GOP hurt by progressive conservatives

GOP hurt by progressive conservatives

Sunday, February 27, 2005
By DAVID J. SIROTA
KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWS SERVICE

In the wake of the 2004 election, there has been much talk about how the American Left lacks policy prescriptions to solve America's problems. As President Bush's political guru Karl Rove asserted recently asserted, "conservatism is the dominant political creed in America" while progressivism is lost at sea.

But is this conventional wisdom really true? Not if you look at the handful of Republican politicians who have recently headed back to their states from Washington to serve as governor. Once reliable conservative ideologues inside the Capital Beltway, these governors have undergone a conversion on their road to America's heartland. And they threaten the conservative movement more seriously than any Democrat in America.

In the South, for instance, two GOP congressmen-turned-governors have abandoned their past willingness to gut Medicaid funding and are now raising hell about budget shortfalls. Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher told Fox News last month that he's "very concerned about any cuts" to the low-income health care program, apparently forgetting how his party tried to cut Medicaid repeatedly when he was a House member. Similarly, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, a hard-core economic conservative in Congress, actually proposed raising cigarette taxes to increase Medicaid funding. In two other "red" states, this same sort of reversal occurred on tax policy. Alabama Gov. Bob Riley last year ignored his votes in Congress for deficit-expanding tax cuts and instead pushed a referendum to raise taxes on his state's top income earners to deal with budget shortfalls.

<snip>

But these governors are not seen as mere turncoats to be ignored - they are seen as mortal threats to conservatism itself. Because by embracing progressive policies during their states' budget crises, they are exposing conservatism as ill-equipped to deal with real-world challenges.

<snip>

http://www.bergen.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk0MDAmZmdiZWw3Zjd2cWVlRUV5eTY2NTg5MjAmeXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkxNA==

understand, it wouldn't take a hell of a lot to foment an overthrow of the government if they remove the foundations of the social system. The bottom line is they are shit scared of the consequences of the bush "plan."

David Sirota is a fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.

They identify the writer with some useful information, i.e., that he's at a liberal think tank. I wonder if they do that for all their columnists, or just use it as a scarlet A for liberals. I actually like it if they do it equally. I frequently wonder, who the heck is that? when they only identify someone as a columnist for some paper or being with some institute that I don't know anything about.

BTW, David Sirota is frequently on the Al Franken show on AAR, for any who don't catch that show.