I have been saying for a while that the biggest risk to the President’s reelection is the disaffection by “smaller government” elements of the Republican base. A nice summary of that sentiment is Don’t Underestimate Conservative Discontent by Tara Ross:
Conservatives feel that the President has betrayed small government principles. They are upset about the creation of multiple new bureaucracies and entitlements during his term. They disagreed with the President’s (recently repealed) steel tariffs. They are still fuming over the campaign finance bill that gave the government massive new control over free speech of Americans. Most of all, they are furious over the quickly escalating rate of federal discretionary spending.
Each of these presidential actions has caused conservatives to become more and more alarmed. Already, some conservatives wonder behind closed doors if it would be better to have a Democratic President and a Republican Congress. Maybe the friction between the two would lead to better policy and less spending. Maybe Republicans would start acting like Republicans again. In some cases, it is only the need to win the War on Terror that causes people to still hesitate at the thought of a President Kerry.
For a counterpoint emphasizing the overriding importance of the war against Islamic terrorists, read James Lilleks’ Guess Which Candidate Our Enemies Want to Lose in 2004?:
Let’s just be blunt: The North Koreans would love to see John Kerry win the election. The mullahs of Iran would love it. The Syrian Ba’athists would sigh with relief. Every enemy of America would take great satisfaction if the electorate rejects the Bush doctrine and scuttles back to hide under the U.N. Security Council’s table. It’s a hard question, but the right one: Which candidate does our enemy want to lose? George W. Bush.
And some conservatives will be happy to help, it seems.
Woe and gloom have befallen some on the right. Bush has failed to act according to The Reagan Ideal.
The actual Reagan may have issued an amnesty for illegals, but the Ideal Reagan would have done no such thing. So unless Bush packs freight cars full of gardeners and dishwashers and dumps them off at the Mexican border, some voters will just sit this one out.
The Ideal Reagan would have eliminated the National Endowment for the Arts; the actual Reagan proposed a $1 million increase in his final budget. But Bush increased NEA funding — perhaps an attempt to placate people who wouldn’t vote for him if he showed up in performance with Karen Finley and a can of Hershey’s syrup. So angry conservatives might just sit this one out.
And if a Democrat takes office, and the Michael Moores and Rob Reiners and Martin Sheens crowd the airwaves on Nov. 3 to shout their howls of vindication? If the inevitable renaissance of Iraq happens on Kerry’s watch, and the economy truly picks up steam in the first few years before the business cycle and Kerry’s tax hikes kick in? If emboldened Islamist terrorists smell blood and strike again? Fine. Maybe the next Republican president will do everything they want.
Oh, sure, Bush is fine on the foreign affairs stuff, and yes, there’s a partial-birth abortion law, and the tax cuts were nice, and come to think of it, Sept. 11 wasn’t followed by blow after blow after blow, for some reason. The nation endures, at least at press time. But that’s hardly enough. Where’s that bill requiring 60-foot Ten Commandments monuments in every capitol rotunda? Let Kerry win. Teach the GOP a lesson, it will.
(Thanks to Rod Dreher for the pointers)
UPDATE: Victor Davis Hanson adds to the counterpoint in favor of reelection in Do We Want to Go Back? What to remember come November:
More likely, if President Bush loses, the war against terror will return, as promised, to the status of a police matter — subpoenas and court trials the more appropriate response to the mass murder of 3,000 at the “crime scene” of the crater in New York. Europe will be assured that our troops will stay while we apologize for the usual litany of purported unilateral sins. North Korea will get more blackmail cash, while pampered South Korean leftists resume their “sunshine” mirage. Iraq will be turned over to the U.N. as we abruptly leave, and could dissolve into something like the Balkans between 1991 and 1998. Iran and Syria will let out a big sigh of relief — as American diplomats once more sit out on the tarmac in vain hopes of an “audience” with despots. The Saudis will smile that smile. Arafat will be assured that he is now once again a legitimate interlocutor. And strangest of all, the American Left will feel that the United States has just barely begun to return to its “moral” bearings — even as its laxity and relativism encourage some pretty immoral things to come.
If White House politicos figured that many who were angered about out-of-control federal spending and immigration proposals would grumble, but not abandon Mr. Bush — given the global stakes involved after September 11, and the specter of a new alternative foreign policy far to the left of that of a Warren Christopher and Madeline Albright — then they were absolutely right.
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