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(Obama Gets) Bush-Whacked
IBD Editorials ^ | June 19, 2009 | Investor's Business Daily

Posted on 06/18/2009 5:36:23 PM PDT by WhiteCastle

George W. Bush: After being pummeled by his successor, the 43rd president ends his silence on America's slide into socialism and timidity. He reminds us leadership is not something that comes off a teleprompter. Perhaps tired about being publicly blamed by the current administration for all our current ills, Bush spoke out in Erie, Pa., on Wednesday at the 104th annual gathering of the Manufacturers and Business Association. On the same day President Obama announced expanded policing authorities for the Fed to deal with a "culture of irresponsibility," another move many feel will stifle the risk takers and entrepreneurs needed to grow the economy, Bush extolled the virtues of capitalism and the free market.

(Excerpt) Read more at ibdeditorials.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Editorial; Front Page News; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: barackobama; bho44; bhohealthcare; bush; bush43; bushdestroyedgop; bushlegacy; corruptbush; fanniemae; freddiemac; goawaybush; guantanamo; healthcare; ibd; obama; rinobush; socialism; stimulus; tarp; teleprompter; worstgoppresident
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1 posted on 06/18/2009 5:36:23 PM PDT by WhiteCastle
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To: WhiteCastle

About damn time!


2 posted on 06/18/2009 5:38:17 PM PDT by sauropod (People who do things are people that get things done.)
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To: WhiteCastle
Bush has been blamed by the current administration for the housing bubble collapse. "We tried to reform (them)", Bush noted, "but we couldn't get it through the vested (Democratic) interests on Capitol Hill."

Even now, the Republicans are too timid to name the culprits.

3 posted on 06/18/2009 5:38:50 PM PDT by Jeff Chandler (The University of Notre Dame's motto: "Kill our unborn children? YES WE CAN!")
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To: WhiteCastle

On the same day President Obama announced expanded policing authorities for the Fed to deal with a “culture of irresponsibility,”....
:::::::::

I guess quadrupling the national debt and proposing more plans to continue increasing the debt beyond that, with more socialist programs we do not need or want, is not IRRESPONSIBLE....


4 posted on 06/18/2009 5:41:30 PM PDT by EagleUSA
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To: WhiteCastle

And Gibbs response.

We won!


5 posted on 06/18/2009 5:49:31 PM PDT by Carley (OBAMA IS A MALEVOLENT FORCE IN THE WORLD)
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To: Jeff Chandler
Even now, the Republicans are too timid to name the culprits.
That's exactly what I thought when I read this.

Speeches like this are less than worthless if they don't lay out in great detail what happened, detail that the lying commie press would be forced to cover.

And speaking of the lying commie press, without naming THEM as part of the conspiracy to build a Socialist State of America, then W comes off looking like a fool.

Worse than a fool. Like a McCain.

6 posted on 06/18/2009 5:51:28 PM PDT by samtheman
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To: Carley
And Gibbs response: "We won!"

And America lost!

7 posted on 06/18/2009 5:54:34 PM PDT by The Duke (We don't rent pigs! (but we do apparently elect them))
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To: WhiteCastle

Arrest Bush for crimes against Obama!/s


8 posted on 06/18/2009 5:55:40 PM PDT by Dallas59 ("You know the one with the big ears? He might be yours, but he ain't my president.")
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To: WhiteCastle

“leadership is not something that comes off a teleprompter”

ROFTL! That’s so wonderful. Says a lot with a few words. Salute, Pres. Bush.


9 posted on 06/18/2009 6:01:12 PM PDT by lilylangtree (Veni, Vidi, Vici)
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To: WhiteCastle

This is my favorite part:

He reminds us leadership is not something that comes off a teleprompter.

He nailed that one! I even know some Dems in my area that are wish that Pres Bush was still President — same people that trashed him all the time along with their anti-Bush bumperstrips. They have now decided he wasn’t so bad after all and that ZERO will be the worst ever President for the Country and Democrat Party. All I can do is smile and one guy beat me to my “I Told You So” line they get. They had all said ZERO wouldn’t be so bad and I had already told him he would be worse then Carter.


10 posted on 06/18/2009 6:02:42 PM PDT by PhiKapMom (Mary Fallin for OK Governor/Coburn for Senate 2010 ! Mark Rubio for FL Senate 2010!)
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To: WhiteCastle
Most of what he says is good but he still thinks the first TARP was a good idea. Way too much money was invested in houses. Should have let the crash happen so capital could find better uses rather than keep on trying to resuscitate that dead horse. He kept us safe but will go down in history as Hoover the second
11 posted on 06/18/2009 6:05:34 PM PDT by Nateman (If liberals aren't screaming you're doing it wrong.)
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To: WhiteCastle

and 0bama takes another one in the.................................HA ha!!!

12 posted on 06/18/2009 6:12:59 PM PDT by Chode (American Hedonist - Obama is basically Jim Jones with a teleprompter)
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Comment #13 Removed by Moderator

To: WhiteCastle

Good, I’m hoping that Obama gets so tied up fighting the past that he forgets about the future.


14 posted on 06/18/2009 6:16:01 PM PDT by WinOne4TheGipper (Don't blame me. I actually thought about it before I voted.)
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To: Nateman
Way too much money was invested in houses.

Correction , too much $ invested in BANKS that were supposed to use it to loan to people that owned houses.

Instead, the banks are turning down people that are trying to modify their mortgages and socking the billions away to bring up their bottom line.

Speaking of bottoms, Barney Frank and his cronies have made BILLIONS off of all this phony stimulus, and he should be tried, convicted and hanged by the neck until he confesses with his dying breath.

SS, please note the above disclainer "tried and convicted"

15 posted on 06/18/2009 6:18:18 PM PDT by Syncro
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To: samtheman

“leadership is not something that comes off a teleprompter”

Gotta hand it to dubya that was a good one lol


16 posted on 06/18/2009 6:32:44 PM PDT by italianquaker (We went from a country that hates the president to a president that hates his country)
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To: PhiKapMom; lilylangtree; WhiteCastle
For years I have been ruminating on the essential nature of George Bush and how it affected his method of governing. Here is a long post, really a compilation posts, that go back years trying to express the essence of George Bush and how this genuinely Christian and patriotic man was moved to create a legacy which resulted in the dreadful mess we are in today. I would welcome your reactions:

THE CHARACTER OF GEORGE BUSH

Let me make it quite clear from the very beginning that I do not assail the virtuous character of George Bush. To the contrary, I admire it. In September 2006, I posted this:

I believe the author missunderestimates George Bush. If he acts, he will not act to protect his legacy, he will act to protect his country.

In recent weeks, no FReeper has been more harsh, even bitter in his criticism of President Bush. But I have never accused him of low or base motives. I have abandoned George Bush over Harriet Meir, spending, McCain Feingold, and the foolishness and ineptness over Valerie Plame, the ineptness over Katrina, validating Democrats by pandering to the likes of Teddy Kennedy, the need to change course in Iraq, and above all, over immigration, but I never thought that Bush was wrong because he would sell us out or because he was ambitious.

Bush will act, or not act, because he believes it is right and because he is a patriot. Unlike the author, Bush is not a neocon, his agenda is strictly America's future.

If one considers the list of failures for which I indict George Bush in the preceding quoted paragraphs, not one of those actions that so troubled me occurred because George Bush is a small man. To the contrary, they happened because George Bush chose options congruent with his faith. They were animated out of a fullness of heart, not a meanness of character.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF HARRIET MEIR

Looking back, I think the nomination of Harriet Mier was a profound disillusionment for me as it was for George Will and other conservatives. I quote a reply in the context of that nomination to demonstrate that I am not personally opposed to George Bush, to the contrary I admire his character: P> [Quoting George Will:] "As for Republicans, any who vote for Meir will thereafter be ineligible to argue that it is important to elect Republicans because they are conscientious conservers of the judicial branch's invaluable dignity."

As a result of the policies of the Bush administration, Republicans have forfeited their formerly kryptonite hundred year claim to be the party of fiscal responsibility.

Thus we have wantonly kicked away one of the legs of our stool. Another leg of the stool was comprised of our ability to go to the electorate, as George Bush did successfully in the last two elections, and persuasively argue that we were the party of judicial integrity. That we were the party which manned the threshold to the Constitution like the Patriots at Thermopylae to check the ravening horde of liberals who would sack the Constitution.

The Harriet Meir nomination in a stroke has needlessly compromised our ability plausibly to appeal to the electorate as a the party which stands on constitutional principle and eschews judicial opportunism.

Why did we saw off two of our three legs? On the issue of spending some would say it is because Bush was never a conservative. Others would say that it was the war that did it but that would not be the whole truth, at least that would not be the whole explanation. Others would say that it is simply the nature of a politician to buy votes with other people's money and the temptation, even to Republicans, is irresistible.

WHAT THE NOMINATION OF HARRIET MEIR REVEALED OF GEORGE BUSH'S CHARACTER

My own view is that our present dilemma is the product of a little bit of each of the above. For years now I've been posting my view the George Bush is not essentially a movement conservative but a committed Christian. Here's what I've been saying recently:

"The truth is straightforward, as usual. Bush is first a committed Christian, then a devoted family man who values personal loyalty to an extreme, and third, a conservative when that philosophy does not conflict with the first two. In this appointment, Bush believes he has satisfied all three legs of the stool.

"On the limited evidence available, I do positively believe Bush appointed her because she has been reborn. I mean that quite respectfully. I mean that he is counting on her being a new person. Most of the time it means she will vote conservative. But I honestly do not think Bush appointed her to vote conservative. I think he appointed he to vote in the SPIRIT."

The sad thing for us conservatives is to contemplate just how unnecessary the debacle over Harriet Meir really was. The whole nomination fiasco is almost uniquely unrelated to identifiable political or policy considerations. In the absence of such temporal explanations, I am left with the conclusion that Bush has selected her because she is Christian.

FAITH TRUMPS PARTY

If one accepts that Bush's Christian character is the key to understanding the man, it explains both your support of him and his virtues and my support of him and his virtues, but also my disillusionment with him-equally because of his virtues. If George Bush gives billions of our taxpayer dollars away to fight AIDS in Africa it is a noble gesture out of the impulse of a Christian heart. If he toasts Bill Clinton in the White House and by the gesture implicitly tells the world that the entire Republican effort to impeach Clinton was misplaced, he does so out of the Christian duty to love his enemy. If he panders to Teddy Kennedy in the White House, he sees himself not as sleeping with the enemy but as turning the other cheek. If he is "compassionate" in his conservatism, he sees it as the outworking of his Christian duty to give alms. Finally, if he consigns his whole administration to disintegration as he watches his approval numbers descend into the 20s because he declined Karl Rove's advice to defend the administration's Iraq policy and thus wrecks his administration along with his party's chances, he does so because as a Christian he knows he will be called to account for his actions in another venue.

If George Bush and his family think that politics is "smarmy" and that party politics are even more smarmy, it comes from his epiphany with Billy Graham which made him a new man, a man which sees another world, a larger vision. The world of party politics is grimy and transitory and not a worthy place to store up one's treasure. It is as nothing against the overwhelming contemplation of eternity.

THE PROPER ROLE OF PARTY IN GOVERNANCE

The founders designed a government which they hoped would function entirely without parties, indeed, it is the job of parties to bridge over the obstacles to power which the founders installed as checks and balances in our Constitution. The founders called partisanship "factionalism" but whatever the label they feared parties because they saw them as another name for the mob. Parties are in business to overcome the checks and balances which frustrate their ambitions.

It is hardly politic for an essayist today to openly declare that the founder's got something wrong but that is undeniably so when it comes to the issues of parties.

Today, no administration can effectively govern if it permits itself to be frustrated by the checks and balances in the Constitution. The degree to which the Congress will do the president's will largely depends upon the degree to which he can exercise party discipline. George Bush was a profound failure in this respect and Republicans paid terrible forfeits in 2006 and 2008. Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were able to enforce enough party cohesion to escape impeachment. George Bush simply could not, or would not, control the Rinos in his own party except perhaps on the issues of maintaining the fight in Iraq and tax cuts.

So there is always a tension, thank God, between the politics of effective government on the one hand and the constitutional rights of our citizens on the other. If we drift too far toward one party government we risk our liberty. If we drift too far from party discipline, we risk the failure of government.

All this brings us to an examination of your assertion:

First of all, all Presidents have a duty to be above party politics, Presidents represent all Americans, not just their particular party. President Bush upheld that discipline in an exemplary manner and it was good for the country.

For all the reasons I've expressed above, I am bound to say that I find your sentiment noble in conception but very, very naïve when it comes to application. What George Bush did was not good for the country because he put us in the mess we are in. When political scientists write the history of the election of Barak Obama they are going to write that it was lost not by John McCain's haplessness but by George Bush. It was lost because Bush abandoned party, not the other way around as you assert, and without party the president becomes so confounded by the checks and balances put in place by our founders that he simply cannot govern effectively. If he cannot govern effectively, he cannot "represent all Americans." No party means no president, no president means no governing for America.

Nobility of character explains George Bush but it does not excuse him or relieve us of the consequences.

THE VERDICT OF HISTORY

I truly fear that George Bush will be seen as the last president of Constitutional America. The Last president of the America you and I were born in. The last president of the superpower. The last president of the nation in an age of nation states. The last president of Old America before it was swept into transnationalism..

He will be seen as a last president of virtue. The last president to believe he was obligated to tell his people the truth as he knew it. The last to have unalloyed loyalty to the nation of his birth. The last patriotic American president.

George Bush will be known as the last president to remain faithful to the Old Constitution. The last to put country before ideology, class, tribe, party, and race.

George Bush will be seen as the last Christian president. The last keeper of the light of the shining city on the hill.


17 posted on 06/18/2009 6:35:14 PM PDT by nathanbedford ("Attack, repeat, attack!" Bull Halsey)
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To: Nateman

The first Tarp funds were because of a run on the money market, $550 billion in 2 hours, on 9/11/2008. Someone was trying to crash our economy.


18 posted on 06/18/2009 6:42:30 PM PDT by DJ MacWoW (Make yourselves sheep and the wolves will eat you. Ben Franklin)
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To: nathanbedford

I agree with your analysis of President Bush and why he made me want to tear my hair out sometimes with his ideas and the way he wouldn’t respond to criticism. He allowed the RATs to define him and didn’t fight back which to me was a fatal flaw that we all paid for in the end. You nailed the Harriet Meir’s fiasco.

I am the eternal optimist that believes we will recover as a Nation but it is going to be hard. Having lived through four years of Carter destroying the Defense Department, it is going to be a long four years if he makes it that far before he has to leave office. I do not believe he will ever get reelected. I believe everything will catch up with the Chicago thug and the liberal Dems. You can only take “I voted for Obama as the first black President” so far before you have to admit he is a horrible President who cannot speak without a teleprompter. Whoever fostered the idea he was intelligent obviously has not heard him speak without a teleprompter.

Obama hiding his school/college records and long form birth certificate say more about him as a person then anything I could say. He is a fraud or he would be out in front IMO. Firing the three IG’s shouts Chicago thug which is all he knows — never had a real job.

It is up to all of us to make sure that this Nation survives by saying “ENOUGH” and holding elected officials feet to the fire. Tyranny cannot be allowed to stand today any more then it was in the pre-Revolutionary War days. When an Administration ignores the Rule of Law for their own gain, then they need to be turned out at the ballot box if not before through impeachment.


19 posted on 06/18/2009 7:06:15 PM PDT by PhiKapMom (Mary Fallin for OK Governor/Coburn for Senate 2010 ! Mark Rubio for FL Senate 2010!)
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To: nathanbedford
Bush lost me when he sent a hunter killer team (US Marshals Service) to arrest Dog Chapman at O'dark thirty. This was done at Mexico's request, for something that is not even a crime in this country.

Compare that to how they arrested Blagovich?

So I'm undecided whether Bush is just stupid? or Pure Evil (a bit of overkill, but close to my thoughts)

20 posted on 06/18/2009 7:13:53 PM PDT by investigateworld ( Abortion stops a beating heart.)
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