“Total Failure”? Hardly.

Matt Towery is not being honest. He says that every Republican he knows considers the Bush Administration a failure. Either he knows a lot fewer Republicans than we think he does or he’s lying through his teeth.

Or there’s a third possibility that I’ll get to toward the end.

I know quite a few Republicans who think that the administration has been an utter failure. I know plenty more who aren’t acting like a bunch of crying, whiny-baby ninnes, too. They know that George Bush has been nothing even close to a conservative President but that he’s done gotten a couple of big issues very, very right.

It’s clear that the administration has known plenty of failures (Katrina, the first three years rebuilding Iraq) and it has done things that Republicans generally find foolish (Medicare expansion, No Child left Behind, signing the Campaign Finance Reform bill).

It’s also clear that this administration has done more than one or two things right.

For any Republican to consider this adminstration a “total” failure, they would have to ignore or forget a few major accomplishments. They would have to completely ignoreore that there has not been a single attack on the United States in 6 1/2 years even though we know for a fact that Islamists have been trying very hard to attack us the entire time. They would have to forget what a huge effect the Bush tax cuts had on a shocked and downsliding economy and what a boom they helped to drive for the better part of the past seven years. They would have to forget that John Roberts and Samuel Alito, two very solid, very smart, and generally conservative jurists sit on the Supreme Court and that this court is called the Roberts Court because of George Bush.

Those are big deals, with effects that will last far beyond the Bush administration. If you are that eaten up with politics that you can’t see just how big a deal those successes are, then you need to take a long vacation far from the stultifying air of the halls of wonkery. Most Republicans in Washington are down on the President because the Republican party is in shambles and the party is likely to take a serious ass-whipping in November. But guess what? That ain’t the President’s fault. It’s the party’s fault that they allowed corrupt and despicable behavior to continue in the halls of Congress. It’s their fault that a weasel like Larry Craig is still in office today. It’s their fault that they let the intern scandal go on as long as it did. It’s their fault that they can’t manage to enunciate a coherent set of principles that can not be swayed with cash or favors. It’s their fault that they spend our money on earmark bribes to favored lobbyists back home. They don’t get to blame George W. Bush for their cowardice and sleaze. They dug this hole. They can damned well man up and take responsibility for it.

And they can stop pawning the blame off on the President because they couldn’t keep their hands out of the cookie jar, their feet from tapping out a seductive rhythm in a bathroom stall, and their fingers out of their interns’ instant message accounts.

I suppose it is possible for Matt Towery to not know any Republicans who can find a good thing this administration has done. I suggest that he get his head out of the party’s caboose and meet a few Republicans who live out here in the real world. I think he’ll find a lot more love for George Bush and a lot more contempt for the weasels in Congress.

Other Posts of Interest:

• The Big Government Cash Machine Marches On, with Conservative Help
• It’s Just A Bill. Yes, It’s Only A Bill. And It Got Screwed Up on Capitol Hill.
• Let’s Hunt Us Some RINOs! And John Boehner, too.

Tags: President George Bush, Republicans

Category: President George Bush, The Republican Minority