E. J. Dionne Jr. wrote what could have been an interesting — if blatantly partisan — explaination of why some Democrats hate President Bush so much. After all, if I want to know why some Republicans hated President Clinton, I’d ask one of those rabid rightie sorts who think Clinton was importing cocaine into Arkansas. And if I want to know why Democrats hate Bush, who better to ask than Dionne?
Well, I’d have been better off asking someone who can at least keep his silliness somewhat sensible. Read:
. . .just before the elections, Bush went after Democrats for their stand on the homeland security bill, turning the very ground on which bipartisanship had been built into an electoral battlefield.
Republicans won in 2002, but Bush lost most Democrats forever. Conservative critics of “Bush hatred” like to argue that opposition to the president is a weird psychological affliction. It is nothing of the sort. It is a rational response to getting burned. They are, as a friend once put it, biting the hand that slapped them in the face.
No one understood this sense of betrayal better or earlier than Howard Dean. Dean’s candidacy took off because many in the Democratic rank and file were furious that Washington Democrats allowed themselves to be taken to the cleaners
Let me get this straight. Democrats hate Bush because they’re mad at Democrats who supported him?
I need a drink.
And if Dionne is somehow correct, make it a double.
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