George W. Bush’s political epitaph
“I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system.”
Stop me before I hurl a shoe.
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OY!
President Bush, please. Do I need to cite examples of how your methods have hindered democracies and free-market?
Cuba, Venezuela, Europe, etc?
For goodness sake, China and Russia are following free-market principles!!!! I feel like I’m in the Twilight Zone!
GWB legacy is now insured, he will go down as worse than Carter – who would have thunk it.
Damn fool.
In other words, he destroyed the village to save it.
Of course, the “save it” part is still questionable.
Why would I want to stop that? I’ll donate a steel-toed boot to the cause.
So can we all agree that Bush was never a conservative? Can we really try to make sure we are not duped again by politicians who know the talking points but not the reasons? History will not be kind to George Bush – conservatives are looking at a long journey through the desert.
Damn….that’s harsh.
The “C” word?
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!!!!
This guy can’t leave fast enough for me…..
I really don’t enjoy making it personal….but this guy is a complete dope.
You’ve been eating shoes?
Worse than Carter? Despite everything I think “things” were worse under Carter, but I’m not giving W a better grade or anything. Please George, get out now.
I’m wondering how it would have been different if McCain had beaten Bush in the primary way back when.
Come on, George! Let Cheney be Prez for a month.
Exactly the same except we would also be “fighting” global warming.
Reminiscent of that famous quoute from the Vietnam War, “We had to destroy the village to save it.”
Honestly, Cheney has probably been president for 8 years. Bush is just the (really, really, really bad) spokesmouth.
oooops. Didn’t mean to plagarize thiteen28, but the idea is the same.
Fool. He has paved the way for massive socialization of whole industries when the Dems take over. Only Nixon could go to China and only a Bush could turn us into Mao-era China.
As I’ve been saying for 8 years, anyone who thinks Bush is conservative hasn’t been paying attention.
He’s a closet socialist who’s stepping out into the open now that he’s about to leave office after destroying the conservative movement in America.
“I killed the Constitution in the illusion of faith and security.”
Is it just me, or does this remind anyone else of:
My collie says:
I’m beginning to think this is all on purpose now. It would not surprise me if in a year or two we are told that the dollar is unsalvageable and we must start a new monetary system to save us. Hello Amero, with our new partners Canada and Mehico!!
The whole pander to Mexico thing makes so little sense you swear mexico has asuitcase nuke somewhere in DC and forces all of our politicians to do a puppet dance.
That is the dumbest effing thing I have ever heard. Go home already, George.
FTFY
I used to worry about the next four years. Now I’m just worried about the next month.
….
Bush, did you eat paint chips?
Why do we have turds floating to the top of our elected offices?
Bush, I shake my head in disgust at how you have squandered a grand opportunity to reform our entitlement programs while we had all branches of government.
President Bush needs to go on vacation, and stay there!
Spot on, islandman.
We had the window and our beloved cowards in DC just slammed it on our fingers.
Just let “the one” take over, Bush is rapidly fading into his likeness, or is taking orders from him. This is so sad for the country. Bush has allowed himself to be defeated on almost every level.
I want to like Mr. Bush, but with statements like this, and I know he truly believes it too, that scares me to see the road that has been paved for the BIG O’ SOCIALIST.
CAN WE JUST START OVER?
Actually the Bush “legacy” is just the opposite of Jimmy’s; Bush kept America safe these last 7 years from those whom Carter enabled.
However on this Bush failed to allow failure to take it’s natural, self-correcting course. It’s a good thing bailout wasn’t the operative norm in years past or we’ed have been stuck with propping up the buggy whip manufacturing companies.
Me too!
GWB is not a conservative. I applaud that he kept us safe, but he has let us down on many other issues. He is about 30% conservative, 50% moderate, and 20% liberal. I don’t believe he is worse than Carter, but he isn’t much better.
Okay, I’ll pile on…
Bush is no conservative. Neither was his father. I think his legacy will be VERY so-so. He was sort of strong on defense of our country with the following disclaimer: Afghanistan was necessary, but Iraq was not, in my opinion, soft on securing our border, soft on fiscal responsibility, and too evangelical. Not to mention he sounds like a freaking buffoon when he talks.
Bush isn’t nearly as bad as Carter…Carter was a complete, total, flaming idiot.
Huh?
Oh, to append my remarks….as Islandman said, one of my biggest pet peeves was how the government freaking GREW HUGE under Bush. Totally mind-boggling.
How disappointing.
“Thank yew, George W. ‘En now, right here on our stage, Topo Gigio….”
Just an opinion of mine, probably not shared by a lot of folks here. It’s not something I can quantify, it’s just a feeling I get.
I won’t bore everyone with why I used to be a hard-core Republican, but really feel more Libertarian, and how I’m very much a fiscal conservative, and really hands-off when it comes to government getting involved in our private lives.
If Bush is a free-market advocate, where did he go? He’s telling us he will submit to socialism in order to un-socialize?
Maybe he is trying to ease us into the nObamafia shackles, so it won’t be so evident.
Bush has sold out responsible Americans and Congressional Republicans, and does indeed seem clueless about running this country properly. I am not sure Obama will be much worse.
We need to form a new union, far more perfect, that the one we are stuck in now.
Some legacy.
Recall that President Bush made his reputation in Texas as “owner” of the Texas Rangers baseball club. Actually he had a relatively small stake in the team but the bigger point is that when he led the drive for a new baseball stadium for the Rangers, the stadium was built with mostly public money. The taxpayers paid the bill but as usual the taxpayers have no access to luxury boxes or the best seats in the stadium or the best parking spaces. The taxpayer foot the bill but only get the right to sit in the upper deck at inflated ticket prices, to shell out $15.00 for a measly parking space and no right to go to the private dining places in the stadium. The taxpayers are just the patsys that team owners treat like dolts. For a bit or irony, consider that it was the voters of Seattle that repeatedly rejected buying a new basketball arena for the billionaire owner of the NBA fanchise there. And the taxpayers of Seattle kept rejecting wasting money on a new baseball stadium that the city bigwigs simply ignored the wishes of the people and took the people’s money and built the stadium anyway. Liberal as Seattle is on social issues, when it comes to corporate welfare, the people said no.
Don’t be stupid.
You are all giving the man way too much credit. He just says things because someone asked him a question and he is required to respond. That’s really it. There is no grand scheme at play here. He’s been winging it for 8 years, and we will all pay the price for many, many more years than that.
Is that like having sex to save your virginity?
In the face of all the disapproval from Ordinary Joe’s, like myself, it makes me wonder what he knows that we don’t? I have a hard time understanding why he would callously sell us down a hole. Could it possibly be that he is relying on the same kind of “advice” that assured him of the stockpiles of Iraqi WMD?
What principles?; The historians will not be kind; He either abandoned or never possessed any conservative principles over the last 8 years; Seven years after 9/11/2001 and he’s still okay with open borders and 20 million illegal aliens destroying our country from within like a cancer; Next he will say “I’ve abandoned defending our borders and protecting our citizens from enemies foreign and domestic to save Mexico and other third world countries”.
Why yes it is!
Sometimes, I wonder, when W says these kinds of things … is it really him and his thoughts or has he been coached/fed a bunch of stupid sh*t.
Michelle, you may hurl a shoe whenever you are ready.
NO MORE RINOS
…and a bigger number of newly legal “citizens”.
Just wail until Jeb runs in 2012. He could tap Colin Powell for veep.
Personally, I think we should be arranging a shoe-hurling trip to DC.
I have a Ford van – room for lots of friends and their shoes.
Mark Sanford 2012
More like getting screwed whether you want to or not.
The writing is on the wall, too bad we didn’t build one. If you’ve seen any large urban setting, you’ve been given a glimpse of what’s coming for the rest of America. I’ve lived in Denver, LA, Atlanta, and now Houston. The ‘government saves’ crowd outnumbers the rest of us, and if they can manage to turn off the MTV and vote, we’ll never win another election. Especially after the upcoming amnesty, we’ve crossed the Rubicon. After that, no matter how hard we try, we won’t be able to put America back together again.
I’m a real optimist, huh???
The easiest and best revolution is for the producers (taxpayers) to slow or stop their production (creating wealth & jobs) so the consumers (government supported folks a.k.a. those sucking of the government teat) will have less from the government trough.
No sense in making it, if they are going to take it away in taxes.
Exactly, FoundingFather,
Why give anything to them? I’m prepared to stash my income away, make less money, find new write-offs. I will relinquish as little as possible to these criminals.
I am not sure which is funnier, the thought of Bush giving up free market principles to save the free market or the thought that Bush was ever a free market guy in the first place.
It is similar to our leaders wanting to raise taxes to save the economy.
The worst part of Bush 43 is that people THINK he is a conservative and that conservative principles failed. In fact Bush 43 was no more conservative than his daddy and besides a single marginal tax rate reduction did NOTHING CONSERVATIVE in his 8 years in office.
And all his big spending lunacy will legitimize more lunatic spending by Obama.
The feds have pumped 5 trillion down this rat whole and Obama will spend trillions more in the next 4 years. We could easily double the national debt between now and January 2013! And we could destroy the economy and our liberties while doing so.
This will go down in history as a dark time for America.
I wonder if Bush’s Oogidy-Boogidy economics isn’t indicative of larger mental health issues. I am really starting to worry about the man. Compassionate conservatism is one thing; kookoo-bats conservatism quite another. The image that keeps coming to mind is Mickey Mouse in the Sorcerer’s Apprentice summoning trillions with his endless army of bail-out brooms — which he is utterly unable to control. Consider his giving the Medal of Freedom to Donna Shalala — that’s not so far removed Caligula appointing his horse to the Senate.
I really wish someone would orer him (e.g. Laura) to a mental examination. Fast. Normally, I would have said Chaney but I don’t believe Bush is aware of much of the rest of the world these days, other than his immediate family. Beyond that, he has gone bye-bye into a fantasy world of unlimited power where everyone loves him. In other words, he has ended up where Obama is starting. This is the kind of stuff that turns atheists into on-their-knees Bible readers.
This may be the most accurate and scariest post here in a long time.
Love this line from the article:
When did this “longtime advocacy” take place, exactly? When he was pushing federal downpayment assistance for minority homeowners?
Yeah, I think it happened on June 8th, 2003 between noon and one o’clock.
Kind of snortworthy if you ask me…
retch
I USED to stick up for this guy.
bile
The problem with Bush’s statement is that the U.S. economy hasn’t followed free market principles for decades, so what has he really abandoned? The U.S. economy is totally Socialistic. In fact, it’s almost the opposite of a free market: centralized banking, fiat money (no gold backing), high taxes, entitlements, unlimited centralized government. And Obama idiotically wants to spend a trillion on “infrastructure” projects, as if tax-and-spend ever “jump-started” anything. Let’s keep on recycling those failed ideas! But he “means well”.
COMPLETELY OT (and maybe not true), but check this:
http://www.suntimes.com/news/sneed/1333057,CST-NWS-SNEED16.article
Sneed hears rumbles President-elect Barack Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, is reportedly on 21 different taped conversations by the feds — dealing with his boss’ vacant Senate seat!
A lot of chit-chat?
» Click to enlarge image
Michael Sneed
Hot air?
Or trouble?
• • To date: Rahm’s been mum. Stay tuned.
RockyR,
Just read the article from link on Drudge. 21 calls.
No doubt the Feds are taking those calls and comparing the nature and topids of the calls before and after Obama’s meetigs with Blago on 11/5 nd 11/12. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Barry saying he had no contact was a HUGE gaff. Note how the press is consumed with shoe throwing. They are hell bent on ignoring the stench in the room.
I am afraid it would have been much worse. McCain was less of a danger than Obama, but much worse than any other Republican of prominence. I voted for Sarah Palin. (That McCain guy was also on mentioned on the ballot, same line I think.)
Created a Education Department
NCLB
Prescription drugs
Comprehensive Immigration Reform w/
Amnesty
Signed the McCain Feingold CFR legislation
What did you expect from such a solid advocate for reining in the powers of Gubamint and its spending ways?
He may deserve credit for no new attacks on the Homeland , freeing 50 million people in the Middle East, making a stab at entitlement program reforms but also handing the keys to the castle to the dems after the 2006 election debacle on CIR.
Time will be the best Judge of what comes out in the wash. Time rolls on as the costs pile-up for 8 years of a muddled administration policy-wise that couldn’t get its ducks in a row when it had the upper hand and now must be resigned to getting the back of a hand for its failings in its last few months in power.
…And as you may recall, Marc, the Seattle Supersonics moved to Oklahoma City, OK for all the tax money poured out the window…
Obama was right after all when he said MaCain is for the third term of George Bush.
Both idiots are RINO, with no core principles.
Bush has a big hand in distroying our economy. He slept at the wheels while the crooks at the wall street and in the mortgage industry literally stole billions.
Democrats are known for spending money we don’t have. But with the national debt doubling on Bush’s watch, how can Republicans say with straight face that the party is for smaller government and fiscal restrainst?
I am glad we did not give McCain an opportunity to further malign the Republican brand.
Too effin’ late.
Sense of obligation to his successor??????
WTF are we??? How about a sense of obligation to the people of this country. Stop effing up our economy dammit!
So at what point will “conservatives” abandon the Republican party? Reagan, the ever-lauded icon of the Republicans, was the exception, not the rule for the party. Besides Reagan, who else in the 20th century was worth a bean for the Republicans? Eisenhower and T. Roosevelt are about the only ones that come to mind. Mediocrity, a shallow intellect, and moral weakness define the majority of the party. There are a few current exceptions, such as DeMint, Poe, and Pence, but the majority are no different than their supposed opposition. At this point, really, what have “conservatives” to lose?
“There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties… This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.” ~John Adams
I forget who coined this, but I must say that it speaks for me: “I am not abandoning the Republican party, the Republican party has abandoned me. “
I wonder how soon the United States’ “Let them eat cake” moment shall arive.
Bush:
Bombing for peace. Torturing for freedom. Imposing governments for democracy. Spying for security. Socializing industries for capitalism.
Bush has one principle: that he is on the side of good, and that nothing he does in its name, no matter how evil, can possibly be wrong.
Bush out, Obama in. Government continues the same course: socialism and total control.
“A Republic, if you can keep it.”
Wow, who knew Bush was an economist?
I was wondering if we could force politicians to have a lobotomy before they take office? Their decisions would probably be better.
Why is it so easy to find true liberals and so difficult to find a true conservative? We need a Conservative Party with a conservative platform.
We should have a national dating service questionnaire for politicians like eHarmony.
Never mind. Somehow the courts would rule against it as they did with eHarmoney being forced to advertise for gays.
Dave, I don’t think you can quantify it because “too evangelical” is a totally meanlingless phrase. Makes me scratch the ol’ noggin and go “Huh?”, too, on that account.
Am surprised that Americans still can’t see Bush’s priorities. Take a close look and you will find that all Bush has done is to pay-back his wahhabbi masters in Riyadh (by eliminating Saddam, Saudi Arabia’s nightmare) and his campaign financers (by leaving the Mexican border open).
Rest was all lies. Bush actively shielded his terrorist ‘family and friends’ from Saudi Arabia, never intended to hunt for Osama and never intended to do anything about illegal immigration.
Ofcourse, if Americans had looked at Bush’s record of failed businesses, going AWOL and being a Saudi puppet, Americans would not vote for him. But guess what? Americans voted him in TWICE(and rejected a true patriot Tom Tancredo).
As they say, in a democracy, people get the government they deserve.
To salvage some self-respect, still not too late to impeach Bush: http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=73KIpzrUXI8
Because being a liberal is the easiest thing in the world, Fender. Folks tend to like things where they can slide, like liberalism, and so they’ll subscribe to anything that comes down that particular pike.
True conservatives are “the few, the proud” who take the less trodden path and who think for themselves. Liberalism require no thinking or questioning – in fact, both are discouraged by liberalism wherein Big Brother does the thinking for the true believers.
Is that what a Harvard MBA yields? No thanks, what a waste of money.
You all may think that I am over the edge on this, but just stand back and look at the Entire Picture… The Illegal Invasion,The Bailouts,The Goverment Intervention…
The ONLY WAY that We the People can Save America from the Socialist/Communist Agenda (which is well underway), is to Contact your STATE LEGISLATURE, and Gather enough support for a CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION.
We need to go back, before we can go forward.
The best thing George Bush can do for the GOP is to immediately and publicly change his party to Democrat. Let him trash their brand for a little while.
We do need a truly conservative party. I am done with the GOP. I’ll be voting Constitution Party from now on.
McCloud9,
We don’t need a ConCon. There is nothing wrong with the Constitution.
A ConCon cannot be limited. If we have one we would almost surely end up with our Constitution rewritten into something resembling the EU constitution.
What we need is for the American people to force our elected representatives to obey the Constitution.
We don’t need a ConCon. There is nothing wrong with the Constitution.
A ConCon cannot be limited. If we have one we would almost surely end up with our Constitution rewritten into something resembling the EU constitution.
What we need is for the American people to force our elected representatives to obey the Constitution.
SingleStack… What do you think The Powers That Be have been doing to the CONSTITUTION? UPHOLDING IT???
Our PRESENT Govt. is A DISGRACE!
If they upheld their SWORN OATH of OFFICE we would not be in this mess.
Fixed it
In even worse news so to speak, guess who’s Time’s Man of the year is, Also alot is spoken of America’s “Racial devide” Last time I looked interracial relationships were at an all time high and growing, before Obama, and the KKK hasn’t blown up a church in quite a while, or the Black Panthers starting a race riot. I’m dissgusted with this world.
Fixed that one too.
It’s not just a party folks, it’s the entire nation. It’s the foundation, what started us and made us what we are: the Constitution. RIP
Ok, while there are things Bush has totally screwed up, you can at least blame him for those things he actually did!!:
Mark Jaquith said:
As opposed to what – appeasement and surrender for peace?
We are currently at peace with Germany and Japan. Do you even understand why?
Not what we did. We haven’t tortured anyone. Bush hasn’t tortured anyone.
BTW, I use the real definition of torture – not the liberal definition.
You don’t impose freedom.
Again, I go back to the examples of Germany and Japan. Were they better off under the governments they had in 1940, or the governments they have today?
You have to spy for security. Ultra. Magic. Enough said.
This I agree with totally. WTH was Bush thinking? This was straight out of the democrat party playbook!!
Given how many things that you got wrong of what he’s actually done, this is very interesting.All it tells me is that Bush has finally joined the democrat party – because that’s the principle they live under.
Don’t worry….President Bush will leave office.
And then we get OBAMA!!!!!!
I am sure that makes all of you so happy.
Bush has sold his political soul to try to avoid being Herbert Hoover II. I’m not really looking forward to an Obama administration, but good riddance, GWB.