Where in the world is former President George W. Bush? I know he is staying out of the spotlight as most former presidents do but have you heard anything lately about Dubya. He declined a visit to Ground Zero with President Obama to honor the 9-11 victims when Bin Laden was captured and killed. Those in his party are distancing themselves from him and more notably from a lot of the so-called compassionate conservative ideas that Bush promoted and they embraced. Listen to any conservative these days and that compassion is gone; replaced with fear and loathing for anything that might help the less fortunate.  Battles rage on making government smaller, revamping Medicare and Social Security, immigration reform and raising the debt ceiling.

Hallmarks of the Bush Legacy such as “No Child Left Behind” are now labeled as government over-reaching. Former Bush administration official and now Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal said as much at the recent Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans calling it  “Wayward Republicanism.” The criticism of other Bush policy is even sharper from GOP presidential hopefuls who openly criticize Bush’s bailouts of banks and automakers as blank checks. Some in the once hawkish GOP are even calling for an end to the war in Afghanistan except for old man John McCain who thinks we should fight in every war.

The Republicans who reinvent themselves every few years are doing so this time on the back of dear old Dubya and going back to their old-time conservative roots. The Republican Party is its own worst enemy, invoking Christianity but not walking by the word. Aren’t you suppose to have compassion for the less fortunate? A good example of this is their non-action on immigration reform. The Dream Act which was first introduced as a bill in 2001 and was recently introduced last month by Senator Dick Durbin(D-IL) has gotten little support from Republicans. Subsequent hearings this week where students told their stories of coming here illegally and achieving only resulted in talk of border security from Republicans who attended the hearing. Their manta of “no amnesty” for illegals will come back to bite them with the changing demographic of the country. In a few years they will reinvent themselves again and blame Democrats for not pushing immigration reform and depending on how the political winds are blowing, Dubya may well rise from the ashes to the iconic status of Ronald Reagan in the GOP.

Posted by Libergirl