reasonable people can disagree on what would result from the UAE managing (not controlling) some of our ports, and post 9/11, it makes sense to ask questions and give all deals like this a complete and thorough review. mccain was right when he advocated this approach, as I noted in an earlier post. the process of review was short-circuited for political advantage. it was to everyone’s advantage that we have an honest debate based on factual information, not on speculation. i was for the deal. i’m not going to re-argue it here, because it doesn’t matter now.
we were not wrong to ask questions about the deal, but the republicans didn’t really want to hear the answers. they couldn’t get past their overwhelming need for self-preservation to find out whether the president was actually right this time.
congratulations to the republicans. they effectively killed the ports deal. so what will they gain from this politically? will it guarantee re-election? that’s still to be determined. they still have some other issues to work out before we can support them in ’06. this party has stopped being principled. they have forgotten why we elected them to serve us. limited government? checks on spending? not for these republicans. when people like coburn and pence make the attempt to deal with spending, they are brutally rebuffed by their republican colleagues. it really makes one question whether the republicans are committed to small government. the clear answer to that question based on the evidence we have seen is that they are not.
Choosing friends wiselycalifornia conservative
Were less safe thanks to furor over port deal townhall.com
The Dangers of Ports (and Politicians)–washingtonpost.com
Technorati Tags: UAE, Republicans
I agree with you. The President was probably on the right side this time. This is thr trouble when you train people to shout “homeland security” without thinking about what their saying.
I suspect that President Bush was right about this. The trouble is that he’s lost so much credibility with the American people and that has resulted in some questionable decisions that he wasn’t willing to try to justify to his supporters. The Harriet Miers nomination was one of those decisions. The UAE ports deal was the other most recent example. The decision not to push Harriet Miers was a good one. The case for the ports deal should have been made, and it was not. If Bush had made the case for it, there might not have been such chaos with his Republican base…or maybe they would still continue to run from the President. I really can’t predict what would have happened.