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Should Conservatives Support Bush?: We Have a Stake in Him
| Article
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19899 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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4 / 1992 |
1,987 Words |
| Author
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Peter W. Rodman
Peter W. Rodman is a fellow of the Johns Hopkins Foreign
Policy Institute as well as a senior editor of National
Review. He was a National Security Council official in the
Reagan and Bush administrations. |
One of these years--may-be this year--the Democrats will get their act together and nominate a candidate who unifies their party and is positioned cleverly to appeal to the broad center of the American public. This is not the time for Republicans or conservatives to tear each other apart over narrow litmus tests of doctrinal purity. We need to stick together and back our strongest leader. Any hopes of long-term realignment depend on continuing the winning record of 12 years. For this and many other reasons, undermining President Bush would be a grave mistake.
Though my main experience has been in the national security field, I find it hard to understand how conservatives can desert a president who has vetoed two dozen liberal Democratic bills, fought courageously to ease the tax burden on investment, appointed conservatives to the judiciary, pushed for the toughest anticrime and antidrug legislation, stood by the conservatives on a host of other social issues, and proposed imaginative programs to restore or preserve citizen choice in such critical areas as education, housing, health, care, child care, and energy policy. The liberals, who have assaulted almost all of the president's pro-growth and limited-government initiatives, are under no misapprehensions about his philosophy.
A policy that has helped bring inflation down to 3.1 percent (for all of 1991) and interest rates to their lowest level in two decades deserves some credit.
In his State of the Union address on January 28, the president announced a set of responsible new initiatives to spur economic revival and long-term growth:
· a proposed cut in the capital gains tax, down to a maximum of approximately 15 percent;
· a proposed new investment tax allowance and simplification of the alternative minimum tax to stimulate Productive new investment in plant and equipment;
· a temporary tax credit for first-time home buyers and more flexibility in the use of IRAs;
· Changes in the "passive loss" rules, to promote real estate development;
· a 90-day moratorium on new federal regulations in order to review and change those that are an unnecessary burden on economic growth;
· new steps to ease the credit crunch to fee up bank lending to businesses and individuals;
· an increase of $ 500 in
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