Timothy Birdnow

They say if you can't say anything good about someone you should say nothing. That's why my comments on former President George Herbert Walker Bush were essentially...

I'm going to have to violate that admonition today. Yesterday was an orgy of faux -bonhomie and 3d printer love. The media, who always despised Bush, calling him a war criminal, a CIA tyrant, and a general poopey-head were suddenly overcome with tender emotions for the deceased ex-President, a man they hated in life but now celebrate as the model Republican. He's their model, alright; ineffectual in life and now dead. They so wish it were true of all Republicans.

I can understand the media, at least. They want to increase the Bushite GOP wing. These were the guys who hated the Conservatives as much as the liberals, maybe more. They knifed the Right in the back every chance they had. They see the country class as a bunch of toothless, bib-overall wearing, moonshine swilling hicks who must be led by their three to six fingered hands. If a large number of ambitious people adopt the Bush style then the Democrats have nothing to worry about. The GOP will split along Establishment/Conservative lines and the Establishment wing will betray their voters to be seen as cooperative. In short, they will sell out the base for thirty pieces of silver and good press. This is exactly the kind of Republican the media wants to promote. I understand them. But I don't understand the conservative media having a collective "Grinches heart grew three sizes that day" moment over the death of Bush. Yet every radio station I turned on featured people from our side waxing poetic about the joys of comity, of us all getting along and singing kumbaya around the electronic campfire. I don't get it.

Over and over we were told what a kind, decent man George H.W.Bush was. I will stipulate to that - he was the kindest, gentlest, most decent back stabbing internationalist who ever deigned to rub elbows with the lesser classes he was forced to lead out of their ignorance. He was so gentle he started a war on drugs that led to the U.S. military being misused to practice law enforcement. He also sort-of invaded Iraq, going halfway then being horrified at the actual results of war and stopping, leaving the regime in place and the bad things he wanted to stop to continue. He was kind as could be as long as you were not a political enemy inside the GOP. And he systematically purged the Reagan people from government to reassert the old RINO order after spending eight years with President Reagan and his revolution against this very thing. Mr. Bush was a decent man, when he was not betraying the very cause that gave him his Presidency. And let's not get started about lying about tax increases.

Richard Viguerie, one of the Founding Fathers of the modern Conservative Movement, wrote an excellent piece rebutting the meme of "Bush the wonderful" at his website. See it here.

From the article:

"The decision to go back on his pledge not to raise taxes didn’t take place until well into his term. But Bush’s betrayal of the Reagan Revolution started the minute he took the oath of office.

Within hours of Bush’s inauguration establishment Republicans, such as James Baker III, who had opposed many of Reagan’s initiatives from within the administration, were promoted. But throughout the government Reagan’s conservative appointees, many of whom were loyal Republicans who had supported Bush, were forced to resign, were stripped of their duties, or were summarily fired by a new administration that wanted no part of the relatively few movement conservatives left in the government on the day Ronald Reagan departed Washington for California."

[...]

"• Bush reversed himself and imposed a temporary ban on semiautomatic rifles—so-called assault weapons—after first opposing the idea.

• He signed and advocated the Americans with Disabilities Act, creating a whole new realm of litigation nightmares for businesses large and small.

• He bailed out the troubled savings and loans banks.

• He signed the Civil Rights Act of 1990, making it easier for employees to sue employers.

• He bought into global warming by signing the Framework Convention on Climate Change.

• He created a "no net loss of wetlands” policy out of whole cloth, with little legislative authority, outraging farmers and landowners across the country.

• And in what was perhaps his most lasting and damaging betrayal of conservatives, he appointed an obscure state judge, David Souter of New Hampshire, to the Supreme Court.

End excerpts.

The fact is, Bush was the consummate insider, a man who, like Hillary Clinton, had an impressive resume' based on appointed positions given him by his insider friends. Reagan chose Bush only to keep the GOP Establishment from doing a #NeverTrump on him; it was a compromise with those people, who wanted Reagan to appoint Gerald Ford to be his "Co-President". Reagan refused to do that, but instead gave them Bush, who was never fully on board.

Bush gave us so many bad ideas. The War on Drugs saw the overturning of basic civil liberties protections, up to and including forfeitures of property without due process. His ill-thought-out invasion of Iraq destabilized a regime that had been a bulwark against the Iranians, plus held terrorism in check to a degree. Now, I supported it then and still do, but one does not half fight a war. Bush did. Bush also got us into Somalia, a terrible idea that ended with American soldiers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. Bush also gave us the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change which has bedeviled us for years. He was a real Green. He gave us the "Clean Air Act' which instituted draconian environmental regulations. He was a major regulator in other ways, signing the Americans with Disabilities Act, a piece of legislation that created national laws that made being disabled a protected class - something horribly at odds with the Constitution and the Tenth Amendment. (Laws forcing businesses to reserve parking for handicapped, putting in ramps and making other such efforts to accommodate a very small fraction of the population was at most something reserved for state governments but Bush nationalized it in his quest for a "kinder, gentler America".) NAFTA was negotiated under Bush, a terrible internationalist scheme intended to create a North American Union and subvert American sovereignty.

He often spoke of a "new world order" which unquestionably meant an international political structure that supersedes America.

He also did a bank bailout similar to the younger Bush/Obama "great Recession" scheme. And, after promising not to, he raised taxes. There is very little to like about George H.W.Bush. He took a revolution and wrecked it utterly, squandering the legacy of his titan predecessor. And I believe he did so willingly, the revenge of the nerds.

He was soft on abortion early in his career, too, although later he became a "gentle pro-lifer". Not sure how you can be gently pro-life, but Bush somehow managed. Abortion is womb-ripping, after all, murdering a child in the sanctum.

Bush was a good family man and a war hero, of that there can be no doubt. But he was a terrible President, the Jimmy Carter of the GOP, and in point of fact he began a legacy, the Bush/Clinton/Obama era. He was not the completion of the Reagan revolution but the beginning of the restoration of the Establishment, a sort of "the Empire Strikes Back" of American politics. Sadly, the Empire has been winning for twenty years now.

As Viguerie points out, the GOP had to almost completely repudiate Bush and did so with the Contract for America. Bush was not one of our own, but rather an agent provocateur. There is a reason Benedict Arnold never advanced in life after betraying Washington and his country; nobody could trust him. Bush is much the same, although he managed to sneak one of his sons into the Presidency and tried to do it with another.

I would go so far as to say George Herbert Walker Bush is the man most responsible for the immanent demise of the American Republic. He knifed us all in the back, and we are still trying to recover to this day. Bush gave us the Clintons and Obamas and now it may not be possible to repair the damage. Certainly America has fallen mightily in terms of culture and tradition. That was because horrible leadership wanted an international order more than a strong America.

That is the final legacy of George H.W. Bush. I wish the conservative media would stop trying to put lipstick on that particular pig.

If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all, they say. I wish our own media would have maintained an eloquent silence.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:49 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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