Sunday, May 21, 2006
Jonathan Chait on the conservative Awakening.
In the LA Times today he writes of the recent and sudden discovery by conservatives of the great mendacity of Our Dear Embattled Leader.
IT APPEARS that the scales have fallen from David Frum's eyes. The former Bush speechwriter, and current National Review writer, once had faith in the basic decency and honesty of George W. Bush. But now the president he once served so loyally, and whose honesty he once found above reproach, has done something utterly uncharacteristic. He has presented his policies in a misleading light.With a little luck we will see the civil war in Iraq imitated by the GOP.
No! you say. This can't be true! But it is. Allow me to quote Frum: "Putting the [National] Guard on the border is a symbolic act…. But I am afraid that in this case the symbolism is manipulative and deceptive."
Deceptive? Bush? He must have the wrong guy. Just a couple of years ago, Frum wrote: "I've always thought it strange that so many on the left have chosen to make an issue of President Bush's honesty. The president is, if anything, almost excessively direct and self-endangeringly truthful."
It's funny. I remember when Bush insisted that he wanted to bring the parties together to pass a patients' bill of rights, even as he arm-twisted Republicans who favored such a bill into renouncing it. I remember when he insisted that lower-income workers reaped the biggest share of his tax cuts. I remember when he presented his stem cell position as a way to dramatically expand research opportunities. One could say that misleading rhetoric was the hallmark of Bush's political style. But if you said that two years ago, you were a rabid Bush-hater.
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