Motivations
Jul. 14th, 2004 07:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lillibetSo, I tend to think of myself as fairly realistic about politics. I recognize that money plays a huge part in elections and policy. I understand that everyone I will ever have a chance to elect will be a politician, will have changed their minds about something at some point, will have some dirty laundry and some shady deals in their past. Even when I completely disagree with decisions made by our leaders, I can usually understand why they made them and even why they thought it was a good idea.
But this one mystifies me. Bush has just changed rules put in place during the Clinton era to protect national forest land from logging and road-building. This has the potential to affect up to 60 million acres in a bunch of states. http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/07/13/forest.rules.change.ap.ap/index.html
My question is, why on earth did he do this now? This is a huge give-away to the logging industry, but there aren't that many loggers and they tend to vote Republican anyway. A few months back I heard a piece on NPR about how traditionally Republican hunters, etc. were finally figuring out that Bush is bad news for them and beginning to work against his re-election. He can't afford that. If everyone who voted for Gore votes for Kerry, Bush loses. He can't be pissing off parts of his base. This is the kind of favor one does for one's backers during the first year of the term, not less than four months before an election. This is a time when he needs votes, not money.
Oh well, good for Kerry.
But this one mystifies me. Bush has just changed rules put in place during the Clinton era to protect national forest land from logging and road-building. This has the potential to affect up to 60 million acres in a bunch of states. http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/07/13/forest.rules.change.ap.ap/index.html
My question is, why on earth did he do this now? This is a huge give-away to the logging industry, but there aren't that many loggers and they tend to vote Republican anyway. A few months back I heard a piece on NPR about how traditionally Republican hunters, etc. were finally figuring out that Bush is bad news for them and beginning to work against his re-election. He can't afford that. If everyone who voted for Gore votes for Kerry, Bush loses. He can't be pissing off parts of his base. This is the kind of favor one does for one's backers during the first year of the term, not less than four months before an election. This is a time when he needs votes, not money.
Oh well, good for Kerry.
