Remember how President George W Bush was treated while in office? Late night comedians mocked him as being some kind of idiot. Democrats claimed he knew nothing about foreign policy. He was portrayed as racist because he didn’t go to New Orleans five minutes after Katrina passed to start helping “all of those black people”. Even when he left office his successor blamed him for everything little thing that he couldn’t accomplish.
Now today, W is the toast of the media and the Left for his subtly scathing attack on the Trump administration during a speech on Thursday. Without ever mentioning the President by name, Bush laid into the rise of ultra-nationalism, the demonizing of minorities and immigrants, and the alienation of long-time allies. He even mocked those who buy into conspiracy theories and those who choose to ignore outright lies. The message was in no way different from the way President Bush spoke or acted when he was in the White House–and yet he was pilloried by those who now want to hoist him on a pedestal as the “Anti-Trump voice of reason”.
That being said, nothing the former President said yesterday is wrong–and more of us real Republicans need to be saying the same thing. Instead of trying to carefully craft replies to outrageous statement from the President that you hope won’t send him in to a further Twitter storm, GOP leaders need to re-iterate real conservative values and solutions to problems–even if it might make the man who usurped the party’s leadership mad. If I hear one more strategist talk about how important it is to keep President Trump as a “Republican ally” in order to “protect the agenda” I’m going to throw my shoe at them–just like the Iraqi “reporter” did to President Bush after the war.
Republicans need to give up on prefacing their comments with “Well I don’t agree with the President, but…..”–and instead say firmly and consistently “This is not what we stand for as a party or as a country and I will not sit here silently and act like this is no big deal”. It’s where the majority of Americans do stand–and as George W Bush got them to admit this week, it’s even something liberals are now willing to accept.
