Circling the drain: Bush dynasty continues to impact Republican politics

[seafan]

Bush dynasty continues to impact Republican politics

By Alexander Burns
August 27, 2012



At the Republican National Convention in Detroit in 1980, George H.W. Bush appears with, from left, sons Marvin and Jeb, mother, Dorothy, wife, Barbara, and son George W. and his wife, Laura. The Bush dynasty has produced a generation’s worth of Republican strategists and party leaders who are active at every level of the 2012 campaign, a former Yale classmate of George W. Bush notes.
(Times, 1980)

At the Republican National Convention in Tampa this week, the Bush family will be everywhere and nowhere. For more than a generation, no family has done more to define Republican politics than the Bush clan. Since 1980, they've clocked a combined 20 years in the presidency and vice presidency, and 14 years in big-state governorships. They've launched three major wars and appointed four justices to the Supreme Court. But when the GOP coalition gathers in Tampa, only one member of the family will play a major role: former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. He had been set to speak today, but the cancellation of the day's convention proceedings because of Tropical Storm Isaac's impending arrival gives him a Thursday slot that won't be in prime time. The two Bushes who actually won the White House won't be attending at all. For George H.W. Bush, now 88, that's a result of his own fading physical strength. For his son George W. Bush, it's a reflection of his enduring political unpopularity.

Since 2008, Republicans have taken extraordinary pains to distance themselves from the legacy of Bush 43, whom many Americans identify closely with a global financial meltdown and the war in Iraq.

.....

Ironically, the entitlements debate is one of the clearest examples of how the Bush dynasty has influenced the 2012 campaign. For Republicans who fear voter backlash over Romney and Ryan's Medicare proposals, George W. Bush's failed — and politically costly — 2005 push for Social Security reform is a chilling memory.

.....

(Victor) Ashe, a former mayor of Knoxville, Tenn., (former ambassador to Poland and a Yale classmate of George W. Bush) suggested that the Bushes' most tangible and immediate legacy is a generation's worth of Republican strategists and party leaders who are active at every level of the 2012 campaign.

"I think the family certainly has a major legacy in the party and it manifests itself when you look at all the people who are running for office or holding office who are alumni of 12 years of Bush presidencies," he said.

Bush loyalists remain salted through our government, and have burrowed in deeply in the Departments of Justice, State and Defense in particular. Dick Cheney's "left-behinds" still are in a position to undermine a president who might entertain popular, progressive notions for the people's government, or to thwart a president who also might want to extricate the United States from military adventurism, undermining other countries' governments and taking ruthless control over their resources.

Embedded Bush loyalists continually clamp down on civil rights, voting rights, privacy rights and economic rights, which inevitably leads to more violent unrest in the populace.

Bush operatives also infest secretive outside spending groups to influence elections, such as American Crossroads (Karl Rove); Super Pacs created to buy politicians; Wall Street offices; the boardrooms of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries; and countless regulatory agencies that have seen their responsibility to protect the people, stripped.


These generations of Bush operatives continue to reproduce and spread malevolence, draining this country's lifeblood.



GOP ponders Bushes past and future, August 27, 2012


For more than a generation, no family has done more to define Republican politics. | Reuters


The stark truth:

No one family has done as much to undermine decades of our country's progress; to steadily extinguish the quality of life for people, and especially for the middle class; to mock scientific progress, public education and workers' unions; to impoverish people by putting into place policies to redistribute wealth upward into the hands of a privileged few; to diminish international respect for America and to foment international unrest and mistrust, and to embolden our enemies, as have those named Bush.



Now is the time to repudiate this Family and its cancerous influence over American politics and the lives of all of our people.


Once and for all time.

[No Elephants]

1. Bush dynasty? They must mean "Bush crime family."