The GOP Have Finally Figured out their guy Bush is a Lemon

Sept 9, 2005

Too bad there is no lemon law for Presidents, although even if there was one, the GOP would likely have not exercised their options in time (I'm guessing that if ever such a law is enacted, five and one half years and one re-election later will be too late). Actually, five and a half years isn't the true count. If we include the Presidential nomination and campaign process of 2000, where the GOP could have saved us all a lot of grief if they had nominated someone else, the true tally is that it has taken over seven years for the GOP to realize that George W. Bush has no business being, and is horribly unqualified to be, President.

When historians look back at the eight years of the 'W' presidency, they are going to come up with a variety of pejoratives to describe both the period and the man himself. If I had a vote for the preferred nomenclature of the Bush Presidency, I would probably call it 'The Moronathon'. How else could you look at it? I tried to be as generous as possible, but I could not think of a single accomplishment of the Bush Presidency that isn’t completely undermined by a related failure of greater magnitude. Those who favor tax cuts have to acknowledge that the economy under Bush has never been what one could call 'good' and certainly not great. Most of the time, it has been bad, and with oil and gas prices now as they are, it looks like it is heading for bad again. His major foreign policy imitative has been the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and both are unmitigated disasters. Afghanistan remains a completely failed state with the US backed government controlling smaller and smaller pieces of the country each week and the Taliban reasserting control. Iraqi WMD never materialized and Bush's State Of The Union speech of 2003 asserting that Iraqi WMD do exist in no uncertain terms is going to come to be seen as the best unintended work of comedy in centuries, perhaps ever.

Now, we have the GOP controlled congress openly beating up on the President, opposing his choice for the Supreme Court in the wake of Sandra Day O'Connor's absence and rejecting the President's wishes on the treatment of foreign detainees and on Gulf reconstruction contracts. Congressional Republicans have started to realize that the Presidents failures on a broad front may allow Democrats to regain both houses of congress in 2006 and are deserting him like rats from a sinking ship. What took them so long? Was it that hard to realize this man did not have the stuff to be President long before he won a single state's primary? We Democrats knew, and most independents strongly suspected as much. Did you Republicans think that our saying so was just partisan rhetoric? We don't normally say such things so you can be assured that when we do, you ought to take notice.

What I hope the American people remember going into the next few election cycles is that Republicans cannot be trusted to pick competent people to be their nominee for President or really any vital job. Seven years and a plethora of failures is far too long to wait to start reining someone in. Kerry may not have been exciting, and Gore's personality wasn't exactly engaging, but if you look at their experience, it is obvious they could have done the job and done it well, and as for Clinton, well, no more needs to be said. The GOP ought to be ashamed of who they picked and how long it took to realize their mistake. Every Republican member of congress should resign for giving the country and supporting such a lemon.