White House to promise to mend its ways. But Bush's latest budget combines accounting flim-flam with unenforceable promises. So how do we put Uncle Sam on a sounder fiscal basis?

Vote Democratic.

Democrats obviously are no pikers when it comes to spending. But the biggest impetus for higher spending is partisan uniformity, not partisan identity. Give either party complete control of government, and the Treasury vaults are quickly emptied. Neither Congress nor the President wants to tell the other no. Both are desperate to prove they can "govern"—which means creating new programs and spending more money. But share power between parties, and out of principle or malice they check each other. Even if a President Kerry proposed more spending than would a President Bush, a GOP Congress would appropriate less. That's one reason the Founders believed in the separation of powers.

Sorry I quoted Cato, JBR.

Nice one.

I really don't want to get off on a Pinera tangent but I do think it points to the conservative free market bias of the Cato institute. Hey, if you believe in it then great but just don't kid yourself. They probably don't protest when the free market somehow fails and yet Bush is bailing out the Airlines industry while workers are being laid off.

The fact that they would even endorse a Democrat simply means to me that Bush's authoritarian big government baggage has become more of a liability than the assets of his wealth-friendly tax cuts.

I'm not condemning them 100%. I just think a reasonable person would think of them as a conservative think tank. Wouldn't you agree with that?

I actually agree with much of your post. Of course they are biased toward fiscal/economic conservativism. They don't gloss over that.... they wear it on their sleeve.

Quote:They probably don't protest when the free market somehow fails and yet Bush is bailing out the Airlines industry while workers are being laid off.

First, they will protest anyone, Democrat or Republican. If the free market "fails", as you call it, they will have an opinion as to why this may have happened. You may disagree with them, but - more often than not - they'll point to embargos, regulations, corporate welfare, bad business decisions, externalities, and the like, as being the culprit of a corporation going belly up.

Quote:The fact that they would even endorse a Democrat simply means to me that Bush's authoritarian big government baggage has become more of a liability than the assets of his wealth-friendly tax cuts.

I pretty much agree with you entirely on this. But just be aware that this 'endorsement' is one opinion of one scholar (pointing out your use of the word "they"), not an official endorsement of the entire think-tank itself, per se.

Quote:I'm not condemning them 100%. I just think a reasonable person would think of them as a conservative think tank. Wouldn't you agree with that?

I think a person who is only mildly familar, at best, with them would assume them to be conservative. But, as I mentioned elsewhere, a number of positions they take are quite at odds with the Republican Party.

They promote a book called "Bad Neighbor Policy: America's Failed War on Drugs in Latin America". One essay written was simply titled "Why the U.S. Should Not Attack Iraq". Hardly the GOP party line. They also endorse a liberal immigration policy and would prefer the government to keep out of meddling with gay marriage.

In a nutshell, they're "conservative" in economic matters, "liberal" in social and personal freedom matters.