Pondering the relief expressed by military officials that Bush is finally on his way out, Dave at Orcinus reflects:
But in truth, this constitutes not merely the entire Bush approach to governance, but conservative governance as well. Thus -- to use one example out of many -- during Bush's tenure there was not a single economic problem that could not be solved by anything other than tax cuts for the wealthy and deregulation of the financial sector....
So when we hear conservatives tell themselves that the reason they lost this last election was their failure to adhere to "conservative principles," we know they're continuing to cling to the very reason they lost. Because such adherence inherently means that these "principles" -- that is, conservative dogma about how they believe the world ought to be, particularly the insistence that government itself is the problem, when the reality is that bad governance is the problem --trump their ability to face realities on the ground.
Entertaininglyg, iconservatives have utterly and epically failed to see that this is the fly in their snake oil: their belief that if you impose your dogma on reality and then yell and shake your tiny fists and stomp your wee feet at reality and the terrestrial globe for failing to conform to your beliefs,reality will eventually see the light.
In other words, they are anti-pragmatists, since they couldn't care less if something works and is supported by a majority of Americans, so long as it's right as in "Right." Furthermore, it's now clear that they've been wrong since Ronald Reagan. And with liberals and progressives powerless to check or balance him, the Bush administration finally exposed the entire conservative dogma for the tissue of fallacies, wishful thinking, and reality-denial that it is.
Give Bush credit for that, anyway.
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