But... GWB is not a conservative. He has some conservative impulses, but anybody who qualifies his conservatism by calling it "compassionate conservatism" doesn't understand conservatism. My Dad was a social worker for 40 years. After leaving the Army in 1946, he decided his lifelong ambition to be a journalist was frivolous, and he needed to help people. Over the years, he took a great deal of grief from his peers and from politicians (he was high up in the PA Department of Welfare), but he said -- long before GWB misunderstood conservatism: "I am a conservative because I'm compassionate. The 'compassion' of liberals is invariably a false compassion." That GWB didn't understand that, and that his father played Jerry Mahoney to the execrable Peggy Noonan's Paul Winchell with "A Kinder, Gentler Nation." is the reason the Republican Party has been laboring in the wilderness since 1988.
Conservatives have carried GWB's water for eight years for the same reason we carried Nixon's (also not a conservative): On the ONE major issue of his time Bush (and Nixon) were right, and they were willing to fight that fight and the "loyal opposition" was willing to run and hide.
We have some new faces now. It's time to get them onto the national stage, and while doing it, we need to ditch the Democrat wannabees. I think people like the Bush Family and the McCain Mavericks have a role to play in our Party. But they should not be the source of our ideas, and they cannot be the leaders any longer. John McCain has had his day, and I hope on reflection he realizes that many of the people he counted on were never his friends: The Press. The Moderates. The Latino voters. The people who stuck with John McCain were the people into whose eyes he so sedulously stuck his fingers time-and-again since his first bid failed. I hope as a result of our support John McCain returns to the conservative fold he loyally occupied until he lost to Bush in South Carolina in 2000. If nothing else good could come of this election, to welcome a genuine American Hero back to his conservative roots would not be inconsequential. I've always wanted to like John McCain. I hope he sees who his true friends are, now.
Bush may not be a conservative, but unfortunately for the past 10 years or so starting with when we all knew he was gonna run back in 1998, he has been the THE face of the conservative movemnt and of the Repubican Party.
Given that his disapproval is at 75% or so, taht’s not a good place for us to be. The sooner he’s gone and we can rebuild, the better.
The exit polls tell us that we got a big beating, but we did not completely collapse. This was not like Goldwater in 64, McGovern in 72, Carter in 80, Mondale in 84, even Dukakis in 88. I’d compare it more to Ford in 76. McCain faced an uphill struggle, made a valiant effort that saw undecideds breaking towards him late in many key states, but in the end the unpopularity of Bush, the economic/financial collapse, the implosion in pary ID and Obama’s massive spending/ad advantage were too much to overcome.
But if you look at the key states like OH, FL, VA, NC, IN and others, the margins are all 3 pts or less, in many cases 1 pt or less. IN, OH, NC are all 1 pt or less. FL is 2 pts. McCain got 49% in all 4 of them. He was right there and given how bad things were for the party this year, I have confidence that they will be even more competitive next time around. You would have thought McCain could havce rode Mitch Dnaiels coattails better in IN, Daniels got 58% of the vote and that should have carried McCain. VA does look like the demographic changes are starting to take effect. They’ve had dem govs for a while and now 2 dem Senators. I do think Warner’s rout of Gilmore helped Obama big time. If John Warner had ran for reelection tonight and won which he would have, McCain probably would have oulled it out. Oh well. We are still in a decent position going forward to reclaim those.
Now, states like CA, NY, IL, MI, PA, MA, WA, OR, MD etc... are long gone and we’re seeing how difficult it is to win when you write off 200 EVs to start with.
But at least we can finally start to rebuild after Bush. He did a lot of good, but he also has left us in awful shape.