On these four mega-questions,
Republicans are as divided as they were in the days of
Rockefeller and
Goldwater. Where the right unites—on tax cuts, John
Roberts and Sam Alito—the president has the nation
behind him.
Wherever "conservatives"
stand—whether
Old Right or neocon,
supply-sider or deficit hawk, America First or
global democrat, big government or small government—the
returns of Bush's policies are largely in and the
outcome unlikely to change. And this is why Bush and the
GOP are in trouble, and neoconservatism is in the dock.
The altarpiece of the Bush foreign
policy is Iraq. American dead are at 2,600, the wounded
at 18,000. Three hundred billion dollars has been
plunged into the war. Yet Iraq is a bloodier, more
dangerous place than it has been since the fall of
Baghdad. One hundred are being killed every day, half of
them in the capital. IED attacks on U.S. troops
are at record levels—three and a half years after
Baghdad fell.
The Bush democracy campaign brought
stunning electoral gains for the Muslim Brotherhood in
Egypt, Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon and
Moqtada al-Sadr in Iraq. Our ally Hamid Kharzai is today
little more than mayor of Kabul, as the Taliban roam the
southeast and coalition casualties reach the highest
levels since liberation five years ago.
North Korea and Iran remain defiant
on their nuclear programs.
Vladimir Putin is befriending every regime at odds
with Bush, from Tehran to Damascus to Caracas.
Neocon meddling in the Bear's backyard has gotten us
bit.
Unless we grade foreign policy on
the nobility of the intent, which is how the liberals
used to defend disasters like Yalta, it is not credible
to call Bush's foreign policy a success. The Lebanon
debacle, once U.S. complicity is exposed, is unlikely to
win anyone a Nobel.
Bush's trade policy has left us
with annual deficits of $800 billion with the world and
$200 billion with Beijing. Once the greatest creditor
nation in history, we are now the greatest debtor. U.S.
manufacturing has been hollowed out with thousands of
plants closed and 3 million industrial jobs vanishing
since Bush took office.
As for Bush immigration policy, the
nation is in virtual rebellion. Six million aliens have
been caught at the Mexican border since he took office.
One in 12 had a criminal record. In April-May, millions
of Hispanics
marched through U.S. cities demanding amnesty and
all rights of citizenship for
aliens who are breaking the law by even being here.
Bush and the Senate are in paralysis, appeasing the
lawbreakers by offering amnesties and by opposing House
demands that the president seal the border before the
invasion brings an end to the America we once knew.
While the economy has been running
well since 2003, creating jobs, and the markets are
performing well, the real wages of working Americans
have not kept pace with the portfolios of the clients of
Lawrence Kudlow. Industrial states, like Ohio, could
be killing fields of the GOP in November.
To the neocon guru Irving Kristol,
"The historical task and political purpose of
neoconservatism would seem to be ... to convert the
Republican Party and American conservatism in general,
against their respective wills, into a
new kind of conservative politics suitable to
governing a modern democracy." [The
Neoconservative Persuasion, Weekly Standard,
August 25, 2003]
With some of us, the
tutoring never took, but the neocons surely did
convert George W. How's your boy doing, Irving?
Patrick J. Buchanan needs
no introduction to Vdare.com readers; his book
State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and
Conquest of America,
can be ordered
from Amazon.com.
