Bush is just a symptom – indeed. Bush is the logical conclusion of all the conservatives’ ideals.
Daily Kos: Trying to unload Bush
Republicans are in a bind — they want to disown Bush and throw him to the wolves. They want to blame him for all the problems they’ve had the past few years governing the country and save their own hides, but they still can’t find the strength to oppose his Iraq efforts. They are attached to his hip, yet they want to pretend that Bush is the cause of all the nation’s problems. Complicating things, they’ve had a governmental trifecta, so they don’t have their usual Democratic Party foils to blame. They’re on their own and isolated on this one.
But ultimately, Bush is a symptom of the problem, not the cause. The cause is conservatism. How can an ideology that holds as a truism that government can’t work, work? If Republicans ran the country smoothly and ably, it would lay waste to their claims that government is the enemy and can’t make people’s lives better. In that regards, Bush hasn’t been incompetent. He’s been wildly successful.
So yes, what we have just witnessed is the logical conclusion of effective conservative governance, and things would look the same way today whether we had President McCain, President Lott, President Jeb, President Romney, President Thompson, or whichever other anti-government Republican we slotted in.
This is what conservatives want for America. We’re seeing it in the most vivid of colors. Blaming Bush for doing exactly what conservatives wanted to the country would be like, well, blaming Gonzales for doing exactly what Bush ordered him to do.
UPDATE:
“I think it’s probably possible to be a conservative without appearing to be an idiot.”
– Roscoe Bartlett, a Republican Representative, at a U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on global warming, 21 Mar 2007, following criticism of witness Al Gore.
Me too. But not to be a Bush supporter.
6 Responses
Am I a bad person for feeling a bit gleeful at the thought of the Republicans predicament?
(Go Buu-oush, Go Buu-oush, Go Buu-oush.)
Absolutely not! It’s called schadenfreude….
I just look at it as karma finally calling them out…. and karma is a BITCH and boy is she PISSED OFF!
I thought instant karma too. 🙂
Looked up Schadenfredue and found this proverb:
Schadenfreude ist die schönste Freude (denn sie kommt von Herzen)
Schadenfreude is the most superb kind of joy (since it comes directly from the heart).
I doubt that your understanding of conservatism is really so sketchy. You know well that Bush has expanded the power of the Federal government at every opportunity, a conservative concept? Endless sea’s of red ink, Austrian economics 101? Fighting wars to safeguard Israel and benefit big oil, Pat Buchanan endorses this? A tidal wave of immigration, the Klan is Bush’s biggest supporter? I expect better out of you Donna. If you don’t like conservatism fine. But at least be intellectually honest.
Hey, I didn’t write it, Markos did. ;^)
It doesn’t matter what I understand conservatism to be, it’s that the conservatives becked Bush and gave him the power to do all this shit.
As for Austrian economics, I asked the first day of my econ class in grad school if we were going to talk about Austrian economics, and when the prof said no, I tuned out the rest of the semester. It amuses me that all the free marketeers would freak out if we had a truly free economy. ;^)
As to expecting whatever out of me, your mileage may vary. I do think Bush is the result of all the conservative scheming, and if this is what he’s brought them, oh well. Maybe next time, they’ll go with a real conservative.
And for the record, I’m STILL a registered libertarian. ;^)
Conservatism, in its best sense, is suggestive of retaining social norms, institutions, and resources that serve us well. It will sometimes struggle to preserve those that do not. Still, preservation of presumed goods is a core value. And it is a laudable one. I have a lot of respect for conservatism where its goal is thoughtful and well-intentioned. But none of this applies to the Bush administration, IMO. I agree that there are a lot of people who identify themselves as conservatives who supported Bush. Some have abandoned him because they see which way the wind is blowing. Others, I assume, do so as a matter of principle.
One of the charming things about Bushspeak is that one can usually figure out what is meant by simply negating what has been said. “Compassionate sonservatism” is a perfect case in point.