The Failure of Bush and Congressional Republicans to Be Responsible Conservatives

The current minority of Americans who continue to support Bush (polls put it around 37-41%) is shrinking and no wonder. Bush and his friends are hardly behaving like the conservatives who first sought to control the Republican party and then sought to win the branches of the federal government. What we have been given is a woefully incompetent president and a very corrupt Congress. Christy Hardin Smith of Firedoglake has some thoughts on the growing discontent among Republican rank and file and the few elected officials and pundits willing to speak out:

There have been any number of signs of internecine warfare among factions within the GOP over the last couple of years. The Bush Administration — specifically the Cheney/neo-con faction — has pushed the libertarians, the strict constructionists, the more moderate financial conservatives, out of the party, bit by bit. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard from disenchanted conservatives who say "the party has left me," shaking their head at the extremist positions and the disengenuous fact-free arguments made to serve the agenda and the immediate need for strengthening a hold on short-term power, rather than the long-term interests of the party as a whole.

And it seems that it isn’t just the rank and file who are disgusted by the lack of continuity between public pronouncements of ethical positions, and private actions that thwart those very ethics…time and time again. Hypocrisy catches up eventually, and the Bush Administration has been shovelling the malarky pretty thick since day one.

(snip)

...according to the grumbling that I have been hearing for years from disgusted Republicans, President Bush is a failure....

But Republicans in Congress, who have known this for years, haven’t bothered to call him on it for the good of the American public because they were too afraid of the personal consequences to themselves politically to do so for the good of the American public? Is that about it? And that includes sending brave men and women off to an ill-planned occupation in Iraq and a failure to finish the job in Afghanistan because…what?!?…they feared that the Bush Administration would call them names in public.

It's a fine post so give it a read.

What we have been experiencing in the last five years is without question a truly abnormal time in our history. Nothing the Republicans have done makes much sense. Even the tax breaks are simply selfish adults breaking into their children's piggy banks to 'borrow' money, except it's future generations who will be paying back the 'loans' to pay for the excesses of this corrupt and unearthly Gilded Age.