For me personally, one of the most depressing aspects of Bushism has been the reaction to it from traditional conservatives. There have been some defectors, but not nearly enough. The first to jump off the Bush/Cheney train (after Senator Jim Jeffords) were environmentally minded conservatives. Loosening arsenic standards was a spring 2001 scandal. It was followed by the 9/11 cover-up, and then by a steady drumbeat of assaults deriving mostly from the Department of Interior. Eventually EPA Secretary Christie Todd Whitman resigned her post. More queasiness followed. Next it was Secretary of Treasury Paul O’Neill’s chance to throw up his hands in disgust. Yet, surprisingly few economic conservatives showed any sympathy for O’Neill.
Next came, unsurprisingly, veterans of the State Department and those that had devoted a lifetime to diplomacy and the United Nations. These were the people John Brady Kiesling was speaking of when he explained his resignation before the war.
But what I’ve discovered from the people who’ve searched me out is that there seems to be this incredible unhappiness in the traditional American internationalist foreign policy community that the president, just out of ignorance and ideology, is taking apart what these people had built through careers.
The State Department’s protest was followed closely by a related revolt from the intelligence community that became particularly acute after the outing of Valerie Plame.
Finally, this past spring, we had the revolt of the Generals.
To be sure, there have been other mini-revolts revolving around embryonic stem-cell research, social security reform, Terri Schiavo, the fallout from Abu Ghraib, the incompetence of Katrina preparations and relief efforts, and the revelations about warrantless domestic surveillance. But none of it has served to peel off a substantial portion of the traditional Republican base. Poll numbers are definitely down for George W. Bush, but there has not been any really strong indicators of a fundamental realignment of the national parties.
So, I have been waiting a very long time to see something like this (see below). A series of traditional conservatives have penned essays on why the GOP deserves to lose the midterm elections and they will be appearing in the October 2006 issue of the Washington Monthly.
I applaud these people for their courage of convictions. I, too, would like to see a Republican Party that I can trust to govern this country from time to time and to carry out oversight of the Democrats when they are in power.
Let’s quit while we’re behind
By Christopher BuckleyBring on Pelosi
By Bruce BartlettAnd we thought Clinton had no self-control
By Joe ScarboroughGive divided government a chance
By William A. Niskanen
Restrain this White House
By Bruce FeinIdéologie has taken over
By Jeffrey HartThe show must not go on
By Richard A. Viguerie
Well said. Like you, I lament that the GOP has allowed itself to be hijacked by the neoconservative cabal. They need to do a serious housecleaning because, as you inferred, we do indeed need a two party system.
So the guy stands in the ruins of the smoldering town, gas can in hand, and proudly shares through charred lips his eureka moment: “Fire burn!” Sorry, I can’t applaud. I just want him kept away from inflammables.
Yes we need (more than) two parties, but the GOP has nothing to offer. It hasn’t since Teddy Roosevelt.
So they want Democrats to come clean up their mess so they can make a new one?
Mighty white of them.
Well, it is getting pretty hard to continue to justify this shit. Witness Coulter’s recent remark that things in Afghanistan are going swimmingly. This strange choice of language tends to show that even she is having difficulty with her regularly scheduled spewfest.
Bruce Fein admitted on television that he voted twice for Bush, so I was glad to read his comments. His column begins with heavy going but his concern for the ways the Bush administration has trampled the Constitution is real. Mr Fein has testified before committee hearings and he served on the ABA Task Force on Presidential Signings, so he is doing whatever he can to point out the Bush errors.
In spite of the fact that he is older than God, he still knows language. His take: “incontinent conservatives”!!!!!
some of the other op eds are just stupid. Why think repubs would be able to regroup after a loss in 2006 and become stronger and why would we want that? Yes we want two parties at least where sometimes we only have one but really what have the repubs to offer other than war, mad spending and deficit enlarging traits? Surely there is a democrat you can drink a beer with! I would like to see a whig party now rather than repub. Can we talk it up?
I’ve often wished that all the way back during the 2000 presidential campaign, or even earlier, I had started compiling a list of all the self-identified conservatives who were criticizing Bush. Over the years there have been many, many of those, most of which quickly vanish in the Internet tides, never having made the TV buzz. By now, it would be a really difficult research project to reconstruct that all the way back to 2000. I hope someone has done this.
Dean’s latest book arrived today from Amazon, along with Greenwald’s, Tom Tomorrow’s, and Ricks’ book Fiasco on the Iraq war. Time for some reading.
Just read all those seven linked articles. Great stuff, ESPECIALLY Bruce Fein’s comment.
While I’d like to take this as good news, it seems to me these conservatives want a Democratic congress so they can blame them for the shortcomings of conservatism as a governing philosophy. There doesn’t seem to be much admission of the failures, only an attempt to distance themselves from their own.
Make no mistake about it – the past six years has been a failure of conservatism. They say it’s not conservatism, that it’s something different. But the people who have run this country into the ditch are their people – conservatives through and through.
These far righties have had a sudden change of heart, just as the tide is changing and their party’s foibles are catching up with them. Sure smells like an attempt to lob the problem into the other camp to me.
concern trolls.