Is it time to stop with the "Bush is an idiot" routine?

First off, he is an idiot -- plain and simple. That said, the bottom is about to fall out when it comes to his support among elected officials and pundits within the GOP. Once that happens, the argument among Republicans is going to be that the conservative movement didn't fail, it was simply placed in the wrong hands. Had Iraq, the response to Katrina, Medicare, etc. all been managed by someone more competent, each of their plans would have succeeded.

Look, it's so tempting to knock the guy, but at the end of the day, Bush was a symptom of a conservative ideology that failed -- and we all have to be sure that nobody from that movement is allowed to place the blame on one individual in an effort to try again.

... that tried to co-opt the conservative voter base and whore the country out for the most profits. And that (hopefully) history will show as being smote from the face of the Earth by the good people of this country.

We can't let them get away with pinning everthing on Bush & throwing him overboard. He is nothing more than a figurehead for the Rapacious Right.

I think he may be laughing at us behind that smirk.
Knowing that he is the fall guy and thinking of it all as a joke. He may be arrogant enough to take the presidency that lightly.

He's full blown neo-con, which should never be confused with my father's Republican party.

He may be the original neo-con POTUS. Still, we need to show them for what they are, and hope that the REAL republicans care enough to take back their party!

But they need to do the work to take their party back. I don't think a one party system is healthy for our country, even if that one party ends up being the Dems.

I hope the rate of Kool Aid poisoning goes down long enough for a few REAL conservatives to come back to reality!

My dad and my boss are life-long, yet currently disenchanted, republicans. I feel for them both.

At least Dems already know what it's like to have people in their own party who they can't agree with:)

and to hell with everyone else. What do except from a frat boy, who never had to struggle. I can say so much more, but Hello Agent Mike:hi:

They are the ones that are voting with him time & again in Congress.

Put Republican candidates not in Congress (Giuliani, Huckabee, Romney) and ask them if they say "yes" or "no" to certain Bush policies.

...that Bush is NOT an idiot.
It's all an act.
He's a sly little devil, and we should NEVER forget that.

but we have to remember we are much better than them, way better than them.

I disagree.

Name me ONE thing that Shrub has done on his own initiative alone. Except for a talent for finding the most ethically challenged people to work for him.

No. He's not sly. NOBODY has had the wool pulled over their eyes by GW.

And ideologically, he a follower. He's a student of RW think tank ideas but certainly not an innovator.

Everyone all talks about "Bush's plan" or "Bush's policy". Nonsense. You can always name some PNACer or RW columnist who had the very same "ideas" YEARS before Shrub came on the scene.

No, he's the front man, the snake oil salesman with the charm that makes people want to part with reality.

And that's his only useful purpose.

They got away with it with Reagan and they aren't very imaginative.

He has the low cunning of a mafia thug, he knows what he is doing and why. And his cronies adore him for all the loot he's brought them.

Bill Clinton, no dummy himself, said don't underestimate him.

...is that he's criminal. In fact, it can be argued that calling him stupid harms us, because it lowers the public's expectations on Bush**.

Check out this article from the Rockridge Institute:

Bush Is Not Incompetent
http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/research/lakoff/incompetent/view?searchterm=incompetent

NGU.

Bush certainly "accomplished" a lot during his time in office, although those accomplishments have not been the type of things that any ethical person would want to accomplish. Yet he was too idiotic and too arogant to realize that eventually people would figure him out. I quit calling him incompetent a long time ago, but he will always be an idiot.

NGU.

A man who once had a 90% approval rating now has a 28% approval rating, I think most people have figured out Bush is an idiot and a very dangerous one at that. Yet the Republican Party supported that idiot, not only did they support him they idolized him. They told us he was going to bring freedom to the world and make us safer, they made it sound as if this idiot would be our savior. We can go after Bush and take the Republican Party down with him, and to do that we need to remind people of all the stupid things they have done. If lowering expectations means Bush's approval rating drops from 90% to 28% then I think these lowered expectations have been very helpful to us.

And besides since when has Bush EVER exceeded low expectations? The man has been a failure at everything, and right when we think it can't get any worse it does. Every. Single. Time.

NGU.

People are perfectly capable of realizing he is both an idiot and a criminal, the two categories are not mutually exclusive.

I think we need to keep reminding people of just how big of an idiot Bush is, and also remind them that the entire Republican Party embraced him like he was their God. I mean honestly why would anyone with any common sense at all embrace someone like Bush? Yet he was the hero of the Republican Party right up until the time those same Republicans had to run for reelection.

Having just posted a video mocking Bush the next thread I read is this one...

All I can say is... excellent post, pretty much sums up what I think about Bush and his role. Having said that, most people that I meet here in the UK are not naive enough to believe that Bush is anything but a puppet for a more sinister agenda.

"bushites" being the larger group of those nasty egotistical delusional power hungry control freaks.

"Bush is an idiot. Bush is Hitler."

Say it again and again and again and again.

Let's keep running against a lame duck.

Let's not offer any positive, proactive solutions.

Let's not inspire the American people with what we'll do differently.

Let's just say, "We're not that idiot Bush, so vote for us," and hope that the corporate media lets that message sink in.

Let's keep running against yesterday's news.

The executive is still dictating policy and from where I'm looking that's pretty damn shit scary here and now today!!!

He is a Neo-Fascist Asshole.

who own America (and one of their own)

to give us all something to focus on while the rest of the oligarchy rapes the country. We're not in Kansas anymore and the man behind the curtain is more sinister than we imagine.

global warming, the illegal occupation of Iraq, outsourcing, immigration, social issues . . . all of it is either part of the class war or part of the strategy of divide and conquer

we need to eliminate the rich, their stooges in government and the media, their tools (capitalism and its artifacts like corporations)

health, environment, our rights,spying on us (what kind of crap is that) they continue to feed us with their propaganda, yes folks this is serious....sigh.

I, along with the rest of the country was warned years ago by Ari Fleisher that I needed to "watch what I say". Yeah, well.. fuck that. I could give a rats ass who thinks what, the day I stop speaking the truth is the day they put me 6 feet under.

It's a routine, and it's calculated to make peole like him and underestimate him. It also hides his considerable mean streak.

other conservative is not an idiot also.

Although I still disagree with idiot, it's too generous and gives them an exit.

and that's the nicest thing I can think to say about him

The Republicans are having to resort to election fraud precisely because their conservative ideology has failed.

I think it is key to point out that it's not just Bush, but the entire ideology that needs to shoulder the blame.

he starts acting like one.

Bush is the apotheosis of modern conservatism--everything he's done has been straight out of the American Enterprise Institute playbook. The disasters, fiascos, scandals and screw-ups that have been the hallmarks of the Bush administration are not the product of failed execution or "incompetence." They are the entirely predictable result of a fundamentally unsound ideology that's been tried and tried again, and which has failed spectacularly every time. Modern conservatism is nothing more or less than Fascism Lite(tm) disguised as theo-populism. No matter which shade of lipstick you put on a pig, it's still a pig.

People already know Shrub is an idiot, and they have known for years who really runs things. No one is going to say Cheney or Rove are idiots, quite the opposite.

They will say that the "republican revolution" was sidetracked by "neocons", forgetting how the whole party voted as one to support this evil. THAT is what needs to be drummed into people's heads- that NO republican stood for "the classic, conservative principles" when it counted.

If neocon ideology didn't work because an idiot (Bush) was at the helm, it needs to be brought up that 99% of Republicans backed him 100% for all the years of his presidency -- so the failures are not the responsibility of one idiot, but of a party composed solely of idiots, idiots who are certainly not to be empowered to do even more damage.

Are the rethugs actually expecting us to believe that one person makes all the decisions? Yes, Bush is an idiot, but he is not surrounded by idiots. He's surrounded by very smart and corrupt individuals who caused one disaster after another.