Who do you respect more?

[nickshepDEM]

Neocon/Big Gov't Conservatives: Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Frist, Rumsfeld, etc...

True Conservatives: Reagan, Buchanan, Goldwater, etc...


*If you were forced to choose.

[FrenchieCat]

1. I respect anyone who fights for what's best for this nation....

and doesn't play so much along to get along.

I very much respect those who seek truth and justice rather than those who are always on guarding their own political fortune.

I respect those who stick their necks out and put their reputation on the line by staking out a position that ends up key in alerting the rest of us as to what's up.

In reference to your specific question, please don't ask me to pick the lesser evil of two.
I am sick and tired of being forced in doing that.

[nickshepDEM]

2. Ummm, ok?

Thanks for contributing to the thread... I think.

[FrenchieCat]

3. Like they say on the Islands,

No problem. :hi:

[Celeborn Skywalker]

4. True conservatives, but

I would classify Reagan as more of a neocon than a true conservative.

[nickshepDEM]

5. Hmmm. I was thinking about it, but sided against.

Why would you classify him more as a neocon than true conservative?

[Hippo_Tron]

6. Reagan started the neocon movement

"Supply-side" economics as well as the religious right wing of the GOP began under Reagan. All of the post FDR pre Reagan Republicans accepted that the permanent programs from the New Deal was good for this country. Reagan was the beginning of the end of FDR's legacy. He was the first president to really cut into the social safety net.

That being said, what Raygun did to the country was small pennies compared to what Bush has done and especially compared to what Bush could do if he were as good of a politician as Reagan.

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

8. That's not neo-con

neo-con is socially pretty liberal but holds hawkish foreign policy views (ie believing that you can spread "democracy" through force).

[ChairmanAgnostic]

9. but he also took back what he gave them.

then again, pragmatists were probably ruling the roost the second term. between the gun shot and the early signs of Alzheimers, I do not believe he was totally in control the last three years.

[Celeborn Skywalker]

7. I basically echo what Hippo_Tron said (nt)

[Terran]

10. Reagan wasn't a true conservative

He was almost as much about Big Government messing with people's privacy as Bush is.

[Telly Savalas]

11. It's a false dichotomy.

Conservatives of all shapes and sizes like government intervention when it suits their purposes.

What distinguishes Goldwater from the rest of this bunch is that he was a liberal on a number of social issues.

There may be foreign policy issue differences between imperialist conservatives and xenophobic isolationist conservatives, but neither group could properly be called more "true" than the other.

Bush & Co. are no less "true conservatives" than Reagan or McCarthy or Hoover.