Posted on 09/16/2009 12:10:22 PM PDT by TBP
Bush was preparing to give a speech to the annual meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC. The conference is the event of the year for conservative activists; Republican politicians are required to appear and offer their praise of the conservative movement.
Latimer got the assignment to write Bush's speech. Draft in hand, he and a few other writers met with the president in the Oval Office. Bush was decidedly unenthusiastic.
"What is this movement you keep talking about in the speech?" the president asked Latimer.
Latimer explained that he meant the conservative movement -- the movement that gave rise to groups like CPAC.
"Let me tell you something," the president said. "I whupped Gary Bauer's ass in 2000. So take out all this movement stuff. There is no movement."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
He came on a hot day in July. I took my kids down to the town park to see him (we saw all the candidates).
He arrived at the dock in a caravan of antique wooden motorboats, having been occupied on an island in Lake Winnipesaukee with family friends. His honor guard wore straw boaters and blue blazers.
Although the population of the town is around 6000, the "local leaders" were pretty much unknown (except for the real estate brokers).
He gave a vague and rambling talk about his "American heroes", starting with "single moms". He pushed some Evangelical buttons.
What George W. Bush was and is has been perfectly obvious for a decade. I voted for him twice, because he was better than the horror of Gore the nut or Kerry the fake warrior and dilettante.
But a conservative? Don't be absurd!
See my #123. Nothing happened to him.
And I see the Bush-haters are also out in force! Threads like this seem to attract you people like a magnet! You just can’t seem to make many of us hate him like you do, so you proceed to insult us along with him. Hello? He’s not in office anymore, so what is your problem? I know I felt a lot safer with Bush/Cheney in office, and I sure don’t now!
Maybe someone a whole lot worse that you say Bush is, has taken over? Maybe you should worry about what he’s going to do, and help keep him from doing more damage than GWB would ever do? As far as I remember, it’s still ok to defend GWB for things he did right on this forum, isn’t it? Furthermore, I’m not alone on here in doing that. And that, my dear Bush-basher is my right as well as your’s to trash him!
I smell a big lying fish on this one. Bush said none of these things. They are just trying to change the subject again.
I would sue this guy for libel if I was Bush.
Simple. Ask yourself this question: If Cheney is anti-socialist, why didn't act that way when Bush pushed through his socialist bailouts? Cheney was silent as a church mouse though not out of deference to his Bush. During the same period, he was raising holy hell to get a pardon for his friend Scooter. As far as I know, Cheney STILL has not denounced Bush's socialist bailouts. Why? Probably because he doesn't care.
He was a big spender, pro illegal, Rockefeller republican.
In many cases, I have always felt that people like Bush and McCain go anti abortion because they know nothing is really going to be done to stop it right here in America.
I don't know what is really in their heart, but I have wondered.
If this guy was dazzled by Bambi’s by-the-number “Yes We Can” campaign schlock, then he’s a stone-cold moron.
I like Bush, but man he sure surrounded himself with a lot of useless, slack-jawed d**chebags (pardon my French).
Reagan was forced to let Poppy on the ticket.
Ex CIA head Poppy is no lightweight. The family has been in the game since the days of Vannevar Bush, a real genius.
Jim Baker and the ‘awl people back them.
But is that really a "movement"? People didn't like what Obama was doing, but was there a shared goal and the will and energy to achieve it? Something more than just blocking Obama?
Movement politics implied staying together for the long haul, and the Bush years pretty much showed that conservatives weren't doing that. The focus on a distant goal just wasn't there, at least at home.
Still, it's noteworthy how little the limited government idea appealed to Bush and his people. He naturally assumed that a conservative movement would focus on social and evangelical concerns, rather than economic or fiscal ones.
When the conservative movement began with Goldwater, Reagan, and Buckley that wasn't true at all: reducing the size of government was at the top of the agenda.
What? You mean to suggest that Mr. Cheney is NOT the conservative most people on here said he was? Even after all the courageous back-talk he’s given B. Obama? I can’t believe there are people on here who would even suggest that Mr. Cheney is anything less than a conservative!
Heavens!
The only trouble with your argument, is that he chose him twice! Why do you suppose he did that? He also supported and encouraged Bush Sr. when he ran to succeed him! He didn’t have to choose him again, did he?
Maybe Reagan actually liked Bush Sr., and chose him willingly? They certainly seemed to work together well, didn’t they?
Maybe he was part of the problem in the Bush years. Conservatives looked at Cheney the fighter and gave the administration their approval. That Cheney might not have been fighting for all the things that conservatives cared about -- that foreign and military policy and the power of the White House mattered to him and budgets or deficits or deregulation or even abortion might not -- didn't make much of an impression.
FWIW, another poster on another site suggested that if there were still a conservative movement it might have mounted a primary challenge to Bush in 2004, as conservatives did against Nixon in 1972 -- not in order to unseat him, but to push him to the right, to make it clear that he couldn't take their votes for granted. But there wasn't even a nominal primary challenge, and that's may be evidence that the conservative movement isn't what it once was.
No, according to me it would NOT be alright. President Bush certainly had his faults but he gave us a conservative judge for the Supreme Court, voted against stem cells from embryos, fought against abortion, and did a few other good and decent things as well. I’ll take him over Clinton and Obama any day of the week.
Sniff. Thank you...
My point is that Cheney completely failed to denounce Bush's socialist bailouts even though he DID raise a ruckus when Bush failed to pardon Scooter. I am more interested in a Republican who shows courage and takes risks. Cheney doesn't. When the chips were down, he seemed to care only about protecting Scooter (lest Scooter talk too much).
BTW, it was YOU not me who depicted Cheney as some sort of anti-socialist hero. I was merely asking the obvious: why didn’t Cheney take the opportunity to denounce Bush’s socialist bailouts!?
The easiest way for a nobody to get money is to bash something liberals hate.
Notice how much press Latimer is getting, with so little effort.
It's much harder to get press if you write something the left won't find popular. Then you get blacklisted, or called a racist, and your book gets ignored like Levin's.
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