The former president George W Bush recently gave a speech and it's been taken by some people to be anti Trump in nature. I agree, I think it's also very anti-Trump but it's also anti-the left as well. I did not read the entire speech but the clips I've read are pretty clear. I wonder why Bush is choosing to speak out against Trump right now while he kept his mouth shut during the eight years of the Obama presidency.
W has always been much smarter and a much better man than his adversaries on the left and right give him credit for. He's also a master politician who knows which way the wind is blowing. Obama stuck his head in the sand when the GOP made massive electoral gains during the later years of his presidency, while Bush admitted defeat in 2006 when the democrats made the same gains. W knows that Trump is a weak president who the establishment hates. So if he critiques him, then W will be back in the good graces of the elite-for a time. They'll turn on him the moment they can.
He's a Bush, and the one thing you can count on them for is decent behavior. There is no way Bush would have attacked his rivals the same way Trump did in the 2016 primary race. That was also his fatal flaw-he allowed the left to attack and define him and tried his best to rise above it instead of fighting back.
Trump is the opposite. He lacks the manners, class, and grace that Bush has. That's a good thing in some ways-in the real world you need to learn how to punch back-but it's a bad thing as well. You need to learn to pick your battles.
I think the Bush's and John McCains of the GOP generally speak up more towards perceived threats within their own party than against Democrats. After all, taking the country and its government in a direction you want it to go starts at the party level. A toxic figure in the GOP will do far more damage to the right than the Democrats ever could.
ReplyDeleteI used to agree with you, but no longer. A toxic figure won the presidency and carried the GOP to victory in the house/senate. It remains to be seen how that'll work in the long term. The Trump victory took political science and shred it to pieces. Remember, everyone-literally everyone-thought Hillary would win in a landslide.
Delete