Even Republicans Fear Bush

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Mon, 01 Nov 2004 07:21:28 -0800

Subject:Even Republicans fear Bush

 

 

Even Republicans Fear Bush

by John Nichols

 

The most divisive election campaign in recent American

history has not merely split the nation along party

lines, it has split the Grand Old Party itself.

Unfortunately, most Americans are wholly unaware of

the loud dissents against Bush that has begun to be

heard in Republican circles.

If the United States had major media that covered

politics, as opposed to the political spin generated

by the Bush White House and the official campaigns of

both the Republican president and his Democratic

challenger, one of the most fascinating, and

significant, stories of the 2004 election season would

be the abandonment of the Bush reelection effort by

senior Republicans. But this is a story that, for the

most part, has gone untold. Scant attention was paid

to the revelation that one Republican member of the

U.S. Senate, Rhode Island's Lincoln Chafee, will

refrain from voting for his party's president --

despite the fact that Chafee offered a far more

thoughtful critique of George W. Bush's presidency

than " Zig-Zag " Zell Miller, the frothing,

Democrat-hating Democrat did when he condemned his

party's nominee. Beyond the minimal attention to

Chafee, most media has neglected the powerful, and

often poignant, condemnations of Bush by prominent

Republicans.

 

Former Republican members of the U.S. Senate and

House, governors, ambassadors, aides to GOP Presidents

Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan and George Herbert

Walker Bush have explicitly endorsed the campaign of

Democrat John Kerry. For many of these lifelong

Republicans, their vote for Kerry will be a first

Democratic vote. But, in most cases, it will not be a

hesitant one.

 

Angered by the Bush administration's mismanagement of

the war in Iraq, record deficits, assaults on the

environment and secrecy, the renegade partisans tend

to echo the words of former Minnesota Governor Elmer

Andersen, who says that, " Although I am a longtime

Republican, it is time to make a statement, and it is

this: Vote for Kerry-Edwards, I implore you, on

November 2. "

 

Many of the Republicans who are abandoning Bush

express sorrow at what the Bush-Cheney administration

and its allies in Congress have done to their party:

" The fact is that today's 'Republican' Party is one

that I am totally unfamiliar with, " writes John

Eisenhower. But the deeper motivation is summed up by

former U.S. Senator Marlow Cook, a Kentucky

Republican, who explained in a recent article for the

Louisville Courier-Journal newspaper that, " For me, as

a Republican, I feel that when my party gives me a

dangerous leader who flouts the truth, takes the

country into an undeclared war and then adds a war on

terrorism to it without debate by the Congress, we

have a duty to rid ourselves of those who are taking

our country on a perilous ride in the wrong direction.

If we are indeed the party of Lincoln (I paraphrase

his words), a president who deems to have the right to

declare war at will without the consent of the

Congress is a president who far exceeds his power

under our Constitution. I will take John Kerry for

four years to put our country on the right path. "

 

In the end, of course, the vast majority of

Republicans will cast their ballots for George w. Bush

on Tuesday, just as the vast majority of Democrats

will vote for John Kerry. But the Republicans who plan

to cross the partisan divide and vote for Kerry have

articulated a unique and politically potent indictment

of the Bush administration.

 

Here are a dozen examples of what Republicans are

saying about George W. Bush -- and John Kerry -- as

the November 2 election approaches:

 

 

" As son of a Republican president, Dwight D.

Eisenhower, it is automatically expected by many that

I am a Republican. For 50 years, through the election

of 2000, I was. With the current administration's

decision to invade Iraq unilaterally, however, I

changed my voter registration to independent, and

barring some utterly unforeseen development, I intend

to vote for the Democratic presidential candidate,

Sen. John Kerry. "

 

-- Ambassador John Eisenhower, endorsing Kerry in an

opinion piece published in The Manchester Union

Leader, September 28, 2004.

 

 

 

 

 

" The two 'Say No to Bush' signs in my yard say it all.

The present Republican president has led us into an

unjustified war -- based on misguided and blatantly

false misrepresentations of the threat of weapons of

mass destruction. The terror seat was Afghanistan.

Iraq had no connection to these acts of terror and was

not a serious threat to the United States, as this

president claimed, and there was no relation, it's now

obvious, to any serious weaponry. Although Saddam

Hussein is a frightful tyrant, he posed no threat to

the United States when we entered the war. George W.

Bush's arrogant actions to jump into Iraq when he had

no plan how to get out have alienated the United

States from our most trusted allies and weakened us

immeasurably around the world... This imperialistic,

stubborn adherence to wrongful policies and known

untruths by the Cheney-Bush administration -- and

that's the accurate order -- has simply become more

than I can stand. "

-- Former Minnesota Governor Elmer Andersen, a

Republican, endorsing Kerry in an opinion piece

published in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, October 13,

2004. Andersen argued in the piece that, " I am more

fearful for the state of this nation than I have ever

been -- because this country is in the hands of an

evil man: Dick Cheney. It is eminently clear that it

is he who is running the country, not George W. Bush. "

 

 

 

 

 

" George W. Bush has come to embody a politics that is

antithetical to almost any kind of thoughtful

conservatism. His international policies have been

based on the hopelessly naive belief that foreign

peoples are eager to be liberated by American enemies

-- a notion more grounded in Leon Trotsky's concept of

global revolution than any sort of conservative

statecraft. "

-- Scott McConnell, executive editor, The American

Conservative, endorsing Kerry in the November 8, 2004

issue.

 

 

 

 

" I am not enamored with John Kerry, but I am

frightened to death of George Bush. I fear a secret

government. I abhor a government that refuses to

supply the Congress with requested information. I am

against a government that refuses to tell the country

with whom the leaders of our country sat down and

determined our energy policy, and to prove how much

they want to keep the secret, they took it all the way

to the Supreme Court. "

-- Former U.S. Senator Marlow Cook, Republican from

Kentucky, endorsing Kerry in an opinion piece that

appeared in The Louisville Courier-Journal, October

20, 2004.

 

 

 

 

" My Republican Party is the party of Theodore

Roosevelt, who fought to preserve our natural

resources and environment. This president has pursued

policies that will cause irreparable damage to our

environmental laws that protect the air we breathe,

the water we drink and the public lands we share with

future generations. "

-- Former Michigan Governor William Milliken, from a

statement published in the Traverse City Record Eagle,

October 17, 2004.

 

 

 

 

" As an environmentalist who served as chairman of the

U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works,

I know that this administration has turned

environmental policy over to lobbyists for the oil,

gas and mining interests. On the other hand, I know

first-hand of your commitment to a more balanced

approach to environmental policy -- one where we can

have both jobs and profit for industry as well as

clean air and water. There is no stronger evidence of

this than your outstanding leadership and support in

the restoration of the Florida Everglades. John, for

each of these reasons I believe President Bush has

failed our country and my party. Accordingly, I want

you to know that when I go into the booth next Tuesday

I am going to cast my vote for you. "

-- Former U.S. Senator Bob Smith, Republican from New

Hampshire, from an endorsement letter sent to John

Kerry, October 28, 2004.

 

 

 

 

" Nixon was a prince compared to these guys. "

-- Former U.S. Representative Pete McCloskey,

R-California, from an article in the Palo Alto Weekly,

September 8, 2004. McCloskey, who is active with

Republicans for Kerry, says of members of the Bush

administration, " These people believe God has told

them what to do. They've high jacked the Republican

Party we once knew. "

 

 

" The war is just a misbegotten thing that's spiraling

down. It's a matter of conscience for me. After 9/11,

the whole world was behind us. That's all gone now.

That's been squandered. Now we've made the entire

Muslim world hate us. And for what? For what? "

-- Former State Senator Al Meiklejohn, Republican from

Colorado and World War II combat veteran, explaining

his decision to support John Kerry in an interview

with The Denver Post, September 19, 2004.

 

 

 

 

 

" We need a leader who is really dedicated to creating

millions of high-paying jobs all across the country. "

-- Former Chrysler chairman Lee Iacocca, who

campaigned for George W. Bush in 2000 and appeared in

television advertisements for the Republican Party of

Michigan that year. Iacocca, who complains that under

Bush deficit spending is " getting out of hand, "

endorsing Kerry on June 24, 2004.

 

 

 

 

 

" In a dangerous epoch -- made more so by a president

who sees the world in stark black and white because

simplicity polls better and fits into sound bites --

John Kerry may seem out of place. He is, in fact, in

exactly the right place at the right time to lead our

country. "

-- Tim Ashby, who served during the Reagan and George

Herbert Walker Bush administrations as director of the

Office of Mexico and the Caribbean for the U.S.

Commerce Department and acting deputy assistant

Secretary of Commerce for the Western Hemisphere,

endorsing Kerry in a Seattle Times, October 14, 2004.

 

 

 

 

 

" I have always been, and I still am, a registered

Republican, but I shall enthusiastically vote for John

Kerry for president on November 2... If the Bush

administration stays in power four more years, it will

pack the Supreme Court with neocons who reject the

idea that the Constitution is a living document

designed to protect the freedom of the citizens. "

-- Anne Morton Kimberly, widow of former Republican

National Committee chair Rogers C.B. Morton, Secretary

of the Interior during the Nixon administration and

Secretary of Commerce during the Ford administration,

endorsing Kerry in a an opinion piece that appeared in

the Louisville Courier-Journal, October 14, 2004.

 

 

 

 

" Mainstream Republicans believe in fiscal

responsibility, internationalism, environmental

protection, the rights of women, and putting

middle-class families ahead of big business lobbyists.

Moderate Republicans should not be asked to swallow

the right-wing policies of George W. Bush. "

-- Clay Myers, who was Oregon's Republican Secretary

of State for 10 years and the state's Treasure,

endorsing Kerry at a press conference for Oregon

Republicans for Kerry, September 1, 2004.

 

 

 

 

" The current administration has run the largest

deficits in U.S. history, incurring massive debts that

our children and grandchildren will have to pay. Two

and a half million people have lost their jobs;

trillions have been wiped out of savings and

retirement accounts. The income of Americans has

declined two years in a row, the first time since the

IRS began keeping records. George W. Bush will be the

first president since Hoover to have a net job loss

under his watch... President Bush wanted to be judged

as the CEO president, it is time to say, 'you have

failed, and you're fired. "

-- William Rutherford, former State Treasurer of

Oregon, endorsing Kerry as a press conference for

Oregon Republicans for Kerry, September 1, 2004.

 

 

 

 

" I served 20 years in the Ohio General Assembly as

Republican. People have asked me why I oppose George

w. Bush for president. My first response is, 'He is

incompetent.' His behavior, his bad judgment, his

record, all demonstrate a failure as president. He

certainly misled the country into a no-win war in

Iraq. Following his preemptive invasion, he totally

misjudged the consequences of his action. He made a

bad situation worse, fomenting widespread terrorism,

all done with a frightful loss of lives and money. "

-- Former Ohio State Representative John Galbraith, a

Republican legislator for 20 years, endorsing Kerry in

a letter to The Toledo Blade, September 28, 2004.

 

 

 

 

 

" Before the current campaign, it might have been

argued that at least in affirming the importance of

faith and respecting those who profess it the

administration had embraced traditional conservative

views. But in the wake of the Swift Boat ads attacking

John Kerry, even this argument can no longer be

maintained. As an elder of the Presbyterian Church, I

found that those ads were not at all in the Christian

tradition. John McCain rightly condemned them as

dishonest and dishonorable. The president should have,

too. That he did not undermines his credibility on

questions of faith.

 

Some say it's just politics. But that's the whole

point. More is expected of people of faith than " just

politics. "

 

The fact is that the Bush administration might better

be called radical or romantic or adventurist than

conservative. And that's why real conservatives are

leaning toward Kerry. "

 

-- Clyde Prestowitz, counselor to the secretary of

commerce in the Reagan administration and an elder of

the Presbyterian Church, from " The Conservative Case

for Kerry, " published in the Providence Journal and

other newspapers, October 15, 2004.

 

 

 

 

© 2004 The Nation