CNN Money – Monday, January 08, 2007 via Overlawyered.com:
The Miers nomination split the Republican Party, as everyone recalls, with most of the ideological conservatives–like Bill Kristol, David Frum, George Will, Kate O’Beirne, Charles Krauthammer–putting their collective foot down and taking the position that she was simply not up to the job. In my mind, that’s the moment when the wheels came off the George W. Bush presidency.
For a long time, the brilliant conservative ideologues who championed and defended the George W. Bush presidency professed not to know what I’m talking about. They dismissed those who broached the topic as Eastern Establishment elitists. The president was not simple, they maintained. Rather, he was possessed of “moral clarity.”
And that was pretty much the party line all the way up till October 3, 2005, when Bush nominated Harriet Miers to assume the pivotal seat on the U.S. Supreme Court that Sandra Day O’Connor would be vacating. Then the charade abruptly ended.
It must have been a liberating, cathartic moment for the conservative intelligentsia. For even though Bush drew down Miers’s nomination on October 27, 2005, the ideological right has never been able to resume its pre-Miers lock-step.
Yes, he’d been incompetent in handling Iraq. Yes, he’d been incompetent in handling Katrina. Pretty soon, you had the Iraq Study Group, whose mere existence–put aside its unanimous conclusions–was an unprecedented, bipartisan statement that our president just wasn’t up to the job.
Yes, and no. The problem was that the true conservatives had already been forced, and might have been willing, to look the other way once they realized that Bush was not interested in fiscal restraint or limiting federal size and power, as long as he was still going to be their champion for highly intelligent, strict constructionist judges on the courts. Harriet Miers proved that Bush couldn’t even be counted on for that.
Bush is a war criminal! He stole the 2000 and 2004 elections and should be in prison. He invaded TWO sovereign nations for NO REASON, supports the illegal Zionist regime that illegally occupies Palestine, and his grandfather (Prescott Bush) was a Nazi! We need a more sensible, compassionate, and caring government that lets people be free, and also free from worry about losing their jobs and having massive health care bills and ending up dead in the streets. Not one that spies on its citizens, allows the rich to own guns to kill the poor, and imprisons journalists like Mumia Abu-Jamal just because they don’t like what they say.
ok so the prez is incompetant – so what. Theres a lot of incompetant leaders out there – just look at Africa.
3 – Exactly! We need more incompetence and unclear thinking at the apex of government, not less. When Bush withdrew the Meiers nomination, we all lost a wonderful opportunity to enrich the collective incompetence of those who run the U.S. A tragedy, really.
wow this is weird
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/01/10/rfid-defence.html
Sorry, tallwookie. I was just taking the notion that incompetent leaders are, you know, okay, and running with it. You’re right, it got a little weird. Seemed logical though, given the premise.
I would say that Miers was only one of several things. Each one chipped away a few pieces of support.
Many people held their noses when they voted Bush in 2004. The war was going badly even then.
The whole WMD / phony intelligence was roaring away, questioning why we went to war.
Katrina and Rita had wrecked havoc on Mississippi and Louisiana. Bush wanted to sit on Trent Lott’s front porch as the horrors of the Convention Center and Dome were coming to light.
Mother Bush dissed all the Katrina refugees and scared Houston that they would stay past their welcome.
Abramoff was making the news.
Delay was making the news.
The Republicans in Congress were doing nothing. People wanted to know about where all this money was going and no one would answer questions.
Ted Stevens and his Bridge to Nowhere went through the budget.
None of these things by itself caused Bush’s downfall. Together, in the space of a year, they killed his legacy. Or made his legacy, depending on how you look at it.
One other thing to add to my last post. Bush nominated two anti abortionists to the Supreme Court. The majority of Americans favor legalized abortion. This might have also influenced many voters. Voters don’t care about you stand on abortion as long as it remains only your opinion. But when you decide the law, then it becomes more personal.
Wow, you’re utterly in denial, Herman.
What is it about cop killers that makes you get funny in the pants?
Mike (#1) pretty much sums up how the conservatives reacted to Bush. The Meirs nomination was a betrayal of the conservatives that formed the cornerstone of his support, and we let him know he had gone too far. His nomination of Judge Alito repaired most of the damage, but we never forgot.
Bush’s dramatic drop in the polls really came from two sources: the Valerie Plame scandal and Katrina. Both of these go to show how the public can be swayed if lies and innuendo are shouted loud enough and long enough. The Bush administration had nothing to do with Valerie Plame’s out’ing — which the Special Prosecutor learned on the first day of his job! Yet the Prosecutor deliberately kept the investigation open for nearly two years and allowed rumors and accusations to fly, causing Bush’s support to erode like sand on a beach.
The Katrina debacle was the responsibility of the New Orleans mayor and the Louisiana governor, but the media was quite adept at shifting the blame to the Office of the President. And judging from Fusion’s quote, “as the horrors of the Convention Center and Dome were coming to light,” one can only conclude that once a lie takes hold, the truth is buried forever.
9. Can you explain how a .38 (bullet diameter of .357 inches) can fire a .44 (bullet diameter of .429 inches)? Or why NO ONE saw Mr. Abu-Jamal do it, even though the street was far form abandoned? Or are you so brainwashed that you have no idea what I am taking about?
10. Baby Bush let them die in Katrina because they were black and poor. Now all his fat cat buddies can buy the land cheap and continue their rape of poor. Notice how he tried to blame his drunken incompetence on a woman and an African-American? Wonder what he was doing at his ranch while New Orleans drown? Cocaine?
Oh, my, what a hilarious trip inside Herman’s Head.
Mayors and governors have no responsibility whatsoever to plan for disasters and implement said plans.
Those hundreds of school busses marooned in flooded parking lots because of Nagin’s incompetence don’t matter.
Nagin’s idiotic plan to use the Superdome and the convention center as relief centers doesn’t matter.
And of course, the fact that the victims of Katrina were equally balanced between the races doesn’t matter to HERMAN THE RACIST.
oh snap
Frank,
The whole nation read about the FEMA agent inside the Superdome begging for help while Bush was congratulating “Browny” We read about those trucks filled with bottled water FEMA refused to allow into the devastated area. We read about how rescue teams from Canada, Portland, Los Angles, and other places were in operation even before Michael Brown had his hair combed. We read about the firefighters and rescue workers being trained in Atlanta about how to show off their FEMA shirts and not to do anything else. We read about contracts given away with no accountability. We read about how the Army Corp of Engineers had been given only a fraction of the money they asked for to upkeep the New Orleans levies. And I’m only including what came to light between the hurricane and the end of the year.
True or not, they all reflected on his highness. And as all Republicans know, just keep throwing the shit and see what sticks to the wall.
Frank,
Can you do anything except parrot back Faux News and Rush The Lush Limbaugh? Call me all the names you want, it’s the last act of someone who has lost arguement and has nothing left.
Herman,
Thank you. It has been a long time since I felt like a conservative, but you made me feel that way. Take a pill and slow down there Cowboy.
Well, I was going to write a long detailed response to #15, but then I read #16. 🙂
#14 Mr. Fusion –
True, but as I said, Bush and the feds did not have a monopoly on the incompetence of Katrina. And incompetence is not intentional malice, as Herman The Racist claims it is.
My sense was that the wheels came off with the response to Katrina.
Americans saw — close up — what a bunch of bunglers this administration is.
We, over here in the ME, already knew the massive scale of their bungling but reality becomes more stark when it is closer to home.
#12 – Uh Frank, you’ve got it backward. FEMA doesn’t have the authority to go in anywhere until aid is requested by the Governor. Our whole governmental system is supposed to start from the local level not the other way around. Other than war callups the President has no authority over the National Guard unless the Governor gives it to him.
While I by no means say FEMA got everything right, it’s interesting how it’s response to Katrina was demonstratably much better than the response to Andrew a few years earlier yet we never hear about that.
Everyone quit picking on Herman. Herman’s fun. I bet he’s great at parties with a few beers in him. 😉
Herman drinks VODKA if you haven’t figured it out yet.
In hindsight, that’s so blindingly obvious I should have known.
If you’re not used to beer though, that would make it even more fun.
Mucous said:
😉
Oh geez… how did I miss this.
Grrrrrrr…