Decius wrote:

John Podesta, founder of the Center for American Progress and former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, called the midterms “the end of the grand conservative experiment.”

Delusion on the left.

“There were no conservative grass-roots group saying, ‘Invade Iraq,’ ” Mr. Norquist said. “If Bush changed the policy, you’d have four neocons whine and the rest of the movement would be fine.”

Delusion on the right.

Apparently the big K was insufficiently shocking.

The pundit class must have secretly declared it a political third rail. There is too much blame to go around.

Bush's story is "trust us." We'll protect you from terrorists. You don't need to worry about laws and checks and balances and international opinions. We're the good guys. Make us powerful and we'll take care of it. Katrina broke that spell. People saw them clearly being incompetent and spinning it, and the trust went away.

But, if you were going to avoid Katrina you'd have had to start working on the new levy back in Clinton's time, or even earlier.

The Katrina debacle wasn't about fixing the levees, it was about handling evacuations properly and failing that, getting emergency workers to the places they were needed immediately after. Watching people die, live on national television exposed the fact that for all the blathering these blivets have does about "National Security" the only security they were interested in was keeping their asses secure in their warm comfortable chairs.

EVERYONE knew about what would happen if the levees failed. The people in this administration just didn't care because the people that would get smacked don't generally vote, if they do vote they don't vote for them, and they don't give their money to them. That's true for basically any sort of emergency and why FEMA, which worked very well and very nimbly under Clinton, has turned into an utter debacle under Bush. They chopped the legs out of it because they don't give a damn about the people who would need the help, and it's not because as Kanye West said, "George Bush doesn't care about black people."

It's because George Bush doesn't care about about anyone but George Bush.

RE: For Conservatives, It’s Back to Basics