Good Article about W.

[IntenseNitroTruckPow]

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/

Peggy Noonan was a speechwriter for Reagan and Bush 41. Her opinion piece here (I think) captures how betrayed conservatives and moderates feel about the current shrub.

[NoahFence]

Yep. They've been banking on the stubborn antagonism most conservatives feel toward anything labelled "liberal". They've had people so worried that their son was going to turn homo and that terrorists were going slip anthrax in their McNuggets that nobody noticed the administration themselves were doing actual bad things. By then, they'd been bashing anyone who disagreed for years...hard to backpedal on that. People are still too paralyzed to do anything about it, despite the growing outrage.

[sorabji_66]

guess i'll have to stop looking to politicians to solve my every need.

[C.J.Woolf]

Noonan says that Bush has split the conservative coalition. That may be so, but with his stance on immigration he is openly siding with his real base: big money individuals and big business.

One thing they like is lower taxes for themselves. Bush got them their tax cuts in 2001, and the rest of the conservative coalition didn't complain even though they got relatively little out of it.

Another thing Bush's real base likes is cheap labor. This time, Bush's policy is seen as flipping the bird at the rest of the conservative coalition. I wonder if Bush is surprised at the reaction.

[Hermione]

In order to be surprised , you have to have a belief to begin with. People whose lives revolve around running over other people, their beliefs, their values , only have beliefs in running over . Surprise only enters the picture if other people register on the radar screen, which they don't. Pity I have to think like a criminal in order to rationalize the theft of my country's principles.

[IntenseNitroTruckPow]

I think the Dubai Ports World fiasco last year was the tip-off to even the most hardened persecution-complex Bush supporter that he was going to do whatever the hell he wanted to do, no matter how it looked to the "base". Here he was trying to sell off operations of our ports to an Arab country implicated in acts of terrorism (the way Saddam's Iraq wasn't) just after the news/fear cycle had raised the possiblity that a container ship was the best way to breech our borders, all without even bothering to spoon-feed it to us. I can understand greed, but I can't abide stupid ham-handed arrogance.