A Boston Tea Party …(“Unfavorables”)

With 8 days remaining to the election the popular vote shows Bush and Kerry virtually tied or Bush slightly ahead. However, Bush’s favorable rating is around 44 percent. Why are more people going to vote for him than like the job he is doing?

Voting comes down to the choice between two men. You may not be a big fan of either of them or not agree with every position a candidate takes. Sometimes when you get in the voting booth you must choose which of the two men you dislike the least. For Bush to get such a low favorable rating must mean that some Republicans and Independents feel he hasn’t been doing the best job. Why?

For a conservative Republican like myself it is easy to identify with certain issues that other Republicans feel Bush has let them down. Issues involving outrageous spending, new entitlement programs, the open Mexican border, and the continuation of a political rather than military war in Iraq to name a few. True conservatives cannot be happy with a Republican President increasing domestic spending without requiring spending cuts at the same time. Buying the votes of some senior citizens with a prescription drug entitlement program is not my idea of leadership. Not having the political will to close the Mexican border upset me. Not having vetoed any bill over a 4-year period is shocking.

President Bush might have a higher favorable rating had he chose to be faithful to his conservative base. A prescription drug bill disillusioned as many conservatives as it gained in senior citizens. Vetoing a few spending bills might have shown he was different than his Republican friends in congress. He failed to realize that you can spend to please some Democrats but in the end they (the Democrats) still won’t think he spent enough nor vote for him because of social issues. Blowing up Falluja might have shown us safety hawks that beheadings were not going to be tolerated or closing the border with Mexico would have put safety over votes.

President Bush has tried to be a little of everything to everyone. He figured if he throws enough bones at various interest groups he might get a few more bites. The evidence has shown that he either didn’t throw enough bones or quite possibly threw too many. Next Tuesday he just better hope that like myself the “unfavorables” still come home to vote. I just hope he didn’t take to many of us for granted.