Hey "Dull-be-You" I'm gonna be your brain during your adminstration."
Okay, Karl, mission accomplished...you're doin a heckuva job!
Posted on 03/09/2010 1:21:25 AM PST by meandog
AUSTIN – As Karl Rove makes the rounds this week with his memoir burnishing the Bush legacy, another book by another Texas Republican offers a decidedly different view.
Former state GOP chairman Tom Pauken, a Dallas lawyer and foot soldier in the Reagan revolution, offers a sober counterpoint to Rove's full-throated defense of his former boss.
In Pauken's view, the former president and "Bush's Brain" not only hijacked conservatism, they nearly destroyed it.
(Excerpt) Read more at dallasnews.com ...
As Rush says. Bush didn’t run on conservatism. This guy is telling us something we know.
Yeah but he wasn't as bad as the alternatives.
Sigh!
What wasted opportunities.
Double sigh!!
Bush was a disaster for the Republican Party.
Good man yes.
Principles "conservative" - NOT!!!
Wasted opportunity especially after 911!
No ‘Compassionate Conservatism’? And if the compassionate qualifier was disqualifying because it suggested regular conservatism isn’t, how do we take Palin’s ‘Commonsense Conservatism’?
McCain was undoubtedly better than the alternative, too—yet how much harm would he have done to the Republican Party, and how much progressive legislation might he and a Democratic Congress slipped through on us?
The tax cuts were good, as they always are. With a bit of help from conservatives, his selections for SCOTUS were good.
Unfortunately for the Republic, the only principle that matters to either political party is "power". And please don't use that "we must be in power" to accomplish anything. The GOP had the whole enchilada only to squander the opportunities they had.
Sorry if it sounds harsh, but this old man is sick and tired of them all. R's and D's.
| We are now one of the largest Spanish-speaking nations in the world. We're a major source of Latin music, journalism and culture. Just go to Miami, or San Antonio, Los Angeles, Chicago or West New York, New Jersey ... and close your eyes and listen. You could just as easily be in Santo Domingo or Santiago, or San Miguel de Allende. For years our nation has debated this change -- some have praised it and others have resented it. By nominating me, my party has made a choice to welcome the new America. Our future cannot be separated from the future of Latin America. As I speak, we are celebrating the success of democracy in Mexico. George Bush from a campaign speech in Miami, August 2000. |
Here is an excerpt of a good critique of that speech:
In equating our intimate historic bonds to our mother country and to Canada with our ties to Mexico, W. shows a staggering ignorance of the civilizational facts of life. The reason we are so close to Britain and Canada is that we share with them a common historical culture, language, literature, and legal system, as well as similar standards of behavior, expectations of public officials, and so on. My Bush Epiphany By Lawrence Auster
You guys keep blaming Republicans, like Bush, Mccain, ... for not being conservative enough.
I have a different take. It’s the media. The media is extremely clever at shaping public opinion.
Look at what they did to Jim Bunning. Bunning was absolutely correct in his stand. But the media portrayed it as an attack on the unemployed. And the media’s attack stood.
Bush cut taxes. But the media portrayed it as “tax cuts for the rich.”
Bush removed a horrible dictator and his evil sons, but the media portrayed it as Blood for Oil.
The media has created the image of conservatism as heartless, uncaring, for the rich only.
It takes superhuman strength of character and media savvy to overcome these media portrayals.
Our enemy is NOT conservatives, even if they are not as 100% conservative as we would prefer.
Our enemy is the media. Things are turning though: with Fox news, FRee Republic, Conservative talk radio, countless blogs and web sites for purveying the truth, we are starting to get the real message out.
But when we attack our own, we only harm ourselves. The media is the enemy - we should never forget that.
With all due respect of Sarah Palin she’s not going to be President. I like her conservatism. If she signs a reality tv contract she won’t be taken seriously
“McCain was undoubtedly better than the alternative, too—yet how much harm would he have done to the Republican Party, and how much progressive legislation might he and a Democratic Congress slipped through on us?”
One of the major problems with the Republican Party establishment is its practice of running candidates who are “better than the alternative”. Bush I, Dole, Bush II, and McCain were all politicians put forward as better than the Democrat alternative. These candidates were all pragmatic politicians, not visionaries, not true believers in the principles of limited government delineated in the Constitution.
I for one am tired of casting a Republican vote because the candidate isn’t as bad as the other guy (or gal). I’d like to really vote FOR a patriot who has a vision of greatness for the country and a commitment to individual liberty instead of big government.
As *good* rebranding -- as people try Palin's ideas, and find that they WORK in reality, the credibility of conservatism will go UP.
Remember she's using "common sense" conservatism as a label for Reaganism.
Read Going Rogue for more.
Cheers!
You aren’t wrong. The media is the vanguard of the liberal establishment. But that doesn’t make Bush any less dreadful. Two straight Democrat landslides can be laid at his feet.
Forgot about Roberts and Alito and, you're right, he gets an A+ for his SCOTUS appointments. Tax cuts were good too except there should have been a hiatus when Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom began, IMO because there is a economic axiom that's tried and true, at least that's what I've been told: You can have guns or butter but you cannot have both at the same time.
“You can have guns or butter but you cannot have both at the same time.”
True. Had they cut domestic spending at the same level that military spending was going up, there’d have been no problems, budget wise.
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