by Tim Jones

Created on: February 17, 2007   Last Updated: April 19, 2007

Reading through the responses to this title, I am struck by the usual conservative positions being expressed about this administration. It has been a long held conservative belief that government should be small, yet the Bush administration has presided over the largest government expansion in recent US History. How does this jive with your conservative philosophy? The Department of Homeland Security is the biggest bureaucracy ever created, and the Inspector General just released his report placing the Department at the bottom of all government agencies in terms of mismanagement and morale. The department has yet to produce a balanced budget in any of its 5 years of existence.

This is not to mention the 10 billion dollars that have been "misplaced" in Iraq by defense contractors with limited to no oversight by this White House, or the Republican Congress that had been in power through all of this. 2.5 billion of this missing money has been attributed to Halliburton alone. These figures are staggering, and go right to the heart of the usual conservative argument that they are the ones best suited to run our government. Losing 10 billion dollars doesn't seem fiscally conservative to me.

There are only two reasons that something like this could occur, incompetence or fraud. I believe in this instance it is a combination of the two. Any hope that people had in the competency of the Bush Administration was quickly shattered by the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and Hurricane Katrina. I believe there are still thousands of trailers sitting empty in Arkansas right now, there may even be trucks filled with ice still running at this very moment somewhere in New Jersey, all the while sucking off the taxpayer dole. And, combined with the failures of management in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have created one of the worst presidencies in US History.

It is my belief that conservatism is slowly dying, being squeezed to death slowly by the serpent of time. Evidence of this is apparent in the current slate of Republican candidates. Republicans are being forced to put aside their stone age social beliefs, hold their nose and go along with Rudy Giuliani or John McCain, because they know that these are the only candidates who have a chance to win. The American public is beginning to wake up to the politics of fear and destruction, and are looking for forward thinking candidates with more moderate views to represent them in the 21st century.

I personally believe the 2 party system should be done away with. There are far more than 2 ways to look at anything, and all views should be represented in the discourse. But, that's another story.

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