MSNBC: "Interventions highlight Bush's shifting ideology, 2nd term markedly different from first"

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Interventions highlight Bush's shifting ideology
President's second term has been markedly different from his first

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26800103/



By Michael Abramowitz and Dan Eggen
updated 2:04 a.m. PT, Sat., Sept. 20, 2008

President Bush's decision to shore up the financial markets with massive government intervention is the latest sign of a broad ideological transformation of his presidency.

After a first term in which he largely adhered to conservative — or neoconservative — principles, Bush has moved away from long-standing positions on a range of foreign and domestic issues. In the final year of his second term, he has reached out diplomatically to North Korea and Iran, engineered a dramatic midcourse correction on the Iraq war and increased the government's role in the daily workings of the economy to a degree that would have seemed unimaginable when he first pursued the nation's highest office.

Given that Bush toppled two foreign governments and slashed taxes dramatically in his first term, the policies of his second term are striking, particularly to those who had hoped his presidency might usher in enduring conservative rule in Washington. Some leading conservatives seemed stunned yesterday by the turn of events that has left the federal government in control of one of the world's biggest insurance companies and the two largest financiers of home mortgages.

"I believe that the president is exhausted and the vice president has been marginalized, and what you now have is the Washington interests . . . dominating the administration," former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said in an interview yesterday. "We have now launched big-government Republicanism. If we saw France do this, Italy do this, we would have thought it was crazy. We would have had pious speeches about the folly of bureaucrats running businesses."

[dkf]

1. When your adherence to ideology causes the whole thing to collapse

you gotta use the Govt to bail out your screw ups.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

2. Water carriers for the lost boy...

[livelongandprosper]

3. Why do his daughters look about 256.4% more intelligent?

Just noticed it. He can't be the father or genetics is junk science.