No, don’t look at me – I think George Bush destroyed America, but here I’m just the messenger. The person who actually said this is none other than the right’s beloved, iconic Peggy Noonan in today’s Wall Street Journal.
George W. Bush destroyed the Republican Party, by which I mean he sundered it, broke its constituent pieces apart and set them against each other. He did this on spending, the size of government, war, the ability to prosecute war, immigration and other issues.
I don’t doubt Noonan’s analysis. What puzzles me is that any Republicans out there still support Bush. Do they really hate the Republican Party that much?
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3 comments:
I think there's something in the conservative mentality that prevents them from admitting mistakes. So, it's not that Republicans are still crazy about Bush as much as it is that they can't admit that Bush was a mistake. Also, a significant number of Republicans really believe that God put Bush in office, so who's to argue with the Big Dude? Last, there is a significant number of Republicans who believe that you don't criticise a (Republican) President during time of war.
Though I am loathe to admit it, it was not really Bush that destroyed his Presidency and the Party, but the people around him. Bush is incurious, arrogant, and unrealistically optimistic, but the Party itself filled his Administration with incompetents based on loyalty alone, and the Party itself failed to exercise any kind of internal checks on these incompetents' excesses or disasters. Instead, the Party backed the Administration with every ounce of power they had, forcing Congresspeople to say and vote for things that would jeopardise their own elections.
After Bush has left office and a whole lot of loyal cronies are out of a job, we can expect many stories to come out about what really went on during Bush's reign, and the GOP will have little leverage to stop it. In another two years the GOP may finally have to admit that Bush was, indeed, a mistake, and a very expensive one at that.
Good point Todd!
Hey, I totally agree. Infact, so does this bumper sticker: Bush Destroyed America
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