G.W. was MIA

Townhall.com ^ | November 15, 2012 | Michael Reagan

[Kaslin]

Democrats have been blaming George W. Bush for the last four years.

Now I think it's time for Republicans to start blaming George W. for the next four years.

For a week we've been pinning last week's debacle on everything from Mitt Romney's moderation to low Republican turnout.

But the most important Republican who didn't turn out to support Romney this fall was George W. Bush.

You can make an honest argument that G.W. was as much to blame as anyone else for our being unable to defeat an incompetent incumbent of historic proportions.

For four years Barack Obama has blamed the Great Recession on G.W. and used his presidency as his excuse for why the economy is taking so long to get fixed.

And where's G.W. been? MIA or AWOL, take your pick.

He didn't show up at the GOP convention. He didn't become an enthusiastic surrogate for Romney in a handful of swing states where a few hundred thousand more Republican voters could have changed history. He didn't stump for senatorial candidates in contested states such as Virginia and Montana.

G.W., the ex-cheerleader, was nowhere to be seen or heard during Romney's campaign. What's worse, he didn't even defend his own economic record. He let the conservatives on talk radio and at Fox News do it.

The trouble is talk radio and Fox only reach about 20 million people during a week - and most of them are already in the conservative Republican choir.

Last I checked, 121 million Americans voted on Election Day. That left us Republicans with 101 million people who still needed to hear our message about who's really to blame for the broken economy of 2008 to 2012.

We griped and moaned and pointed to Obama, but the mainstream liberal media were too busy protecting their hero to fairly tell our side of the story.

The only way conservatives can get the national news media to deliver our message to the American people is to go over the media's heads. And the only people who can do that consistently are ex-presidents of the USA.

Bill Clinton became Obama's best propaganda weapon. When Clinton claimed that no one, not even a super-genius like him, could have solved the economic problem G.W. Bush left Obama within four years, every voter in America heard it.

Even Jimmy Carter was hauled out of mothballs to help the Democrat cause.

The 2012 campaign was all about "the economy, stupid." Obama blamed G.W. and Republicans. Plus, he had Clinton and Carter bashing G.W.'s record with their bully sticks every day and countering Romney's arguments that Obama was to blame.

We should have had G.W. standing up and saying, "This is bull. I'm tired of this. This is what I did or did not do with the economy as president. The real culprits are Dodd & Frank and four years of Obama's failed policies."

Instead G.W. stayed quiet, even on the issue of Benghazi. Because he refused to show up and defend himself and his record, the Republican Party had to take arrows for him and we lost our second presidential election in a row.

The question I'd like to ask my fellow conservative Republicans is, if G.W. isn't willing to stand up for his own presidency, why the heck should we?

[livius]

That’s my feeling, too.

Plus the left has demonized him so much that his appearance would probably not have been helpful.

[marron]

The GOP including Romney have wanted to distance themselves from GW. They have yet to offer any full-throated defense of anything he did.

He did them a favor and stayed away.

[Phlap]

So, were you smart enough to vote? Or are you amongst the too many?

[ifinnegan]

"We should have had G.W. standing up and saying, "This is bull. I'm tired of this."

That is what Romney should have said.

This whole article is whacked out. The GOP-e kept Bush at bay. Just like they kept Palin at bay and the tea Party at bay.

The GOP-e said let them take care of it and you all keep out of it.

The GOP-e were warned over and over during the primaries, but still prevailed. They got their way and what happened was exactly what they were told would happen.

Now they blame vote fraud. Other candidates. Now, GW.

Here is what Romney supporters were saying when Free Republic was saying no to Romney:

From Committed - Mitt Romney Central, Oct 2011.

The Committed name is a bit ironic today. They should have been committed.

[malia]

Michael Reagan wrote this? How disgusting!!

Michael Reagan is nothing more than a ‘wanna be’.

[silverleaf]

GWB went emotionally AWOL in 2006

Something very weird about his passivity, exceeding the patrician aloofness of his father who failed to rebut or put any end to stupid scandalous democrat behavior

Yes Bush 41 gave us Bill Clinton and the sordid moral degradation of the US presidency

GWB brought us the unconstitutionally installed emotionally disturbed obama, a black marxist ideologue who has contempt or hatred for 2/3 of the American people and a rasist hatred for all our institutions that he intends to “remake”

I believe the Bushes are good man but evil succeeds when good men do nothing

[skeeter]

W wasn't a bystander in his own demonization. He could've offered an alternative account for this defenders' sake.

But his silence kinda left em flapping in the wind for want of a point to rally around.

So he basically surrendered the field. Not helpful.

[Cyber Liberty]

I disagree with Michael on this one.

[skeeter]

Something very weird about his passivity, exceeding the patrician aloofness of his father who failed to rebut or put any end to stupid scandalous democrat behavior

IMO W lost interest in the job after Saddam Hussein was gone.

Finally resolving the Gulf War was his administration's reason d etre. It explains alot of things.

[Sawdring]

The Bush family needs to stay as far from politics as possible. They have caused massive damage to this country. Hoover II can’t speak anyway so why would one lament his absence from the election?

[lodi90]

If you can’t see that a flawed mitt romney was preferable to a hardcore marxist america hating kenyan the problem isn’t the GOP. It’s you. The same goes for anybody else that didn’t vote GOP in this last election to remove the kenyan.

[DooDahhhh]

Summed it up, I do believe.

[Wuli]

Both G.W. and G.H.W. have had a serious and strong belief that a former President should be retired from politics for the most part. I think the one area where they both shied away from that the most was at both conventions nominating G.W. Bush; his parents made an appearance - no speeches, just an appearance. Yes, when asked by any reporter, G.W.s parents spoke approvingly of and in support of their son. But, that was as far as it went (I think) and they did not campaign for him (if my memory is right).

I think that had G.H.W. and G.W. not been related, and still had their same sentiments about the role of former Presidents, I don’t think G.H.W would have been at G.W.s conventions. Because they were related, for them, it was not so much a former-current President relationship, as much as a father-son relationship. In other ways, they have both led very private lives since the presidency and askewing any very political roles.

[lentulusgracchus]

Romney, and the GOP-e, campaigned as moderates and that turned-off a large number of the conservative/TEA Party base.

Have you ever noticed that the behavior of the GOP-e has mirrored -- or vice-versa -- the absolutely witless, feckless, listless behavior of so-called Speaker Denny Hastert?

He let the queer pederast Rep. Mark Foley go on and on with his illicit communications until Nancy and Harry were ready to "out" him to suppress GOP turnout in 2006. He turned a blind eye to grafters and porkers and smalltime crooks in the GOP House, and the Party paid for it by losing the Speaker's gavel to Red Nancy Pelosi and the evil Rahm Emanuel.

So why does the GOP leadership so emulate the disastrous Hastert in their politics and their leadership style, or lack of it? About all they're good at is piking conservatives in the back.

[lentulusgracchus]

Mitt lost because too many conservatives were too contrary to vote.

---

You really believe that fairy tale? Mitt lost because of the GOTV issues and not responding forcefully enough to the Bain attacks. That killed him in the rust belt and there went the election.

---

1. Conservatives did undervote and were no-shows, McCain got 1,000,000 more votes than Romney did. Conservatives warned the RiNO's that this would happen if they dissed conservatives and pushed them away. The RiNO's and Romney did this on purpose, and not entirely for "move to the middle" electoral purposes.

2. Romney did consistently, in fine Rovian style, fail to respond to attacks by Dems, even when he had money. Dems timed the Bain attacks for when they knew he would be low on cash after the primaries, and their attacks worked because Romney didn't respond, when voters first began paying attention leading up to the conventions.

This is a RiNO/RNC/Yacht Club failure with a capital F, their fourth since 1992. They failed with Bush 41, Dole, McCain, and now Romney. Their pattern of failure is consistent and predictable, making life easy for people like James Carville and David Plouffe.

Slapping people around and then complaining when they don't show at the dance on their own, isn't a credible technique for Republican victory, and nobody but a dolt will believe that complaint now. The RiNO's are done, stick a fork in 'em.

[Servant of the Cross]

Good grief. Hey, Michael. Did it ever occur to you that W was instructed to stand down by the Romney campaign itself, because they were so squeamish about being branded as a return to the policies of President Bush?!

Romney and the GOP did NOT want W at the convention and didn't invite him.

Michael, you are stuck on stupid with this article.

[Jedidah]

Stupid article.

Romney was so cowed by Obama that he didn’t want to be associated with Bush.

Which was a stupid move.

I wish we had W back.

[Jedidah]

Excellent post. I agree with all you said.

[Gay State Conservative]

I don’t see how W is responsible.Of course a good percentage of voters think he’s responsible for “The Great Recession” but we know that the Community Reinvestment Act and Frank-Dodd is the cause and that W just happened to be in charge when the stuff hit the fan.Ten bucks says that Romney didn’t want W’s (public) endorsement,so that can’t be a factor.He may,or may not,have wanted Palin’s endorsement..if not it would have been because the Lamestream Media has done such an effective job on her.

[zeestephen]

This is not the first time that W's silence has affected the country.

For at least two years before the Iraq surge, W's public and political effort to be a war leader were beyond pitiful, and almost invisible.

W allowed the anti-war, GOP hating, Hard Left MSM to literally dictate a false and hopeless perception of how things were going, and that seriously impacted GOP election results in 2006.

W's inexcusable silence also motivated our Islamic enemies to continue fighting, which cost the lives of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of American soldiers.

The “strong silent war leader” may be a hero in dictatorships or works of fiction.

But in a free country where the Hard Left MSM sets the agenda and the terms of debate, the silence of George W. Bush has been an unmitigated catastrophe.