It all went so wrong long ago. Reagan selecting GHW Bush for a running mate was his single biggest mistake. He should’ve picked Sen. Paul Laxalt as his running mate and made Bush an Ambassador (to the UN or back to China). Laxalt could then have succeeded him in 1988 as President with perhaps Jeane Kirkpatrick as VP.
But, absent that, going back to 2000, we’d have been better off with a younger Fred Thompson as the Presidential nominee and OK Gov. Frank Keating for VP. Absent the obvious tool of the Deep State/Establishment, one reason Shrub came to the forefront was because he did seem to possess the star quality. He’d knocked off the crazy leftist Ma Richards as Governor and was presiding over Texas’s transformation downballot into a GOP state. He had a gargantuan reelection victory in 1998 over Garry Mauro, the State Ag Commissioner. The other worry for him was making sure a Republican succeeded centrist Dem Bob Bullock as Lt Governor, and that also was accomplished. Had the Dem won, he’d have hesitated to run for President and leave the state to a leftist. That was a huge reason why CA Gov. George Deukmejian shot down any attempts to run for President or VP in 1988, he did not want to turn over the state to leftist Lt Gov. Leo McCarthy.
So again, Shrub looked like a highly successful big state Governor in his own right with few equals. It also helped that boomlet for McQueeg early on (with the theft of the Michigan primary with Black Democrat voters) from the left scared the straights into supporting Shrub. For at least a short time, it appeared Shrub might redeem the family name, but as we saw in policy, it was a fiasco and paved the way for Zero.
Largely agree. I think if he had left office in 2004, he’d probably have been recalled fondly, even with Iraq.
Family.
Failure.
Forever.