Several years too late, Bush’s most intense fans wake up
Where were these anti-Bush L-dotters two and three and four and five years ago, when Lucianne.com was one long teen swoon for GW Bush? What the L-Dotters, who are representative of the Republican base, are finally saying now, that Bush is a liberal who has “deconstructed” conservatism, VFR said consistently during all those years. Specifically, all through 2004 I argued that if Bush were re-elected he would ruin the Republican party and conservatism, while the L-dotters, and, of course, the entire mainstream conservative movement, backed him 1,000 percent. And now those same L-dotters are blaming Bush for having governed so badly and in such a liberal way that he discredited the Republican party and drove the country to vote for the Democrats, exactly as I predicted would happen in 2004. If the pompous, unintelligent Kerry had won in 2004, as I preferred, a revived and more conservative Republican party would have been in a position to win back the presidency in 2008. Instead, the Napoleonic, unintelligent Bush was re-elected in 2004, and now, as a result, an intelligent leftist messiah has taken over America.
Here’s a brief sample from the Lucianne thread:
Reply 12—Posted by: justjoe, 11/10/2008 8:18:32 AM
I respect loyalty wherever I find it, including loyalty to Bush. And some of the loyal are the best posters on this site. So with all due respect, as a non-Texan, as a conservative, I say that Sarah is completely right. Bush almost single handedly destroyed the Republican party, but that is the least of it. Much worse, he deconstructed the meaning of conservative. In the end, he came to stand for nothing. And he stood for nothing presiding over a country fighting a war that had long been grossly mismanaged, with an economy in shambles, uncontrolled borders, and wild government spending. Millions of Americans simply can’t wait for him to leave the White House. Given all that, it is remarkable—and a tribute to Palin alone—that the ticket did so well.
Reply 19—Posted by: Gretchen, 11/10/2008 8:45:42 AM
Bush has been characterized as a Christian Socialist. Indeed. I love the Christian part, detest the Socialist part. The two don’t mix, and we have a President Obama to show for it.
Reply 23—Posted by: TrueBlueWfan, 11/10/2008 8:54:32 AM
I thank W for keeping us safe for the last 7+ yrs.
That said, I blame him for NOT DEFENDING HIMSELF! When he didn’t defend himself, he didn’t defend US, who voted for him. He let the liberal lies stay unchallenged and believed. He refused to sic his Justice Dept. on liberal law-breakers/treasonists. He championed the causes of illegal aliens, and sided with the left against us on that issue. He played nice too much with Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid while he had to know they were coniving to destroy him.
Worst of all, he went along with this Bailout proposal, that sunk McCain/Palin and our country for a long time. He should have stood firm and demanded deep tax cuts and nothing more. Nationalizing our banking industry introduces Socialism to our markets and it ain’t leaving anytime soon.
Barack should plant a big kiss on W today. Sarah in 2012.
Reply 27—Posted by: Jan Sobieski, 11/10/2008 9:00:07 AM
I thought we weren’t allowed to criticize George Bush on this web site? Since I do not wish to be banned like so many before me I will simply agree with #12’s statement and hope that I do not cross the line in so doing. I will say this, I believe #12 is being extremely circumspect and reserved in his criticism.
I do hope it will be possible to once again express conservative opinion on this site and hopefully, at some future date, we can objectively analyze the Bush presidency including criticism.
Reply 51—Posted by: lynn 11, 11/10/2008 9:47:35 AM
#23 says it all, as far as I’m concerned. I voted for President Bush twice, supported him all the way, and now I’m left with an empty feeling and lots of frustration that things have ended up this way. Saying this does not mean I don’t recognize the good he did, but the end result is not good for any of us.
- end of initial entry -
Alan Levine writes:
I was a bit puzzled by your reference to Bush as “Napoleonic.” Maybe I’m dense, but there is nothing about the man that reminds me of Bonaparte. Bush would be doing well to be compared to Napoleon III. Or were you thinking of that wretched fellow, Napoleon II, or Napoleon III’s son, who was speared by the Zulus? They died young——we would be better off if Bush had!
LA replies:
What I’m referring to is his dictatorial manner of making pronunciamentos—on the spread of democracy in Muslim lands, on a two-state solution for the Palestinians, on the elimination of tyranny everywhere in the world. An early example was when, still fresh from his toppling of the regime in Iraq, he convened a conference with Arabs and Israelis in Sharm el-Sheikh around June 2003, where he basically ordered the Israelis and the Arabs to make “peace.” He would speak as if his word was the law for the world. He would repeatedly order the Arab countries to do more to advance democracy, as though he were the overlord of those countries. What made it even more unendurable was that the things he expected to happen as a result of his word were not doable things, but utopian, off-the-planet things.
What you had was a man of very limited intelligence and understanding, who would glom on to certain slogans or ideological tropes that “worked” for him, and then he would just keep repeating them forever. The less in touch he was with the real world, the more insufferably Napoleonic his pronouncements became.
And the neocons—who deserve a special place in hell for the harm they’ve done this country—fed his megalomania.
November 12
Evan H. writes:
Your comparison of Bush to Napoleon reminded me of this old article in “The American Conservative”, in which Gregory Cochran draws a number of parallels between Napoleon’s invasion of Spain and Bush’s invasion of Iraq.
LA replies:
That article contains an astonishing quotation of Paul Wolfowitz from before the Invasion of Iraq. The closest to the original source I could get was Time, March 11, 2004:
A month before the invasion of Iraq, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was asked by an interviewer how he imagined the U.S. military would avoid the sort of local hostility there that its presence in Saudi Arabia had generated. Wolfowitz replied: “First of all, the Iraqi population is completely different from the Saudi population. The Iraqis are among the most educated people in the Arab world. They are by and large quite secular. They are overwhelmingly Shia which is different from the Wahabis of the peninsula, and they don’t bring the sensitivity of having the holy cities of Islam being on their territory. We’re seeing today how much the people of Poland and Central and Eastern Europe appreciate what the United States did to help liberate them from the tyranny of the Soviet Union. I think you’re going to see even more of that sentiment in Iraq.”
Cochran goes on to say:
He really said that, on Feb. 26, 2003. He forgot that 40 percent of Iraqis are illiterate (more than any of their neighbors), forgot that Najaf and Karbala are the holy cities of the Shi’ite majority, forgot that Islam would be the only ideology left in Iraq with the fall of the Ba’athists. We now hear about martyrs and jihad every day of the week, while Sistani, a mullah’s mullah, acts as the unofficial powerbroker of Iraq. I can’t read men’s souls, but it certainly looks as if our decision makers and Napoleon mirror-imaged the foe: they personally didn’t take religion seriously and so found it hard to believe that anyone else did either.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 11, 2008 08:28 AM | Send