Conservatives do not like the Monkey, either

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WHAT CONSERVATIVES REALLY THINK OF BUSH.

...But, for many conservatives, the current bout of Bush hatred is nothing new. They have felt it themselves for many years. A month before the Republican convention, Andrew Ferguson wrote in The Weekly Standard, "e'll let slip a thinly disguised secret--Republicans are supporting a candidate that relatively few of them find personally or politically appealing." But instead of voicing their anxieties about Bush, these conservatives suppressed their feelings for fear of suffering retribution from the White House and the conservative press. And this suppression, in turn, seems to have exacerbated their feeling of alienation.

The best guide to this critique can be found in the writings of the two most incisive conservative columnists: Ramesh Ponnuru and George Will. Writing about Bush's big-government conservatism in National Review two years ago, Ponnuru argued: "More people are working for the federal government than at any point since the end of the Cold War. Spending has been growing faster than it did under Clinton." And it wasn't just the spending that irked. Well before Harriet Miers, Ponnuru delivered a long list of ideological betrayals: from the imposition of steel tariffs to new accounting regulations to the creation of a new Cabinet department.

Will's columns have hinted at a second, albeit less widely articulated, source of ideological unhappiness. By attempting to remake the Middle East, the administration has embraced a project so utopian and ambitious that it transgresses every principle of Burkean conservatism. Will especially warned against transforming the political culture of the region....The widespread conservative discomfort with the Bush domestic agenda and the Iraq war has yet to bubble over. But the Miers debate gives every reason to believe that it will. Watching conservative bloggers and columnists join the Miers controversy has provided an important object lesson in social anthropology. After years of eviscerating every critic of Bush, sites like The Corner have followed their herd mentality in the exact opposite direction. (Only now that The Corner has plunged into this internecine warfare, which happens to jibe with the political interests of liberals, its atmosphere gets roundly described as intellectually honest.)

That's what should make the spectacle of the past week so troubling to the Bush administration. It has depended on orthodoxy within the movement to suppress complaints. But now that discipline has broken down. The conservative movement increasingly resembles a dictator's palace in the midst of a coup. Comrades have begun turning on one another with incredible fervor, as the widely ridiculed Bush apologist Hugh Hewitt will now surely attest. These days, you never know who will get dragged out and shot next. Since so many nagging complaints have festered for so long, it will surely get even uglier.

Boo hoo hoo!!!!! Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas!

"Republicans are supporting a candidate that relatively few of them find personally or politically appealing."

Even Raygun didn't like Duhhhbya and "the crazies".

They're either chickenshits for not standing up to him, or chickenshits for bailing on him when he's going down.

...just all around chickenshits.

eom

... is the essence of being Republican, so that is no surprise.

That's one of the reasons I always know that Reps power will never last long. Their innate hubris and greed always get them into trouble. They always talk of law and order but they don't think laws should apply to them.

And once in hot water, their innate selfishness always makes it worse as they turn on other Reps in an effort to save their own hides.

We're just at that stage now, and I think it is going to be downright fun to see the karmic destruction in action. I'm glued, glued I tell ya!

First, let me say that as a recovering repuke voter, my hatred (yes, hatred) of Bush, his family, and his regime, knows no bounds. My recovery began in early 2003 as I realized with horror that he was taking us to war in Iraq.

What I should have learned much earlier: When considering whether to vote for someone, don't just look at the person (or chimp)--look at WHO OWNS HIM/HER.

If I had realized who owned Bush, I might have begun my rehabilitation much earlier.

you can!

for example, I have some long-time friends whose house in New Orleans was destroyed. They have just been told by their flood insurance that, er, the insurance company is not planning to pay quite as much as one would think they'd pay, were one's house to be inundated with water literally up to the ceiling, which water stayed in for 2 weeks.

I said, well, if you have to sue...

She said, well, husband says what about a class action?

I said, er, see, the republican congress has passed legislation to severely curtail class actions.

I then said, wonder if you guys' insurance contract has an ARBITRATION CLAUSE in it. This could prevent you from filing suit unless certain difficult prerequisites are met...

Arbitration clause? she asked.

Yes, said I--it's this thing that the REPUBLICAN legislators and state courts in various states have been allowing in contracts--to protect the insurance companies...

Oh dear, oh dear... and just think, the republicans have all been taught that a "plaintiff" in a lawsuit is the scum of the earth. And now they might have to BE one...

a column in the 1980s. I think it goes back to Poppy calling Reagan's tax plan "voodoo economics" during the 1980 presidential primary.

On edit: That column was one of a handful where Will got something right.