WHAT GATE? (via David Hill)

At what price? (Bruce Bartlett, August 5, 2003, Townhall.com)

In recent weeks, George W. Bush has started to come in for the first meaningful criticism from mainstream conservatives during his presidency. While nascent, it could become the only real barrier to his re-election next year unless dealt with quickly. [...]

Substantively, there was absolutely no reason for any conservative to support Nixon in 1972 except that he was better than George McGovern -- the most left-wing Democratic nominee since William Jennings Bryan.

No doubt, that is the same reason why most conservatives supported William Howard Taft against Bryan in 1908. But the result was that Taft signed into law the federal income tax and created a national bank for the United States (the Federal Reserve), two cherished liberal ideals that Bryan never could have accomplished. Only a Republican president could have rammed these measures through a Republican Congress.

Conservative dismay over Taft's liberal agenda led directly to massive Democratic gains in Congress in 1910 and his own loss in 1912. The same dismay over Nixon's liberal agenda led to massive Democratic gains and his ouster from office in 1974.

I am sorry to say that I see Bush traveling the same path. He has concluded that the Democrats are very likely to nominate a candidate so far to the left as to be unelectable. Howard Dean's ascension to the head of the Democratic pack supports this conclusion. But ironically, rather than making Bush feel more comfortable pursuing a conservative agenda, he continues to move left on domestic issues -- especially the budget-busting prescription drug subsidy bill.

Bush has also signed into law a campaign finance reform bill that most conservatives view as blatantly unconstitutional, endorsed an education bill written by Ted Kennedy and initiated more trade protectionism by any president since Nixon. But against these, Bush continually plays his trump card: the war against terrorism. And just as Nixon played the anticommunist card in terms of the Vietnam War, it has been enough to keep most Republican voters under control -- so far.

The only substantive difference between Nixon and Bush, in terms of policy, is that the latter cut taxes while the former raised them.

This would be an incoherent enough column if all it did was compare America's most liberal president ever, Richard M. Nixon, to its most conservative since Coolidge, George W. Bush. But note that in order to bolster his insipid argument, Mr. Bartlett attributes William Howard Taft's 1912 loss to conservative disillusionment--who did they vote for the progressive Teddy Roosevelt or the Democrat Woodrow Wilson?--and GOP midterm losses in 1974 to same--perhaps he's forgotten that "second-rate burglary"? Here's a handy rule of thumb: when someone has to lie about the facts, doubt their theory. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 6, 2003 7:00 AM