The secret source of Bush’s serenity (hint: it’s not in his stars, but in ourselves)

Carol Iannone writes:

Regarding Peggy Noonan’s criticism of President Bush’s weirdly upbeat manner, I realized after Bush’s press conference last week that the reason he is so confident and so insensible is that he has no real opposition. The left wing Democrats are almost totally useless as an opposition party due to their defeatism and their anti-American attitudes. It is easy for Mary Matalin, Tony Snow and other Bush spokesmen to act as if they are dealing with a crowd of people not that far removed from the long-haired, dope-smoking Sixties leftovers caricatured by Rush Limbaugh. The only people who can in general offer real, useful, cogent criticism are conservatives, as they showed during the immigration debate. But the conservative movement has been so compromised in trying to stay on board with the Bush Administration on most other issues that they have been virtually neutered as a potential loyal opposition. Or, rather, they’ve been pretty loyal, but the opposition part has been severely muted. Facing no forceful intellectual challenge from any mainstream source, Bush feels free and easy to go on speaking his nonsense and enjoying his job.

The conservative’s lack of will to question Bush makes me fearful that another liberal or moderate Republican succeeding Bush as president could finish off conservatism completely. Already you can see the conservatives’ white flags going up on one issue after another when it comes to the most liberal Republican candidate, Giuliani. But if a Democrat were elected in ‘08, conservatives would reorganize and be revitalized and become again the important force that they are meant to be, and that is so crucially necessary for the welfare of our country and our way of life. Meanwhile, conservatives could at least rally around the more conservative Republican candidates now in the running.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 18, 2007 08:15 AM | Send