"George W. Bush destroyed the Republican Party, by which I mean he sundered it, broke its constituent pieces apart and set them against each other," Peggy Noonan writes in Friday's Wall Street Journal. "He did this on spending, the size of government, war, the ability to prosecute war, immigration and other issues." Ditto, but isn't the eighth year of a presidency a bit late to recognize this? Peggy Noonan, if you remember, took leave of her job at the Wall Street Journal to campaign for Republicans in 2004. No Child Left Behind, the prescription-drug giveaway, the Iraq mess, the amnesty bill--the most offensive items for conservatives on Bush's agenda--all were apparent in his first term. Why not oppose Bush, rather than campaign for him, when it mattered?

Alas, the truth doesn't crystalize for everyone at the same time. My disillusionment with Bush came around, say, 1999--when he announced that he would be running for president. Put another way, I never was disillusioned because I never expected much. He said that education, an area the previous party platform had promised to relegate to the states and localities, was his top federal priority and promised an enormous expansion of Medicare. Like Mike Huckabee, he generally had the right ideas on social issues but has no grounding on anything else.

For Noonan, the truth crystalized about six years later. "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," Noonan wrote last year. "This was at once so utopian and so aggressive that it shocked me." At the time, she memorably wrote of the speech: "It seemed a document produced by a White House on a mission. The United States, the speech said, has put the world on notice: Good governments that are just to their people are our friends, and those that are not are, essentially, not. We know the way: democracy.... The most moving speeches summon us to the cause of what is actually possible. Perfection in the life of man on earth is not."

But that wasn't Noonan in the hysteria of the Iraq invasion: "We are about to startle and reorder the world. We are going to win this thing, and in the winning of it we are going to reinspire civilized people across the globe. We're going to give the world a lift." In those heady days, George W. Bush was "President Backbone" and "The Right Man." Bush's big-government "conservatism" didn't matter according to Noonan. "Why will the base forgive Mr. Bush? Because they know it's all about the war."

Now that experience has shown the war to be a disaster rarely paralelled in the annals of American foreign policy, and Bush's popularity nears historic presidential lows, it's no longer "all about the war." The previously overlooked Bush Administration blunders now glare. But it's too late to stop No Child Left Behind, the Medicare expansion, federal funding of research on aborted fetuses, anti-First Amendment campaign finance laws, nationalization of airport security, and the other liberal causes enacted by the Bush Administration and a servile Republican Congress. It's not too late to get on the right side of history. Better late than never, I guess.

You're right of course and I think that many of us start out politically aloof and then come to the discovery (usually after the fact) that our chosen is less than expected. I'll admit that I've been guilty of not knowing much about a candidate only to be shocked 'SHOCKED!' that they are not who I thought they were. I’ll further admit that it comes down to some laziness.

All one can do is pay more attention and really scrutinize their prospective choice more carefully.

But is there really a perfect candidate? Was there ever? Even a supposed Conservative God like Ronald Reagan had his flaws. It could certainly be argued that he evolved to be a better President in office than expected. But, who knew?

The question was and is: would it have been better to have Gore or Kerry in the White House? I’m not a big Bush fan but I think the answer is no.

The same goes for today as both parties have relatively weak fields of talent. Some say that the Republican Party needs to wake up and maybe needs a purge and that the only way to do that is for Republicans to stay home and let any one of the bad Democrat candidates get the win and screw the country for four years. Pretty risky I think.

Nope, this election will be another one where the voting will be against the ‘lesser of the two’ who could potentially do the most damage. Our hope will be if the next President is a Republican that, like Reagan, he evolves in the job.

She is a fraud and a phony. Just another "ex-" liberal, Democrat "latter-day" conservative who supposedly moved right when the left got to crazy for them. She has always tended to be hysterical in her musings and her gushing reaction to Huckabee's fascist response to Dr. Paul in that one debate ("when we male a mistake we make it as one nation") puts the lie to her change of heart on the Bush Doctrine.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110010568

"The question was and is: would it have been better to have Gore or Kerry in the White House? I’m not a big Bush fan but I think the answer is no." - asdf

Would Gore have invaded Iraq? Certainly not.

Would Gore have been worse than Bush on expanding the government? I don't see how he possibly could have been, Bush has expanded the government more than any president since LBJ.

Would Gore have eroded civil liberties? Don't see much reason to believe he would have.

Kerry its more open to argument, but I certainly believe we would probably have been better off if Gore had won in 2000.

The problem with the so-called conservative movement is that it is entirely a fixed appendage of the Republican Party. Now, the conservative movement can include party activists -- from either party -- but it should not degrade itself down to the level of partisanship. Can anyone really distinguish between a conservative thinker and a Republican party activist? We have reached a point where conservatism is nothing more than the latest Republican talking points. The conservative movement has become entirely absorbed by the Republican party. Ann Coulter's latest travesty _If Democrats had any brains, they'd be Republicans_, highlights the fact that she doesn't distinguish between being a Republican and being a conservative. Republican and conservative are now synonymous. People should know that when they read Ann Coulter, or listen to Rush Limbaugh, they are getting the opinions that defend the interests of the Republican Party, not conservatism.

I don't think much will change though. Hopefully, the mouthpieces of "conservatism" will eventually fade and new voices -- ones not beholden to political parties -- will emerge.

Its difficult to praise Bush but try as I might I can't find his opposition offering any kind of reasonable alternatives. Amnesty-sure I hated it but what did the dims offer as an option-open borders?

Fiscal responsibility-sure Bush is a disaster but name one dim who offered to cut spending?

The bottom line is you asked for a RINO and you got one. Wjhat did you expect?

We have lots of RINOsnow running for the GOP I can't see a single real conservative in the running. So the best we can expect is phase II of Bushies Adventure. But I am not sure I want to witness the Hildabeast and Osama New Politboro.

Well, we’ll never really know for sure now will we?

But you think it not a better thing that Bush is in the White House and not Gore?

Whether you agree with our foray into Iraq or not, however misguided, at least Bush took some action. Maybe if Gore under Clinton for eight years had been paying attention, 9/11 might not have developed and we wouldn’t be talking about Iraq today.

Throw in the fact that Gore is a big Government leftist and I would expect that we might have seen it grow even more under fat Al along with diving into Kyoto, pushing very expensive ‘Green’ Government programs and nominating way left judges.

Bush is not bargain but after eight years of Clinton, four of Gore would have been more of a disaster.

The government has grown more under George Bush than Bill Clinton, so there is no reason to conclude that Al Gore would be any worse on fiscal issues -- evidence suggests he would probably be better.

Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, so even if Clinton and Gore were out to lunch in 1990s that still doesn't suggest that a Gore presidency would be worse. In fact, I think it would've been much better.

What evidence?

No one knows for sure how a Gore presidency or a Kerry presidency would have turned out. They never happened. What is known is, to date, the Bush presidency has been very bad over all. Ultimately a leader is not judged by at least taking action. The leader is judged by what they actually accomplish not by what they intend to accomplish. Th accomplishments of the Bush Administration have been sorely lacking. If the Bush presidency ended today, he would likely be remembered as the worst president in American history by far. It is difficult for me to envision Bush or his administration being willing or able to do any thing to alter this situation.

Which ever candidate wins the next election it is vitally important that they succeed. America's position in the world as well as its very survival is extremely precarious right now. We cannot afford another failed presidency.

The Clinton years were more fiscally responsible than the Bush years. So if Al Gore continued the Clinton "legacy" then he would've been a far better president.

Bill Clinton? You mean the guy who allowed corporate espionage by the Chinese (who donated heavily to his campaigns) to go uninterrupted on a grant scale and who was completely out to lunch on national security and who disputed our sovereignty in place of the Global Economy? The guy who foisted the biggest tax increase in history on the American people? The guy who was impeached because he couldn’t keep his little slick willy in his drawers and who took his job so seriously that he was more busy chasing chicks than doing the most important job on the planet? That Bill Clinton?? I could go on.

So, tell me again, what was it that Gore ever did under the Clinton regime?

Anyway, if it weren’t for Ross Perot and Bob Dole (the John McCain of his time), this particular posting wouldn’t be necessary.