Democrats wanted Bush to fail

[Pangloss]

It's Fox News, but is it really that hard to believe that 51% of Democrats "wanted Bush to fail"? I don't think it is at all.

 

Seems like fair play, following the chastisement of Rush Limbaugh for wanting Obama to fail. And now I have to shower.

 

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100days/2009/03/09/flashback-poll-showed-democrats-wanted-bush-fail/

[iNow]

It's FOX. I don't trust it. I want to see the questions. I want to see the population demographics. I want to see their methods of polling.

 

It's Fox, and I don't trust it. It's simply a well-timed article, probably mostly fiction, to assuage the outcry of Rush Limbaughs disgusting approach to politics.

[bascule]

For the record, I wanted "Bush to fail", certainly after Iraq. Had his strategies succeeded I would've had to rethink my world view. The failure of his strategies at least confirms in my mind that their ideological roots are flawed as well.

[The Bear's Key]

Highest approval ratings for W in polls.

 

ABC News/Washington Post

 

Approve 92

Disapprove 6

Unsure 1

 

FOX News/Opinion Dynamics

 

Approve 88

Disapprove 7

Unsure 5

 

NBC News/Wall Street Journal

 

Approve 88

Disapprove 7

Unsure 5

 

Gallup and USA Today

 

Approve 90

Disapprove 6

Unsure 4

 

Pew Research Center for the People & the Press survey

 

Approve 86

Disapprove 7

Unsure 7

 

(http://www.pollingreport.com/BushJob1.htm)

 

 

What you might ask yourself is, how does an 85+ % approval rating for Bush translate into major desire to see him fail?

 

Glad you asked So let's illustrate how.

 

The public didn't view the response to 9/11 attacks in a partisan manner. Who, under normal circumstances, ever would? But...once enough of us had seen Bush's party (under Karl Rove guidance/coersion) repeatedly treat 9/11 as a golden opportunity to push/shove their agenda -- the once-in-a-lifetime chance to gain a "permanent majority" -- and calling people traitors/unpatriotic who disagreed, the one thing I'm sure of is: you are correct, many people eventually did want the administraion to fail, because their success would've magnified the constitutional abuses they perpetrated.

 

As Scott McClellan wrote about, the Bush team was in campaign mode from day one in the White House. Nice to know their #1 priority when the nation is on high terror alert is to create a permanent Republican majority.

 

You see, if the Bush Administration hadn't used the attack on U.S. soil as a means to score heavy politically, or hadn't called any opposition to these schemes unpatriotic, or hadn't attempted to solidify many of those plans into law, or hadn't flooded the government positions with inexperienced yes-men in order to ensure their schemes, or hadn't written about the benefits of transforming Iraq, Iran and North Korea (years before Y2K) and then conveniently labelled those nations the "Axis of Evil", it's highly unlikely you would've encountered a poll today claiming 51% of Democrats wanted Bush to fail.

 

Or maybe that's just me

 

 

(failure of schemes doesn't equal failure of presidency)

[Mokele]

I think it depends upon what you mean by "fail". Nobody *wanted* to see chaos in Iraq or the stock market fall, but rather wanted him to 'fail' in his attempts to gather ever-more executive power, persecute minorities, etc.

 

Personally, I would have loved it if he'd brought peace to Iraq - no political ideology is worth that many lives - but I was *definitely* rooting for him to fail on the Federal Marriage Amendment.

 

The difference is twofold:

1) most conservative pundits seem to be rooting for things to *stay bad*, effectively hoping for suffering and misery in the advancement of their politics, and

2) more importantly, these same people were accusing liberals of being treasonous for daring to oppose W, making blanket statements that "we must all support the president as out patriotic duty", but now they're doing exactly what they accused us of being traitors for doing. Highlighting their hypocrisy is great fun.

[john5746]

Highlighting their hypocrisy is great fun.

 

Yes, I think that's the major point. Rush has made at least half of his living by declaring that liberals want America to fail. But he is the poster boy for hypocrisy. I understood that long ago.

[Mr Skeptic]

I wanted Bush to fail but the country to succeed. I'd like to see Bush in jail for violating the constitution. When Bush first started his presidency, I simply didn't particularly like him. I think it's a little early to be making strong judgments one way or another about Obama.

[iNow]

I'll take a different tack. I'll concede that there are great similarities in the people who wanted "Bush to fail" and the people who want "Obama to fail." I thinks it fair to say that these comments are just short-hand for "I don't like their particular set of policies," not some bigger "I hate America and it's president" insinuation.

 

I didn't care much for many of Bush's policies, but I had the intellectual fortitude to express my distaste specifically on those policies. I did not cast some large, all encompassing, generalizing net out of laziness and just say, "I want Bush to fail." I said, "I want policy X to fail for reasons A,B,&C," or "I disagree with policy Y due to D,F,&G."

 

So, when someone says, "I want Obama to fail," I think it IS exactly the same as when someone said it about Bush. I just find it lazy, and so non-specific as to be completely irrelevant and non-troublesome.

 

Personally though, I don't tend to get worked up when idiots say that they want Obama to fail. That's their opinion, and they're welcome to it. I'm not going to sit here and suggest that their saying it is in any way different from when people said it about Bush, I'm just going to suggest that both approaches lack academic integrity and specificity, and so can be disregarded.

 

I really don't understand the outrage on that comment. Out of all the things that Rush and these others say on a daily basis, that's what we're going to express moral outrage over? Seriously? It's as if your son raped a girl in school, but you're going to instead punish him for not cleaning the dishes after breakfast and leave the far more egregious act to be ignored.

[ParanoiA]

Yeah, this whole business on wishing others to fail and that somehow earning "news" status is just one of the dumbest wastes of time I've seen in a while. But, hey, no one is going to be able to stop partisan hacks from pretending like there's an issue there.

 

Rush is going to wish Obama to fail whether he says it or not. Democrats wanted Bush to fail, whether they say it or not. How do I know? Because it's freaking insane to believe in the opposition's ideas moreso than your own, otherwise why are you in oppostion? I feel compelled to toss out a big fat elementary "Duh!!" here.

 

Next they're going to make news out of Tom Coughlin's hope that the Patriots fail in their superbowl running. ("Oh my...he wants the NFL to fail??" No, dummy, he's on a different team...)

 

Yes, believe it or not, democrats believe most republican ideas are bad. And as controversial as that may be, republicans believe most democrat ideas are bad. Yep, no kidding.

 

Hey, in fact, this MAY have something to do with why they are two separate parties to begin with...but I don't want to jump to conclusions.

[Mokele]

I really don't understand the outrage on that comment. Out of all the things that Rush and these others say on a daily basis, that's what we're going to express moral outrage over? Seriously?

 

See my comment above. He's been branding us as traitors for over 7 years for daring to disagree with the Prez, yet the moment that Prez is someone from the other party, he drops all of his bullshit about "it's not patriotic to question a sitting president's policy during a time of war" and immediately does the same thing he accused us of doing.

 

Sure, it's not the worst thing he's ever said, but it's the most recent example of his intellectual dishonesty.

[iNow]

See my comment above. He's been branding us as traitors for over 7 years for daring to disagree with the Prez, yet the moment that Prez is someone from the other party, he drops all of his bullshit about "it's not patriotic to question a sitting president's policy during a time of war" and immediately does the same thing he accused us of doing.

 

Indeed. Point taken.

[Sisyphus]

That’s a good point, actually. I bet Al Qaeda wants Obama to fail, too! Rush Limbaugh is a terrorist!!!!!111!!