The irony is so thick here...you right wingers ONLY curse government when Democrats are in charge. When Bush was in the White House you folks LIVED at the alter and there was not a PEEP about too much government, too much debt or too much spending...not a PEEP. And when little despot dictator Republican's get elected governor, you folks CHEER when they step on We, the People, or have government make them pee in a cup.
With each time your argument gets defeated, you come back with weaker and weaker lies. Just about every conservative I know had MAJOR criticism of George W. Bush. Why can't you just accept reality?
Is there one single liberal left on earth that can accept reality? Or does one become a liberal only by becoming a schizophrenic?
PURE BULLSHIT. You are a lying piece of shit. There was NO criticism of Bush when he was president from the right...NONE. And you are ignoring how your right wing regressive turds lick the ass of recent despot governors like Christie, Walker and Scott. You turds CHEER when they overstep their authority and step on 'commoners'.
You right wingers are devoid of any honesty. Have an adult read this to you.
Why Conservatives Hate Bush
Excerpt:
Heartening as it is to hear the growing criticism of Bush from within the GOP ranks, the idea that he's veered from conservatism is hogwash. Bush is the most conservative president we've had since probably Warren G. Harding—and perhaps ever. He has governed, wherever possible, fully in step with the basic conservative principles that defined Ronald Reagan's presidency and have shaped the political right for the last two generations: opposition to New Deal-style social programs; a view of civil liberties as obstacles to dispensing justice; the pursuit of low taxes, especially on businesses and the wealthy; a pro-business stance on regulation; a hawkish, militaristic, nationalistic foreign policy; and a commitment to bringing religion, and specifically Christianity, back into public policy. "Mr. Bush has a philosophy. It is conservative," wrote Peggy Noonan in 2002. Ah, but times change. Last June she complained, "What conservatives and Republicans must recognize is that the White House has broken with them."
It's certainly true that Bush hasn't delivered on every last item on the conservative wish list. But what president has—or ever could? What Bush's new critics on the right don't see, or won't see, is that to credibly accuse Bush of betraying "conservatism" requires constructing an ideal of conservatism that exists only in the world of theory, not the world of practical politics and democratic governance. It's an ideal that any president would fail to meet. In a democracy, governing means taking into account public opinion and making compromises. That means deviating at times from doctrinal purity.
Indeed, Bush's presidency, far from being a subversion of modern American conservatism, represents its fulfillment. For most of the president's tenure, many of the same folks who now brand him as an incompetent or an impostor happily backed his agenda. Republicans controlled the Senate and the House with iron discipline. They populated the federal court system, built a powerful media apparatus, and, for years after 9/11, benefited from a public climate of reflexive deference to the powers that be. From 2001 to 2007, the conservative movement had as free a hand as it could have hoped for in setting the agenda. The fruits of its efforts are Bush's policies.
So while conservatives may be disillusioned with Bush, they can't seriously claim it's over his policies. Another explanation seems more likely: When the Iraq War really turned sour in 2005 and the domestic catastrophes piled up, the appeal of being linked with Bush's legacy dimmed. Like mobsters turning state's evidence before they're sent up the river, former Bushies began to testify, throwing themselves on the mercy of the court of public opinion. The reason isn't that Bush is an imperfect conservative. It's that he's an unsuccessful one.
One clue that right-wingers might be acting a bit opportunistically in turning on Bush is the sloppy nature of so many of their arguments that he's left conservatism. In seeking to salvage a pure doctrine from the flotsam of the Bush years, for example, his onetime boosters will often say that he forsook a core conservative principle such as "tradition," "humility," or "small government"—or, more vapidly, "adherence to the Constitution," "the wisdom of the Founders," or "honesty in government." But general concepts like these are so elastic as to encompass any grounds for disowning a failed course of action—or so generic as to be useless as defining traits of conservatism. (Don't liberals preach adherence to the Constitution?) It may be fashionable now to deride Bush's Iraq policy as insufficiently humble, but on the eve of the invasion, when Bush flouted world opinion, how many conservatives warned that he was jettisoning principle? And, for that matter, how does the failure to prepare for and address Hurricane Katrina's damage stem from a dearth of humility? Even the oft-heard conceit that Bush has become a "big government" conservative—breaking from postwar conservatism's antistatist foundations—doesn't withstand scrutiny. After all, practically everyone on the right backed his tax cuts, corporate giveaways, and military and security expenditures, which, along with health care cuts, have busted the budget. On inspection, buzzwords like "big government" and "humility" appear to be supple rhetorical tools, used inconsistently and opportunistically, for polemical force or political positioning—not as the basis of serious intellectual critiques.
So are conservatives unhappy with Bush because he let down their causes? No. They're miffed that Bush, in pursuing those very causes, alienated two-thirds of the voting public. Starting with Katrina in the fall of 2005, and proceeding through the worsening civil strife in Iraq, the revelations of the wiretapping and U.S. attorney scandals, and growing discontent with domestic problems like health care, Americans lost faith in Bush's agenda. Various right-wingers are now trying to salvage conservatism not simply to maintain their own reputations but because they worry that, having soured on Bush, voters may soon sour on the creed of conservatism itself. That would be a turn of events for the right so damaging that not even another Ronald Reagan could repair it.
