A Few Bad Apples?
When the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, the conventional wisdom was that the misconduct was the result of a few bad apples. I didn’t really buy it then. Now, of course, we know the truth.
A Nate Silver post on Republican contenders for the 2012 Presidential election suggests Mike Huckabee would be a better bet than the higher profile candidacies of Palin, Romney, or Gingrich.
My first thought was, well, thank god! The idea of a Palin or Gingrich presidency frankly scares the hell out of me. Romney, I don’t know much about. But my next immediate thought was “What if ANY of them actually won?”
Shouldn’t they all scare me?
I never liked George Bush. From the start, throughout his campaign in 2000, he seemed like a smirking idiot. In November of 2000, I frankly couldn’t believe the vote was even close enough for the SCOTUS to give him the job. But, once it was done, I was okay with it. I would have preferred Al Gore, being a Democrat, but at that point I didn’t see what impact either one of them would have on my own personal existence.
Again, we all know better now.
Getting back to the 2012 election, as much as I like Obama, the old me would have been okay if he didn’t win a second term. I’d have been disappointed, but I always believed that a Democratic candidate was, at best, the lesser of two evils.
Now, however, I’ve spent the last few years listening to Republicans defend torture. As more and more details emerge, I keep expecting Republican politicians to begin disassociating themselves with the Bush administration. Is there not one out there who will say, “Whoa! His intentions may have been good [they weren't], but this behavior was clearly illegal, immoral, and just plain WRONG! I am nothing like Bush!”
No, instead they cling to “Torture Works”® and “Obama has made us a target by releasing the memos!” [BTW, I think their irony meter clearly has a short circuit when they say it’s not the torture itself that made us unsafe, but admitting it.]
Now, I don’t think I would EVER be able to trust another Republican president. Apparently Bush and his ilk aren’t just a few bad apples. The entire Republican Party is the poisoned tree.
I wonder if the Gallup poll results due out Monday will show that the rest of Americans feel the same way. Guess we’ll know for sure in 2010 and 2o12.
If it turns out that it is just me, Canada is just too cold. I hear Australia is nice.
