I'm glad some conservatives have taken those blinders off.

Conservatives crucial to Bush's re-election restive about Iraq war

SCOTT LINDLAW, Associated Press Writer
Sunday, July 11, 2004


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(07-11) 10:29 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) --

When an influential group of conservatives gathers in downtown
Washington each week, they often get a political pep talk from a
senior Bush administration official or campaign aide. They don't
expect a fellow Republican to deliver a blistering critique of
President Bush's handling of the Iraq war.

But nearly 150 conservatives listened in silence recently as a veteran
of the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations ticked off a litany of
missteps in Iraq by the Bush White House.

"This war is not going well," said Stefan Halper, a deputy assistant
secretary of state under President Reagan.

"It's costing us a lot of money, isolating us from our allies and
friends," said Halper, who gave $1,000 to George W. Bush's campaign
and more than $83,000 to other GOP causes in 2000. "This is not the
cakewalk the neoconservatives predicted. We were not greeted with
flowers in the streets."

Conservatives, the backbone of Bush's political base, are increasingly
uneasy about the Iraq conflict and the steady drumbeat of violence in
postwar Iraq, Halper and some of his fellow Republicans say. The
conservatives' anxiety was fueled by the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse
scandal and has not abated with the transfer of political power to the
interim Iraqi government.

Some Republicans fear angry conservatives will stay home in November,
undercutting Bush's re-election bid.

"I don't think there's any question that there is growing restiveness
in the Republican base about this war," said Halper, the co-author of
a new book, "America Alone: The Neoconservatives and the Global
Order."

Some Republicans dismiss the rift as little more than an
inside-the-Beltway spat among rival factions of the GOP
intelligentsia. Indeed, conservatives nationwide are still firmly
behind Bush. A Pew Research Center poll last month found that 97
percent of conservative Republicans favored Bush over Kerry.

But anger is simmering among some conservatives.

"I am bitterly disappointed in his actions with this war. It is a
total travesty," said Tom Hutchinson, 69, a self-described
conservative from Sturgeon, Mo., who posted yard signs and staffed
campaign phone banks for the Republican in 2000. Hutchinson said he
did not believe the administration's stated rationales for the war, in
particular the argument that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass
destruction.

Hutchinson, a retired businessman and former college professor, said
his unease with Iraq may lead him to do something he has not done
since 1956: avoid the voting booth in a presidential election.

Jack Walters, 59, a self-described "classical conservative" from
Columbia, Mo., said he hadn't decided which candidate to vote for.

"Having been through Vietnam, I thought no, never again," Walters
said. "But here comes the same thing again, and I'm old enough to
recognize the lame reasons given for going into Iraq, and they made me
ill."

The tension has been building in official Washington, where
conservative members of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign
Relations committees have pressed the administration for answers on
combat operations; disagreed with the Pentagon on troop levels; and
expressed frustration with an administration they feel has shown them
disdain by withholding information.

Chief political adviser Karl Rove's formula for re-election is
primarily to push Bush's conservative base to the polls.

Another administration official involved in Bush's re-election effort
has voiced concern that angry conservatives will sit out the election.

But Matthew Dowd, the Bush-Cheney campaign's chief strategist,
described the fear of losing conservative support as "just ludicrous."

Bush is "as strong among conservative Republicans as any Republican
president has been" -- higher than President Reagan's approval among
conservatives during his re-election campaign of 1984, Dowd said.

Yet, Halper said his critical review on the administration's
performance on Iraq last week was met with expressions of support in
the conservatives' weekly meeting, which is closed to journalists.

The marquee speaker sent by the administration was Eric Ciliberti, who
spent several weeks in Iraq this year and told the audience of broad
progress being made there.

Ciliberti complained to the group that those in the news media were
not reporting the positive developments out of Iraq. Ciliberti did not
return several calls late in the past week from a reporter seeking his
account.