I fail to understand how President Bush's failure to form a coherent policy-making schedule has anything to do with his NOT substantially paving the way for Barack Obama in 2008.  So he failed to get Social Security reform?  So he failed to get Fannie and Freddie taken care of?  What does that say about his ability to govern?  

Point-in-fact, he DID get a very large Medicare Bill through in the form of a completely new kind of entitlement, and true-to-form, failed to pay for a single red cent of it.

To the text of your statement, what does it say about a man who "gets killed" by a body, any body, that "had lost its way completely"?

As I said before, I supported President Bush in a great many ways, and I still support the efforts in Iraq and in Afghanistan.  But he was not a good President.

Duane, your strong comments elsewhere notwithstanding, I fail to see how you've coherently articulated anything that runs counter to the points I made.  Jonah Goldberg didn't "abandon" President Bush because of the wars - he spoke out against the President increasingly because of the realization that "compassionate conservatism" was just big government in socially palatable wrapping.  Read Liberal Fascism for his treatment of the Bush Presidency.  

Reforming Fannie / Freddie alone wouldn't have staved-off the financial crisis - the problem originates with the structure of the banking system.  President Bush was incapable of (and until it was too late - uninterested in) understanding this or anything else related to the financial system, and should be held to account for having left us worse of than when he took office in this regard.  After all, financing the wars requires a strong financial base, something to which he paid absolutely no attention.

I can't help but believe the media will try to portray (or allow the portrayal - by visible media personalities - of) any questioning of his policies as racist, not personal.  Check out Politico's treatment today of Andre Carson's latest race-baiting tirade and you'll get a flavor of what's in store for us...(my treatment of the Politico story can be found here)

If the scenario were such that we controlled both houses of Congress with healthy majorities (as I think will likely be the case), I would far prefer another four years of Obama to another four years of President Bush.  If you can curtail the activities of his Cabinet and of the Departments, he becomes the political gift that keeps on giving.  His administration is a train-wreck wrought from incompetence - even if he had the right ideological leanings, he would still be a disaster of a kind.  This guy is just a couple of months on the fortunate side of a primary challenge.

The rise of the GOP tide will crest - just on the math - in 2016.  That bodes well for us, whomever is POTUS.

Of course, the odds that we win huge in Congress and don't take the White House are almost nil, so...

Important to remember that W also got us $4 trillion in mal-financed debt, Nancy Pelosi as a national political figure (from repeated exposure to the visage of whom, I may never recover), a (still!) Harry Reid-led congress, and a tremendous continued exposure to a catastrophic collapse of the financial system (it's coming - don't you worry).  

Oh yea, and W got us Barack Obama, Obamacare, a rogue Justice Department led by the worst kind of man possible, an NLRB determined to remake America in the image of some hybrid 1970's Anglo- / 2000's Venezuelan nightmare, Justices Sotomayor and Kagan (KAGAN!)...need we continue?

I supported President Bush.  But let's remember that when he left office, we were hoping history would take a Trumanesque view of the man.  To say that was an overly-optimistic hope would be to understate matters quite considerably.

It's offensive because the sickly-sweet message "God loves you" is also accompanied by the absurd revelation that if we who have been made so that we cannot believe ignore the overtures of the credulous, fire, torture and damnation are ours for all of eternity.

It may come as a surprise to you, but if you want to claim one you must claim the whole lot.

So please pardon me if I choose to remain "un-grown up" and politely but forcefully decline to be spoken to in that tone of voice.

Thanks.

You've lived in the BA for how long and you found this strange?  Par for the course, in my experience.  

The only way you can get away with being publicly religious in San Francisco is if you're: 

1. able to claim victimhood of some additional variety - race being the preferred category (being persecuted for being Christian isn't enough - despite attempts by those who hold power in the state to rid civil society, not just the public square, of religion)
2. mentally disturbed, or give the appearance of being such
3. proselytize in a language that is not english or spanish - in which case the only people who will tend to care will assume you're disturbed (see 2 above)

That's it.  Anyone else is SOL.  

We certainly have a great task ahead of us to ensure Justice Thomas is properly appreciated by future generations for his contributions.  The contrast between he and the exceptionally malleable Justice Kennedy (who remains Obamacare's last and best hope for survival) could not be more stark, to say nothing of the likes of Sotomayor or Kagan.  

In this, they (the Left) largely succeeded, no?

... The last point here - that Mitt is his own worst enemy in all of this - I agree with, but not for reasons that could be considered pejorative (as was the intention with the comment).  Mitt is good at turnarounds, at driving efficiency into inefficient operations, at restructuring finances, and at consensus-building.  Look at his professional career.  Look at the Salt Lake Olympics.  Look at Romneycare.  

Mitt doesn't drive dislocation.  He either cleans up after it, or he builds enough consensus around just what's wrong in order to patch enough holes to keep things afloat.  

The problem is that dislocation is what we all want.  We want not just change, but DRAMATIC change.  We don't want hope, we want revolution.  And that ain't Mitt.

I don't think two of the first three arguments here are accurate.  Mitt does have a constituency - just not in the Republican primaries.  His is the great, squishy, (and oddly enough) secular middle.  Going back to the previous comment, it's difficult to draw conclusions re: how well voters like the guy - he's only run three times, twice at the state level and as a Mormon GOPer in Massachusetts.  Think about that for a sec.

I agree he hasn't learned how to run an effective national campaign, though many accounts of his run against Ted in '94 pointed to a rising star (a billing to which, one could argue, he has lived up to), and he won in 2002.

...

I'm not an enormous Romney supporter - to my thinking both he and Perry will provide strong leadership.

But, Mitt's critique rings somewhat more true than you're giving him credit for (though I don't suspect voters will much care).  Romney has run for office 3 times - once for Senate (against Ted Kennedy), once for Governor, and once for President.  He won once and lost twice.

He's also played a role in private sector life that many can only dream of (if they aspire to such things).  Look back over the preceding 40 years and you'll find that Mitt has been far more active in the private sector (and within civil society, generally) than in politics.  

The same cannot be said of Rick Perry, who is, point-in-fact, the very definition of a career politician.

Again, no idea whether voters will care, but it's best to be measured in our criticisms of the candidates.

This is amazing, even by the (already rock-bottom) standards of this Justice Dept. 

Can anyone here name any instances where the Reagan, Bush I or Bush II Departments of Justice acted in such an overtly political manner?  

...

Fascinating - need to get this thing on Kindle...

Actually, this is precisely the problem - many of the religious here DO in fact disagree with the fundamental tenets of that statement.  This leads to all sorts of meaningful differences with respect to policy, and those differences will increasingly serve as the dividing line between large segments of the base.  

For instance, those here for whom religion is a primary answer to the nanny state's great machine of disenfranchisement immediately seized upon the idea that "uneducated" caucasians seem to be less religious than "educated" caucasians.  And that's really about it.  No policy problems.  Just a cultural statement.

Those who, on the other hand, don't view the world through believers' eyes see a troubling process of de-civilization, and immediately wonder what policies could be implemented to reverse the process.  The optics matter.

This is going to be THE theme behind a great number of discussions within the conservative community in the coming months.