A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency by Glenn Greenwald Read Free Book Online Page B

one area where we can make somewhat useful comparisons between Nixon and Bush: their status as liberal Republicans (emphasis added).” Thus, reasoned Goldberg, Bush is exactly the opposite of what “conservatives” support: “The modern conservative movement, from Goldwater to Reagan, was formed as a backlash against Nixonism.”
Yet when Bush was highly popular, Goldberg decreed precisely the opposite—namely, he anointed George W. Bush as the heir to Reagan conservatism and the Bush-led Republican Party as the vessel of pure Reaganism:

But it is now clear that Bush’s own son takes far more after his father’s old boss than he does his own father, at least politically speaking. From tax cuts (and deficits, alas), to his personal conviction on abortion, to aligning America with the historical tide of liberty in the world, George W. Bush has proved that he’s a Reaganite, not a “Bushie.” He may not be a natural heir to Reagan, but that’s the point. The party is all Reaganite now [emphasis added]. What better sign that this is now truly and totally the Gipper’s Party than the obvious conversion of George Bush’s own son?

The dramatic turnabout in conservative characterizations of Bush is nowhere better demonstrated than by comparing Goldberg’s accusation in 2006 that Bush’s governing approach is like his father’s rather than Ronald Reagan’s (“Bush was always loyal to his father, who came out of the Nixon wing of the party”) to Goldberg’s 2002 polar opposite claim that Bush “takes far more after his father’s old boss [Ronald Reagan] than he does his own father” and that “George W. Bush has proved that he’s a Reaganite, not a ‘Bushie.’”
As Bush’s popularity has plummeted, so, too, has the esteem in which his own followers hold him. Self-identified conservatives during Bush’s first term were writing truly worshipful books about George Bush, devoted to paying homage to his greatness as a leader and as a wise, resolute yet humble man; in 2006 they were denouncing him as a stubborn and weak failure who, in addition to those “sins,” was never a conservative at all, and perhaps was even a closeted “liberal.” The conservatives’ frantic scampering to distance themselves and to disassociate their political movement from Bush stands as a powerful testament to the president’s steep fall and isolation.
In that regard, there is a serious, and quite revealing, fraud emerging in the political landscape—namely, that the so-called conservative movement is not responsible for the destruction wrought on the country by the Bush presidency and the loyal Republican Congress that followed him. Even more audacious, the claim is emerging that the conservative movement is actually the prime victim here, because its lofty “principles” have been betrayed and repudiated by the Republican president and Congress that have ruled our country for the last six years.
This cry of victimization was the principal theme at the National Review Institute Conservative Summit held in January 2007, at which one conservative luminary after the next paraded on stage to lament that the unpopular president and rejected GOP-controlled Congress “abandoned” conservatism and failed for that reason. As but one illustrative example, the following is a passage from National Review editor Rich Lowry’s opening remarks, introducing Newt Gingrich (whom Lowry afterward described as “inspiring, brilliant, creative, visionary”):

It is, in all seriousness, it is a distressing and depressing time to be a conservative. I’m reminded of the old saying by Mao—things are always darkest before they go completely black.
In recent years, we have watched a Republican Congress disgrace itself with its association with scandal, with its willful lack of fiscal discipline, and with its utter disinterest in the reforms that America needs. And at the same time, we watched a Republican President abet or passively accept the