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December 26, 2010
Eliot Weinberger in his review of Decision Points by George W. Bush in the London Review of Books says that in the mere two years since he left Washington, Bush is beginning to seem like a reasonable man compared to the Republicans who have now been elected to higher office.
Unlike them, he was not a ‘family values’ Christian who liked to have prostitutes dress him in diapers; he did not have to pay a fine of $1.7 billion (yes, billion) for defrauding the government; he does not advocate burning the Quran; he does not believe that Obama is a Kenyan Muslim allied with terrorists who is building internment camps for dissidents; he does not believe that people of Hispanic origin should be randomly stopped and asked to prove their immigration status; he does not support a military invasion of Mexico or a constitutional amendment stating that the United States cannot be subject to Sharia law or an electric fence along the entire Canadian border or the death penalty for doctors who provide abortions; he does not believe that bicycle lanes in major cities are part of a plot by the United Nations to impose a single world government.
Weinberger adds that the Palinites and Tea Partiers are getting the publicity, but the old-fashioned neocons still hold the power, and they may well run the ever patient Jeb Bush – practically the only Republican left with both dull conservative respectability and national name recognition – for president in 2012.
This shows just how much the Republican Party has shifted to the Right in the context of the global financial crisis.
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I think it's interesting to think of the Bush statement in relation to the awesome story of the emminence-gris and bane of his government, imposed by cowboy oil interests; Cheney- in particular his Nigerian oil antic. That this is only the last of a long line of scandals, is no surprise.
But it does position Bush in the alibi stakes, in relation both to himself, but the promotion of Jeb Bush.
Which brings us to a breathtaking question.
How is it that politics have sunk so low that the Republicans, when pressed, can only throw up despicable Jeb Bush or that cretin Palin?