Hogwash. Bush ran as a strong, "kinder and gentler" conservative in that election and ran a very conservative campaign. His team often referred to it as being Reagan's third term. Remember "Read my lips"? - That was a conservative promise not to raise taxes. If was Bush's failure to govern as a conservative that cost him a second term becasue he broke his promises.
The best strategy now, I feel, is to break away from the GOP to form an authentic conservative party, with the expectation that 2016 might be the last hurrah for the GOP in a vote splitter, then pick up the pieces and let the political spectrum re-align around leftist Democrats and authentic conservatives without this wishy-washy centrist third rail which has been mostly a short circuit in modern times. Bush (W) won more as a conservative than a centrist, and the elder Bush’s win as mentioned above was in expectation of a continued conservative administration that generally fizzled out. Otherwise, the record of centrist Republicans since 1976 has been poor with the electorate either staying home, splitting off or remaining unenthused to the point where any Democrat could win, even deeply flawed ones.
I think it’s time to abandon the GOP and back a new American Conservative Party. There may be something out there with the name and skeleton already. The platform should be libertarian enough to attract that wedge of support, then build from that base — small, efficient government, a strong military, cutting back the power of the state and the entitlement culture, intelligent economic policy, caution on climate and homosexual agendas that threaten to undermine America ... all the sorts of things that the RINO crowd will not touch and cannot understand.
It would be worth one term of Hillary Clinton to kill of the GOP, after all, there is no RINO much different from Hillary Clinton anyway.
Bush used that “kinder, gentler” phrase in his inaugural address, not during the campaign. Medved needs to take his Gingko.
Yep. You got it exactly right. Bush was elected in a landslide because of the success of the eight years of Ronald Reagan. Period. He picked up the baton and ran with it. During his term, he screwed up royally by trying to placate the democrat congress. Agreeing to tax hikes to seem ‘reasonable’. It coat him a second term.