My View
Who does Bush really want to be president?
By Robert R Barney
Laugh as you may, but those who have read my commentaries before know that I have never considered George Bush a “Reagan” Republican. In the past, I have even made the claim that nobody has done more for the democrats than George Bush, and maybe he was truly a democrat covert agent! Reagan speech writer, Peggy Noonan wrote several months ago that President Bush has harmed the party more than Richard Nixon. She wrote several months ago that Bush single-handily destroyed the Republican Party. Richard Nixon never did that!
Let's examine many Bush supporters and how they have fled from McCain to support Obama. Yes, you read that correctly. Are you aware that T. Boone Pickens, the oil guy telling us to get off oil for wind power was the guy who paid for the swift boat ads for Bush? Now, he is sounding like Al Gore! His TV ads fail to mention that he has a personal stake in his altruism, he is building the largest windmill operation in the world in Texas. The ad also doesn't state real facts about the “oilman”. Pickens made the majority of his wealth in a scheme called “greenmailing”. The term depicts a type of corporate blackmail in which a substantial investor purchases stock and intimidates to take over a company. His real intention, though, is solely to scare management so that it will buy back his shares at a price that is higher than the market value of the stock. In short, one buys into a company with enough stock to cause trouble so that they get “bought off” by the board.
Another recent Obama supporter is Tom Bernstein, who went to Yale University with Bush and co-owned the Texas Rangers baseball team with him. In 2004 he gave the maximum 2,000 to the president's reelection campaign and gave 50,000 to the RNC. This year he is changing his support to Obama. He is one of numerous former Bush disciples who find the democrat newcomer appealing.
Matthew Dowd, Bush's chief campaign strategist in 2004, declared recently that he was disenchanted with the war in Iraq and the president's “my way or the highway” way of leadership. He is the first member of Bush's inner circle to condemn the leader's performance in office. Is this truly a new found view, or one that must be looked at through skeptical eyes? For instance, Robert Kagan, a leading neoconservative and co-founder of the Project for the New American Century in the late 1990s, that called for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Disagreements on the war have not stopped John Martin, a Navy reservist and founder of the website Republicans for Obama, from supporting the antiwar senator. He joined the military after the Iraq war and is about to be deployed to Afghanistan. “I disagree with Obama on the war, but I don't genuinely think it is a test of his patriotism,” Martin says. “Obama has a message of hope for the country.” Yeah, right!
Bankers have also been oiling Obama's campaign. John Canning, a “Bush pioneer” and investment banker that raised $100,000 Bush in 2004, has given up on the Republicans. “I know lots of my friends in this business are disenchanted and are definitely looking for something different,” he said.
Maybe this explains the sudden switch by Obama to Bush policies which are making the liberal left mad. He is reaching out to evangelical voters by now supporting Bush plans that expand programs steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and in a move sure to cause controversy, support some ability to hire and fire based on faith. This flip flop on Obama's part has also been compared to the Bush ways of governing. “To some extent I will agree with you. Obama supporters do seem to blindly believe everything he says, just like Bush supporters,” says a democratic pundit who admitted that Obama and not McCain may represent four more years of Bush! Maybe Bush really meant all those nasty things he said about John McCain in 2000! What's your take?
