AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

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In fact he always claimed it would be a "long war". Of course you do have that pesky faux pas where he proudly stood in front of a "Mission Accomplished" banner and yes, he was wrong about that.

You must have missed the testimony to Congress by members of his administration slk. Not only would it be short but the Iraqi oil would pay for the reconstruction.

The difference I see between Obama's claims on the stimulus bill and Bush's on the war, was that Bush smartly never laid out a time frame for when the war would be won. In fact he always claimed it would be a "long war".

Though other officials often provided caveats about unpredictable dangers, they also spoke of the conflict in optimistic terms. For example, Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a breakfast meeting earlier this month that the goal was "a short, short conflict." Last September, Myers said that "Iraq is much weaker than they were back in the early '90s," when it was routed in the Persian Gulf War.

Right up to the hours before Bush announced the war's start last Wednesday, leading officials voiced confidence. "The campaign will be unlike any we have ever seen in the history of warfare, with breathtaking precision, almost eye-watering speed, persistence, agility and lethality," said Vice Admiral Timothy Keating, commander of U.S. naval forces in the Gulf.

That view appeared in a Defense Department document titled "Overview of Requirements" submitted this week to Congress. It referred to "a short, extremely intense period of combat operations using a full range of U.S. and coalition forces. This phase will eliminate any significant organized resistance to U.S. coalition forces and will end the current regime."

At a news briefing with Rumsfeld yesterday, Myers spoke in a more measured way about forces approaching Baghdad. "It was necessary to try to bring down this regime as quickly as possible," he said. "I didn't say quick; I said as quickly as possible. "You've heard us both stand up here and say this is going to take some time, and the tough part is yet ahead of us."

A senior administration official who briefed reporters Monday on condition of anonymity said Rumsfeld "has right along said that he thought that fighting was likely to last weeks, not months." Rumsfeld told troops last month that "it could last, you know, six days, six weeks. I doubt six months." Rumsfeld also contradicted the Army chief of staff, who told the Senate that "several hundred thousand" troops would be needed to occupy Iraq. "Far off the mark," Rumsfeld said.

Fox,
Not sure I agree...the public is waking up and recognizing that Obama has pulled a "bait and switch". Public opinion of Obama is souring very quickly and if the economy doesn't recover to near 2007 levels by the end of his first term, he's done.

As long as he continues to pull to the extreme left, Obama will be the best thing that has happened to Republicans since Jimmy Carter.

Maybe. I would hope you are right and that we would actually return fiscally and morally competent leadership to Washington.

Senate confirms Sotomayor for Supreme Court
(By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS, Associated Press, August 6, 2009)

WASHINGTON " The Senate confirmed Sonia Sotomayor Thursday as the first Hispanic justice on the Supreme Court. The vote was 68-31 for Sotomayor, President Barack Obama's first high court nominee. She becomes the 111th justice and just the third woman to serve.

Democrats praised the 55-year-old Sotomayor as a mainstream moderate. But most Republicans voted against her, saying she'd bring personal bias and a liberal agenda to the bench.

Senators took the rare step of assembling at their desks on the Senate floor for the historic occasion, rising from their seats to cast their votes.

She replaces retiring Justice David Souter, a liberal named by a Republican president, and she is not expected to alter the court's ideological split.

Still, Republicans and Democrats were deeply at odds over confirming Sotomayor, and the battle over her nomination highlighted profound philosophical disagreements that will shape future battles over the court's makeup as Obama looks to another likely vacancy " perhaps more than one_ while he's in the White House.

The GOP decried Obama's call for "empathy" in a justice, painting Sotomayor as the embodiment of an inappropriate standard that would let a judge bring her personal whims and prejudices to the bench.

Her writings and speeches "reflect a belief not just that impartiality is not possible, but that it's not even worth the effort," said Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the minority leader. "In Judge Sotomayor's court, groups that didn't make the cut of preferred groups often found that they ended up on the short end of the empathy standard."

Democrats, for their part, hailed the vote as a breakthrough achievement for the country, on par with enactment of civil rights laws. They warned Republicans they risked a backlash from Hispanic voters in the short term and an enduring black mark on their party in history books by opposing Sotomayor's confirmation.

"History awaits, and so does an anxious Hispanic community in this country," said Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the Senate's lone Hispanic Democrat and the head of his party's campaign arm, just minutes before the vote. "When she places her hand on the Bible and takes the oath of office, the new portrait of the justices of the Supreme Court will clearly reflect who we are as a nation, what we stand for as a fair, just and hopeful people."

The Senate chamber was heavy with history as senators cast their votes in turn.

Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., 91, the longest-serving senator who has been in frail health following a long hospitalization, was brought in in a wheelchair to vote. Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., suffering from brain cancer, was absent.

In the final tally, nine Republicans joined majority Democrats and the Senate's two independents to support Sotomayor's confirmation.

The Republicans said that they might disagree with some of her rulings, statements or views, but that she was well-qualified to serve on the nation's highest court.

"Judge Sotomayor's decisions, while not always the decision I would render, are not outside the legal mainstream and do not indicate an obvious desire to legislate from the bench," said GOP Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio.

Like Democrats, many of them called Sotomayor's background inspirational. The daughter of Puerto Rican parents, she was raised in a South Bronx housing project, then educated in the Ivy League before rising to the highest legal echelons.

So Obama lied to the American public about the effectiveness of his plan in order to get his stimulus bill thru Congress...eh? Sorry, when you drew the analogy to the Iraq war, I couldn't resist taking a jab at all those folks who claimed Bush was lying when he took us to war in Iraq based on errant CIA assessments of Saddam's nuke capabilities.

The difference I see between Obama's claims on the stimulus bill and Bush's on the war, was that Bush smartly never laid out a time frame for when the war would be won. In fact he always claimed it would be a "long war". Of course you do have that pesky faux pas where he proudly stood in front of a "Mission Accomplished" banner and yes, he was wrong about that.

I don't think it's reasonable to assess the stimulus bill to be successful simply because at some undetermined time in the future the economy recovers. Under that reasoning, the only chance for failure is if the economy never recovers. I mean I could apply that same measure of success and say the economy recovered, not based on Obama's stimulus plan, but rather based on Bush's even-slower working stimulus plan or even Bush's tax cuts back in 2003. Even you Dems admitted that the economy would eventually heal of itself, given time. They just argued that recovery would be much quicker if we indentured our children. And "quicker" was always 2 years.

You're can't change the measures of success in mid-stream. You sound like the kid that starts the game saying "best out of three" then when he loses, says "best out of five"...then "best out of seven", etc.

The role of the Recovery Act is clearest in state and local spending. Sharp falls in revenues and balanced budget requirements have been forcing state and local governments to tighten their belts significantly. But, state and local government spending actually rose at a healthy 2.4% annual rate in the second quarter of 2009. This followed two consecutive quarters of decline, and was the highest growth rate in two years. No one can doubt that the $33 billion of state fiscal relief that has already gone out thanks to the Recovery Act is a key source of this increase.

WASHINGTON " The Senate confirmed Sonia Sotomayor Thursday as the first Hispanic justice on the Supreme Court. The vote was 68-31 for Sotomayor, President Barack Obama's first high court nominee. She becomes the 111th justice and just the third woman to serve.

president george walker bush did absolutely nothing. about anything. as usual.

(7) increased budget deficit from +233 billion to -415 billion.

I cannot speak for any other conservatives, but I want Obama to fail .

will conservatives

This lively book traces the development of American conservatism from Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Daniel Webster, through Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Herbert Hoover, to William F. Buckley, Jr., Ronald Reagan, and William Kristol. Conservatism has assumed a variety of forms, historian Patrick Allitt argues, because it has been chiefly reactive, responding to perceived threats and challenges at different moments in the nation’s history.



While few Americans described themselves as conservatives before the 1930s, certain groups, beginning with the Federalists in the 1790s, can reasonably be thought of in that way.

The book discusses changing ideas about what ought to be conserved, and why.

Conservatives sometimes favored but at other times opposed a strong central government, sometimes criticized free-market capitalism but at other times supported it.

Some denigrated democracy while others championed it.

Core elements, however, have connected thinkers in a specifically American conservative tradition, in particular a skepticism about human equality and fears for the survival of civilization.

Allitt brings the story of that tradition to the end of the twentieth century, examining how conservatives rose to dominance during the Cold War. Throughout the book he offers original insights into the connections between the development of conservatism and the larger history of the nation.