Define Conservatives vs. Liberals

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Joe Mariani Sounds like a GOP Basher to Me 

Joe Mariani has an interesting column today in GOPUSA where he comes across as a massive GOP pork barrel spending apologist. Remember when the GOP touted themselves as being fiscally responsible? LOL.

Liberal 'Budget Hawks' or Vultures? -- Joe Mariani -- GOPUSA
But back to the new Budget Hawk game. It's the best way Liberals have come up with to undermine support for the war in Iraq.

Yeah, how dare anyone question the costs of this unnecessary, pre-emptive war on a country with no weapons of mass destruction. You tell em, Joe.

Realizing that most Americans outside of Hollywood abhor wasteful spending, the anti-war crowd often pretends to be horrified by the amount of money spent by the Federal government on Iraq.

Yeah, those darn liberals and their sneaky pandering to "most Americans" who "abhor wasteful spending." How dare they play to American's emotional attachment to fiscal responsibility?

"Do you know how much Bush's war in Iraq is costing?" they demand to know. "Hundreds of millions a day!" It's always "Bush's war," though Congress voted to send troops to Iraq, and keeps nailing slabs of pork to every defense-related bill.

Yeah, how dare they call it Bush's war when it was also authorized by the GOP controlled congress who "keeps nailing slabs of pork to every defense-related bill." It's clearly the minority Democratic party's fault all of this is happening, right?

Still, it's all a pose, a calculated outrage designed to reduce support for the war among more fiscally conservative Americans.

Isn't it interesting that Joe Mariani thinks Bush is losing support for his war (uh, and the GOP's war) because Democrats are speaking out about the costs?

Hey Joe Mariani, do you honestly believe that fiscally conservative Americans of ANY political persuasion would be against a justifiable war?

Things don't get much better for Mariani's column after that. For example, he tries to justify a WARbased on the cost being not much higher than the military costs of NOT fighting one:

To complain that keeping the American military -- or, at least, about ten percent of it -- in Iraq costs X number of dollars per day is to ignore the fact that the military isn't cheap to keep home, either. Troops still have to be paid, fed, clothed, housed and trained; equipment still has to be upgraded, repaired and replaced.

Seriously, he really said that. Maybe we should just start randomly firing Nukes at other countries too, since the cost of launching nukes isn't that much higher than storing them?

It's amazing how poor the writing can be on GOPUSA. This particular article was FEATURED in their newsletter! Don't they have any respect for their readers?