Bush 'Compassion' Agenda: An '04 Liability?

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/26/politics/26MEMO.html?hp

President Bush is running for re-election as a "compassionate conservative" who has sought to bring a new Republican approach to poverty and other social ills. Indeed, his campaign Web site is lush with a "compassion photo gallery" showing him reading to schoolchildren, helping out at a soup kitchen and visiting an AIDS treatment center in Africa.

But supporters, some administration officials among them, acknowledge that Mr. Bush's "compassionate conservative" agenda has fallen so far short of its ambitious goals, in a number of cases undercut by pressure from his conservative backers, that they fear he will be politically vulnerable on the issue in 2004.

At the same time, some religious supporters of Mr. Bush say they feel betrayed by promises he made as a candidate and now, they maintain, has broken as president.

"After three years, he's failed the test," said one prominent early supporter, the Rev. Jim Wallis, leader of Call to Renewal, a network of churches that fights poverty.

Mr. Wallis said Mr. Bush had told him as president-elect that "I don't understand how poor people think," and appealed to him for help by calling himself "a white Republican guy who doesn't get it, but I'd like to." Now, Mr. Wallis said, "his policy has not come even close to matching his words."

Its goal was not to be compassionate but to fool a lot of voters. It worked perfectly.

Perhaps they weren't thinking ahead four years. Perhaps they trusted in their ability to come up with some other trick in time.



http://www.dvorkin.com

just that his definition were not what most sensible people consider compassionate.

Compassionate if the rich get their tax cuts.
Compassionate if the his buddies get the war contracts.
Compassionate if he doesn't abuse us with his press conferences......

and you can tell how cheap he is too!

May I use that one!!

Perfectly put:)

policy and war on achieving increased $$$$$$$ for his corporate donors and superwealthy friends. This seems to be the ONLY thing in his life that he actually has excelled at (as well as completely fuc#ing up the Country).

I think about when I think of that moron. I remember how he mocked that woman on death row during the election. He surely has no compassion for the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, or for our own soldiers. He has no compassion for minorities or the enviornment. He has no compassion for anyone except the people who have paid for his being installed in the first place...actually, I doubt he even has compassion for them, not that they need compassion. He just needs more of their money so he can scam his way into another 4 years of destroying the country, and the rest of the world as well.

Every time I see the asshole on TV or even a picture of him., I see those empty eyes, and I am convinced that there is no soul in there.. just a lazy, arrogant void of a man.

No one else could have said it any better than you did.

:dem:

"Man, that Hussein had it all figured out!"

Great quote. What a pathetic asshole this president is.

WE CAN'T GET HIM OUT SOON ENOUGH. What's taking so FUCKING LONG??????

Why aren't we just throwing this idiot out on his ear? NOW!

I hope whoever is running against him in 2004 pounds him with it.

The chimp was born with a silver spoon up his nose and never worked a day in his fucking worthless life. How could he possibly understand how poor people, or even working people think?? :grr:

Marvin Olansky...some info on origins of Compassionate Conservatism

http://www.heritage.org/Research/PoliticalPhilosophy/hl676.cfm

<snip>
I'm glad to be back at the Heritage Foundation. In 1989, when I spoke here about "conservative compassion," I felt like the man in the old joke who's driving on the Beltway when his car phone rings. Answering, he hears his wife's voice urgently warning him, "Marvin, I just heard on the news that there's a car driving on the wrong side of the Beltway. Please be careful!" Marvin responds, "It's not just one car, honey, it's THOUSANDS of them!"
<snip>

<snip>
Faith-based groups can gain two protections, one in the way government financing is structured, and one in the way that offers of government help should be received. Here's the basic funding rule for church-state interaction: always choose the method that can best protect the independence of faith-based groups. My own preference is for tax credits--send a check for $500 to a poverty-fighting charity, faith-based or not, and send $500 less to Washington.
<snip>

Enjoy!!

Mr. Wallis said Mr. Bush had told him as president-elect that "I don't understand how poor people think," and appealed to him for help by calling himself "a white Republican guy who doesn't get it, but I'd like to." Now, Mr. Wallis said, "his policy has not come even close to matching his words."


Just skip the "I'd like to" part, and you have a Bush campaign slogan for 2004:

"A White Republican guy who doesn't get it: Bush/Cheney 2004"

If anyone buys into that compassionate conservative hogwash it can only mean that people have lost all sense of reason, have lost all touch with reality.

Compassion's irrelevant anyway.

Putting the ignorant heathen peeps out of their misery so civilization can take over the resources to better the world...I mean their pocket books!

The conservative part is not bombing the hell out of them all!

That should read "compassionate propaganda gallery".

For something to be a liability, shouldn't it actually exist first? Just asking.

just surround yourself with smiling BLACK kids.. you know, those places where once you've been there they cut all their funding?

Gore Vidal said it all once in a quote, "Everything they say is nothing more than code for 'get the niggers'"..

he's not very PC but man he sure hits the mark with these hateful old white guys..

rest of us? Are they saving the dividends cuts for a rainy day or are they using them to travel to fabulous destinations such as Disney World?

People like him actually believe that poor people LIKE being poor, that all of them CHOSE to be poor. He can't conceive of what hopelessness feels like, of what depression feels like, of the lack of inspiration that comes from squalid living conditions and ill-funded ramshackle schools. He thinks poor people choose to live this way because they are lazy... it's all so simple to him. Did he pick the family he was born into, I wonder? Whatever you are born into, that is all you know, for a very long time. It takes a good deal of effort to inspire and to uplift people from all that they've ever known.

So he wonders how poor people think. How about, goddamn it, my company eliminated my minimum wage job and I'm hungry and the pantry is empty and I've got to choose between paying the gas bill or the electric bill and my son is sick and I have no medical coverage and the school sent me a list of school supplies I can't afford to buy and my car has 200K miles on it and is making funny noises and how will I go job hunting tomorrow because there's no one to watch my sick son while I'm gone, FOR STARTERS?

Chimpeachment.