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Breaking Up Is Hard to Do ("Bush Destroyed the Republican Party" -- Drudge Headline)
WSJ.com ^ | Jan 25, 2008 | Peggy Noonan

Posted on 01/26/2008 5:57:27 AM PST by fightinJAG

[snip]

On the pundit civil wars, Rush Limbaugh declared on the radio this week, "I'm here to tell you, if either of these two guys [Mr. McCain or Mike Huckabee] get the nomination, it's going to destroy the Republican Party. It's going to change it forever, be the end of it!"

This is absurd. George W. Bush destroyed the Republican Party, by which I mean he sundered it, broke its constituent pieces apart and set them against each other. He did this on spending, the size of government, war, the ability to prosecute war, immigration and other issues.

(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: bush; compassionate; destroyed; elections; gop; noonan; rinobush; smellthecoffee
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To: Young Scholar
<> They govern and spend like Democrats.! That wing doesn't walk the talk!
181 posted on 01/26/2008 10:11:52 AM PST by bluebeak
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To: go-ken-go

“Oh yes, don’t forget he put those Supreme Court judges in too, Alito and Roberts. No credit for that, Peggy????”

W wanted Gonzalez and Harriet Miers in those positions. It was conservatives that foisted Roberts and Alito on him.


182 posted on 01/26/2008 10:36:54 AM PST by Comparative Advantage
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To: Comparative Advantage
W wanted Gonzalez and Harriet Miers in those positions. It was conservatives that foisted Roberts and Alito on him.

Several of the posters on this thread do not want to be bothered with the truth, so you just keep bothering them. :^)

183 posted on 01/26/2008 11:24:58 AM PST by org.whodat (What's the difference between a Democrat and a republican????)
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To: org.whodat

For some reason here the truth about GWB often leads to attacks on Pat Buchanan.


184 posted on 01/26/2008 12:59:41 PM PST by Theodore R. ( Cowardice is still forever!)
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To: Toskrin
Democrats are in favor of higher taxes to pay for greater spending, while Republicans are in favor of greater spending, for which the taxpayers will pay. - P. J. O'Rourke
185 posted on 01/26/2008 1:14:07 PM PST by gpapa ("My idea of gun control is a good, steady aim" - Fred Thompson)
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To: cake_crumb
"Imperialism" my left toenail. It was common sense ...

No. It was an out and out imperialistic move by the neocons and there was no common sense about it. We only finally started to turn the "peace" around and make progress once we booted the neocons out of positions of policy influence and let the military do its job under Petraeus and such folks. The neocons under Bush had less of an idea how to win peace than did the Clinton administration.

These guys were not conservatives, and they have cost us trillions. A president does not just say, yes, let us invade Iraq. He chooses a plan and a group of people to implement that plan. Whether or not invading Iraq in the abstract was a good idea, the plan that was executed ran out when we booted out Sadam and they had no clue what to do next except swing about wildly like the school bully attacked by 100 six year olds.

No, it was not our finest moment, and Cheney, Wolfowitz and a few others will go down in ignominy as a consequence. Rumsfeld, is also tarred by it, which is a pity, because his Pentagon reform was drastically needed, and we still need lot more of it.

It all broke down because State and Defense could not work together to rebuild Iraq, and that problem I have to lay at the feet of the President himself. Interagency is always a mess and he should have waded in and started throwing his weight and people around and tossing them out until they started functioning.

But Bushes are establishment people and never buck the system. It is their downfall in the end.

186 posted on 01/26/2008 6:17:59 PM PST by AndyJackson
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To: mimaw
Look at this presidents accomplishments and you can not in good conscience call him a failure

What accomplishments. He got a couple of good judges in, but only after the Hariett Myers debacle. And he landed us in a godawful quagmire in the middle east because we had not plan what to do once Sadam was out. We are going to be bogged down for another 10 years. And getting support for Iraq has cost him virtually every other important policy issue.

He tried to get nuclear energy going and failed. He promised us he was going to do things for small business (deregulation and lawsuit abuse reform). Not a peep out of him on those issues. He kept renominating Greenspan which was a great idea until it wasn't, and then replaced him with his inbred second cousin. And he created the biggets boondogle of an inept bureaucracy in the history of the federal government - homeland security.

No, I don't think this is going to go down in history as a great administration.

187 posted on 01/26/2008 6:24:06 PM PST by AndyJackson
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To: HawaiianGecko
But, what were the big ticket items here, Iraq War, Homeland Security and the prescription drug program. Hmmm... I can't think of two and certainly not three of these items I was against.

Well I can think of two I was against, and a third that I would have been against (the invasion of Iraq) if I had understood at the time how incompetent the neocons running it were. It took us six years to find a strategy that worked with the people.

Homeland security was an even worse idea than the Department of Energy - a large spralling bureaucracy that barely has a mission or the competency to execute it, because the function is not one belonging to a centralized government but a decentralized economy (and that goes for Homeland security too, which is much more a police and FBI function than whatever it is that Homeland security really thinks it does do).

188 posted on 01/26/2008 6:31:04 PM PST by AndyJackson
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To: Leisler

Some of the best conservative articles I’ve ever read were written by Rush in his newsletter - and he can nail a stealth liberal caller, think on his feet and expound on the topic the caller thinks he “has” Rush on in a New York minute that spins the seminar caller’s head. Rush is probably about as well educated as the average college boy who graduated from public high school and then went off to college and partied and drank for four years. Limbaugh has devoted himself to self-education; unlike most of those “Joe College” party boys who generally became lawyers like their daddys and then serve as pages for Teddy Kennedy.

Neil Bortz strikes me as really insecure and rather pontificating without the sharpness of Rush. Rush can put into words what a lot of us have been thinking for many years. - I do wish Rush would leave off the sexual innuendos and pronouncing school as “screwell”. He doesn’t need all that, and it is honestly more naughtiness than methodology I think. Rush is deeply flawed, but he is not smart like a fox is not smart.


189 posted on 01/26/2008 6:44:34 PM PST by Twinkie (Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God . . .)
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To: Non-Sequitur
What it needs is leadership, which is currently lacking.

What the GOP needs most are conservative leaders, and apparently there aren't any!

190 posted on 01/26/2008 6:49:03 PM PST by NRA2BFree ("The time is near at hand which must determine whether Americans are to be free men or slaves!")
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To: fightinJAG

We Republicans break up only if the screaming media and drudge tell us to. Why are we Republicans? I’m one because I believe we can do it on our own, we don’t need the government to take care of us from cardle to grave. We were given the ability to think by our Creator, a thumb, which separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. We have free choice....are we Republicans or Socialists? That is the question for today.


191 posted on 01/26/2008 6:49:29 PM PST by tillacum (The only way to vote is REPUBLICAN, no matter what. We've got to win.)
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To: Comparative Advantage

Then sonny, go back to the democrat website, you belong there.


192 posted on 01/26/2008 6:53:15 PM PST by tillacum (The only way to vote is REPUBLICAN, no matter what. We've got to win.)
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To: G.Love

If President Reagan would be resurected today, in it’s climate of semisocialism and Conservatism, President Reagan would be called a liberal. My thoughts, reading what I’m reading here. Of course, I’m such a conservative, I almost squeek.


193 posted on 01/26/2008 6:56:07 PM PST by tillacum (The only way to vote is REPUBLICAN, no matter what. We've got to win.)
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To: counterpunch

She has been silently and surly been trying to hehead our President. I personally think that she has a very large METOism when she write about someone in power, unless, of course, they think exactly as she does. She knows all.


194 posted on 01/26/2008 7:02:36 PM PST by tillacum (The only way to vote is REPUBLICAN, no matter what. We've got to win.)
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To: Doofer

I think every Republican Presidents, down through the ages, have DESTROYED the Republican Party from the time of Lincoln. Why is there STILL a Republican Party if it’s been destroyed????? I’m still here and so are a few others. The Party exists despite policians....if you believe in conservatism or not..make up your minds and keep on keeping on as a conservative.


195 posted on 01/26/2008 7:08:01 PM PST by tillacum (The only way to vote is REPUBLICAN, no matter what. We've got to win.)
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To: mewzilla

LA,LA,LA,LA,LA,la,la,la,la,la, ABANDON THE GOP, THE GOP, THE GOP ABANDON THE GOP,GOP, GOP. GO DEMOCRAT, DEMOCRAT, DEMOCRAT, DEMOCRAT, BECOME A SOCIALIST, SOCIALIST, SOCIALIST AND HAVE NOTHING TO-00 GRIPE ABOUT, GRIPE ABOUT, LIVE A LIFE ON SUBSISTANCE, SUBSISTANCE and know what real poverty is. Pardon my music, but negativism really is not a good thing to harp about. DO SOMETHING CONSTRUCTIVE! Volunteer for what you believe. Join a Republican group, become an election judge, helper, begin a grass roots group, quit griping.


196 posted on 01/26/2008 7:18:41 PM PST by tillacum (The only way to vote is REPUBLICAN, no matter what. We've got to win.)
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To: no dems

Not matter the things our President Bush HASN allowed, he HASN’T ALLOWED ISLAM THE PRIVILEDGE OF HITTING US AGAIN IN OUR HOMELAND.. YA’LL DON’T THINK OF THAT. I’m a Bush Backer and I really regret those out there who look only at the negative reports from the screaming media.


197 posted on 01/26/2008 7:25:42 PM PST by tillacum (The only way to vote is REPUBLICAN, no matter what. We've got to win.)
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To: Theodore R.

And How many Presbyterians, Episcopanians, Baptists, Methodists, Lutherins, convert to Catholosim or Mormanism, or Bahia????????????????? Not many that I’ve heard, we kind of stick with what we are born into. So what’s the big deal about Morman’s converting to another faith?


198 posted on 01/26/2008 7:32:30 PM PST by tillacum (The only way to vote is REPUBLICAN, no matter what. We've got to win.)
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To: tillacum

Well, ya’ll this is about as much negativism as I can take for the next few months. Maybe Peggy started it....but darn the skiff is overloaded with negative thought of our Republican Party and our President. Bye all.


199 posted on 01/26/2008 7:35:58 PM PST by tillacum (The only way to vote is REPUBLICAN, no matter what. We've got to win.)
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To: Theodore R.

Rush coined Mittens.


200 posted on 01/26/2008 7:40:02 PM PST by Balding_Eagle (If America falls, darkness will cover the face of the earth for a thousand years.)
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