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The more I think about it. How the hell did no one worth a damn run in 2000 that George Bush’s idiot son was nominated, George Bush who was the first elected GOP President since Hoover not to be reelected. George Bush who signed a dem tax hike into law after vowing not to. Jr. who was a failed baseball executive, with a buried DUI that nearly ended up giving us Al Gore. The answer of course is the establishment crowned him well before the first primary. And rather than object, conservatives just pretended he was one of us. His main challenger was McStain who was even worse and who’s 2000 campaign would have fit better in the rat party.

Dubya also had that "down home" folksiness and Evangelical bona fides that contrasted bigly with his dad's Northeastern preppy pedigree, so it was much easier to envision him as being different from his dad.

I also suspect a certain amount of buyer's remorse over the lack of enthusiastic backing for Bush the elder in 1992 among some Republican voters motivated some support for Dubya as well.

George Bush who signed a dem tax hike into law after vowing not to. Jr. who was a failed baseball executive, with a buried DUI that nearly ended up giving us Al Gore.

Not owning up to the DUI was certainly a problem, but I'd also add in the general incompetence of his 2000 campaign concerning Florida. Just how the hell did Bush almost let that state slip out of his fingers? Did no one on the ground tell him that it was looking close there? I also have to wonder about their GOTV campaign in general, as they also let Iowa, New Mexico, Wisconsin and Oregon go by microscopic margins. Packing those four states in would have made Florida a moot point. (I'd also add that his 2004 showing could have been better. He only picked up Iowa and New Mexico, both small states in population. He ought to have won Wisconsin and probably Pennsylvania as well)

Hard to win with an ongoing (somewhat) unpopular and undecided war. If you recall in 2002 and I think in 04 as well, the Rs picked up seats in Congress. I know in 2002, that wasn’t supposed to happen.

I’ll fully own up to Bush convincing a lot of us he was different from his dad.

And I remember the pride here on FR the day he took that mound of rubble in NYC with the bullhorn, or threw a perfect strike at Yankee Stadium, or made one of the best speeches in US history at the National Cathedral.

W attempted, weakly, to reform SS, but gave up. Instead, he drifted into the amnesty debate. Had he gone full GIJOE on Iraq, not holding back on the “Muslim” stuff, and had he not gone into amnesty, his legacy would be much, much different.

Most of all, however, his stupid (Rove’s stupid) decision to not fight back, to just take it, not only destroyed his presidency but really the GOP presidential candidates in 2008 and 2012 who played by the same rules. It also cost us the House and Senate in 2006.

Despite all that, I will always have a soft spot in my heart for the W of 2001 who made us proud and who, for a while, held us together.