The Death of American Conservatism

Yesterday I mentioned Sean Hannity, Ann "the man" Coulter and Rush Limbaugh. Today there is an article on NRO (for some reason still in my favorites list) from Victor Davis Hanson. Of all the Iraq war and overall Bush apologists, VDH was considered to have credibility. He's a professor of history and the classics. But he's just another blind partisan hack, and outright liar, as seen here:

Why is Obama’s grand talk already at odds with his actions?

For one reason, he is unduly empowered by a media that too often roots for him, rather than reporting critically about his actions.

Second, in the last two years, Obama and his supporters advanced two general gospels that are coming back to haunt him:

First, that George W. Bush was a terrible president, and that his toxic policies had done irreparable damage to the United States.

Second, and in contrast, that Obama was an entirely novel candidate with fresh hope-and-change ideas that would bring a renaissance to the United States and the world.

Bush’s Texas twang and occasionally tongue-tied expressions strengthened the first supposition. Obama’s youth, charm, and multiracial background enhanced the second.

But we are already seeing that simplistic polarity was infantile—even if the enthralled media desperately wanted to believe in the mythology.

In truth, Bush, after the left-wing hysteria over the 2003 invasion of Iraq, governed mostly as a traditional conservative rather than a reactionary extremist. Meanwhile, newcomer candidate Obama predictably embraced old-style and well-known liberal orthodoxy.

You see? Bush was a traditional conservative. Starting two foreign wars he couldn't end and socializing the US economy are traditional conservative things to do. The reason why people didn't like him was his Texas twang. (Come to think of it, that's why they hated Palin too, her hick accent! Nothing to do with anything else!)

What a disgrace. Outside of the snake handlers, who believes this stuff anymore? Bill Buckley is spinning in his grave for what has become of his magazine.