+1 bump.
Let’s not kid ourselves, however. The Bushes might be decent people but their “thousand points of light,” and “compassionate conservatism” weren’t that different that some of the very RINOS we rightly spurn here.
The quality of a democracy will never exceed the quality of the press. We’re toast.
It is time we stop bringing wet noodles to a knife fight with the Dems.
Instead we need to bring swords, axes, better yet, an Indiana Jones revolver when the Dems/MSM stand there in their Hassassin garb, swishing their scimitars and trying to look macho.
We must use these metaphorical verbal weapons or else things will continue to degenerate to a situation where “metaphorical” is insufficient.
These people are trying to & are succeeding in destroying our country!
Specifically, W had the opportunity to drive our issues at the outset of his first term but he chose to reach across the aisle instead.
Unfortunately, many conservatives dislike Bush as much as the liberals do.
He was a President who worked to guide and lead the nation as a whole, unlike the current President who refuses to hang up his party-hat outside the door of the Oval Office.
Bush was failed by the Republicans in Congress, who abandoned him at every opportunity. Republicans need to set the record straight and redefine Bush’s legacy if they want to start winning again. Unfortunately conservatives are a coalition of the selfish.
Brings to mind the saying, “Together we stand, or together we’ll hang.”
You are correct. We have to fight battles over and over because we let too much stand. The deficit was under $150 billion after six year of Bush, lower than the years before that. It was lower because the economy was strong. When we stop fighting old battles, we lose. The abandonment of Bush in his second term has sunk our party. Even when he wasn't fighting back, party surrogates should have been...not for him, but for the party. When we let it stand that the spending was from the Bush years and not Obama. When we let it be believed that unemployment is better than it was then, well, this is what we get. The fact is the Bush years were some of the best on record. Not without challenges, but he came in with an economy that had grown unprecedentedly for a few years, and he still kept it growing relatively well. History has been re-writen on this, as it is on so many other things while we have a thump up our ass.
Great post.
Bush spent too much, but when Republicans had control of both houses, our economy was humming along. Bush did try to warn of the coming mortgage crisis, but it fell on deaf ears. I get so irritated when Republicans let Obama get off easy with saying he “inherited this mess,” because he actually inherited it from the Democrat-controlled Congress elected in 2006.
As stated before, our economy had recovered nicely from 9-11 and was doing well. The Republicans lost in 2006 because of Iraq, not the economy. I wish they had the guts to set the record straight.
Everyone seems to fondly remember Clinton- for what reason I have no answer. Bush gets the short end of the stick, definitely.
I cannot tell you how many good, hard-working people that I have spoken with that blame George Bush, and by extension, the Republican Party for the collapse of the economy. So many Americans only watch the alphebet media for their news and are basically ignorant of the facts, and simply absorb any story-line or narrative the media feeds them.
I had a long conversation with a couple I recently became friends with last week. They asked me who I was voting for and after I told them it was Romney the female asked me “why I was blaming Obama for all the stuff George Bush did”. When I asked her what “stuff” she said, “are you kidding? look what he did to the economy.”
After fifteen minutes of explaining to her that the problem with the economy was the result the Housing and high risk-Securities bubble and how it was government interference in the housing market that set the table for such a mess, her eyes glazed over and her head started to bob.
She had no clue about Fannie and Freddie taking the risk away from the financial institutions by promising to buy all their paper, never heard of the “Red Lining” controversy that the Democrats engendered to force lending institutions to loan money to their irresponsible constitients. She does not know who Barney Frank and Chris Dodd are and anything about their role in creating this mess. And was incredulous when I told her that Barack Obama is more responsible for the collapse than George Bush is since he is one of the people that helped cause this mess through his work as an attorney for Acorn filing lawsuits under the Fair Housing Act to force lenders to loan money to high risk individuals. (I have a copy of the court docket for the infamous Citibank lawsuit that Citibank eventually settled, and which forced all the other lenders to comply wth the Community Reinvestment Act. Barack Obama’s name is on the document as a lawyer representing the plaintiffs in the case)
My point is this; If the Republican Party does not confront the media when they are perpetrating their latest lying narrative about the GOP and their politicians, there is not enough money in the world to try and change that perception on the part of the public during a political race. The GOP needs to confront the media every single day on these lies and call them out on every one of them as often as possible. If the GOP does not start fighting back and confront them on their shows about their bias, we will always be at a disavantage when they are counting votes.
PF
Quite honestly, Bush’s legacy his first four years and the Republican Party would have been far better off if Kerry had won the 2004 election.
Bush would still be a hero and not a party pariah.
Kerry would have got that real estate bubble that burst(and would have happened regardless who was president) and nobody would’ve e been able to blame Republicans for that mess.
We would have won the 2008 election and the country would be far better off today.
And Barack Obama would still be an obscure Senator from Illinois, a failed state.
Unfortunately, we can’t relive the past.