Reply #9: Pretty cool article.

[vickitulsa]

I liked this from it too:

William Kristol wrote in The Weekly Standard that Bush had proposed "an unknown and undistinguished figure . . . for an opening that conservatives worked for a generation to see filled with a jurist of high distinction. There is a gaping disproportion between the stakes associated with this vacancy and the stature of the person nominated to fill it." (Emphasis mine.)

Well, exactly. And the "gaping-disproportion" line would've been a great one to describe Bush's bid for the presidency in 2000, too. Kristol had unwittingly turned Harriet Miers into a George W. Bush surrogate. The concerns that couldn't be voiced about Bush now surfaced by proxy. The great discussion was finally on, and this time the conservative intelligentsia wasn't, well, playing dumb anymore. The whole electorate could see that the right-wing pundits had really known all along, but had kept mum on a calculated bet that they could adequately supervise the boy-president and keep him on the rails.

I remember thinking at the time when the Chimp put forth this lady and immediately drew such criticism from many Repugs for it that this WAS a very telling moment. I saw it too -- though I believe Iraq and Katrina were what truly undermined his presidency in a huge way. That, and the continuing exposure to his goofy, childishly petulant, arrogant and noxious public persona that grated on everyone's nerves by the bundle.


Still, has anyone else noticed that the sea change in the public's opinion of Dubya seemed to have come about very quickly when it finally came?

It was almost like one day he was everyone's darling and his approval ratings were way up there no matter how moronic he seemed to some of us, and then in a very few short months he had become an idiot, a naked "Emperor," a dunderhead who embarrassed ALL Americans when he tried to talk like he actually knew anything!

THAT's what I noticed most of all, starting a little over a year ago....