Ron Reagan Lambasts Dumbya
A friend sent me a copy of the text of Ron Reagan's article from the September issue of Esquire. Interesting commentary. Pithy....
A sample:
"When the party Mr. Bush is hosting in his world ends, you'll be left picking shrimp toast out of the carpet."
"George W. Bush promised to "change the tone in Washington" and ran for office as a moderate, a "compassionate
conservative," in the focus-group-tested sloganeering of his campaign. Yet he has governed from the right wing of his
already conservative party, assiduously tending a "base" that includes, along with the expected Fortune 500 fat cats, fiscal
evangelicals who talk openly of doing away with Social Security and Medicare, of shrinking government to the size where they
can, in tax radical Grover Norquist's phrase, "drown it in the bathtub." That base also encompasses a healthy share of
anti-choice zealots, homophobic bigots, and assorted purveyors of junk science. Bush has tossed bones to all of them -
"partial birth" abortion legislation, the promise of a constitutional amendment banning marriage between homosexuals,
federal roadblocks to embryonic-stem-cell research, even comments suggesting presidential doubts about Darwinian evolution.
It's not that Mr. Bush necessarily shares their worldview; indeed, it's unclear whether he embraces any coherent philosophy.
But this president, who vowed to eschew politics in favor of sound policy, panders nonetheless in the interest of political
gain. As John DiIulio, Bush's former head of the Office of Community and Faith-Based Initiatives, once told this magazine,
"What you've got is everything - and I mean everything - being run by the political arm."
godfry
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