Chgo Trib: Bush Was as ‘Socialist’ as Obama

In another Obama loving column, Chicago Tribune writer Steve Chapman took pains to assure readers that Barack Obama is no socialist, calling the charge a “fabrication.” To prove that Obama’s attempted take over of the nation’s healthcare and his actual take over of the financial and auto sectors isn’t a step toward socialism, Chapman countered that President Bush, “a conservative hero,” did it too.

---

Obama, it’s true, has done things that involve enlarging government — bailing out banks, taking over General Motors, proposing a “public option” for health insurance and spending $787 billion to stimulate the economy. But it was George W. Bush, a conservative hero, who tossed a federal lifeline to financial institutions and automakers, as well as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He also signed the 2008 stimulus package, which was billed as a tax cut but was nothing more than a handout of $168 billion the government didn’t have.

It is amazing to compare the Bush bailout package to Obama’s policy of actually taking possession of business by government as if they were one and the same. But even more ridiculous is to claim that Bush is a “conservative hero” in the context of bail-outs and finances as if it were a true statement. George W. Bush was never a “conservative hero.” It is certainly true that his faith based polices were a favorite aspect of his presidency among conservatives and it cannot be denied that Bush was a hero for his prosecution of the war. But Chapman seems to have ignored that conservatives lambasted Bush at the tail of his term for the very bailouts that Chapman claims made him a conservative hero. In the end few conservatives claimed George W. Bush as one of their own. Bush was not a conservative hero. He was, in some ways, a hero of conservatives, but he was not a “conservative hero.” It is illegitimate to compare the level of Obama’s socialist-like policies to Bush as if they are in any way comparable.

---