I disagree with the comparison of Bush haters to Clinton haters. We Clinton "haters" only pointed out his illegal activity and the abuse of power. He was impeached for goodness sakes.
I don't remember GOP Congressmen making the over the top statements about Clinton. Did Pat Robertson say stupid things? Sure. But so does Al Franken against Bush.
The "right" was ticked off with Clinton and his scandal after scandal after scandal. He broke the law. Nixon never was convicted or held in contempt of court. Clinton used the IRS and the FBI against his enemies. Nixon only vocalized his wish to do the same.
Clinton did things illegal and got a pass, Bush has not and gets the blame from idiots that would put on knee pads for Clinton.
We have a winner!
I did not start out 1992 or even 1993 hating the man I dubbed Little Big Fraud-- rather, it was earned by him one step after another as he "held" office- or as Rush used to put it, "America Held Hostage..."
I started out one of my canned rants against the Clintons this way:
Like the chains on Marley's Ghost
That "clinton legacy" has been forged...
link...
by link...
by sordid link....
...because that is the way my dislike was earned- one sordid link at a time.
Not to mention perjury before a grand jury by the Chief US Law Enforcement Officer, subornation of perjury, obstruction of justice, and the use of thugs like Lenzner or Palladino for enforcement. In my mind, these actions that led to impeachment, possible removal from office, and a promised (but not consummated) congressional censure does not equate to inserting 16 words into a State of the Union speech that suggested Saddam had sought to buy yellowcake uranium on a particular occasion from Niger.
The intelligence may have been dubious, which is the nature of the beast, but Saddam had previously made such purchases from other African nations. Many of Democrat charges against Bush spring from this episode. Ironically, the sloppiest "intelligence" of all was performed by Joe Wilson as recounted in his NY Times op ed piece.
The often insightful John Podhoretz has had this problem before: He seems to need to construct some sort of moral equivalence. For instance, on July 23 this year he wrote that "Honest conservatives and Republicans will admit that they felt a certain disappointment that the economy did not cave in after Bill Clinton raised taxes in 1993."
I disputed this revisionist attempt at equivalence at the time since most of us with investments cheered the rising markets that followed (and put our money where are mouths were) to such an extent that the Fed chairman warned of "irrational exuberance" as the Dow pushed past 6,000 in December 1995. At the time, the rise was attributed (more properly in my view) to the public's perception that a Republican-controlled Congress would exercise greater fiscal restraint than did previous Democrat Congresses.
Unlike the anti-Bush crowd, the anti-Clinton folks have not resorted to factual fantasies to describe a president's behavior, in part because the liberal "mainstream" press would not have allowed them to get away with it. Podhoretz needs to take a deep breath and contemplate what he has asserted.
There's definitely a different kind of hatred going on here. I hated Clinton. 'Still do, but it mainly is born of seeing that his liberalness was going to perpetuate victimhood, poverty, and political enslavement, in other words, I disagreed with his ideology.
Clinton's tenure only served to prove what I had believed, he never let me down, much less embarrass me or threaten the very essence of what I believed in. Hatred of Bush is more visceral for the very reason that the Left's most sacrosanct tenets have been exposed as not only wrong but dangerous in the extreme.
Almost everything that has happened in Bush's short tenure has been a very public repudiation of leftist dogma, their hatred then, is born of fear of extinction and therefore much more virulent than ours was.
Look for this hatred to increase.