George W. Bush Told Inner Circle He Worries About Being 'Last GOP Prez'

[kpete]

Wouldn't this be fitting:

Former President George W. Bush confided to his closest ex-aides that he fears Donald Trump's nomination could hasten the downfall of the Republican Party, according to a Politico story out Tuesday.

"I'm worried that I will be the last Republican President," Bush told former aides and advisers at an April reunion in Dallas.

The Bush family has chosen to remain on the sidelines of the GOP nominating contest after former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush left the race. Jeb Bush has said he won't vote for Trump, and neither George W. Bush nor his father, former President George H.W. Bush, are attending this week's convention.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/george-w-bush-worried-last-gop-president

[Xipe Totec]

1. We should be so lucky. nt

[Cirque du So-What]

2. Can't lay that entirely at tRump's feet, Dim Son

Your utter ineptitude surely plays a role.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

7. +1

What is it anyway about Republicans failing to take any "personal responsibility"? Republicans didn't want to claim to be Republicans for a time following his "reign of error".

[Va Lefty]

3. I remember George Carlin saying

He would always refer to him as Gov. Bush because "that's the last elected office he held in this country legally."

[Proud Liberal Dem]

4. I agree with him

To the extent that I accept his legitimacy as POTUS in the first place (which is to say that I don't).

[Iggo]

5. In his lifetime, at least. Yeah.

He'll never see another one.

[whatthehey]

6. There's always hope.

But I doubt they are going the way of the Whigs just yet. Even if they did Duverger's Law would simply mean another RW party would coalesce and may even be worse.

[zipplewrath]

13. Actually a "new" party

If history is any guide, the "new" party will come from the left. After the long period of ever rightward drifting politics in this country, the large opening is on the left. The conservatives have been exposed as an extremely small minority that only leveraged the "angry white guy" phenomenon under the guise of conservatism. The large opening is on the left, as was aptly demonstrated this year.

One must remember the democrats were originally the more "conservative" party when the GOP was born. Lincoln and Teddy were both fairly liberal even by modern standards. It was around the time of FDR that the real shift occurred, ultimately leading to the democrats becoming the liberal party, and desegregating the party in the early '60s. The alignment of the democrats with unions really moved them to the left. The GOP, from the time of FDR or so drifted steadily right ending up here, so far right they can't see the center.

Quite honestly, one can more easily see a new left party popping up, with much of the blue dog, conservative democrats joining with the old "Rockefeller republicans" under the democratic label. Not sure what the new party would be called, but goodness knows there's plenty of names available.

[whatthehey]

16. I suspect that underestimates the huge numbers of radical doctrinaire conservatives

Despite DU histrionics, the very furthest right conservative Democrat in Congress is light years away from the angry white male right who universally consider any Democrat to be an effeminate anti-American race traitor. I know this because much of DU reacts to me as if I were a Republican (and in reality I'm certainly more moderate than most here), and yet that's what the average blue collar white male barstool warmer thinks of me. Those folks would never meld even with a Blue Dog Dem party if their lives depended on it, because their own view of themselves as "real men" does depend on it. Excoriated routinely as a RWer here, I have far more politically in common with Kucinich, Sanders, etc than with even supposedly sane anti-Trump Republicans like Sasse. There are no Rockefeller Republicans in office any more. That's where the Blue Dogs came from once Reagan completed the transformation of the GOP into a reactionary know-nothing troop of blackshirts.

Are there sane, reasonable and reachable Republican voters though? Some, yes. The educated white mostly male contingent who pay little attention to politics beyond soundbites but retain class/family party allegiance that predates the rightward lurch. One small silver lining of Trump is that the media orgy surrounding him will eventually penetrate their apathy and make a bunch of them Democrats for now at least. But a political realignment there is small potatoes. Instead of given the loony right a 40% national floor it maybe makes that 35%, and that is the part that will never accept even DUs cartoonish view of oligarchic corporatist bankster neoliberal watercarrying DINO hawks or whatever the current epithets are as political allies.

So doesn't that leave us with a roughly equal split between Trump, Clinton and Sanders in today's terms if the Republicans implode? No. Because such a split is unworkable in a first past the post based electoral system. The vast sane majority of both the Clinton and Sanders groups would, as they indeed are doing within the current Dem party, eventually realize they are much closer to each other than the Trumpenstaffel and coalesce to beat them handily, resulting in a Dem party moved further to the right (yes Virginia that's definitely possible, as <15% consider mainstream Dems like Obama or Clinton to be too conservative) by the influx of those reachable Republicans and a truly brutally right wing Republican party or its successor (my guess would be something akin to Freedom Party or America First Party). They would retain relevancy by gerrymandered districts as well as immovably right wing states like WY, WV or AL, but have to await the next realignment, probably when the Dem big tent finally collapses and enough moderates peel off to make the Republican party rational again, to have a sniff at the WH.

[zipplewrath]

18. The size of the radical right is vastly over estimated

The crucial point here is that the moderate republican is a larger portion of that minority party than the tea party/wing nut group. Furthermore, and more critically, it's larger than the conservative portion. It's long been known that the problem is that it is the conservative group that votes in primaries. But in any case we're always talking about fractions of a MINORITY party. Someone some day is going to figure out that there is a potential majority of conservative democrats AND moderate republicans. And that group will still get SOME of the wing nut, anyone but a liberal, crowd to vote for them. It's all in the "independents" and that ever shifting group of fence sitters.

But be honest, wouldn't ya rather have a national election between say Jim Webb and Russ Feingold instead of between Ted Cruz and... well... anyone?

[SunSeeker]

8. Let it be so. nt

[deepcover]

9. Poor poor pitiful fool

A moment of enlightenment from our ex village idiot. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately by the look on his smirking face while dancing with himself at the memorial last week, he has slipped back into his lifelong coma.

[GeorgeGist]

10. Glory, Glory, Hallelujah

[edhopper]

11. I guess he doesn't want to

acknowledge how much of his legacy is responsible for that.

[underpants]

12. But what about Jeb???!! W screwed up so badly he made it hard for a whiteguy toget elected President

The second part is a line from Chris Rock

[MichiganVote]

14. Once again, its all about George folks. Predictable.

[Monk06]

15. Well he set the bar low enough for Trump to step right over it Bush has a conscience? Hoodathunk?

[cosmicone]

17. Remember how we felt in 1991?

It looked like the pukes would rule forever with their bible/flag routine.

From the ashes emerged Bill Clinton.

There is a republican out there who will keep fiscal conservatism while jettisoning the social conservatism and rebuild the pukes.

Let's not be complacent.