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Friday, April 16, 2004

He really is Son of a Bush

I heard it again today, a fact that probably does need to be flogged as much as possible--Bush cut taxes during a war, and we have NEVER cut taxes during a war. It's insanity and why would he do it? Pretty much I think the general feeling was that it was an idealogical thing--BushCo believes in tax cuts and no silly war is going to get in the way. The more cynical of us felt like BushCo knew that cutting taxes during the war is bad for the country but didn't care because it fit their own ends, that being to make themselves and their friends as rich as possible and screw everybody else. There's lots of validity to both those arguments but I think something else is working here.
The question is: Why did Cheney, Rove, etc. choose Bush to be their figurehead? I'm certain they could have found a figurehead who was a better public speaker, for one thing. Then it occurs to me--this is about Bush the First more than I realized. It's felt that the campaigners dropped the ball on Bush I, that they wasted too much time on making decisions with the public interest in mind and less time on building up his image.
I imagine after Ronald Reagan, Republicans felt like they had a lock on power indefinitely and if Democrats kept winning it was that Republicans weren't hanging onto power hard enough. The way the media spun the Bush the First loss has infected their minds. The media's take is not that Clinton won, but that Bush lost on two issues--not "finishing" the war with Iraq and raising taxes. He didn't "finish" the war with Iraq and he raised taxes.
They want a do-over. They have convinced themselves Bush would have won if he had "finished" the war and cut taxes. Once they installed a Bush who can fix the "mistakes" his dad made, then they would have a lock on power to infinity. And that's why they're flailing. People are questioning the very things that should have made the Bush presidency perfect, and they don't know what to do. Isn't that why Bush the First lost: taxes and Iraq? What's going on?