I didn't say that he was, nor is Pelosi Stalin. I was making an argument based on an analogy. The point is, because somebody vile hates someone or something, it isn't a good enough reason for me to stop hating that someone or something.
I tried not to make the case you were labeling them as those people, but none the less in your example you provided two very despicable groups with which to contrast them with. That pretty much invalidated the example for me, rightly or wrongly. And while I do find your follow-up sentence above to be somewhat reasoned, there are always reasons for why people do back or oppose certain people. You can't simply dismiss a similar believe between two diametrically opposed groups, without doing some soul searching.
I'll take you at your word you wouldn't dislike Cheney on the basis of the Left's beliefs, if you'll take me at my word that I don't like him based on mis-percieved Conservative views. In fact there are things about him that bother me, some of his currently held views.
And once you've covered that aspect of his administration, there are legions of issues that are fair game. I don't like being put in this position, because it's something I never wanted to have to admit, but I'd say Bush actually did a worse job than Carter with the nation he was handed. There are some aspects of his administration that are startlingly bad. Job's grew by 0.83% under Bush. Tradtionally it should have been around 15 to 15.5% growth in eight years. Look at the economy he handed off.
No argument there. Most of the bad policies that we're dealing with now under Obama are just the logical extrapolation of things that got rolling under the last administration: amnesty for illegals, TARP (morphing into a "stimulus package" and bailout), the Patriot Act and NSA surveillance, etc.
I agree. We'll still be dealing with Medicare Part D forty years from now. It will be a decade or two if ever, before we get back to full employment. It will take that long before the government's income stream is healed. We need to pay down debt, and this income stream needs to be healed in order to do it. Your comments on the Patriot Act and the NSA problem are also spot on.
Frankly, because the Bush administration was attacked by despicable people like Pelosi and Hillary Clinton, there was a knee-jerk tendency by many on the right to defend it, even when the criticisms came from the libertarian/Constitutionalist Right. With some perspective, people are starting to see that a lot of the previous administration's policies weren't so different from those advocated by a Pelosi or a Clinton after all.
When it came to Conservatism, Bush did not have a burning desire in his belly. His reactions many times were nothing like what a Conservative's reactions would be. He hesitated, first sounding more like a Leftist, and then sometimes settled back in a more Conservative position. A number of times, more than I care to admit, he never returned to the proper position.
When first confronted with most issues, you and I have an almost instantaneious revulsion to the socialst solution. It's not in our core. With Bush, it was. You could tell it when he first ran for the presidency. It doesn't take long, before you note that his core belief system, is nowhere near your own, because of these snap reactions to scenarios.
This wasn't a Cheney administration. I'm not able to tarnish him on the record.
Well, there's a good case to be made that Cheney was put on board because daddy thought that Junior wasn't up to all the heavy lifting that the job required.
I think it's more than a good case to be made. I think it's a lock. None the less, if Bush is the man when the good stuff happens, he's the man when the bad stuff happens.
Too much bad stuff happened. Cheney played a part in it too. He deserves to be raked over the coals on some of it. I'm not in lock step with you over Halliburton, but wrong choices were made all too often during the Bush years. Cheney was involved in them. At the end of the day, it was the Bush administration. The little wanker doesn't deserve to have the blame shifted at all.
He wasn't presidential material. He should never have been selected as our nominee. We paid a heavy price for it. He basically skated.