The Spawn of Bush Hatred

We call attention to two momentous stories that reinforce the Law of Unintended Consequences.

Both detail outcomes of the driving ideological force of the American (Golbal?) Left since November 2000, namely Bush Hatred.

Item one is a Gallup poll detailing that self-proclaimed conservatives now outnumber self-proclaimed liberals in all fifty states. DC is now the only province with a liberal plurality. Party identification favors Dems thanks to moderates and conservatives who align with that label, but the percentage of conservatives is on the upswing.

Item two is Joseph Finder's Daily Beast revelation that Obamanoid CIA Director Leon Panetta, famously the CIA director with no experience in intelligence, was self-admittedly wrong when he announced that the CIA had been operating an illegal assassination operation under Bush. Finder details the sordid details of the affair, which ought to be read and digested by those concerned about the stewardship of intelligence gathering under the regime of Pelosi & Co. Evaluation: it's every bit as bad as we feared.

What links these disparate stories is that neither might have arisen had the Left had something other than anti-Bush in its ideological and rhetorical arsenal. Politically, they presently suffer the backlash of a body politic unconvinced by the Manichean worldview that justifies a policy by insisting that it is the opposite of Bush's. Administratively, they have sown chaos with precipitous accusations of wrongdoing made credible by their blaming all the world's ills on the hapless Dubya.

These are examples of the bitter consequences arising when politicians run Against the Man But Without a Plan. Because people love to assign blame, they're happy to vote on such a basis. But it provides nothing for governance.

And so we warn those inclined to employ Obama hatred as their own strategy: articulate something by which you can both win power and effectively exercise it.