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Reasons Seattle Post-Intelligencer Can't Back Bush "Bush's self-styled "compassionate conservatism" has had a decidedly nasty edge, from a welfare reform proposal that would cut off assistance to the children of a mother who did not show up for job training, to his unseemly mocking of Karla Faye Tucker, a woman about to be executed...Bush is the scion of an oil and politics family. His father was president, and that probably helped George W. Bush win the governorship in a conservative state.... Serving as executive of a huge state might seem to give Bush the experience edge. But Texas is constitutionally a "weak-governor" state. In New York, 140,000 people work for the governor; in Texas, it is about 200....Bush inherited much of the Texas education reform for which he has taken so much credit....Exemplified by his visit to Bob Jones University (which prohibits interracial dating among students), Bush has been running to the right....Beyond his record as governor, it's hard to know much about where Bush stands. His habit of speaking in bumper stickers tells us too little." 2/27/00
The New York Daily News Can't Back Bush, Either"Despite a single term in the Texas statehouse, where the governor's powers are weak, he began his campaign with an aura of the anointed. As soon as McCain walloped him in New Hampshire, Bush dropped the mantle of a compassionate conservative and retreated to South Carolina, where he wrapped himself in the Confederate flag and took to the stump at Bob Jones University, that bastion of bigotry. He appeared determined to recoup his loss at any cost, even to his own principles. When criticism mounted, Bush's tepid I-am-not-anti-Catholic letter to Cardinal O'Connor smacked more of political pandering than genuine contrition. It arrived on the desk of the ailing cardinal only a week before the New York primary — and long after Bush had defended his choice on talk shows on every network. As McCain put it, the Republican Party is the party of Abraham Lincoln, not Bob Jones. But Bush acts as if he doesn't see the difference. Perhaps he's blinded by the mud he's slinging. During a debate in South Carolina, for example, he tossed off a spurious anti-gay remark at McCain, and his surrogates have had the temerity to cast aspersions on McCain's war record. It's worth noting that McCain is a hero not simply because he was a POW in North Vietnam, but because rather than provide propaganda for the enemy, he rejected freedom and endured five years of hell. That reflects true courage and real character. Bush, on the other hand, resorted to having his team, led by Gov. Pataki, try to keep McCain off the New York ballot. By contrast, McCain risked alienating key voters when he decried the pull that Jones and Robertson exert over the GOP." 3/5/00
The Cleveland Free Times Finds Inself Unable to Support Bush "Governor George W. Bush has proven to be what everyone feared he was: a dilettante. But even dilettantes have, on occasion, proven themselves worthy of the anointed position in which they found themselves. Unfortunately, Bush also happens to be an inarticulate, ill-prepared and ill-informed dilettante. Slap a smirk on top of this package, and we have perhaps the most unbecoming Republican presidential front-runner in more than a generation." Columnist John Hyduk adds, "The son of that "thousand points of light" guy, Dubya is an Andover and Yale graduate, a vagabond who bounced from job to job until a Harvard Business School stint prepared him to take advantage of an oil boom, then turn the Texas Rangers baseball team into a mound of cash. [The only oil boom Bush took advantage of was family-connected tax shelters from his losses.--Politex] "Self-made man, my ass," huffed Austin journalist Robert Bryce in a 1998 magazine article. "Governor Bush traded on his family name for two decades. He was nowhere. He’d still be nowhere in business if his name wasn’t George W. Bush. He only got into the Rangers because of his father’s name and the connections he made at Yale. How many regular guys are able to get the government to condemn the land, build the stadium, and make their 2 percent share go from $600,000 to $15 million." Bush famously signed a bill allowing Texans to tote concealed weapons; his is one of the most polluted states in the lower forty-eight; a huge war chest (squandered on a handful of delegates) makes his campaign finance reform proposals less than credible." 3/7/00
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