I have been waiting to comment on George W. Bush’s gratuitous slams
against Republicans. I have been waiting to see if his offensive remarks
were the kind of rhetorical lapses we all make from time to time, the
kind that don’t run deep, or whether they were calculated to deliver a
message that runs to the core of who he really is and what he really
thinks. I’m tired of waiting.
Bush accused congressional Republicans of trying to “balance the
budget on the backs of the poor.” He said that “Too often, my party has
confused the need for limited government with a disdain for government
itself.” He said that “too often, on social issues, my party has painted
an image of America as slouching toward Gomorrah.”
With these words, Bush sent messages to liberals and libertines in
both major parties that while misguided extremists in the Republican
Party would like to stomp on the poor, bring down the government, and
pass judgment on reprobates for merely doing the things God made them to
do, he, George W. Bush, is a different kind of guy, one they need not
fear will seriously intrude on the national journey toward hedonistic
socialism.
George W. received a lot of criticism for asking Pat Buchanan to stay
and fight his battles within the Republican Party. He was criticized by
Republican “moderates” who saw Buchanan’s imminent departure as a chance
to do what they have always wanted to do, get rid of the “religious
right” and their extremist ideas about abortion, morals and the
Constitution. They wanted Buchanan’s departure to be seen not as a loss
to the Republican Party, but as a cleansing of it. Apparently, Bush now
agrees with this view.
Bush’s accusations that Republicans are trying to balance the budget
on the backs of the poor concerned the method for paying money to the
working poor under a welfare program misnamed the Earned Income Tax
Credit. The Republican plan was to pay out the same amount of welfare in
12 monthly payments rather than in a lump sum. To call this an abuse of
the poor is both unfair and dumb. It is something a liberal Democrat
would say.
As for “disdain for government,” the men who wrote the Constitution
designed it for the specific purpose of protecting the people against
overweening government power and intrusion. The founders of our country
were wary of government and deeply suspicious of it, based on their own
experiences, their knowledge of history, and their understanding of
human nature and the corruptive influence of power.
The case could be made that “disdain” is a mild reaction. The
American government is out of control, operating beyond its
constitutional limits. Laws are passed not based on what the
Constitution says, but on the last abominable misinterpretation of what
it says.
Constitutional scholar and columnist Joseph Sobran, who is running
for vice president on the Constitution Party ticket, headed by Howard
Phillips, had something worthwhile to say on the subject of what a
Phillips-Sobran administration will produce: “Merely returning to the
Constitution will, all by itself, achieve many things. It will end
excessive spending and taxation; it will abolish all the programs
whereby taxpayers are forced to support the unproductive; it will
restore sound money and end inflation; it will forbid usurpations —
legislative, executive and judicial — of the powers reserved to the
states, thereby restoring, among other things, the abortion laws of all
50 states; it will prevent undeclared foreign wars; it will forbid
oppressive regulation by unelected federal bureaucrats; it will make
private property truly private again. And this is the short list.”
When Bush expressed regret that so many in his party believe America
is “slouching toward Gomorrah,” he was making a negative reference to a
book by that title written by one of the most learned and respected
jurists in America, Robert H. Bork. Was it necessary to undercut Bork as
a means of courting favor with the irreligious left? Why drag this
distinguished American through the political gutter again?
If Bush did not understand the implications of what he was saying and
the code language he was using, someone on his staff did understand and
put the words in his mouth. By ridiculing Bork, Bush signaled
pro-abortion feminists that he had a litmus test, that he would never
appoint Robert Bork or anyone like him to the Supreme Court. Second, he
signaled to the community of heathens that he was not alarmed at the
“values” America is beginning to share with those twin cities despised
by the Lord, Sodom and Gomorrah.
If Bush thinks he can ride into the White House on the backs of
religious conservatives, he had better think again.
