|
W’s “malaise” moment?
I will never forget watching Jimmy Carter’s ill-fated 1979 speech in which he said that America was suffering from a deep moral crisis, and that the solution to this crisis was a Manhattan Project-type development of shale oil, an endeavor he said we must treat as the moral equivalent of war. The speech, afterward dubbed the “malaise speech” (though Carter had not used the word “malaise”), seemed so ludicrous and desperate, not only in its content but its delivery, that Carter never recovered. People stopped taking him seriously. Has George W. Bush just had his malaise moment? Not that Bush is talking about a national crisis of confidence, but that he has, like Carter, made himself into a figure that can’t be taken seriously. I’m referring to his statement this week that he seeks the eventual expulsion of “every single” illegal alien from the United States, a goal he announced even as he continues to press for a six year “temporary” amnesty for illegal aliens already in the U.S., which, of course, would mean that Bush’s promised drive to rid America of illegals couldn’t commence until he had left office. Thus Bush’s statement is even more ludicrous than Carter’s. At least Carter actually believed in developing alternative energy sources, while Bush, of course, is the most pro-open borders and pro-illegal aliens president the U.S. has ever had. The announcement, moreover, is a transparent ploy to win back conservatives who are in rebellion over the Harriet Miers nomination. For Bush to declare that he intends to remove every single illegal alien from the U.S. is as believable as if President Clinton had said that he wanted to re-impose Victorian morality on the Western world. Carl Simpson writes:
Only the most dedicated followers of the conservatives’ Jim Jones are willing to view his promise to deport all illegals as anything other than a bizarrely Clintonesque attempt at pandering to his base. First we legalize them all, then we deport all the illegals! Even the majority of Freepers, traditionally a hotbead of Bush worship (though perhaps less than Lucianne.com’s gang), see through this utterly laughable ploy.A reader writes: “If this thread at Free Republic is any indication, then perhaps the jig is up for Bush. The level of ridicule and contempt is almost complete.” There are indeed many insightful and witty comments at the Free Republic thread. It is well worth perusing. I haven’t found a Lucianne thread commenting on the Bush immigration statement, but this thread (online for only a couple of days, here is a permanent file of it that I’ve saved) shows that L-dotters have had it with Bush. It is quite amazing. It is as though all the discrete gripes they had had with him over the years, from his expansion of government handouts to his open-borders policy to his legitimation of Clinton, all those things that they had put on hold in the interests of party loyalty, have suddenly, in a true paradigm shift, come together into the picture of a man who is, they now realize, not on their side. Which is, by the way, exactly what I said about him in “My Bush Epiphany,” published in September 2000. So there will be no going back to the status quo ante Miers. Once you have seen something, you can’t go back to not seeing it. And that is what has happened with the conservatives and Bush.
If you think it doesn’t feel good to hear scads of mainstream conservatives suddenly saying what I’ve been crying in the wilderness for the last five years, think again. Email entry |