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E.J. Dionne Pines for Bush

By Aaron Goldstein on 6.17.11 @ 5:28PM

Well, now that the GOP presidential race is on, I guess the liberal media has now begun the process of "rehabilitating" George W. Bush.

How else can you explain E.J. Dionne's latest offering? Dionne writes, "Yet compared with the New Hampshire Seven - and with today's Republican majority in the House of Representatives - Bush was the reincarnation of Theodore Roosevelt."

So Bush the Cowboy now walks softly?

Well, Dionne hastens to add that "there are limits to my Bush nostalgia" citing the Bush tax cuts and the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But who knows? In time, he might come around.

After all, these seven Republicans (with possibly more to come) aim to unseat President Obama. Whatever disappointments the liberal media might have with The Anointed One, the thought of his defeat is untenable. So the liberal media must characterize any Republican wishing to replace Obama as so toxic that they are willing to re-cast Bush as a moderate. So don't be surprised if Dionne isn't the last liberal columnist to write something along the lines of, "Unlike this crowd of Republicans, Bush acknowledged that the federal government can ease injustices and get useful things done."

Two and a half years of Obama will do that to a liberal writer.

View all comments (25) | Leave a comment

Thom| 6.17.11 @ 8:13PM

By the time this mess is over with the likes of Hitler and Stalin will have been turned into moderates by the Democrat Media compared to anyone to the right of King Obama.

former conservative| 6.17.11 @ 8:46PM

I think you have a reading comprehension problem. If someone wrote that a singer was so bad, they made Justin Bieber sound like the reincarnation of Roy Orbison, you would conclude that the singer in question really, really sucked, not that Justin Bieber was getting a critical makeover.

As for your speculation about the media, the test of a proposition is not in how the motives behind it can be spun, but in whether the proposition is true. Did Bush "acknowledge that the federal government can ease injustices and get useful things done"? Yes he did. Did anyone do that in New Hampshire? No they didn't. Dionne's point is that the GOP field has moved to the right, which is frankly undeniable. The closest thing to a Bob Dole or a George Bush Sr. in this race is Huntsman, who is to the right of both of them.

But of course, whining about the media and calling the president names is so much more fun than understanding what other people mean when they write clear, unambiguous sentences.

Nick| 6.18.11 @ 12:34AM

Nice try, Mr. Dionne. You're not fooling anyone.
You were never a conservative!

Truth to Power| 6.18.11 @ 9:12AM

I can sympathize. Obama is making Mussolini look like an improvement. I think Obama has nicer poses though.

former conservative| 6.18.11 @ 11:30AM

Paging Godwin....

Truth to Power| 6.18.11 @ 3:35PM

If you enjoy policing you could spend full time writing "paging Godwin..." for your progressive pals. I compared him not to Hitler but to a left wing, incompetent corporatist. Like Obama he toyed with communism but settled on shake down corporatism as the best way to raise money for his various schemes. I think Obama's poses are better even when they are modeled after Mussolini. They both conned a pretty good chunk of our over-educated elite class. Sure that is not much of an accomplishment but it is something. Mussolini could at least make the trains run on time and draw the attention of the Roosevelt administration. Obama is just a total disaster. I was dead serious, phony boy. As you said just because I think Il Duce is better than Obama doesn't mean I like Il Duce. They are both corporatists and just government versions of Tony Soprano.

Bill Hussein O'Stalin| 6.18.11 @ 6:02AM

E.J. Dionne would be a help to the world if his PC were taken away and he were given crayons and a coloring book and a padded room. In fact, that would apply to about 98% of the opinion writers over at the Washington Post. It's become the DailyKos lite.

mike w| 6.18.11 @ 9:06AM

Why wouldn't Dionne love Bush? Bush was a liberal in many ways. His massive expansion of entitlements and his love for illegal aliens indicated this. Simply wanting to go to war does not a conservative make.

As Dionne confirms in his own way, Bush was a disaster for the USA.

former conservative| 6.18.11 @ 11:33AM

Mr. O'Stalin: If I hadn't watched the New Hampshire debate, I would assume that you were actually a liberal, commenting in such a way as to make conservatives look like idiots.

RTamlin| 6.18.11 @ 12:10PM

It took you this long to figure out that O'Stalin is a liberal troll??

Look, I'm not defending Dionne but it's not that hard to figure out what's got him scared. As hard as the lamestream media has been pushing for Romney there is a growing chance that the Republicans WILL nominate someone who will make liberals wish they could have W back.

Bachmann and Palin are the names that stand out and a Palin/Bachmann ticket would destroy liberals. Think about it. If Palin runs she's going to turn everything on its head. Everything the Annointed One has done will be UNdone.

You think that scares them? Here's what really scares them: they know that if a real conservative like Palin ever takes power, and has the support of a Republican House and Senate, not only will there be big changes ... people will LIKE those changes. And there will be NO going back.

Bill Hussein O'Stalin| 6.18.11 @ 1:18PM

Well, that's really odd FORMER CONSERVATIVE. Your comment obviously indicates that you are a liberal, an idiot and possibly a coward. Most geeks get very brave from behind their keyboard in their mother's basement with the curtains drawn. Yawn!

Occam's Tool| 6.18.11 @ 9:52PM

Bill,

I don't think you're a Liberal, or a troll. Now, I'm a bloodthirsty reactionary myself (see my day's comments elsewhere on this blog), but you always seem to me to be a nice, calm Conservative. You also face uncomfortable facts squarely.

former conservative| 6.22.11 @ 7:32PM

@Bill: Wow. The fact that you could write the phrase, "you always seem to me to be a nice, calm Conservative," in direct response to this: "Your comment obviously indicates that you are a liberal, an idiot and possibly a coward" says a lot about what the words "nice" and "calm" mean to you.

former conservative| 6.22.11 @ 7:21PM

Yes, I'm brave behind a keyboard. I'm also brave when the bullets are flying, but that's just because I spent more than a decade of my life protecting your right to pull accusations out of your ass rather than address, even tangentially, a single point I made. Coward? I'd like to see how you take it when the Humvee in front of you explodes.

And yes, I'm a liberal and proud of it. But that's just because I apply critical thinkingg skills, rather than a pre-packaged ideology, to the issues of the day.

@RTamlin: I'd never encountered him before, so how was I supposed to know?

former conservative| 6.18.11 @ 11:33AM

Mr. O'Stalin: If I hadn't watched the New Hampshire debate, I would assume that you were actually a liberal, commenting in such a way as to make conservatives look like idiots.

Nick| 6.18.11 @ 3:54PM

So inane, he had to post it twice!

Typical bleeding heart.

former conservative| 6.22.11 @ 7:22PM

So crazy with anger and ill will, he took an innocuous website snafu and made it personal!

Typical buffoon.

martin j smith| 6.18.11 @ 12:04PM

Actually if you take away all of the fog Bush and Obama are not that different in many areas. I will not spend time writing a thesis as to the reasons but, If you follow Bush's last term on both the issues of terrorism and domestic policies GWB would fit right into the Socialist Party--he would just be a little nicer on a personal level.

as for former conservative--I wonder if s/he was ever a conservative ever. In fact based on the writing--I do not think so.

former conservative| 6.22.11 @ 7:29PM

Well, I've been published by AEI and the Claremont Review, and my old friends Bill Dannemeyer, Bruce Herschensohn, Dana Rohrbacher, and the national board of Young Americans for Freedom circa 1992 would all disagree with you. As recently as 2004, I was going to all the right K-Street cocktail parties. I'd put my lifetime reading list of conservative big names against anyone's on this forum: I lived and breathed Kirk, Burke, von Mises, Hayek, Bastiat and many others for decades. Sorry, I don't reject your arguments because I don't know them, I reject them because I spent so much of my life making them, and found them to be wanting.

Oldefarte| 6.18.11 @ 2:43PM

PINES FOR BUSH??????? Hades, I pine for not only Bush, but Roosevelt, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, and Clinton aw well!!!! Anybody except this HOWDY-DOODY nincompoot that imitates a president of the US!!!!!!!!!!!!