Salon: "Shipwrecked" ("no one, not even his dad, can rescue Bush now")

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

Shipwrecked

Bush has so thoroughly destroyed the Republican establishment that no one, not even his dad, can rescue him now.

By Sidney Blumenthal

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2005/10/27/bush_fall/index.html

Oct. 27, 2005 | There is no one left to rescue the Republican Party from George W. Bush. He is home alone. The Republican-establishment wise men whose words were once quiet commands are shouting unheeded warnings. The Republican leaders of Congress are distracted and obsessed with their own crises of corruption.

Suspended House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is under indictment for criminal campaign practices while Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for insider stock trading in his family-owned Hospital Corporation of America. The only revolt brewing in the Senate is on the right against President Bush's nomination of his White House legal counsel, Harriet Miers, to the Supreme Court; some Republican senators fear her potential for secret liberal heresy despite the president's protestations of her conservative purity.

---SNIP---

The storm enveloping President Bush is a consequence of his adoption of the vicious smear tactics of the Nixon political operation, learned there by Karl Rove, who was called as a witness to testify about them before the Watergate inquiry, and of Bush's elevation to power of the neoconservatives removed by Reagan and excluded from office by Bush's father. Bush is haunted by the history he insisted on defying.

The elements of the Republican establishment that Bush brought into his first administration as a sort of symbolic tribute were gone by his second. By their nature, these people are discreet, measured and private. It is not their impulse to voice disagreement in public. Their sweeping and emotional jeremiads against what Bush has wrought are extraordinary not only in their substance but in having been made at all. Those expressing their disquiet about Bush are more than simply losers in bureaucratic struggles for primacy of place. Once representative of the heart and soul of the Grand Old Party, they are historical castaways. They stand for another Republican Party that has been supplanted by Bush's version.

[afdip]

1. with an ultra rw nominee, the fundies will line up behind

dubya again and forgive him . . . they will do anything to achieve their agenda. anything. we can only hope the coming indictments will drive a stake into their heart. how much evidence do they require before they see the obvious???? plamegate, delay, frist, miers, deficits, iraq, 2000+ dead . . . . duh!!!!

[NoFederales]

3. It must be "single issue" madness that drives the fundies and other

extremists; "they" care for nothing except the single object of their venomous hatred.

Nofederales

[leveymg]

2. The Ghosts of These Guys Finally Got Him.

Hell Hath No Fury Like The Eastern Establishment Spurned

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

4. Do you think that the old time Republicans will take back

their party? Have they decided that having people who are Republican in name only in charge of the Congress and WH is worth having to abide with the extremism that has taken over?

[leveymg]

5. "Republican in name only"? What would you call them?

I'd say they're a lot like these folks:

Know-Nothings

[ClintonTyree]

6. Neo-cons........

they are definitely neo-cons not real Republicans. Real Republicans wouldn't stand for bush's deficit spending, the didn't want to invade and occupy Iraq. His Daddy was a real Republican, along with Baker, Scowcroft etc. Baby bush pushed those people out of the way in favor of people like Wolfowitz, Rice, Rumsfeld etc. that eschewed the "old guard" and took this country on a path of exporting Democracy and doing it by force if necessary, all the while follwing a fiscal policy that is bankrupting the country.
There are "real" Republicans and this bunch isn't among them.

[hippiechick]

7. Dare we dream ... that W will destroy the Republican party ??

Oh. My. Stars ! (To paraphrase our own Arwalden!)

O8)

[Douglas Carpenter]

8. recommended - excellent article everyone should read

[IChing]

10. It was placed it in the editorial section of du yesterday

check it out
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x168247

[maxsolomon]

9. WAY too optimistic

there's 3 years remaining till we see if this is true. i am not yet ready to believe that ANY of this will cost them one house seat, much less control of the senate or the presidency.

[LaPera]

11. Old news, this is before Miers quit-Bush will be the darling of the right

again with his next nominee, that the far right want & likes and Bush will again be loved by them...