He’s still hacking out the “compassionate conservative” nonsense. He is completely out of touch with politics 2010.
“He’s still hacking out the “compassionate conservative” nonsense. He is completely out of touch with politics 2010.”
And Reagan too. This is EXACTLY the point - and good on you for spotting it :-) And it is a Bush trait - ‘kinder and gentler’ (precursor to compassionate conservative), had no reference in the first place. There was nothing unkind or not gentle about Reagan. He did what was needed to be done to save the economy - raise interest rates and lower taxes. There was some uncomfortableness (unemployment basically) but it was shorter than the longer unpleasantness that was to come if he would have went with Keynes instead of Friedman - what George HW did with raising taxes and what George W did with the bailout. Which is part of the reason we’re still seeing 10% unemployment 2 years after the ball dropped.
GHW Bush didn’t understand it in the primaries (voodoo economics) and didn’t get it once he became president (read my lips with no follow through). They simply don’t get a most basic tenet of free market economics and the conservative cause, or (more likely) they couldn’t stand the media pressure to carry it through. Reagan could and I think Palin could too. That’s what makes them different from the Bushs and Rove.
And ‘blood’ has nothing to do with it. Rove was trying to make the point (Laura refused to let him) that the Bushs weren’t really blue bloods all of their lives and to an extent, he was right on that. They basically get ‘distracted’ when the chips are down - on taxes for GHWB and on the bailout for GWB.