Four years ago, George W. Bush promised to extend the ban on assault weapons. Last Friday, Republicans let the ban expire, thus saving the president the embarrassment of having to veto any extension of the popular ban in the midst of the election campaign.
Mr. Bush can now claim that he couldn’t sign a law that was never presented to him. The president never lifted a finger to signal congressional Republicans that he was in favor of the measure.
Even 35 percent of the members of the National Rifle Association support a ban on assault weapons, according to recent polls. There is little doubt that an overwhelming number of the rest of us support the ban, too. The gun lobby tells us the law was ineffective because of its flawed definition of what constitutes an assault weapon. But it was the gun lobby itself that widened the loophole.
The media "objectively" points out that there are no statistics to prove whether the ban on assault weapons was effective. True. The gun lobby forced a stunning prohibition into the law against any statistical evidence being gathered. Now the pro-gun forces and their lackeys in Congress can turn around and argue that the ban wasn’t effective. Brilliant, no?
Our inner cities are killing fields. Common sense tells you that the more weapons you remove from the street, the less innocent lives will be lost. The president loves to claim that we are safer under his leadership, but al-Qaeda is not the only threat if you live in the inner city.
A couple of weeks ago, the Republicans professed to love New York. Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani was among those extolling the virtues of a president who is steadfast, whether or not his cause makes him popular. Well, Mr. Bush’s change of heart on the assault weapons ban is another indication that he will waffle with the best of them when in search of votes.
Maybe Rudy ought to tell his fellow New Yorkers and the rest of us how the president and his fellow Republicans in Congress just made us all less safe.
The well-cultivated image of Mr. Bush as being the candidate you can depend on to mean what he says would be laughable except for the fact that it is playing very well in Peoria and all points south. On almost every major issue of importance, the president has been the true waffle man.
Take the tax cuts. Back in the day, when there was a surplus (surely you can remember when our big problem when Bush took office was how to spend the surplus), candidate Bush said he just wanted to return you the money that the government owed you. When the surplus disappeared quicker than a Jennifer Lopez marriage, Bush changed his rationale. Now the tax cuts were needed to stimulate the economy.
The president wasn’t finished. He would cut the deficit in half in five years, except by his own figures he would have to let his own tax cuts expire in order to do so. Except Mr. Bush all the while was celebrating making those very same tax cuts permanent.
On foreign policy, candidate Bush was dead set against using American troops to nation build. But when he failed to find the celebrated weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the president’s rationale changed to, well, nation building. And there was the thing about this president never giving in to terrorists, but what then are Fallujah and Najaf all about but giving in to Muqtada al-Sadr and his terrorists?
Mr. Bush is still touting his "No Child Left Behind" slogan, but what an empty slogan it has turned out to be without adequate funding. Remember his sudden announcement in the middle of record deficits that we would be launching an expensive space initiative to land on Mars? Six days later, he never mentioned Mars in his State of the Union speech unless you count the time Papa Bush gave him his own video of War of the Worlds.
We heard that his new Medicare drug program would be cost efficient. Except the president’s plan specifically prohibits the government from negotiating better prices with the pharmaceutical companies. The latest word out of Washington is that Medicare premiums are going up 17 percent. Mr. Bush’s waffling has made even many of his conservative supporters grumpy.
Conservatives have a laundry list of gripes against the supposedly conservative Mr. Bush. Tariffs on steel and lumber, federal regulations on corporate accounting, the addition of a new cabinet position without eliminating any of the existing ones, and his failure to veto even one of the Congress’ deficit-busting proposals are some of the specifics.
The overall picture is even more damning to conservative groups like the Cato Institute. Non-discretionary spending by the federal government has increased 20.8 percent on Mr. Bush’s watch. The conservative National Review criticizes Mr. Bush for increasing the size of the federal government more than at any point since the Cold War.
Only the Right’s hatred of Kerry keeps them in line.
In South Philadelphia, we don’t use the word "flip flop" to describe Mr. Bush. Around here, we know him as The Waffle Man.
