Discussion for article #236401
“This is going to be a bigger problem than I expected it to be,” she said. “The only explanation that I have heard that makes any sense is, after 13 years since he has run for election, he is really rusty. And he’s just not as good a candidate as we thought he was going to be.”
No, the problem is that conservatives never ever pay a price for being wrong on ANYTHING as Paul Krugman so aptly describes in his column, today. In fact, there are rewards for a conservative if you’re wrong.
Iraq is a special problem for the Bush family, which has a history both of never admitting mistakes and of sticking with loyal family retainers no matter how badly they perform. But refusal to learn from experience, combined with a version of political correctness in which you’re only acceptable if you have been wrong about crucial issues, is pervasive in the modern Republican Party…
It doesn’t matter that the skeptics have been proved right. Simply raising questions about the orthodoxies of the moment leads to excommunication, from which there is no coming back. So the only “experts” left standing are those who made all the approved mistakes. It’s kind of a fraternity of failure: men and women united by a shared history of getting everything wrong, and refusing to admit it. Will they get the chance to add more chapters to their reign of error?
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I do not know Jeb Bush personally.
But he does not seem to sway from giving the impression I KNOW exists for Rafael Trujillo, erstwhile “Presidente” of the Dominican Republic until 1961:
It is said that Trujillo’s son, Rafael, Jr. (nicknamed “Ramfis”) was made a Full Colonel in the Dominican army at age four.
There is nothing about either man, G.W. or Jeb, which would indicate that either ever were confronted with situations in which their family, wealth, privilege, status or heritage did not give them a highly skewed view of the world in which we live.
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Such is the power of approved, Frank Luntz/ALEC/FOX/Rovian/MSM/Talk Radio
M I N D B L O W I N G
brainwashing of the American public
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In the U.K., lower middle class and middle class voters who vote for Tories, [conservatives] are referred to as: “Turkeys voting for Christmas”
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You know, Fox Pundit Gang, we get that things can change. Jeb could have brought a dog on stage this week, killed, cooked, and eaten it, and he could probably live it down and “change the conversation” over the next year and a half. The question is whether his flailing over the most predictable question in political interviewing ever doesn’t tell us something about him that’s going to continue to be true no matter what questions come up during the next 500 days. Is he an entitled mediocrity who couldn’t be bothered to make even the most obvious preparations for campaigning to be president of the United States, or not? It has nothing to do with the voters’ short memories.
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I’m no Bush fan but he’s still one of the saner ones running. The purity tests are already tiresome.
If the Jebster had just doubled down and said something truly horrible like: “Yes, not only would I have invaded but I would have doubled the number of troops, used tactical nuclear weapons and done it on Sunday!” A very large number of people on the right would have said to themselves:
“Well, I disagree with him, but right or wrong, he stands with his his brother and, even if the cost in lives would have been outrageously excessive, he’s a man of principle.”
The Jebster’s biggest “political” mistake was vacillating. On the right, it’s better to be consistently dead-ass wrong than vacillate.
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Let’s talk about the matriarch of this tribe, Barbara Pierce Bush, a descendant of Franklin Pierce, deemed to be one of the worst presidents this country has had. Mediocrity mendacity and incompetence are in the genes, and the sons are incapable of rising above it. From Wiki
President of the United States (1853–1857). Pierce was a northern Democrat who saw the abolitionist movement as a fundamental threat to the unity of the nation. His polarizing actions in championing and signing the Kansas–Nebraska Act and enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act failed to stem intersectional conflict, setting the stage for Southern secession.
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Almost makes you pine for bills of attainder.
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He may be saner (such a low bar as to be insignificant) but he is intellectually just not there. He is appallingly dense on both the “info coming in” and the “verbiage going out” spectrum. I don’t know many high-schoolers who couldn’t best him in a debate.
Agreeing or disagreeing with his policies are moot if the President of the United States cannot comprehend a simple, TRULY soft-ball question that he should have had an answer to (through preparation) at the tip of his tongue.
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The amazing take-away from Jeb’s “stumbles” is the change in the Republican Party’s perception of Iraq. Two years ago, these pundits would all have been defending the invasion.
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John Ellis has so far shown himself to be a lazy, unthinking, sleepwalking campaigner, with no particular enthusiasm for the demands of the Executive Office. He’s simply almost dutifully following the dynasty’s meandering course.
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Yes, very likely; but I think Jeb’s far greater sin to those on the right was his vacillating.
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Dubya said it best: Bring 'em on.
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…Jeb Bush is “viewed very differently today than he was seven days ago…”
Not by me.
Seven days ago I thought he was a cowardly idiot.
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There is still much to be revealed and discussed about his two terms as governor of Florida during which, among other things, he signed Stand Your Ground at the behest of ALEC, was opposed to abortion and signed Terri’s Law to prevent Terri Schiavo being taken off a feeding tube and to die with a shred of dignity. He also presided over 21 executions. So he was pro-life except when he wasn’t.
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It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Jeb is in the thrall of the neo-cons. Just look at his list of foreign policy advisors. Those guys don’t recognize anything they did while running GWB’s Iraq war was a failure. Jeb has been forced to acknowledge that his 19 advisors are about the only people on Earth who think the invasion of Iraq was a good thing. That must have hurt. Sometimes reality is a bitch.
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I love the headline of this from salon.com
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Well Megyn, maybe, just MAYBE it turns out that George W. is the SMART ONE in the Family.
O M G.
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