Poll: Middle class voters abandoning GOP

[mawilson 2,133]

How does one become a Bushbot theoretically without having grown up in the U.S.?

A Bushbot is someone who supports Bush?

Many people voted for Bush simply because they didn't like the other options.

It doesn't mean they liked him or agreed with all his policy decisions.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

How does one become a Bushbot theoretically without having grown up in the U.S.?

A Bushbot is someone who supports Bush?

Many people voted for Bush simply because they didn't like the other options.

It doesn't mean they liked him or agreed with all his policy decisions.

bushbot

Noun: (i) A dupe who falls hook, bobber and pole for the paradoxical utterances of George W. Bush; (ii) a person who blindly and unhestitatingly accepts political and moral "truths" as concocted and served up by the Bush Administration; (iii) one who appreciates warmongers and is willing to facilitate WWIII.

Bushbots believe:

1. The United States should get out of the United Nations, and our highest national priority is enforcing U.N. resolutions against Iraq.

2. Jesus loves Bush and his -bots, but hates homosexuals and the Clintons.

3. Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush's daddy made war on him, a good guy when Cheney did business with him, and a bad guy when Bush decided to fulfill the neocons' wet-dream of taking over Iraq.

4. The best way to improve military morale is to praise the troops in speeches, while slashing veterans' benefits and combat pay.

5. A good way to fight terrorism is to belittle our long-time allies, then demand their cooperation and money.

6. A good way to make our country "strong" is to bankrupt it and weaken the middle class.

Bush: Let's clone up some more bushbots!

Bushbot: But cloning is immoral.

Bush: So?

Bushbot: Oh, I see your point.

[mawilson 2,133]

I doubt many people fit into this rather contrived definition, certainly not Infidel.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

I doubt many people fit into this rather contrived definition, certainly not Infidel.

or this definition...

Bushbot

Political chat room users who endlessly argue in favor of Bush Administration errors, no matter how much evidence is presented to them. When polls show 62% of the country hates Bush, bush bots will say it's "Liberal Spin" - even if the poll is reported by Bill O'Reilly on Fox News. If any media shows a body of an American Soldier or baby injured in Iraq, or reports on a crooked Abramov link to Bush or Cheney, that's treason.

They think that anything and everything Bush does is holy and good, they take all their talking points from gasbag Rush Limbaugh or Faux News.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I doubt many people fit into this rather contrived definition, certainly not Infidel.

He seems to be consistently against Democrats, not because of the merits (or lack of) of particular candidates but simply BECAUSE they are members of Democrat Party.

The Republicans, it seems, can do no wrong.

[Alex+R 0]

I doubt many people fit into this rather contrived definition, certainly not Infidel.

He seems to be consistently against Democrats, not because of the merits (or lack of) of particular candidates but simply BECAUSE they are members of Democrat Party.

The Republicans, it seems, can do no wrong.

And he spouts recycled propaganda as if it were an argument or a set of facts. One thing the right is very good at is coming up with catchphrases and simple concepts (i.e. flipflopper, 'liberal elite') and convincing their followers that those phrases are all the information they need to be informed on a particular issue.

It's funny when I hear the same unsubstantiated and completely false argument from three different people who don't know each other, using the same soundbites.

[mawilson 2,133]

or this definition...

Bushbot

Political chat room users who endlessly argue in favor of Bush Administration errors, no matter how much evidence is presented to them. When polls show 62% of the country hates Bush, bush bots will say it's "Liberal Spin" - even if the poll is reported by Bill O'Reilly on Fox News. If any media shows a body of an American Soldier or baby injured in Iraq, or reports on a crooked Abramov link to Bush or Cheney, that's treason.

They think that anything and everything Bush does is holy and good, they take all their talking points from gasbag Rush Limbaugh or Faux News.

How about this definition:

People who know that Bush is wrong, the Iraq war is illegal, the environment is suffering, yadda yadda

but they just don't give a ####### because they got tax breaks and the economy is going strong?

[Alex+R 0]

How about this definition:

People who know that Bush is wrong, the Iraq war is illegal, the environment is suffering, yadda yadda

but they just don't give a ####### because they got tax breaks and the economy is going strong?

I believe that's the definition of 'selfish'? With a dash of 'shortsighted'?

[one...two...tree 2,762]

or this definition...

Bushbot

Political chat room users who endlessly argue in favor of Bush Administration errors, no matter how much evidence is presented to them. When polls show 62% of the country hates Bush, bush bots will say it's "Liberal Spin" - even if the poll is reported by Bill O'Reilly on Fox News. If any media shows a body of an American Soldier or baby injured in Iraq, or reports on a crooked Abramov link to Bush or Cheney, that's treason.

They think that anything and everything Bush does is holy and good, they take all their talking points from gasbag Rush Limbaugh or Faux News.

How about this definition:

People who know that Bush is wrong, the Iraq war is illegal, the environment is suffering, yadda yadda

but they just don't give a ####### because they got tax breaks and the economy is going strong?

Most people are multidimensional as you demonstrated. The ones are who are one dimensional, however, are unable to see anyone else except as one dimensional. It's a dreadful affliction.

[Trompe le Monde 1,107]

People who know that Bush is wrong, the Iraq war is illegal, the environment is suffering, yadda yadda

but they just don't give a ####### because they got tax breaks and the economy is going strong?

They would probably be a garden variety republican, just not a bushbot -- there are many of them, but the Bushbots deny their existence and insist anyone who opposes Bush must be a "far left liberal". Bushbots would not vote for someone like Nixon because he was "too liberal"

[mawilson 2,133]

How about this definition:

People who know that Bush is wrong, the Iraq war is illegal, the environment is suffering, yadda yadda

but they just don't give a ####### because they got tax breaks and the economy is going strong?

I believe that's the definition of 'selfish'? With a dash of 'shortsighted'?

Sounds about right.

[ual777 0]

Both parties suck.

[Heracles 417]

The Republicans, it seems, can do no wrong.

Of course they make mistakes and there are lots of issues republicans have different views on. I have not seen republicans burning people who disagree with them. Joe Lieberman ring a bell.

Edited October 28, 2006 by Infidel

[one...two...tree 2,762]

The Republicans, it seems, can do no wrong.

Of course they make mistakes and there are lots of issues republicans have different views on. I have not seen republicans burning people who disagree with them. Joe Lieberman ring a bell.

Burn? What is your definition burn? Is that your gripe that Dems 'burn' whoever disagrees with them? What do you call it when a Republican dares to speak out against the Bush Administration? Treason?

....Mr. Bush, Meet Mr. Taft

My critics, Bush whimpered, "are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments related to Iraq's weapons programs."

No such thing ever happened. That bipartisan investigation -- the so-called "Phase II" probe into administration manipulation of pre-war intelligence -- is ongoing right now. It's taken this long to start because, as Laura Rozen reported in our October print issue, Senate intelligence committee chairman Pat Roberts dragged his feet; and, as Murray Waas reported in The National Journal online, once Roberts did haltingly begin the probe, ####### Cheney and his staff refused to turn over crucial documentation. The delays and stonewalls, of course, are exactly what led the Democrats to call the closed session of the Senate. The probe is finally proceeding -- but it sure hasn't "found" anything.

There is no other way to interpret Bush's sentence: It is a direct, unmediated, Nixonian lie. What kind of pathetic man would utter such a lie on Veterans' Day, when over 2,000 U.S. soldiers have died?

But what may be even more embarrassing is the old dissent-is-disloyalty saw: "These baseless attacks," Bush said, "send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will." In other words, criticizing my case for the war is giving comfort to the enemy.

Comfort to the enemy. Interesting phrase. It's been used before -- by a Republican; in fact, by "Mr. Republican," Robert A. Taft, who was speaking against the Roosevelt administration.

I wrote this up for Salon in 2002. But back then, before the Iraq War had even started and long before Democrats started growing a spine, no one paid attention. I'm not in the habit of recycling my hits, but this one is worth reintroducing -- not for what I wrote, but for the material I quoted.

Taft, the conservative Ohio senator who is a hero to many of today's conservatives, gave a speech at the Executive Club of Chicago in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. There are a number of paragraphs that are just grand, but here's the best one, which is worth quoting in full:

As a matter of general principle, I believe there can be no doubt that criticism in time of war is essential to the maintenance of any kind of democratic government ... too many people desire to suppress criticism simply because they think that it will give some comfort to the enemy to know that there is such criticism. If that comfort makes the enemy feel better for a few moments, they are welcome to it as far as I am concerned, because the maintenance of the right of criticism in the long run will do the country maintaining it a great deal more good than it will do the enemy, and will prevent mistakes which might otherwise occur.

Drink in those words. That's not William Fulbright two years into the Vietnam War. It's not Ted Kennedy last week. It's Mr. Republican, speaking -- when? Not mid-1943, or even March 1942. Taft delivered this speech ... on December 19, 1941!

That's right: Twelve days after the worst attack on American soil in the country's history, perhaps with bodies still floating in the harbor, the leader of the congressional opposition said to the president, we will question, we will probe, we will debate.

And he was right to do so. In fact, when I was researching this, I came across no evidence that Taft's assertion was even controversial. As I wrote in Salon: "Taft's speech hardly caused a ripple. If The New York Times covered it at all, it did so in a small enough way to escape my notice as I looked through newspapers from that time. The Washington Post did mention the speech, but only at the tail end of a larger story that was mostly about [secretary of State Cordell] Hull. In the American political system that existed then, Taft's right to speak his mind on policy was a given, and no high-ranking Roosevelt official launched a major public attack."

Taft said much more in that speech. (The full speech doesn't seem to exist online; if you Google it, you get my piece and blogs linking to my piece. Some Democrat staffer ought to shoot over to the Madison Building and dig up the original.) And every word of it demolishes the Bush administration's horrendously un-American posture.

There is a carillon on the Capitol Hill grounds, 100 feet high, on the Senate side, named for Taft. Senators see it every day. Democratic senators might point it out to their Republican colleagues, and remind them of a time when their party was led by people who, whatever their ideology, understood the principles on which the United States was founded and honored them.

Michael Tomasky is the Prospect's executive editor.

[I'm Gone 60]

How does one become a Bushbot theoretically without having grown up in the U.S.?

A Bushbot is someone who supports Bush?

Many people voted for Bush simply because they didn't like the other options.

It doesn't mean they liked him or agreed with all his policy decisions.

a bad guy when Bush decided to fulfill the neocons' wet-dream of taking over Iraq.

Yeah and what are neocons.

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/lind1.html

The core group now in charge consists of neoconservative defense intellectuals. (They are called "neoconservatives" because many of them started off as anti-Stalinist leftists or liberals before moving to the far right.)

Most neoconservative defense intellectuals have their roots on the left, not the right. They are products of the influential Jewish-American sector of the Trotskyist movement of the 1930s and 1940s, which morphed into anti-communist liberalism between the 1950s and 1970s...

If Bush had picked true conservatives we wouldn't in the mess in Iraq.