I don't blame Bush himself. I blame Republicanism itself.

[gulliver]

Don't get me wrong, I completely loathe George W. Bush. But it took a lot of help to make him what he is and to let him do what he has done. For the horrible damage we have suffered, the mangling of our values, the sadism and stupidity of both our foreign and domestic policy, the fiscal insanity in the public and private sector, the division and wreckage of our social compacts...I blame Republicanism.

Republicanism has rotted. Like a fish, it has rotted from the head down. Republicanism's most influential leaders are its most rotten. It's most influential ideas, superficially sell-able as we have had the misfortune to learn, are stupid, shortsighted, and mean.

Republicanism shouldn't be talking any more. It should be face down on its knees begging for forgiveness. The only thing the world needs to hear from Republicanism for the foreseeable future is "I'm sorry." Bush, Cheney and Rove are the apotheosis of Republicanism, the crazed, confused, nihilistic, vapid, misanthropic ism-curse we have been enduring. These men and their servants are Republicanism's true avatars and its icons set in stone.

Anyone who still wears a Republican T-shirt needs their soul audited and their head examined.

<end rant>

[mzmolly]

1. Absolutely.

"Republicanism" is the problem, not simply Bush/Cheney.

[supernova]

2. Completely agree

Anybody who thinks it's OK to vote for people to be in charge of government when their sole selling point is government is the problem, needs to be in a psych ward.

[Union Thug]

3. Bush is an expression of the problem. The problem is

conservatism (and this, more than anything else, involves their advocacy of 'free market capitalism.')

[napi21]

4. YEP! He just happen to be the first Pub to be in the position of

generating the perfect storm. It was quite a few years ago that Grover said "We need to downsize gov't to a size where we can drown it in a bathtub!" Shrub managed to get the Presidency, an evil and arrogant VP, a Pub House & a Pub Senate. Collectively, they are well on the way to doing just that!

[Robbien]

5. I blame free market thinkers and their think tanks

The Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the American Enterprise Institute and the EU Stockholm Network who all built a network of that helped them gain political power.

This is not just limited to GOPers. Plenty of these wrongheaded ideas are also on the march in the Democratic party and across the globe.

Anti-government, Anti-environment, Anti-middle class.

Greed is good so say they all.

[whosinpower]

8. It is the love of money

That will destroy mankind's potential.

[pansypoo53219]

6. i have a card from the 60's giving the republican principles or the party

somewhere around Nixon it seriously jumped the rails to insanity church land.

the party has been taken over by pod people.

[LaurenG]

7. His ancestors trained him well

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2474780

Especially last link in (the link above) bobthedrummers post
http://www.spectrezine.org/resist/bush.htm