Bushian "Revisionistic Historicalism"
by digby
Greg Sargent has an interesting post up about Bush's crony capitalism and why he's anathema in a party which has moved significantly to the right just since his departure. He quotes him giving a recent speech:
“I didn’t want there to be 21 percent unemployment...I didn’t want to gamble. I didn’t want history to look back and say, ‘Bush could have done something but chose not to do it.’ And so I said, ‘no depression.’”...Bush told dealers he still believes in the free market. “If you make a bad decision in business, you ought to pay,” he said. “The problem is, sometimes circumstances get in the way of philosophy.”
The theory is that the GOP today wouldn't have done that because they've moved so far to the right. I think that's true. But I'm not sure I buy that the Republicans rejected Bush on that basis. Remember, his approval rating when he left office was dismal:
That trajectory had nothing to do with bailouts. He was way down there long before the economic crisis hit. His failure was Iraq, where he beat his chest and swaggered around the world carrying on about non-existent WMD and cost a whole lot of lives and treasure. Until the very end, the economy had been doing pretty well and there weren't a lot of complaints.
Remember, conservatism can never fail, it can only be failed. It was inevitable that they would turn on Bush and call him a liberal. It's what they do. But that's not the real reason they rejected him. They rejected him for putting their "exceptionalist" worldview to the test and failing. Making America look weak and inept is simply unforgivable. In fact, it's taboo, which is why they have to blame today for a different crime committed long after they had already written him off.
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