"GWB ran as a conservative. He is governing like a liberal"

[SHRED]

---

This is a popular mantra I hear from the Republicans as they desperately try to distance themselves from Bush.

They don't even know what those words mean anymore. Probably never did. Starting with Rush Limbaugh and the rest of RW hate radio and then moving to television, the propagandists have done a fantastic job in demonizing the word "liberal".
They use the word as a dumping ground for anything they disagree with.

There has been a full onslaught against the word "liberal" over the airwaves, from the Republicans, for many years.
---

Here is a poignant response from another message board regarding the title of my post's claim, that Bush is somehow now a "liberal":

----


I'm very pleased that Pinoccio is governing like a Liberal...repealing the cuts in big oil subsidies, re-instating capital gains taxes to their previous level, increasing funding to education, rolling back the war machine, and providing for the needs of those denied medical care.

Glad he has cut himself off from the right wing churches, refrained from appointing right-wing ideologs to the Supreme Court, and has appointed the most ethical defender of Constitutional rights as Attorney General that was available in his nation-wide search for the finest legal mind the country could produce.

A man of far-reaching vision...wanting only to develop the nation with the greatest infrastructure, the finest educational system, and the most innovative technologies in the world. A leader in the fight against global warming and a staunch defender of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Thank you for setting the record straight. NOT

Retired Monk
"Ideology is a disease"

[Totally Committed]

1. Like a liberal WHAT, exactly?

Not even close. He's governing like he's a royal... a king or an emperor. He kind of reminds me of the last Tsar of Russia, with Cheney as the evil Rasputing pulling the strings.

This is just a slam at liberals.

TC

[Ian David]

2. Conservatives campaign on the platform that government creates more problems than it solves.

And then, once they're elected, they do their best to prove themselves right.

Therefore, George W. Bush is a true conservative, because he has created the most fucked-up government in American history since we quashed the Southern Confederacy.

[Cosmocat]

17. WELL said ...

n

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. Calling him a liberal...

Is so far off the mark that it leaves me nearly speechless!

:puke:

[GreenPartyVoter]

10. So true.

[Ganja Ninja]

4. The party of responsibility my ass!

They've been cheering every move this Bozo's made for the last 6 years. Now when the inevitable results come to pass they want to put the liberal stamp on him and kick him to the curb. They refuse to accept that the policies were as wrong as the man they put in place to lead them.

Six years ago they made the mistake of voting for this man without considering his qualifications. All they knew was his family name and his party affiliation. To paraphrase an old saying, those who refuse to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it by voting for Fred Thompson.

[GeorgeGist]

5. Yes indeed ...

Bush is making faster progress than even Grover Norquist (notorious liberal) dreams of

"My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."

[BeyondGeography]

6. Shows you how lost they are

They know they have to oppose Bush (give them this much credit), but their only hope is to run as common-sense centrists opposed to the right-wing extremism of Bush. Instead they say he has been too LIBERAL, which only paints them into a deeper corner and puts them further away from most voters.

Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of losers.

[erpowers]

7. John F. Kennedy

The response you listed was great, but I think John F. Kennedy had one of the best, if not the best, responses to the liberal bashing campaign. I do not have the quote, but Kennedy explained what a liberal actually was.

[QueenOfCalifornia]

12. JFK's "What is a Liberal?"

John F. Kennedy Said it best -

What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label "Liberal?" If by "Liberal" they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then ... we are not that kind of "Liberal." But if by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal."

[erpowers]

21. Amazing

That quote is just amazing. I think everytime I read it I like it even more. I do not see why more Democrats/liberals do not use that quote more when attacked by Republicans. That quote says it all. In addition, it seems that some Republican are afarid to take on the John F. Kennedy legacy.

[Jim__]

8. The American Prospect had an article on this.

An Excerpt:

But the spin won't cover the reality. Over the first six years of the Bush administration, conservatives largely had their way. With Bush and Karl Rove pursuing a political strategy of feeding their base, Tom DeLay ramrodding the conservative majority in the Congress, and the corporate lobby enforcing discipline, movement conservatives set the course of the country -- with catastrophic results.

Each of the signature Bush follies -- Iraq, Katrina, Enron, privatization of Social Security, the Terri Schiavo case, trickle-down economics that didn't trickle -- can be traced directly to conservative ideas and the conservative think tanks and ideologues that championed them. In every case, conservatism failed, not simply because of corruption or incompetence, but because of original conception. Sensate conservatives have, in the words Irving Kristol once applied to liberals, "been mugged by reality." Actual existing conservatism fails because it gets the world wrong. And invoking Reagan offers not salvation but confirmation of that failure, for Reagan championed many of the same ideas and inflicted similar debacles on the nation.

.

There is more, but you need a subscription to read the full article.

[Strawman]

13. Yep. Recommended reading to rebut that RW talking point.

[Odin2005]

9. This is the new RW talking point.

It's generally spewed by libertarian types that want to distance themselves from the Neocons and Theocons while at the same time bashing us "tax and spend libruls."

[RandomKoolzip]

11. It's the only way that conservatives can distance themselves

from the consequences of their decisions - pretend that the choices they were given were false. The W. Bush administration is exactly what they've wanted for decades now (minus the actual lynchings and pogroms), but since now public opinion is seething with anger about their present condition, they have to play-act appalled. Secretly, they're all still having wet dreams about W and his flight suit.

[AX10]

14. I agree. When Reagas spoke of "personal responsibility"...

what he really meant is that nothing is your fault, but it's someone elses fault.

[StudentsMustUniteNow]

15. I'm so sick of hearing this

He ran as a conservative and governed like a NEOconservative, not a liberal. Jesus.

[booley]

16. This is becuase it's NEVER thier fault

All of the times that Cons have gotton what they wanted and yet things got f*cked up becuase of it, they always have an excuse. and its' always somebody elses' fault.

Whether that conservative Judge somehow became Liberal when they dont' rule the con way to how it's the Democrats fault for stuff that happened when the Republicans were in total control of the government... the tune never changes.

They just can't accept that thier ideology is fundementally flawed.

[DFW]

18. Liberal on one issue and one only

Firearms. He wants everyone to be free to acquire as many as they like,
and would probably further liberalize firearm acquistion laws if he could.*

Anything else, and Bush (OK, Cheney) is closer to Stalin than anyone else.

I don't recall Stalin as being cherished among liberals as one of their own.


*TFT's song of Bush's Home on the Range goes:

Oh give me a home
Where no liberals roam
And the folks all think the same way
Where each house has a gun
A big caliber one
And stangers are told, "make my day!"

[Cosmocat]

19. And, let me just add ... The "conservative congress" ...

You know, it might be plausible from a standpoint of being possible, that a president "ran as a liberal and governed as a liberal" ... But, where exactly were the "stout" conservatives in congress during that time span ... You had majorities in both sides, that COMPLETELY worked hand in hand with this pukebag, for six years (the senate turning over in 2002) ...

ZERO vetos and ZERO congressional hearings or subpeonas ...

So, it wasn't only the ONE clown who "ran as a conservative and governed as a "liberal"" ... It was EVERY STINKING ONE OF THEM, him, every senator and every represenatative ...

[krispos42]

20. BWAA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!

Oh, I love the smell of hot desperation before a presidential election!