Well, this is certainly an oddity. I thought Barack Obama was the man who would be able to make our tattered orb whole again, with his gifted combination of the soaring rhetoric of Dr. King and the superior intellect of Khan Noonien Singh. Who would have thought that the left - the hard left - would be crying out for George Bush to return, to lend his moral clarity to the Ground Zero Mosque debate?
Byron York gives three examples - first, prototypical NYC bitter single girl Maureen Dowd(dy):
"It's time for W. to weigh in," writes the New York Times' Maureen Dowd. Bush, Dowd explains, understands that "you can't have an effective war against the terrorists if it is a war on Islam." Dowd finds it "odd" that Obama seems less sure on that matter. But to set things back on the right course, she says, "W. needs to get his bullhorn back out..."
Ah, the bullhorn. Rock beats scissors, scissors beats paper, paper beats rock, bullhorn smashes teleprompter....but even more surprising than Dowd is the pining from the always-angry, conservative-hating left wing-nut (and Washington Post stalwart) Eugene Robinson:
"I…would love to hear from former President Bush on this issue," Robinson wrote Tuesday in a Post chat session. "He held Ramadan iftar dinners in the White House as part of a much broader effort to show that our fight against the al-Qaeda murderers who attacked us on 9/11 was not a crusade against Islam. He was absolutely right on this point, and it would be helpful to hear his views."
And party-line hugging Peter Beinart? Oh, no! Et tu, Beinart?
Words I never thought I'd write: I pine for George W. Bush," Beinart wrote Tuesday in The Daily Beast. "Whatever his flaws, the man respected religion, all religion."
What's funny is, of course, that in retrospect George Bush is showing himself to be more intelligent and well spoken - two qualities that the media derided him mercilessly for allegedly lacking - than the lefty wet dream who succeeded him. What's scary is that the left-wing media is finally starting to admit it.
But it's a momentary phenomenon. All the above leftist longing for George W. Bush is based upon their belief that he would support their cause; that he would tell the 70% of bigoted Americans (who apparently only take orders from Texans) and the 63% of notoriously intolerant New Yorkers that building a mosque at Ground Zero is both acceptable and necessary in order to facilitate rapprochement with Islam.
Of course, George Bush was a pretty shrewd politician as well; I don't remember him leading the nation into a place that 70% of his countrymen rejected. I think that, despite his exaggerated over-appreciation for Islam, he would likely come out (gently) against the mosque, stating what so many decent Americans already know: tolerance is a two-way street, and you must show it to receive it.
Of course, the left's longing for W. would revert back to its usual disgusting form, and Bush Derangement Syndrome would re-surface almost immediately amongst the Left, not unlike the occasional embarrassing flare-up of a long-ago contracted STD....
But W. wouldn't mind, nor would the "70-percenters". The hatred of the hard left echos in the ears of Americans as praise. Why else would the #1 selling t-shirt at Obama's vacation getaway (Martha's Vineyard!) be the one with a smirking W. asking, "Miss me yet"?
We do, Mr. President, we do. And apparently, it's not just the Right and the Center anymore, either....
Wow. Another evil genius plot hatched on JournaList.
ReplyDeleteBush Baiting! they don't want him to chime in because they think he would agree with them, they want him to chime in so that no matter what he says the wolf pack can tear him apart, and take some of the very intense heat and deserved derision off of their anointed leader.
It's very transparent, but that does not matter because the base that they play too is very easily amused.