Countering the Bush Third Term Mantra: How McCain Distances Himself from Bush Properly

The strategy is clear. Everywhere you turn a Democrat is comparing the policies of George Bush and John McCain.



Now, the Democrats are trying to paint McCain's domestic and foreign policy record as the same as Bush's. Yet, it is my supposition that on each Bush's record has one glaring weakness and McCain has been against the President both times.

Domestically, Bush's most glaring weakness has been on spending. On spending, John McCain has been critical of the President's policies from the beginning.


In this video, he vociferously opposes the Bush tax cuts in March of 2003. We were just beginning the war in Iraq. The entire opposition here was budgetary. He spoke of on an already budget that was going deep into the red. We were already spending a great deal in Afghanistan. We didn't know what other trouble spots in the world. We had no idea on what Iraq was going to cost. The President was proposing a series of tax cuts with no cut in spending. How could any good fiscal conservative support such a notion?

On this single, though very important, domestic issue, John McCain has distanced himself properly from the President. For the most part though, there is no reason to run away from the President's record. The Democrats are trying to trash the idea of the tax cuts. What McCain should condemn is the idea of tax cuts without the proper spending cuts. Taxes aren't merely supposed to lower our tax rates. They are also supposed to make government smaller and more efficient. If you can't do these things along with cutting taxes, the tax cuts are meaningless.

Then, on foreign policy, John McCain has also distanced himself from George Bush effectively.


Bush's biggest foreign policy failure was not putting enough troops in Iraq and not realizing that the strategy he had was failing. McCain not only called for putting more troops on the ground and fighting a counter insurgency. That is exactly what is happening now and it is succeeding.

Again, the Democrats try and paint Bush's entire foreign policy vision as failed when what really failed was nearly four years of following the wrong strategy in Iraq. By bogging us down like that it made carrying out proper foreign policy nearly impossible. That doesn't mean the rest of the vision is wrong.
The Democrats think that we should give terrorists rights and if you disagree with him, you are merely carrying out the failed policies of Bush's third term.

These are the same guys who helped to engineer the distraction of the Iraq war at a time when we could have pinned down the people who actually committed 9/11."...This is the same kind of fear mongering that got us into Iraq. It's exactly that failed foreign policy I want to reverse.

Barack Obama wants to talk unconditionally to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and if you disagree with him, you are merely carrying out Bush's third term. They tie all policies to the failed policies in Iraq.

There’s a reason the problems we face today are so much bigger than they were several years ago A big part of it is that George Bush and John McCain have been so focused on pursuing a flawed and costly war in Iraq that they’ve lost sight of our mounting problems here at home. Instead of working to fix our economy and lift up hardworking families, they’ve fought to extend a war that’s costing thousands of lives and billions of dollars without making us any safer — a war that has strengthened our enemies and distracted us from the real battle with Usama bin Ladin in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

Of course, the strategy is no longer failing and thus the Democrats pretend as thought the facts on the ground are no different than they were 18 months ago. Here is how Nancy Pelosi summarized it.

President Bush’s troop surge has “not produced the desired effect.”“The purpose of the surge was to create a secure time for the government of Iraq to make the political change to bring reconciliation to Iraq,” Pelosi said on CNN’s “Late
Edition.” “They have not done that.” The speaker hastened to add: “The troops have succeeded, God bless them.”

The Democrats are trying to pull a misdirection. They are pretending as though the entire Bush policy is failing because of two glaring weaknesses. Furthermore they are pretending that McCain hasn't vociferously been against each of these policies from the start. As such, they are able to turn this perception and turn it into reality.



Of course, the Bush tax cuts secure borders, the surge, and free market health care are all good policy. These are policies to get behind and defend stridently. The Republican have in fact chosen the one Republican to criticize Bush's two main failings and the Democrats are trying to point him as Bush's third term. They will be able to turn that perception into reality unless these two very important differences are pointed out each and every time they do it.

Latinos to Obama: Open Borders or Else

According to the Hill, Latino lawmakers have given Barack Obama an ultimatum regarding the Latino vote.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) must commit to helping illegal immigrants achieve citizenship or else risk losing the vital Latino vote in the general election, Hispanic Democratic lawmakers are warning.

If he does not promise so-called comprehensive immigration reform, the lawmakers say, the only other way to win over Hispanic supporters of his erstwhile rival, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), may be to pick her as his running mate.

Obama’s National Latino Vote Director, Cuauhtemoc “Temo” Figueroa, will have his first meeting in Washington Thursday with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC).

Earlier, I wrote a piece about the the make up of the constituencies of the two parties. Whereas, with Republicans, the constituency is made up almost entirely based on ideology, for the Democrats the make up is made up nearly entirely on race, sex, and ethnicity. Once again, it rears its ugly head.

Fortunately, Barack Obama has been an open borders proponent for years. He has supported everything from driver's licenses to illegals, to the DREAM Act, and he has been against building the fence and the SAVE Act. Unfortunately, if he is to be totally open borders in order to please his base, he will also lose most folks in the middle. Illegal immigration will be one of the most important issues in November, and Americans are overwhelmingly in favor of tough border policy. That is NOT what Barack Obama has favored, and that is clearly not what his Latino constituency is demanding. With his opponent having a relatively moderate position as well, Obama will have to show a great deal of deference to open borders policies in order to secure that vote.

UPDATE:

Hello all VDARE readers for a full dossier of Obama's open borders policy please click here.

More Troubling News From the Border?

Here are some interesting statistics compiled by the Minute Men

17—The number of times armed Mexican soldiers violated our porous borders
in 2006.

29—The total number of times Mexican soldiers violated our porous borders in 2006.

253—That is the DOCUMENTED number of times Mexican soldiers and Mexican law enforcement personnel violated our porous borders in order to traffic drugs and weapons in and out of our country from 1996 to September 30, 2006.

1,000—The number of times U.S. Border Patrol agents in 2007 were attacked while attempting to secure our borders without the necessary resources from the U.S. federal government.

I am always confused when someone proclaims that in order to get illegal immigration under control that we need to work with the Mexican government. Guess what, the Mexican government is not and never has been a willing partner in our illegal immigration crisis. If we are going to solve it, it will be without their help. The money sent back home from illegals and otherwise is the number one import of their economy. The Mexicans have a vested interest in seeing our borders as out of control as possible and these stats are evidence...



Please note the money for the border fence is now in jeopardy...please stay tuned...

Passing Along Some Vital Information Regarding Illegal Immigration

I received this email from Numbers USA over the weekend.

Without explanation, Congress has stripped away $3 billion in desperately needed funds to build the Border Fence that it approved last year and to provide for other border security.That's right—without telling the public, Congress is pulling the plug on the U.S.-Mexico Border Fence that it voted for with such enthusiasm last year (just before they asked voters to re-elect them).

Help us turn this petition into a national overnight phenomenon. Time is critical—Congress will finalize this funding question before Christmas!Now, it is important to emphasize again, as Numbers points out, that the fence and its funding was voted on late in the session in 2006. At last check, about eleven miles out of thousands had actually been built.

The fence has become a sort of cause celebe for opponents of tough measures against illegal immigration.

Their rallying cry comes in this statement from Governor Janet Napolitano of Arizona.

You show me a 50-foot wall and I'll show you a 51-foot ladder at the border. That's the way the border works

That sort of statement is what I refer to as a strawman arguement. No one is claiming that the border fence will keep out everyone that tries to come in. It will however keep out a lot of them, and that is the point of anti illegal immigration legislation. Everytime I hear this statement, I always point out that a Mexican migrant is going to look awfully funny walking around the desert with a fifty one foot ladder. There is no one hundred percent full proof way of keeping illegals out. If we put together a human wall, someone might ride in in a tank. That doesn't mean that methods aren't effective even if some smart person has figured out a way to theoretically get around them.
The border fence near San Diego is proof that the fence works.

Before the fence was built, all that separated that stretch of Mexico from California was a single strand of cable that demarcated the international border.

Back then, Border Patrol agent Jim Henry says he was overwhelmed by the stream of immigrants who crossed into the United States illegally just in that sector."It was an area that was out of control," Henry says. "There were over 100,000 aliens crossing through this area a year."

Today, Henry is assistant chief of the Border Patrol's San Diego sector. He says apprehensions here are down 95 percent, from 100,000 a year to 5,000 a year, largely because the single strand of cable marking the border was replaced by double -- and in some places, triple -- fencing.

Both houses of Congress voted on and approved this fence and the President signed it.

If laws aren't followed through on, then our government is nothing more than a banana republic. This is unacceptable and I hope everyone rises up and demands that Congress follow through on what they started.

The Fence and the Ladder

Sometimes I think that those that occupy the left of our political spectrum are even tougher on border enforcement than we on the right. We are willing to try something even if it only reduces illegal immigration by 50, 60, or even 90%, whereas the left will only implement something if it stops it cold. That is the only way to explain the left's refusal to get behind the idea of a border fence.

Most have heard Democratic Governor Napolitano's response to the border fence, ""You show me a 50-foot wall and I'll show you a 51-foot ladder at the border. That's the way the border works". My response is that someone is going to look awfully suspicious walking around the Mexican desert holding onto a fifty one foot ladder. There is no full proof method to stopping illegal immigration entirely, and the governor is right. The fence will not deter someone if they are motivated enough. The reality is nothing will.

We could put together a human wall that stretches the entire border with Mexico and someone would bring a tank and run through our human wall. Nothing is full proof. That is the reality with illegal immigration and with homeland security for that matter.

While there will be those that go over and under any fence, the reality is that most will look at the fence and walk back home. That isn't good enough for the Governor or any of those on the left. I attended a debate on illegal immigration between Jim Oberweis and Susan Gzesh. Gzesh quoted the Governor in response to a question about the fence.

The reality in my opinion is the Ms. Gzesh doesn't think that the fence won't work, but that it will. Most of those that condemn the fence as flawed and "easily" penetrable, really just want open borders. What they won't say is that is that it isn't that the fence won't work, but that it will.

I am Jewish and I know something about fences. Israel has a fence on the border with the West Bank and none on the border with Gaza. Three guesses where the overwhelming majority of terrorism comes from. People like Ms. Gzesh and the Governor would have us believe that migrants would be willing to find a ladder to come here for work, but terrorists aren't willing to do the same thing in order to kill their enemy.

The arguement that we need not build a fence because people will bring a ladder is the definition of a straw man arguement. What most that are against the fence really want is an open border. The fence destroys that goal and so while they claim that the fence won't work at all, what they are really worried about is that it will