Oh, they were angry, they just didn’t have a Democrat to blame it on!
Sullivan gets into the minds of rightwingers fluffing themselves into a tizzy over Obama after two months:
So these posturing opportunists didn’t just sit back and play partisan games as Bush made left-liberalism inevitable and, in some respects, necessary as a response to this crisis of negligence, they now get to rant and rage as if they and Bush had nothing to do with this. But they did. They were critically part of the problem, enabling and abetting most of the (unconservative) policies that gave us this crisis. Rather than address that fact, which would require a certain amount of introspection and self-criticism (when did you last hear that from Malkin or Reynolds?), they pump up the outrage.
Okay, Wall Street saw finance as a big fun gambling game, but the right saw running the entire country as a football game between Republicans and Democrats. Obama may make his mistakes, but at least he’s trying to govern the country with some sense of concern about the country.
There are those who try to game the system and those who do the hard work and trust in its rewards. The Bush administration made too much of its mission about The Permanent Republican Majority, and thus Republicans have been nearly shut out from the government. Obama seems to believe that if he can actually improve things for America and do a good job as president, the good will flow from his deeds. He believes these things are their own reward.
Republicans not only failed in their mission, but still haven’t come to terms with their problems, including a rust-bucket ideology still tuned for quick soundbites instead of grappling with the problems at hand. As has been said, they only know how to campaign…not how to govern.
-jb
Leave a Reply