Steal This Schnook

Dubya's Extreme Makeover

Years ago, the elder sages of Left Blogylvania predicted that once the full, breathtaking, pandimensional scope of Dubya’s serial crimes, treasons and fuckups began to swim into focus, the Conservatives would find themselves in a terrible bind.

First, they have made Saint Ronnie the Ur-Conservative. Have made it an article of faith that the closer one moves to perfect Gipperhood, the closer one moves to a pure, noumenal Conservative form.

But when you air the room out of all the smoke from Peggy Noonan’s ideological hookah and get down to Reagan’s Legacy as defined by its results, you find the following:

1. A reckless foreign adventurism in the name of that Manifest Shining City Jebus Pax Americana thingie they all believe in…as long as it is other people’s kids who spill their blood.

2. A penchant for first manufacturing tyrants and terrorists and then feigning shock when they behave like tyrants and terrorists.

3. Proudly presiding over the transfer of as much wealth and power as possible into as few hands as possible.

4. A contempt for the Poor and the Middle Class, and an evil enthusiasm for pitting one against the other to consolidate their power.

5. A contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law.

6. A barefaced reliance on lies and propaganda, and a converse contempt for a free and aggressive press.

7. A firm belief that government which helps people is Evil, while intrusive government which sides with corporate and fundamentalist interests against individuals and helps punish people from their workplace to their bedroom is Good. Government that punishes people in the name of Jebus is Extra Super Good.

8. A reflexive answer of “More tax cuts for rich people” to every problem. If the problems persist – if the tax cuts themselves are what has blown a hole below the waterline of the Ship of State -- you need to drill a bigger hole!

9. A giddy eagerness to give and get electoral reacharounds from the scum of the Segregationist South and the Religious Right.

So, second, by mapping these results-based-Reaganometrics over the record of the Crawford Dauphin, any idiot can see that Dubya has embraced each and every one of these core tenets of Modern Conservativism with a bloody vengeance.

That Dubya is, in fact, the Greatest Fucking Conservative Evah!

Third, the Right has spent most of its ink, bandwidth and lung capacity for six straight years ferociously defending their Dear Leader against any hint that he might be anything short of All Knowing, All Wise and All Benevolent. Anyone who takes sides against The Family gets thrown under the bus. Anyone who whispers a discouraging word gets the Full Rove. Anyone who simply points out that what the Dear Leader said last year is in direct contradiction to what he says now is a Liberal America Hater.

Anyone who dissents is a Traitor.

So after six years of relentlessly vicious slander against anyone who even respectfully disputed the Bicycle Chief Brilliance and his Mad Conservative Skillz, I laughed to myself at the suggestion by the sages of Left Blogylvania that the Conservatives would try to claw their way out of their intractable bind by attempting to distance themselves from Bush.

By actually resorting to disavowing him using the same universal epithet they use to hex away All Evilness Everywhere: by declaring him "Liberal".

Nah, I thought. They’ve gone all-in on their Dear Leader and, I thought, there just is no way they can back down now.

But of course I forgot to factor in the fact that the core of the GOP is now almost entirely composed of the reprogrammable golem of the 27%.

And the 27% are congenitally incapable of even entertaining the idea that their dogma can possibly fail. Dogma trumps blood. Trumps the Constitution. Trumps causality. Trumps truth. Trumps Reality itself, because like the Stalinists they so eeriely resemble, burned onto their motherboards is the ineradicably fanatical belief that Conservativism cannot Fail; Conservativism can only Be Failed.

These are junk citizens. Democracy’s Left Behindmost, and if you tell ‘em Dubya is the Second Coming of Reagan on Monday, they’ll cheer until their throats burst.

Then turn right around on Tuesday and tell ‘em he is a Sekrit Liberal, and they’ll boo just as loudly.

Tell ‘em on Wednesday that Dubya never existed and that Democrats are somehow magically to blame for Iraq and they’ll spaz out in wingnut ecstasy, jizz their Underoos, and start speaking in tongues.

Tell ‘em on Thursday that we are at war with Eastasia -- that we have always been at war with Eastasia – and they will march this country into the sea singing “Let The Eagle Soar”.

And so it has been on the Right for months now (example here) but, you might well ask, what Useful “Liberal” Idiot, could possibly be relied on to fall into line with this latest Conservative Lie so that the rest of the scuttlefish Right can stand on their hind legs and howl “You see! Libruls think Dubya’s a Librul too!”?

Why none other that Richard “I know funny and Stephen Colbert is not funny” Cohen.

Let the revisionism begin!

Bush the Neoliberal
By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, May 29, 2007; A13
Years ago, someone coined the term "neoliberal." I was never sure what it meant, and it has since fallen into disuse, but whatever the case, I'd like to revive (and mangle) the term and apply it -- brace yourself -- to George W. Bush. He's more liberal than you might think.

You recoil, I know. After all, the conventional wisdom is that Bush is the most conservative of all presidents, an advocate of limited government, minimal taxes and, when it comes to the quintessentially liberal concern with civil liberties, the man who gave us the twin black eyes of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. It's an appalling record.

But consider this: An overriding principle of conservatism is to limit the role and influence of the federal government.
…

No. It’s not. It used to be a thousand years ago before the GOP was swallowed whole by Christopaths, Corporatists and Segregationists.

To continue to pretend otherwise says vastly more about the incredible intellectual dishonesty of Mr. Cohen than is says about anything having to do with what Liberal or Conservative means in the 21st Century.

Mr. Cohen then waxes rhapsodic about George Bush’s “liberal” attitudes towards education (Since when has a fetish for harshly conformist, uniform, teaching-to-the-test approach to learning been “liberal”?) and immigration, until finally his laserlike vision lands on Dubya’s Iraqi Catastrophe and why his motives were really “liberal”.

Cohen continues...

…
Allow me to make the case that this is also true when it comes to Iraq. I acknowledge that the war is a catastrophic mistake and was incompetently managed. But if you don't think it was waged on behalf of oil or empire, then one reason for our involvement was an attempt to do some good -- rid the world of a really bad guy and make life better for Iraqis and others in the region.

This "liberal" intent may have left Dick Cheney cold and found Don Rumsfeld indifferent, but it appealed to Bush and it showed in his rhetoric and body language.
…

"But if you don't think it was waged on behalf of oil or empire..." ?

Are you fucking kidding me?

Who but the most diehard wingnut believes that we went to war primarily for other, nobler reasons? Who but the most hard-core Bush regime dead-ender could parse the despicable lies we were told to trick us into Iraq and reach any other conclusion?

Cohen then completes this bleat-and-switch by awkwardly swiping the disaster that is Bush Presidency from the Temple of Ronnie,

running like hell, and lobbing the stinking, unequaled failure that is this Administatration’s record into my back yard.

Bush's neoliberal instincts have come a cropper across the board.
…

Fuck you, Cohen.

Nush/Cheney was the proud choice of the Right in 2000. They eagerly rode Dubya's Cornucopial Codpiece to victory in 2002, and knowing exactly who and what he was, they stood loudly and proudly with him in 2004 while he used every filthy scam in Conservative Karl Rove’s capacious witchbag to jam the worst Administration in American history back onto the throne.

And for good measure, Conservatives sent him back to complete his project of destroying the Federal Government with yet another rubber stamp Ultra Conservative Congress to drive the getaway car and act as his loyal footstool and bidet.

Starting with the Southern Strategy, Consertativism in American has long since devolved into nothing but braying, militant Ignorance, Racism and Fear plowing an arrow-straight furrow towards fascism in harness with Christopathic Fanaticism.

Reagan is their God. Dubya is his Prophet.

And, Mr. Cohen, the kindest thing that can be said of anyone who tries to gin up some ridiculous red herring that makes it easier for Conservatives to slip out of the noose they themselves spent 30 years weaving is that he is a blithering idiot.