Up until his mismanagement of Iraq war, President Bush was quite a popular president. He unified the country quite well after 9-11, and was the first president in recent memory to gain seats in a mid-term Congressional election. The 2004 election was polarizing not for any other reason than the height of Iraq disaster and Fallujah nightmare. Subseuquent to that election, Iraq dominated the rest of his term.
I am proud that he stuck up for his Iraq decision and righted that ship with surge even while his polls were sinking and support for continuing that war was cratering. He was the true leader in that moment of need.
Sure, that caused other political issues for GOP brand. But, at least he did not abandon Iraq like our current President is abandoning Afghanistan.
Thank god!
It all started when the left decided to pivot on his "WMDs on Iraq" as the centerpiece of their attack on him.
There had been WMDs in Iraq -- chemical attacks on Kurds proved it.
And it is likely that Saddam sent his WMDs to Syria, or the Russians did, just before we attacked.
But we couldn't let the cat out of the bag, whether for fear of jeopardizing support in the UN Security Council, or revealing "sources and methods" -- so we had to let the attacks stand for the time being.
But Bush and Rove did worse than that: they didn't defend themselves at ALL -- which made it look like he had been caught flat-footed in an out-and-out lie: which emboldened his detractors on everything else ("blood in the water").
Together with the Plame affair, where high Administration officials KNEW the truth but wouldn't quash the story--and "Bush lied, people died" became a household word.
Together with trying to give reach-arounds to the Dems (Ted Kennedy co-writing the education bill, "No Child Left Behind", Medicare Part D) and almost never vetoing any spending bills: and passing over Jancice Rogers Brown for the Supreme Court, getting rolled on other judicial nominees such as Miguael Estrada (where the Democrats were literally ON TAPE saying, "we can't let this guy get into the Court as a Hispanic, it'd upset our race-baiting") and Bush did NOTHING...
He rolled over for Obama, much as his father had for Bill Clinton.
Screw Bush.
It's time to go for completely genuine conservatives, not connected Washington insiders / Bilderbergers / Soros Plants / whatevers.
Cheers!