Peggy Noonan says the White House thinks its base is stupid. No wonder, with the way she's worshipped Bush for years.
Because, Peggy, that's what most Republicans have done since about 1960 (and, in the case of McCarthyites, well before that too). You shouldn't be so surprised - it's just that now you find yourself getting pissed on, rather than being the urinator.
On edit: she has the reactions of a dinosaur:
The beginning of my own sense of separation from the Bush administration came in January 2005, when the president declared that it is now the policy of the United States to eradicate tyranny in the world, and that the survival of American liberty is dependent on the liberty of every other nation.
Err, shouldn't that have been more like January 2002, with his "Axis of Evil" State of the Union speech? Whatever his real policies were before then, his public "I'm going to tell the world how to run itself, by force" ideas started then. If you'd been awake then, and not so busy damning any Republican opponents as unpatriotic yourself, you might have been able to use the one aspect of conservatism that can be useful - caution. Maybe that then would have made a difference in Nov 2004, you dumbass, Peggy.
For examples of how much Noonan is fooling herself, and lying to us, here's her reaction to that SotU (warning: have a bag handy. Your vomit will be copious):
The president was blunt in unveiling what will perhaps be known as the Bush Doctrine. And that is that the United States will no longer hope for the best in the world and respond only after being attacked; we will, instead, admit and act on the facts of the WMD era and actively search out our would-be killers wherever they are and whoever supports them and shut them down dead. The Clinton model of inadequate response based on ambivalent feeling is over; likewise the Bush I model of cat-herding coalitions and anxious diplomacy is over, though coalitions and diplomacy are nice, especially when everyone agrees to do the same thing at the same time in the same way.
...
Mr. Bush also is not by nature given to laundry-list speeches. One senses he understands that politicians who do them are trying to obscure the fact that they don't have a philosophy. They hope the adding up of program upon program will give the appearance of philosophy. But Mr. Bush has a philosophy. It is conservative. Freedom is the God-given and natural state of man, the government exists to protect man's freedom, and the greatest and most reliable freedom protector in all of human history is: us.
...
For a man who is famously not smart Mr. Bush certainly is smart. The president seems to me these days to be operating as a person of essentially two halves. The first half is Sheer Gut--a sharp and intelligent instinct, an inner shrewdness, an ability to see the bottom line, decide priorities, and see the difference between what is desired and what is needed. The second half, as the liberal pundit Bill Schneider said on CNN after the speech, is "character." People can tell, Mr. Schneider said, that when Mr. Bush says he's going to do something he actually means to do it.
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And it's also true that those who once dismissed Mr. Bush and now praise him are demonstrating an honesty and high mindedness that is wonderful to behold after the sapping, sour 1990s. It really is refreshing--literally refreshing--to have a president people admire and can follow cleanly again.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/p... That's beyond hero-worship - it's more like a new religion. For Peggy, Bush was The Chosen One.
