August 05, 2003

Worth quoting:

Conservative dismay over Taft's liberal agenda led directly to massive Democratic gains in Congress in 1910 and his own loss in 1912. The same dismay over Nixon's liberal agenda led to massive Democratic gains and his ouster from office in 1974.

I am sorry to say that I see Bush traveling the same path. He has concluded that the Democrats are very likely to nominate a candidate so far to the left as to be unelectable. Howard Dean's ascension to the head of the Democratic pack supports this conclusion. But ironically, rather than making Bush feel more comfortable pursuing a conservative agenda, he continues to move left on domestic issues -- especially the budget-busting prescription drug subsidy bill.

Bush has also signed into law a campaign finance reform bill that most conservatives view as blatantly unconstitutional, endorsed an education bill written by Ted Kennedy and initiated more trade protectionism by any president since Nixon. But against these, Bush continually plays his trump card: the war against terrorism. And just as Nixon played the anticommunist card in terms of the Vietnam War, it has been enough to keep most Republican voters under control -- so far.

The only substantive difference between Nixon and Bush, in terms of policy, is that the latter cut taxes while the former raised them. Of course, there are also important personal differences. Nixon was sleazy and dishonest, while I don't believe that such can be said about Bush. But if it turns out that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq -- the reason why most people who supported the war supported it -- then he is going to have a "credibility gap" as big as Nixon's to overcome.

Even so, I think Bush is a "lock" for re-election, regardless of whom the Democrats nominate. Yale economist Ray Fair predicts he will get 56.7 percent of the vote based on economic data already in hand. If the economy does better than expected, his vote total will only rise.

But conservatives still need to ask themselves: to what end? Do we want another Taft or Nixon, who imposed liberal policies no Democratic president could achieve as the price for keeping a Republican in the White House? It is a question worth asking.

-- Bruce Bartlett. The set-up to this is worth clicking for.

Posted by Greg Ransom