{"id":8942,"date":"2006-11-02T13:29:25","date_gmt":"2006-11-02T18:29:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8942.html"},"modified":"2006-11-02T13:29:25","modified_gmt":"2006-11-02T18:29:25","slug":"bush-doesnt-realize-hes-already-changed-the-tone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/bush-doesnt-realize-hes-already-changed-the-tone\/","title":{"rendered":"Bush doesn&#8217;t realize he&#8217;s already &#8216;changed the tone&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Once in a great while, Bush says something so unbelievable, I have to wonder if he&#8217;s an incredibly good liar or living in some kind of bizarro world in which reality has no meaning. Consider, for example, <a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/2006\/11\/02\/bush-tone\/\">this gem<\/a> from the president&#8217;s interview with Fox News&#8217; Sean Hannity.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t like the tone in Washington, D.C. I feel like that the politics has gotten ugly, and that tends to discourage people around the country. And that&#8217;s just too bad.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I would hope in my last two years I can &#8212; and, by the way, I&#8217;ve never really resorted to name-calling. And I&#8217;m not trying to say, well, you know, I&#8217;m innocent and everybody else is guilty. That&#8217;s not what I&#8217;m trying to say. But I understand that it&#8217;s one thing to disagree with a person, but it&#8217;s another thing to have to resort to kind of shameless name-calling. And I really don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s fitting for the president to drag the presidency into that kind of a mudslinging.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>You&#8217;ve got to be kidding me.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Gotten ugly&#8221;? A few weeks ago, the president kicked the campaign season into high gear with some unusually bitter rhetoric. &#8220;We know the enemy wants to attack us again,&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2006\/09\/28\/AR2006092801844.html\">Bush said<\/a>, whereas Democrats &#8220;offer nothing but criticism and obstruction and endless second-guessing.&#8221; Shortly thereafter, the president <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2006\/POLITICS\/10\/03\/bush.ap\/\">upped the ante<\/a>, telling a partisan crowd, &#8220;If you listen closely to some of the leaders of the Democratic Party, it sounds like &#8212; it sounds like &#8212; they think the best way to protect the American people is, wait until we&#8217;re attacked again.&#8221; This week, Bush <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2006\/10\/30\/AR2006103000530.html\">pushed the envelope<\/a> to the breaking point, telling a crowd that Dems want terrorists to win.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Drag the presidency into that kind of a mudslinging&#8221;? Bush is the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/nationworld\/nation\/la-na-outlook29oct29,1,3164478.column?coll=la-headlines-nation\"><i>first<\/i><\/a> president to so blatantly use a war to smear his political opponents with unfair and untrue attacks.<\/p>\n<p>In what universe can this man consider himself above the fray?<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nThis is, after all, the president said in 2002 that Senate [tag]Democrats[\/tag] are &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.leanleft.com\/archives\/2002\/09\/30\/445\/\">not interested in the security of the American people<\/a>&#8221; because they disagreed with him on a labor issue, and then refused to apologize.<\/p>\n<p>When Dick Durbin questioned the administration&#8217;s gulags, Team Bush has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonmonthly.com\/archives\/individual\/2005_06\/006577.php\">accused Democrats of being [tag]traitors[\/tag]<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>When [tag]Jack Murtha[\/tag] unveiled a redeployment plan for [tag]Iraq[\/tag], Team Bush said Murtha has endorsed &#8220;the policy positions of Michael Moore&#8221; and suggested Murtha wants to &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/5869.html\">surrender to the [tag]terrorists[\/tag]<\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>When [tag]Patrick Leahy[\/tag] questioned no-bid contracts for [tag]Halliburton[\/tag], Bush&#8217;s VP told him to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/002017.html\">go f*** himself<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>And, of course, lengthy books are available on Team Bush&#8217;s vicious smears of John [tag]McCain[\/tag] and Al [tag]Gore[\/tag] in 2000, and of John [tag]Kerry[\/tag] in 2004.<\/p>\n<p>The &#8220;tone&#8221; in DC is noxious because Bush and his team a) made it that way; and b) <i>prefer<\/i> it that way. For the president to lament the environment that he created is simply breathtaking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Once in a great while, Bush says something so unbelievable, I have to wonder if he&#8217;s an incredibly good liar or living in some kind of bizarro world in which reality has no meaning. Consider, for example, this gem from the president&#8217;s interview with Fox News&#8217; Sean Hannity. &#8220;I don&#8217;t like the tone in Washington, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8942\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}