Posted on 01/25/2008 7:58:07 AM PST by jdm
Peggy Noonan aims her considerable cannon at George Bush this morning in the Wall Street Journal in the middle of her analysis of the primaries. She fingers him as the main culprit in the destruction of the Republican Party, discounting other and perhaps better causes and engaging in just a little hyperbole:
On the pundit civil wars, Rush Limbaugh declared on the radio this week, "I'm here to tell you, if either of these two guys [Mr. McCain or Mike Huckabee] get the nomination, it's going to destroy the Republican Party. It's going to change it forever, be the end of it!"This is absurd. George W. Bush destroyed the Republican Party, by which I mean he sundered it, broke its constituent pieces apart and set them against each other. He did this on spending, the size of government, war, the ability to prosecute war, immigration and other issues.
Were there other causes? Yes, of course. But there was an immediate and essential cause.
And this needs saying, because if you don't know what broke the elephant you can't put it together again. The party cannot re-find itself if it can't trace back the moment at which it became lost. It cannot heal an illness whose origin is kept obscure.
I love Peggy Noonan's commentary, but this is a little over the top. The party has lost exactly one national cycle in the last four. I don't consider them dead after a single setback, and anyone who does appears more interested in garnering attention than in providing trenchant analysis.
It doesn't mean we don't have trouble, but Noonan's wrong to lay the whole thing on Bush. While it's true that he hasn't provided much in the way of fiscal discipline, he didn't run for office as a Steve Forbes conservative, either. He spoke of compassionate conservatism, a code for big-government approaches for center-right policies, and he delivered. Bush talked about working on bipartisan solutions to national issues, and he pretty much did that before the Iraq war turned sour. Republicans elected Bush knowing what they were going to get, and Noonan can't seriously claim shock over the result.
The seeds of Republican discontent took root in Congress, not the executive. It was the succession of Republican Congresses that refused to cut spending, and instead blew wads of cash on non-defense discretionary spending. Bush led in some of these efforts, but he didn't multiply pork exponentially; that came from House and Senate Republicans. He didn't climb into bed with K Street, either -- that project started before Bush ever arrived at the White House with Tom DeLay and others.
It may be fashionable for Republicans to cast all blame on the President, but that falsely absolves those who created the problems that plague us at the moment. It may also sound rhetorically spectacular to declare the party "destroyed" by having its constituent coalitions debate about its direction, but it's both inaccurate and hyperbolic. It's not unusual for parties to have these debates -- and maybe if we'd had it in 2000, we would have elevated leaders more supportive of traditional Republican fiscal discipline rather than just blindly supported the people who threw that legacy in the wastebin.
Bush43 signed McCain/Feingold into law.
Bush43 looked forward "to seeing us in the rose garden" for his signing into law the McCain/Kennedy/Bush Shamnesty act of 2007
Bush43 has failed to veto ANY spending bill.
I fully expect Myth Romey AKA Bush44 to be equally as bad.
Peggy Noonan could not hold Dubya’s socks
I always wonder about these pundits who want to heap 100% blame on a single character in Government, in the Party, in some org. The guy at the top bears a brunt of responsibility, but when the load is shared or blanaced, it’s hard to shift to his one pair of shoulders. I wonder if the authors who do this are just trying to spit out a column becuase they have 15 minutes before deadline, or if they had plenty of time to give it thought, yet decided not to. Either Way, It’s the President, the Republican Senators and Congressmen, the aides, advisors, the RNC all sharing the blame. They ran away from the core beliefs, and ignored us when we howled at them. And then we voted them back in.
Ping!
The reason we didn't have it then, and won't unless the party is viewed as being in danger of total annihilation, is because the rot had already pretty well settled in: we have the same cast of characters since 1995. We're not going to have it any time soon, either.
When we had a congressional majority, the Democrats still managed to control the agenda with filibusters or the threat of. Judges, immigration, war spending, everything has been subject to conciliation with the Democrat Party.
But the Rats did a job on Bush because everything is Bush’s fault. Going back to the election in 2000 that Bush stole from the Rats, everything has been Bush’s fault.
As a leader of the GOP, Bush has indeed created a lot of division in the party. he has been given some very BAD ADVICE on many issues.
His worst advice was not listening to the people on illegal immigration. But congress has not been supportive, even when it had GOP control.
3 words of advice for the next GOP candidate.
LOOK, LISTEN, LIVE.
WOT without securing the Borders.
Millions of Illegals into the Country.
Minutemen are Vigilantes.
Insane spending.
No Child Left behind.
Keeping Tenet at the CIA.
Enlarging the Dept. of Education.
Exactly!
Enough blame to go around. GWB had considerable "help".
From County convention to State Convention, and in my own county Republican Central Committee, I witnessed much liberalism in action.
The liberals now have a higher stake in our party than do we conservatives.
Sure you have to give the Republican congress their share of the blame, but if there's one individual who could have put a stop to all of that spending, it was G.W. Bush. In fact, the really big ticket items (the prescription drug program and the War in Iraq) were efforts that HE initiated. The pork barrel stuff, a half million here, a billion there, that are rightly attributed to congress are small potatoes compared to the entire federal budget.
That being said, I don't disagree with the author that we got who we voted for when we elected Bush. For a politician, he has been uncommonly honest. He did what he said he would.
Well, except I don't remember him saying he would leave office with the country on the brink of bankruptcy. I'm sure he didn't intend to...
Exactly. She holds a grudge and has never forgiven
Bush for not inviting her to be his speech writer.
I still haven't figured out if Peggy's just menopausal, or she's ticked because she didn't get a job in the administration. You know what they say about "a woman scorned."
We're all united in saying we'll be more than ready for him to leave office.
No?
The GOP certainly lost it’s conservative flavor. Muck like salt without the saltiness imo.
It’s not the party of RWR anymore.
Bush gets blame because he lead, but he lead us off a cliff. If he hadn't done anything and this destruction was the result, that would be different.
This sentence is true, but it tends to support Rush's prediction that McCain, who is to the left of George W. Nixon, would really really destroy the Republican party.
The ONLY current difference between Republicans and DemocRats in DC is that:
Republicans prefer to borrow and spend us into bankruptcy.
DemocRATs prefer to tax, borrow and spend us into bankruptcy.
May God help us!
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