President Bush: Saboteur of Conservatives, Even as He Kept Us Safe

The problem with President Bush is that he has spent the last 4 years sabotaging consrevatives, and the Republican Party. It is President Bush who said something like: "I need to betray my free market principles in order to save them". He got the "betray" right. See last week's entry about how President Bush continued his betrayal of conservative principles up to the bitter end. Getting the message that Congress (for once, justifiably, if hypocritically) was not going to approve the next $350 billion for the Bush Adminstration to spend out of that original bailout blank check, President Bush invited Obama to tell him to make the request on behalf of Obama. It was Preident Bush who instigated this, and not Obama. This was after President Bush refused to accept the failure of Congress to vote to bail out GM and the other automakers, and did so himself (after his Treasury Secretary had previously said that there was no authority to do so under TARP!!!). This was what Congress wanted President Bush to do all along--taknig the heat off of them (especially the Democrats). Now I refuse to be as hard on President Bush as some conservatives (I confess I don't understand why leftists are hard on him at all, except for Iraq--which appears to be pretty much behind us, barring a relapse). At least one, and maybe more, of my own brothers (I have 4--all basically conservative) thinks President Bush is the worst President ever, or at least in the last hundred years. I give President Bush the credit he deserves for "keeping us safe" since 9/11, when the mainstream meaid asserted for years that we were less safe, and that a new attack was imminent. Our ports were supposed to be wide open to terrorists. Our subway security was supposed to be a joke. Ditto our nuclear plants. Ditto our water. Ditto.....everything. What President Bush proved was what this blog told you: the secret to stopping new terrorist attacks is offense, and aggressive, "blitz" type defense. Passive defenses is a loser, because we absolutely can't defend all potential targets (Super Bowl parking lot or secruity lines inside airport terminal?). You have to go after the terrorists. That is what President Bush did. Flawed as Iraq was (mainly in execution), you could argue that even Iraq sent the right message to terrorists, and focused them outside of the United States. This credit I give President Bush for the War on Terror forces me to consider him only the fourth worst President in my lifetime (ahead of Carter, LBJ, and Nixon, but behind Clinton). I say this, even though I consider President Bush an absolute disaster on domestic policy. It is President Bush who made it impossible for the Republican Party to handle the issue of illegal immmmigration in the way most of the country wanted it handled--especailly conservatives. It was President Bush who turned the Republican Party, with help from the spenders in Congress, into just another Big Government party ready to look for the Federal Government to solve all problems (President Bush even putting "first responder" responsibility on the Federal Government, to the tune of wasting billions of dollars every time a hurrican even threatens, because of his embarrassment over Katrina). It was Prfesidet Bush who tried to panic the country over a possible bird flu pandemic. It is President Bush, in combinatiion with Secretary Paulson, who DID panic the country to save Goldman Sachs and Wall Street--unnecessarily, in my view. It is President Bush who made socialism acceptable to the Repubican establishment, after Wall Street embraced central planning in the Communist style to save Wall Street. This last illusion that central planning is the "solution" to every crisis in the economy is the one President Bush embraced enthusiastically to the very end, with that final bailout of the automakers and that final request on behalf of Obama. I can't forgive that. In the last six months alone, President Bush has undermined everything I have ever believed in on domestic policy, and his betrayal has actually accelerated toward the end, with this econmid crisis Bush's own panic helped create (panic that the mainstream media and the Democrats had been trying to create for some six years, admittedly). Presidetn Bush did manage to pick two really good Supreme Court justices, once he got beyond his Texas crony, Harriet Myers. But the domestic failures are just too much. And this determination to betray conservatives to the bitter end, not even leaving it to Obama to take responsibility for that next $350 billion dollar bailout, has earned President Bush probably his final Flying, Fickle Finger of Fate (shared with Bill O'Reilly). Unfortunately, President Bush again richly deserved the award as he did his best to undermine conservatives in even the penultiimate and last weeks of his Presidency. See last night's entry as to the imnpossibility of explaining to my brother why GM deserves a bailout and not my brother and my brother's employees.. That is how President Bush has ruined conservatives. He has made it impossible for conservatives to have credibility in arguing against government solutions, when so many have not only embraced President Bush but the very idea of Federal Government "solutions" to all of our problems--the discredited socialist/fascist/Communist idea of central planning being the answer to all problems. I am surprised President Bush did not embrace a Soviet style "Five Year Plan". Maybe Obama will make up for this oversight.