Posted on 11/14/2007 2:13:23 AM PST by Aristotelian
Hating the president is almost as old as the republic itself. The people, or various factions among them, have indulged in Clinton hatred, Reagan hatred, Nixon hatred, LBJ hatred, FDR hatred, Lincoln hatred, and John Adams hatred, to mention only the more extravagant hatreds that we Americans have conceived for our presidents.
But Bush hatred is different. It's not that this time members of the intellectual class have been swept away by passion and become votaries of anger and loathing. Alas, intellectuals have always been prone to employ their learning and fine words to whip up resentment and demonize the competition. Bush hatred, however, is distinguished by the pride intellectuals have taken in their hatred, openly endorsing it as a virtue and enthusiastically proclaiming that their hatred is not only a rational response to the president and his administration but a mark of good moral hygiene. . . .
Bush hatred is not a rational response to actual Bush perfidy. Rather, Bush hatred compels its progressive victims--who pride themselves on their sophistication and sensitivity to nuance--to reduce complicated events and multilayered issues to simple matters of good and evil. Like all hatred in politics, Bush hatred blinds to the other sides of the argument, and constrains the hater to see a monster instead of a political opponent. . . .
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
“We saw this before when the Gipper was in the WH”
Not like this. I remember that well, but today’s Bush haters are literally deranged... like that lunatic on Rush a week or so ago who was claiming that Bush and Chaney were behind the WTC “bombing” because they’d taken insurance out on it, and Condolezza too, who was able to get insurance even after her “trial”... (?). Hell, the LIBS are SO whacked out I remember one of them telling me that the government had secret bases on the dark side of the moon... just to watch us.
Reagan, they just hated... but they still fuctioned as members of the human race. The current crop of RATS are so demented they shouldn’t be ALLOWED to vote (since they’d probably vote Osama into office)... hell, they shouldn’t be allowed to DRIVE.
Gore wouldn't have "gone after" anybody. Maybe that would have been better.
I’m voting for Duncan Hunter who has been in the Congress for 26 yrs. This is a man for whom “sellout” is a four letter word. Remember the House banking scandal? Hunter was touched by it, only because of the incredible foul-ups by the admin staff of the House. Hunter took his checks and set up a card table in front of San Diego City Hall. For three days, Hunter stood at the card table and answered any questions regarding those checks. If Hunter gets a “blank check” from the Congress, I just know it’s going to be spent on defense and rebuilding our heavy manufacturing base. He’s already got the money for his border fence!
Ding, Ding Ding! You win the prize!!!!
GW Bush did much to get us a DEM majority or even worse RINO's by pushing his long time RINO buddies over solid conservatives. Had any other DEM POTUS Canidate in 2000 got the nod but tainted Gore Bush could not have won. It would not have even been close. Sad part was Bush was telling the nation just how liberal he actually was and yes even FR was helping to create Urban Legend Myth Conservative Bush.
As for 1992 and Perot the RINO's favorite whipping boy? LOL had Poppy simply stayed the course Ross would have stayed in his corporate office. Perot was the symptom of growing problems inside the GOP not the disease.
“To paraphrase, Gore’s Global Warming Circus is the worst idea in the history of bad ideas. He puts it above terrorism because it makes him a “rock star”.”
You’re correct it does make him a rock star, but he’s not running for anything, so his bad ideas don’t factor into this much. I have no idea what would have happened had Gore been President on 9-11, but neither does anybody else, including probably Gore himself, so the argument that GWB is beyond reproach because Gore would have been worse doesn’t hold water.
Speaks volumes, doesn’t it?
You seem to suffer from the brain-blocking hatred described in this article. You are long on bluster and short on facts.
You have nailed it perfectly, my friend!
For what it’s worth, here from Wikipedia on 1960 election controversy:
Some Republicans and historians have alleged that Kennedy benefited from vote fraud, especially in Texas and Illinois, and that Nixon actually won the national popular vote despite the fact that Republicans tried and failed to overturn the results in both these states at the time—as well as in nine other states. These two states are important because if Nixon had carried both, he would have won the election in the electoral college.
Kennedy won Illinois by a bare 9,000 votes, even though Nixon carried 92 of the state’s 101 counties. His victory in Illinois came from the city of Chicago, where Mayor Richard J. Daley held back much of Chicago’s vote until the late morning hours of November 9. The efforts of Daley and the powerful Chicago Democratic organization gave Kennedy an extraordinary Cook County victory margin of 450,000 votes, thus (barely) overcoming the heavy Republican vote in the rest of Illinois. Earl Mazo, a reporter for the pro-Nixon New York Herald Tribune, investigated the voting in Chicago and claimed to have discovered sufficient evidence of vote fraud to prove that the state was “stolen” for Kennedy.
In Texas, some Republicans argued that the formidable political machine of Lyndon Johnson had stolen enough votes in counties along the Mexican border to give Kennedy the victory there.
According to Nixon partisans, the Republican party urged Nixon to pursue recounts and challenge the validity of some votes for Kennedy, especially in the pivotal states of Illinois, Missouri and New Jersey, where large majorities in Catholic precincts handed Kennedy the election. Nixon publicly refused to call for a recount, saying it would cause a constitutional crisis; he also convinced Mazo and the Herald Tribune to not print any stories suggesting that the election had been stolen by the Democrats. Privately, however, Nixon encouraged Republican National Chairman Thruston Morton to push for a recount, which Morton did in 11 states, keeping challenges in the courts into the summer of 1961; the only result was the loss of the State of Hawaii to Kennedy on a recount petitioned by the Kennedy campaign.
Kennedy’s defenders, such as historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., have argued that Kennedy’s margin in Texas (46,000 votes) was simply too large for vote fraud to have been a decisive factor; in Illinois Schlesinger and others have pointed out that even if Nixon carried Illinois, the state alone would not have given him the victory, as Kennedy would still have won 276 electoral votes to Nixon’s 246[citation needed] (with 269 needed to win). More to the point, Illinois was the site of the most extensive challenge process, which fell short despite repeated efforts spearheaded by Cook County state’s attorney, Benjamin Adamowski, a Republican, who also lost his re-election bid. Despite demonstrating net errors favoring both Nixon and Adamowski (some precincts—40% in Nixon’s case—showed errors favoring them, a factor suggesting error, rather than fraud), the totals found fell short of reversing the results for either candidate. The Republican-dominated State Board of Elections unanimously rejected the challenge to the results.
These lost challenges did not deter the belief that Nixon actually won the popular vote in the various recounts Because he still lost the electoral votes needed for the Presidency. Furthermore, there were signs of possible irregularities in downstate areas controlled by Republicans, which Democrats never seriously pressed, since the Republican challenges went nowhere.[4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._presidential_election,_1960
Like watching Wiley Coyote chasing the Roadrunner.
“Perhaps the hatred is a reflection of frustration — frustration by the libs that their message isn’t very attractive to voters.”
Oh, but it is. The 2000 election saw half of the voters cast their ballot for Gore, because he promised to steal from the other half for them. Don’t discount the lure of kleptomania.
Who knows. It was a Republican who told the likes of Arafat, Saddam, Amin, and others go ahead and sponsor state terrorism we won't kill you. Jimmy Carter simply agreed with the man he replaced on that. Reagan proved you didn't have to do a major deployment to silence the likes of such. Even Reagan though understood the Middle East after his first few mistakes.
On the evening of 9/11 several things should have been happening. A message to the Sauds and other nations involved turn over names and persons ASAP. Not the low key thugs in the street but the money men making it all possible. Yemen should have been put on 48 hour notice. The COLE Bombers delivered. Yemen had more to do with 9/11 than Saddam. A few Drones flying over Iraq for window of oppertunity and Bush keeping his mouth shut could have saved us a fortune and many American lives.
A notice via Letters of Marque and /or Reprisal that any head of state sponsoring terrorism would be dealt with personally would have been nice. Again you don't have to deploy the military in mass to do this. Remember this also. Russia went broke chasing a certain man for 10 years through the same mountains we are today. What did they accomplish? When they stopped chasing he showed his face.
I'm not saying we should not go after targets in our own national interest. I'm saying our current strategy stinks and is nothing but a corporate and state department ran boondoggle.
the left hates christians, christianity and the reason for christianity; they absolutely loathe them and Him.
they’ll deny it and hide behind what they portray as enlightenment, brilliance, tremendous intellectual capacity, boundless wisdom and shining vision, not to mention faultless reasoning. they are jealous of the space in the human soul that is taken up by faith. without that they are powerless; watch them sometime as they denigrate people who believe. watch the sneering, the snide comments and the denigration and then imagine them and their minions with veto-proof power.
I would vote for Hunter a whole lot sooner than Rudy, Fred, Mitt, or John. If any of those four get elected things won’t get better.
Democrats told me (well before 2000) that JFK stole the 1960 election. They were not ashamed, much less outraged. For that reason, the “outrage” over the 2000 election, the readiness for outrage in 2004, and even the Diebold scare in a midterm election, always struck me as inconsistent and somewhat phony. I think a new generation of Democrats thought they were entitled to steal an election in 2000, just as they believed their fathers had in 1960.
While there was a certain level of ridicule of President Reagan and GHW Bush, to my mind the hatred coming from the left was engendered by Bill Clinton’s never-ending campaign following his election in 1992. Rather than governing, Clinton continued to make everything political. His campaign for a second term began immediately upon his election in 1992, and the campaign mode never ended during his presidency. This phenomenon swept democrats at all levels, and we see it continuing today in the likes of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, among others.
As for President Bush, all of the factors mentioned in prior posts seem to contribute to the dems’ hatred of him, but it would have been the same no matter what Republican held the office. This is the attitude now by dems. It is never sufficient to disagree with the other side’s policies, one must try to ridicule and destroy those who embrace those policies. “You’re not only wrong, but you are stupid, inept and a criminal” is the modus operandi of the dems.
I am not pleased with the lack of accomplishment by this administration, but I suspect (although I cannot prove) that President Bush has been MUCH more engaged in the war on terror and keeping this country safe than any of us could ever know or appreciate. It would not surprise me if much of his day is spent dealing with threats and potential threats to this country’s cities and infrastructure by militant Islamists. One day, perhaps, we will learn about this, but it will be a long time before we hear of the serious threats that were averted by this administration’s vigilence on our behalf.
“Look at the names and nations of origin of the attackers and go after another nation.”
Oh BARF, not this stupidity once again. One question for you: Was it wrong for the US to go to war with GERMANY after JAPAN attacked us at Pearl Harbor? Sheesh.
“Bush hatred is not a rational response to actual Bush perfidy.”
Correct. It is not about fact, reason, or principles. I remember reading a comment that secular Jews use remembrance of the holocaust to maintain their Jewish identity. I think something similar applies here. The left hardly has Marxism/communism as a unifying theory any more. Now I think they unify through hate: “we know who we are because we know who we hate.”
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