Reagan's foreign policy was not at all like Bush's

Tom Pauken, publisher of Dallas Blog, is at it again, redefining the Bush administration in an attempt to absolve conservatism of any blame for the disastrous foreign policy results of the last six years. In today's blog, Tom Pauken explains how Reagan conservatism was different from Bush 43's brand of conservatism. We now have Goldwater conservatives, Reagan conservatives, neo-conservatives, paleo-conservatives and who knows how many other species in this political managerie. Tom Pauken claims the mantle of Goldwater and Reagan for himself, of course, and, they, being dead, are in no position to object.

Tom Pauken pins all the failures of the last six years on conservatives of other stripes. Well, that's not quite right. He denies them the honor (?) of being called conservative at all. If Tom Pauken had his way, American history would assign the failure of the Bush administration's foreign policy to the Democrats, as Tom Pauken traces the neo-conservative pedigree back to liberal Democrats such as John F. Kennedy. So, there you have it. Kennedy can be blamed not only for Vietnam, but now you can pin the Iraq War disaster on Kennedy liberalism, too. And the conservatives can skate home free.

Rather than these futile attempts to reassign blame, scapegoat others, deny responsibility for themselves, Tom Pauken and conservatives could do the country a belated service by talking about how to move forward and salvage whatever we can from the foreign policy disasters that conservatism has brought down on us in the last six years.

By the way, you can't read criticism like the above on Dallas Blog itself. My responses to Tom Pauken's blog get deleted without notice or explanation. Censorship of opposing political views on Dallas Blog is common despite the occasional token appearance of dissent.