Has the possibility ever occurred to you that people carried water for Bush simply because he was the ostensible opponent of the Democrats, even though many had concerns about his more liberal leanings?
I remember when Rush Limbaugh of all people admitted on his radio show that he was tired of carrying water for squishy GOP figures simply because their opponents were Democrats (I think it may have been after Republicans lost the Congress in 2006?); that sentiment was rife on Free Republic all throughout the 2000s, where those who opposed George W. Bush for whatever reason were purged on a not-infrequent basis...even if their political positions would have been 80 to 90%+ in line with traditional American values.
It’s only with the benefit of the passage of time that Freepers, in general, have allowed themselves to look at George W. Bush’s legacy and performance with a more analytical eye, and have allowed themselves to stop carrying water for a President who was disastrous for conservatism on many levels. I should know: I lived through it.
Were all the claims of the Left truthful? Of course not; but that doesn’t mean the Bush Administration was always right, either. And a lot of Freepers pretended otherwise for the sake of opposing the Democrats.
In hindsight, with all that’s been learned in the subsequent years about the Deep State, the fact that both Republicans and Democrats were united when it came to the cause of invading Iraq would now be a cause of suspicion by many on this website...and deservedly so.
What you call “conservative” foreign policy is an aberration relative to the overall history of America, rife with an interventionist spirit that is utterly foreign to the sentiments of the Founding Fathers.
What has America gotten for all of our foreign interventions over the past two decades? Has it helped or hurt the cause of American conservatism?
What has the wars under Bush gotten us? Well, how many times have we been attacked on American soil after 9/11 when Bush was president? Is that not the most important thing? To prevent further attacks? Bin Laden is dead. Why? Because we caught a guy who led us to him. Where did we capture said guy? Iraq. Saddam Hussein is no longer stockpiling and developing wmds. He is no longer supporting terrorists. He is no longer attacking our planes. He is no longer threatening us. We basically wiped out Al queda because Iraq served as as a roach motel for terrorists after Saddam was removed. We fought them over there, not here. That was the plan right? America is safer because we took action.
One more note, if you were anti-Bush and against the wars all along, you are part of a very small minority of Republicans and conservatives. My remarks are mostly targeted towards those who have embraced the lies they once fought against.