Conservatives are beginning to coalesce — with some notable exceptions — around the idea that the American athletes should not be penalized by a general boycott of the Beijing Olympics but that President Bush should not attend.
No previous American president has attended an Olympic Games on foreign soil.
Erick Erickson, founder of the conservative website www.Redstate.com, has enlisted readers of his site to sign a petition urging Mr. Bush to boycott the Olympics.
“We have people form every state of the union signing the petition,” Mr. Erickson told The Washington Times.
The petition said Mr. Bush “who has spent eight years liberating parts of the world from tyranny, should not give the seal of approval on China’s behavior — approval his presence at the Olympics would most certainly give to the Chinese people.”
“If American athletes want to compete in China, we wish them well and hope they crush their Chinese opponents under the heavy weight of many gold medals,” the petition adds. “But we call on the president to personally boycott Peking during the Olympics.”
Pat Toomey, president of the Club for Growth, a conservative organization whose stance for free trade often puts them at odds with hard-liners on China, said Mr. Bush “should not go,” although he added that this was “my personal view, not my organization’s.”
“For the Chinese government, hosting the Olympics is all about establishing their place among the community of advanced, civilized countries of the world,” he said.
“Their denial of human right to their own people and some of their behavior toward other people should disqualify them from being a member in good standing of the community,” said Mr. Toomey told The Washington Times in his first public words on the issue. “The president could convey that message by choosing not to attend.
Mr. Toomey emphasized he is “totally for free trade with China because it benefits the Chinese people and the American people,” but he said this means that a Bush ceremonial boycott “is the kind of diplomatic pressure we can and should put on the Chinese government.”
Tony Perkins, president of the social-conservative Family Research Council, said that while his group, which is often critical China for human-rights abuses and religious persecution has “never called for a boycott” of the Olympics, “but based on what has been happening, I see no reason for the president to attend. It is not as if China has been pulling out its best China for the occasion.”
Mr. Perkins said the U.S. and the Olympics’ international corporate sponsors “should use the opportunity of the Olympic torch burning in Beijing to shine light on the government’s human rights abuses.”
Republicans in Congress also seem to be joining in the call for Mr. Bush to stay home. According to Mr. Erickson, Mr. McCotter and Rep. Scott Garrett of New Jersey and Thaddeus G. McCotter of Michigan, the chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee, have said they will sign the petition.
Mr. McCotter said several House Republicans sent a letter to Mr. Bush six months ago urging that he not attend the Olympics.
“The Republican Party was the first one to ask the president to reconsider. We welcome the Democrats and we welcome any other Republicans to join us,” he said.
Others are not so sure.
But Oliver North, founder of Freedom Alliance and a Fox News analyst, dismissed the idea of a presidential boycott as “too little, too late,” explaining that when China was being considered as an Olympics host, he wrote a column saying conservatives should have acted.
Yesterday, conservative columnist and MSNBC political analyst Pat Buchanan said on the Laura Ingraham radio show that he supports the president’s going to China.
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