Americans are not surprised when liberals criticize a conservative
president. When, however, arch conservatives find fault with the performance
of a president who prides himself in being a “compassionate conservative” that
is news.
After six years in office, President George W. Bush is facing a barrage of criticism,
not only from neoconservatives but even more strongly from traditional conservatives:
those who dislike radical changes in our laws and institutions, who extol fiscal
frugality and balanced budgets, and oppose risky military adventures far from
our shores.
Some, but not all, conservatives like the President’s fiscal policy because
they share his belief that tax cuts leave more money in the hands of the taxpayer
and therefore increase revenues and spur economic growth. Fundamentalist Christian
conservatives are pleased with the president’s opposition to the use of
federal funds for stem cell research and with his “faith-based initiatives” that
offer federal subsidies for church-run welfare services. Conservatives generally
praise Mr. Bush for bringing Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito into the
Supreme Court.
Conservatives’ praise for the President’s record, however, is increasingly
overshadowed by the charge that too often he strayed from basic principles of
American conservatism. Such views are exemplified by recent books, such as Richard
Viguerie’s “Conservatism Betrayed: How George W. Bush and Other Big
Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause” and Bruce Bartlett’s “Impostor:
How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy,”
Conservatives are usually proud of their patriotism. Now, however, many of them
are aghast at seeing the world’s foremost military power trapped in an
unnecessary, ill-prepared, and open-ended conflict against a hydra-headed enemy
far away from our shores. Instead of destroying the al-Qaeda conspiracy, the
Bush administration stands accused of making ever more enemies by our prolonged
occupation of Iraq and our inability to bring peace to the Middle East.
Conservatives traditionally consider themselves staunch defenders of the Constitution
who stand for the rule of law and the defense of human rights. Yet, the Bush
administration has allowed the torture of detainees and indefinite detention
of prisoners without due process. Instead of guarding our civil liberties, the
federal government condones warrantless searches of phone and internet records
and allows police to check what books people borrow from libraries. Conservatives
also disapprove of the administration’s culture of secrecy that has doubled
the number of classified documents and invoked executive privilege for the purpose
of refusing Freedom of Information Act requests without justification.
Viguerie, the conservatives’ "funding father" and leading strategist,
takes dead aim at the corruption that has plagued the President’s party
in recent years. In The Washington Post he wrote: “White House and congressional
Republicans seem to have adopted a one-word strategy: bribery. Buy off seniors
with a prescription drug benefit. Buy off the steel industry with tariffs. Buy
off agribusiness with subsidies. The cost of illegal bribery (see the case of
former congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham) pales next to that of legal
bribery such as congressional earmarks.”
Bartlett, a treasury official under President George H. W. Bush, claims that
the younger Bush broke faith with conservatism when he expanded the size and
scope of government, allowed immigration to go unchecked, and let the federal
budget run out of control. The national debt increased from $5.7 trillion on
January 20, 2001, to $8.7 trillion in February 2007. When fiscal 2007 ends on
Sept. 30, the national debt will exceed $9 trillion, according to the administration's
own forecast.
The longer you read what Viguerie, Bartlett, and the President’s many other
conservative detractors say about his performance, the more you get the impression
that his biggest problem has not been a failure to understand American conservatism
but simply an incompetence to live up to conservative expectations.