From Washington D.C.
Ted King
THE FEDERAL PAGE
By Ted King
Well, we lost the election, but I say we never even had a genuine candidate. The conservative movement was defeated in the Republican primaries by Senator John McCain, and the alternative candidates were, save Congressman Ron Paul and to a lesser extent former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson, not much better. Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was a dynamic, albeit flawed candidate, but she wasn't at the top of the ticket. Had McCain won, she wouldn't be running the show. He and his band of "me-too milk toasts" would be.
While certain defeat is ensured when the "right" runs a "me-too candidate," I note that when the banking crisis emerged in early October, the GOP was guaranteed to lose the following month for that reason as well. There was nothing to save them at that point. And now we have a true socialist as our President. The same deviants protesting along the inaugural parade route that I wrote about in 2001 (Spring 2001 issue) – consisting of militant gays, black panthers, and other assorted weirdos – should be in this inaugural parade.
Richard Cohen, a columnist for The Washington Post, wrote in late October how the GOP is in decline and on its way to oblivion due to its mean spiritedness. He included his e-mail address at the bottom of his column, and I wrote him the following:
Mr. Cohen,
I just read your column in The Washington Post online about how the GOP is in decline because of those mean spirited right-wingers. I must say sir, I was shocked, shocked that you believe that. Not Richard Cohen! No, I said to myself. He's always been so friendly to the right. The GOP must really be on the decline if you say it's so. See you in 2010.
He did not favor me with a response.
The presidency of George Walker Bush is at an end. I have been writing this column throughout his eight years in office, and based on a scale of 0 to 100, I have broken down his grades based on four parts: national security, judicial appointments, domestic policy, and foreign policy.
National Security – after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the President rallied the nation and remained a calm, steady hand at the helm that led the nation in a fight against those who caused the attacks, overthrowing the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. However, he did not capture Osama Bin Laden or all of his lieutenants of terror, thus disrupting, but not destroying the Al Queda terror network.
In the aftermath of the Sept. 11th attacks, the President and Congress enacted "The Patriot Act," which allows an expansion of government surveillance, and he created more government with the Department of Homeland Security, and still our borders with Canada and Mexico are extremely porous. With John McCain's help, he attempted to give amnesty to millions of illegal aliens inside the country, and his justice department prosecuted two border agents who shot at a Mexican drug runner along the border. Those border agents, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, were sent to prison. Thankfully, President Bush finally did the right thing and commuted their prison sentences on his last day in office.
The President led the nation into an invasion of Iraq based on bad intelligence regarding Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. With many American troop lives and billions of dollars spent later, the situation in Iraq has now stabilized, due in large part to the troops' surge of 2007. One can argue that the surge should have taken place a year or two earlier so the situation could have been stabilized sooner. Overall, the war was, I believe, a mistake but we have not had a terror attack on our shores since that terrible day. I give the President 10 out of 25 points for national security.
Judicial Appointments – both of his Supreme Court justice picks were excellent, probably the best aspect of his eight years in office. However, I must take a few points off for his bungling of the second appointment that initially was of his White House counsel, Harriet Myers. Instead of knowing her legal opinions on key constitutional questions or her judicial temperament, he chose to punt. Fortunately for us, she withdrew her name from consideration, thus snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. President Bush then picked Judge Samuel Alito. He also filled some good vacancies on the rest of the federal bench. I give him 21 out of 25 points.
Domestic Policy – the worst of his policies. He did cut taxes early on in his presidency and that helped the nation recover from the shock of the terror attacks and the economic stagnation that preceded it. The tax cuts were never made permanent and will expire under the new administration.
In order to promote his misguided "compassionate conservatism," President Bush pushed for passage of "The No Child Left Behind Act." He also promoted and enacted a Medicare prescription drug benefit for senior citizens, essentially underwriting the cost of prescription drugs for all seniors regardless of financial need.
The President did not fund research that would have allowed embryonic stem cells being destroyed. He signed into law a ban on partial birth abortions, later upheld by a majority on the Supreme Court; two of that majority are his appointees. He also involved himself in the case of Terri Schiavo, who was a disabled woman being denied food and water without a living will. The President signed an order passed by Congress, forcing a federal court hearing in her case. He took a lot of grief from the media for that. His actions and that of Congress in the Schiavo case were heroic. On domestic policy I give the President 9 out of 25, mostly because of his reckless spending and government growth.
Foreign Policy – the President asserted American power abroad, which is a good thing, and he didn't give a damn about what the rest of the world thought about us. Despite the myth that his was not a proper position for the leader of the free world, it was. When someone tells me that we have "alienated the world," I laugh. His foreign policy liberated millions in Afghanistan and Iraq and in so doing brought Libyan dictator Momar Quadaffi to his senses. We today have an embassy in Libya again. He also nixed American support for the Kyoto Global Warming Treaty. However, the President applied to the nations of Africa that compassionate conservatism nonsense of fighting acquired immune deficiency syndrome or AIDS. More than likely, this policy will wind up becoming a waste of our tax dollars. I give the President a grade of 20 out of 25 for his foreign policy.
Recapitulating his grades, as I reckon them after his eight years as President: his 10 out of 25 for national security plus his 21 out of 25 for judicial appointments plus his 9 out of 25 for domestic policy, plus his 20 out of 25 for foreign policy, add up to 60, a D minus.
President George W. Bush was responsible for a spending spree the likes of which we have not seen since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. And, in so doing, led the Republican Party to virtual rot and ruin.He was obviously, not one of our better Presidents, but was better than some of the alternatives we might have had.
Paul Weyrich died last December at the age of 66. He was one of the architects of what many now refer to as "the new right" or the "religious right," in fact he is credited with coining the term – Moral Majority. He, along with Richard Viguerie and Morton Blackwell, worked with religious leaders like Dr. Jerry Fawell to mobilize Christian conservatives to become involved in politics. This new movement of voters helped then former California Governor Ronald Reagan to become President.
Mr. Weyrich was also one of the founders of the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation and was an early advisor to Rush Limbaugh. He later set up his own think tank called The Free Congress Foundation, and he started a new conservative cable network called National Empowerment Television or NET. It went under a few years later. Paul Weyrich was a critic of government surveillance over the citizenry, even prior to the Patriot Act. He continued doing cable shows about government surveillance technology and other issues after NET went off the air. In the fall of 1999, I ran a camera for one of those shows, which were then taped at the Leadership Institute, where I was a fellow at the time. That year he wrote an open letter to conservatives stating that we had lost the culture war and that we should disengage ourselves from corrupted institutions like the public schools.
Religion was very important to Mr. Weyrich: he was a deacon in the Melkite, Byzantine Catholic Church, but he also had a well-deserved reputation as a hothead, often losing his temper. A friend of mine in politics, who was out of work at the time, turned down a job at The Free Congress because he didn't want to have to experience that temper first hand. Despite his temper, Paul Weyrich was a principled conservative and well respected.
Theodore J. King is an Oklahoma native who graduated from Northeastern State University in 1996. He spent a summer at the Republican National Committee in 1994, worked at the National Right to Work Committee, and spent time working on the Hill in Washington D.C. In 1999, he was a temporay employee with Congressman Kevin Brady of Texas and later worked for the Media Research Center in Alexandria, Virginia. He served as our Washington D.C. correspondent for our From Washington page before returning to Oklahoma in 2001, and continues his reports with The Federal Page. He recently completed a book, The War on Smokers and the Rise of the Nanny State, which is scheduled for release in the spring of 2009.
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