I’ve said before, that I think that George W. Bush was a fundamentally decent person, who was unfortunately stupid enough to be easily manipulated by evil people.
Except for his frat-boy behavior. ISTR reports of him walking around the White House naked from the waist down, except for a sock over his dick. This was common enough that Derf Backderf featured such an occurrence in his The City strip.
My memories of W during his time in office oscillate between “amiable doofus who knows he’s out of his depth” and “bully with a batch of enablers.” Besides ignoring warnings about 9/11 and then launching the Iraq war, my biggest issue with him at the time was the creepy religious undertone to his administration, how you practically couldn’t work for the Gonzales justice department unless you were Born Again (exaggerating, but not by much). His general dimwittedness was legendary, but it seems like a golden age now.
Since he left the White House, that dimwittedness seems to be some actual mental decline. While he was always quite oblivious, when the ice bucket challenge was going around a few years back, he participated on camera. As it was widely pointed out, maybe not the best image for a guy whose administration was tarnished by their rather joyously zealous embrace of torture.
Then there was the time he attended a memorial service for some shooting victims in Dallas, swaying back and forth almost like he was dancing to The Battle Hymn of the Republic. Michelle Obama was holding his hand on one side and I seem to remember her tugging at it and trying to reel him in.
And then…there was the speech he gave a couple of years ago in which he spoke of "the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq — I mean of Ukraine " Then he smirked, shrugged, and said “Hey, I’m 75.”
By that point the GOP was in full cult mode and already had no more use for someone who at least pretended he’d become president for more than settling vendettas (aside, fo course for “Saddam tried to kill my daddy!”) but if they’d still been holding on to sanity, they would have been unpersoning him effectively enough.
W answered questions about Obama’s policies with, “The president deserves my silence”. Remarkably (for a Republican) he has kept that vow even when asked about Trump or Biden’s policy. Despite all his shortcomings, Bush knows how to read a room, and that room has collectively decided they don’t really care what he thinks.
Shades of Stalinist Russia. I wish the GQP would make up its mind which authoritarian it wishes to emulate.
George W. Bush left office with a bad economy, mounting deficits, and U.S. troops still looking for WMDs in Iraq. Republicans can’t accept that their policies led to those outcomes, so they blame the man, cast him into the dustbin of history, then vote for candidates with more of the same policies.
GWB had the sort of folksy personality that played well with Republican voters for about 30 years, beginning with the rise of Reagan on the national stage in the mid-1970s. That period also coincided with the rise of Limbaugh, Gingrich, Fox News, and various other mouth foamers, but the Republican rank-and-file in that era were happy to have tough-talking, but well-mannered Andy Taylor-esque establishment types in charge.
However, when GWB’s administration ended in failure - the Iraq War a quagmire with no WMDs to be found, the economy in the dumps, huge deficits - conservatives, rather than doing any real introspection, simply claimed he wasn’t a real conservative, and started pretending he didn’t exist, so much so, that one could be forgiven for thinking a Democrat was in charge from 2001-2009.
And almost immediately after Bush left office, you had the rise of the Tea Party, and elected officials in the GOP saw they could get a lot of mileage from flinging red meat to the masses. Republican leaders, rather than push back on the crazies, seemed only to encourage their more wild-eyed tendencies. By the time Trump came along, the party was ripe for takeover by a loud, obnoxious, conspiracy theory-spewing asshole.
As awful as GWB was as president, it’s nevertheless quaint to look back on a time when someone who had as much respect as he did for the basic traditions and norms of our political system could become the Republican standard-bearer. This is a guy who called Islam a peaceful religion after 9/11, who tried pushing for sensible immigration reform (only to by stymied by his own party), who, by all accounts, was fairly cooperative with Obama’s transition team. No wonder Republicans treat him as persona-non-grata today.
Republicans went from liking Jimmy Stewart to liking shock jocks.
Yes. But it wasn’t just who they like that changed, it’s who they are. Let me stretch the analogy of Andy Taylor who was mentioned earlier in the thread. The Republican base used to be Aunt Bee. Now the Republican base is Eric Cartman, and the Eric Cartmans of the world aren’t the type to support someone like Bush the Younger.
At this point I feel about GWB the way that P. J. O’Rourke felt about Hillary Clinton. When he endorsed her campaign in 2016, he said, “She’s wrong about absolutely everything, but she’s wrong within normal parameters.”
Yeah, he was a bit too quiet about Trump. Should have spoken out more, but I never put a lot of confidence in W. Bush to do the right thing(and I voted for him in 2000).
He didn’t vote for Trump, which is really saying something about how bad Trump must be.
Dick Cheney, however, has aggressively spoken out against Trump, but he has even less influence in the “Republican” Part of today. Quote intentional
Note: I was wrong in 2000. It was the wrong vote and I would vote Al Gore today if I could go back.
This is true, IMHO. And rather than learning something from the mistakes, they went harder to the right and to the stupid - enter Sarah Palin.
Has he? I don’t doubt you, but I’m trying to recall if I have read anything of that. Frankly, given how Cheney was masterminded the W administration to be more aggressive against America’s (perceived) enemies, I would think he would approve of tRump’s “My Way or I’ll Sic My Rottweilers On You” stance. Maybe Cheney’s criticisms are in the line of “You’re supposed to be subtle about it!”
He has. In 2022, he did an ad in support of his daughter Liz’s congressional re-election bid:
Here is a clip:
Oh? Is that the stance that he’s taken against America’s enemies in Russia and North Korea? I’ve clearly missed something.
(Trump doesn’t give a rat’s ass about America’s enemies, he’s in it for himself and doesn’t even pretend otherwise.)
I was thinking more along the lines of enemies in the Middle East – particularly those sitting on top of vast amounts of petroleum.
Well, he did bomb the shit out of Yemen, more than all other US presidents in history put together, and assassinated an Iranian military leader in Iraq, but that doesn’t outweigh the fact that he literally fanboyed all over most of Bush’s “Axis of Evil”. (Which I suspect was actually Cheney’s thing.)
Y’know, that bit with someone here not having noticed Cheney’s posture on Trump points to part of what happens with former officials. As soon as they are no longer in a position of exerting real authority, or the news shows are not shoving them in your face every day, to a large segment of the public they become just background noise.
Which is where Trump is supposed to be. 
The damn political media didn’t move on to next repulican bozo in order to keep their revenue stream running because they got nothing else.