I don’t know what great things Bush has done for America.
My sense is that the Democrats are going to manage to lose an election that should have been a lock by nominating the most extremist left wing candidate that they could. McCain may have trouble with the base, but he is an acceptable alternative to Obama to tons of Democrats, and for that reason I think he will win.
The House and Senate are another matter. I know that I am thoroughly disgusted with Bush, the Republicans in the Senate and the House, and the people in the key administrative positions (like the Fed Chairman and the FAA chairman, to name a couple of winners). We have a huge, intrusive government that has wasted billions of dollars for the last eight years, been enablers to the Democrats who run the agencies in Washington on a day-to-day basis, and utterly failed to make permanent the commitments made in the Republican Revolution in 1994. They absolutely deserved to lose in 2006 and their pathetic performance the last two years makes it clear that they still don’t get it. They deserve to lose again in 2008.
So we get a RINO president (albeit maybe after winning in a rout over the new McGovernite Obama) hobbled with veto proof majorities of Democrats in the Congress in 2009.
What a revolting development this is! What an appropriate legacy for Bush, the man who expanded government at the fastest rate of any president since FDR.
And who will be lurking in the wings, waiting for 2012? Our old friends the Clintons-ready and available to take on a weak, unpopular McCain who has been unable to get anything done or stop anything that the Democrats in Congress want to do.
Confiscatory taxes, draconian environmental rules, $7 gasoline, stagflation. erosion of personal freedom, liberal courts with a bunch of Souter-type judges(the only kind McCain can get through the Senate), a weak foreign policy with Islamic jihadists in control of the world’s oil supply, a resurgent Russia threatening an increasingly impotent Europe, China astride Asia, and a weak military that makes American power an oxymoron...yep, it is a future to which we can look forward in horror.
Who is responsible? I say Bush.
So we get a RINO president (albeit maybe after winning in a rout over the new McGovernite Obama)
Dream on.
We likely are not even getting that.
On policy, I think Bush has been good on everything except reining in spending and illegals. Also he waited too long to shift strategy in Iraq, a major blunder, but I think the decision to invade was correct. Otherwise, he has been good on policy. He is a bad communicator and goes to extremes in declining to take on the Democrats rhetorically, instead preferring the “high road”. In that way he’s similar to his daddy.
Hmmm...so now that you’ve damned both their houses, pointed out that the Federal government is fatally flawed and cannot be successfully run even by those who are trained for life to do so, what do you suggest?
Myself, I blame us, the voters. We’re the ones who continue to fall for the gag that we can have something for nothing and a lot of what our neighbor has, if we vote for the right thief. That alone is the force driving politicians to move left: that is where ideologues go who are willing to promise to steal more effectively than their opponent and that’s what people secretly want (no matter how loudly they decry that in public). It’s pretty tough to campaign to have people be sensible when the other candidate is promising to loot those ‘other folks’ one can pretend not to know are under assault on one’s own behalf. That’s the hill McCain has to climb, given he won’t take off the gloves and engage in the fistfight. His other option is to try to be a sensible thief, who will manage the stealing process with decorum and who won’t say a single negative word about the other candidate, who is likely to promise jack-booted thugs at the voters’ neighbor’s door unless they fork over for them. In the spun world of media, most people will then discreetly pretend they don’t realize that the same people who must fork over are the ones on whose behalf the gelt is being gained. Thus, the only power has been to interfere with ordinary life for a buck. Talk about a redundant job. But, clearly there’s a sizeable chunk of the working population capable of and willing to engage in such persiflage for a living. Guess they’re hooked on the free cars, the sense of dominance and the illusion of grandeur. Personally, I’d rather live in the woods, but that’s me. I just work to disengage myself from the web to the extent I can and keep my head down.
It’s time not to look like a nail, in other words.