How Bush Destroyed The Republican Party

By Sean Wilentz, from the 9/4/08 issue of Rolling Stone magazine. (link at bottom) Before we begin, I'd like to remind us all
of the Republican tickets in the Presidential elections of the past 50 years:
1952: Eisenhower/Nixon

1956: Eisenhower/Nixon
1960: Nixon/Cabot Lodge

1964: Goldwater/Miller
1968: Nixon/Agnew
1972: Nixon/Agnew
1976: Ford/Dole
1980: Reagan/Bush

1984: Reagan/Bush
1988: Bush/Quayle

1992: Bush/ Quayle

1996: Dole/Kemp
2000: Bush/Cheney

2004: Bush/Cheney
2008: McCain/Palin

I hope you enjoyed the pics of Bush looking like an idiot.

Highlights of the article:

1. In 2000, Bush ran on a platform that he would take action to combat global warming gasses. Before the summer of 2001 was over and Bush had been in office for more than 6 months, he abandoned that pledge.

2. In early 2002, Bush unveils project to "data mine" every Americans phone calls, emails, and medical records. (Joe Nacchio of Qwest refused to cooperate with this plan.)

3. Karl Rove worked as a dirty-trickster in '72 for Nixon, mastered inflammatory, wedge issue politics alongside Lee Atwater, the "Darth Vader" of the Republican party. Bush used these tactics to both get elected and govern.

4. Shortly after 9/11, Rove held a meeting with the RNC telling them that he intended to make the war a partisan issue, that the Democrats could not be trusted to keep the country safe. (Despite the Democrats having fought WW1, WW2, and the first 1/2 of Vietnam.)

5. Under the cover of an undeclared war (undeclared by Congress), Bush disregarded the Constitution, defied Congress, disregarded the law, spied on Americans without warrants, and tortured prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

6. 2004- Congress passes record $27.3B for 13,997 pork-barrel projects, a record.

7. 2004- White House caught censoring reports by gov't scientist on global warming.

8. Katrina- Bush refused to cut short his vacation when the hurricane hit, praised inept subordinates, ("You're doing a hell of a job, Brownie"), housed survivors in toxic trailers, and provided no meaningful Federal action for rebuilding the city. Years of Republican indifference to the urban poor came home to roost, along with a right-wing, anti-govt' ideology that trashed gov't agencies like FEMA by making them nests of cronyism.

9. Congress- instead of doing their job and showing political Independence as a separate branch of govt', the House and Senate rubber stamped the Bush agenda blindly loyally, free to engage in their own scandals and corruption. House majority whip DeLay's, "K Street Project"designed to enforce absolute deference from Washington lobbying firms to the Republican regime by compelling them to hire party activists in exchange for favorable legislation and loosened regulatory oversight for corporate clients. In attempting to replace the bipartisan lobbying ranks with GOP hardliners, DeLay tried to make the Republicans the only party corporate America would do business with, basically turning American businesses into exclusive ATMs for the Republican party, and turning Congress into a rubber stamp for corporate lobbyists.

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/22665562