It is accepted truth among pundits—those Molly Ivins calls “the chattering classes”—that George W. Bush is a moderate.
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Author Archives: Sheila
Parties & Pendulums
Twenty-two years ago, I was a Republican candidate for Congress. I was pro-choice, pro-gay-rights, pro-free market economics, pro-civil liberties. When I lost, the commentators were unanimous in their judgments: I was simply “too conservative.”
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Bush Trade Policy
Bruce Bartlett, a reliably conservative columnist whose commentary on economic matters appears regularly on the editorial page of the Indianapolis Star, recently delivered a scathing analysis of what passes for trade policy in the Bush Administration. After accusing the administration of ?incredibly poor judgment in trade policy ever since taking office,? Bartlett pointed out that the steel tariffs imposed by Bush have backfired badly, by costing jobs in industries that use steel. Bush?s agricultural subsidies, said Bartlett, ?doomed a multilateral trade agreement.?
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Faith Based Terrorism
We can change our foreign policy, we can feed the people who live in these desperately impoverished places, we can give more or less aid to Israel—but none of that is relevant to this particular jihad, or holy war. Those responsible for this wave of terrorist activity are fighting modernity. And there is no more important element of modernity than the secular state.
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The Culture Wars
A few years back, I read an interesting article (I think it was in The New Yorker) predicting the ultimate marginalization of the Religious Right and the victory of social liberalism and toleration. The article acknowledged a string of right-wing electoral victories, but based its prediction on the values of popular culture–precisely those values that cause apoplexy in people like Bill Bennett and John Ashcroft. The thesis of the article was that popular culture is a predictor of political change.
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