That is not who Bush was or is.
The continual abandonment of conservative advocates by conservative citizens is the dominant constraint on the movement.
It is fine to ignore or even criticize non conservative aspects of Bush or other conservatives.
The rationalizations that somehow he did not defend himself is not true. Bush had many more press conferences than Obama does— and yes that is probably because most of the media naturally defends Obama. Bush continually reinterpreted negative spin surrounding things such as Iraq.
The Republican establishment under the leadership of James Baker joined anticonservatives in constructing an inevitable shameful exit from Iraq along the same political trajectory as Vietnam in 2007.
Bush fought back for our troops and the democratic movements of iraq and sent tens of thousands of troops back into Iraq. He won forcefully.
Obama’s surge in Afghanistan is a pale and dismal failure by comparison— resulting in twice the casualties in less than half the time Bush lead our troops in that nation.
Palin, Keyes, Thomas, Cain, ODonnell, Angle, Bachmann, on and on it goes. These are good people left behind by a conservative movement that refuses to defend its own against a militant army of shouters and mockers.
Most of the arguments against Romney such as tax cuts and the auto bailout could be non-arguments today but conservatives refused to defend their ground [under Bush policies] and choose rather to collapse to a bipartisan pathology of Bush-bad.
Thinking they will pick up some elusive independents, they instead leave an ever more confused public that thinks Republicans and Democrats are the same. They both spend too much. They both war too much. They both undermine our values.
An excerpt:
PETER ROBINSON: In his memoir, Karl Rove says that perhaps his bitterest regret is that the Bush White House failed to go
on the offensive against the charge that they politicized the intelligence. This whole notion that ‘Bush lied, people died”—in
the White House they made the decision not to rebut it.
They didn’t want to look defensive.
DONALD RUMSFELD: Karl Rove is exactly right. It was a terrible mistake. It was a mistake on everyone’s part, and it’s a shame.
ricochet.com/main-feed/Donald-Rumsfeld-on-the-Bush-Administration-s-Biggest-Mistake
********************************
Number 24, Chapter 2, Starting at about 7:00
http://www.nationalreview.com/media/uncommonknowledge