[Tall_Texan]

Rush is asking the wrong questions.

He wants to know whether there were any warning signs that the conservative movement was being "hijacked" (to spin on the navel-gazing of our intelligence operations as of late). What he needs to be asking is:
1) Why did he fail to see Bush's policy of compromise and capitulation while Governor of Texas? The record was there. He never bothered to look.
2) Why did he fail to notice when Bush brought aboard Norman Mineta and some leftist types in the Republican party into his cabinet that perhaps they would be able to influence policy?
3) Does the Republican Party suffer from "Battered Wife Syndrome"? Are Republicans so used to being abused by Democrats that they cannot assert their own power to lead themselves? Why is it that the **minority party** continues to set the agenda and get what they want while the **majority party** knuckles under to their will, offering only half-hearted liberalism not federal rollback conservatism??

The answer to the first two are obvious. In his zeal to see a Republican in the White House again, Limbaugh and many other leaders in the conservative movement simply failed to see what Bush really was. A conservative that was all hat and no cattle in his conservatism. Talks a good game, sounds real convincing but rarely stands up to the Democrats when it counts. The answer to the third question gets clearer every day. We have a party so accustomed to being kowtowed that they'd rather be beaten up than to stand on principle. And it looks like this will get worse before it gets better.

Limbaugh is late to the party. Rather than trying to convince us that W. is "Reaganesque", he should have been examining what this man actually did while running the state of Texas.

[Thorondir]

You are right, but oh boy! Here come the heavy-breathing Bush-worshippers. Don't expect much in the way of retional discourse when they get here.

But what is to be done? Where shall we go when the Republicans are Democrats? Third party? Hell no! That's what the liberals want. We are so screwed.

[goldstategop]

I think people wanted so badly to wash the stench of Clinton, they were prepared to overlook the fact that G.W Bush was far from being a Reaganite conservative. And they consoled themselves with the thought that if Bush did get elected, he'd be in such debt to the conservative base that he wouldn't dare to cross it. Its true President Bush has turned to be far from who people hoped he would be. Then again in life there are rarely good choices. President Bush was the lesser of evils next to Clinton's Al Gore. All we can do is hope this fellow doesn't self destruct like his father did at the end of his first term in office.