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Who’s stepping up as George Bush III?

Romney Giuliani

Contributed by Brian Krenz on 12/4/07

With the indisputable failures of the Bush presidency looming like dark, tornado spawning clouds over the GOP’s collective head, it is astonishing that the current crop of Republican presidential contenders is so permeated with W. clones. There’s the wishy-washy Romney, who said earlier this year that we should “double Guantánamo,” the ruthless Rudy, who favors corrupt friends over competent leaders and who was attacked by the International Association of Fire Fighters for what they say were “egregious acts…committed against [their] members,” and now, the Baptist minister Huckabee with his appalling disbelief in evolution. The corruption and demagoguery of the Bush administration, despite receiving a powerful hit in the 2006 election, appears to be breeding more corruption and demagoguery. Funny.

By far the most disreputable of the major GOP contenders is national front-runner (a qualifier that means so little at this point it’s hardly worth mentioning) Rudy Giuliani. The former mayor has bent over backwards at every possible turn to paint himself as the great savior of 9/11—why surely Jesus himself wouldn’t have managed the disaster as well as Rudy. All the while, it turns out, Giuliani had connections to a man who likely provided safe-haven to Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the terrorist behind the very attacks Rudy bellows he worked so tirelessly to clean up. For anyone who believes such an insidious alignment is merely coincidental and not a measure of some larger level of corruption, I’m sorry, but you’re simply not paying enough attention.

Giuliani was blasted over showing favoritism to his pal Bernie Kerik by promoting Kerik to Police Commissioner in New York and subsequently pushing for Kerik to be named the first head of Homeland Security. That sort of favoritism happens in politics all the time, and although it is unflattering, it isn’t necessarily a harbinger of disasters to come. Unless of course Kerik were to go on to be indicted for conspiracy, mail fraud, wire fraud, and lying to the IRS—what’s that? He was indicted for conspiracy, mail fraud, wire fraud, and lying to the IRS? Well at least Rudy’s problems end there…except for the recent allegations that he used New York City money to fund his personal trips to South Hampton to see his mistress. Sadly, it’s true. At this point I’m taking bets on how many days until his campaign implodes (12 is the odds on favorite right now). You may think, well so what? Maybe Rudy is a little suspect. Maybe he isn’t really the guy for the job. Who else’ve ya got?

How about former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney? Aside from displaying flip-flopping finesse that puts John Kerry’s supposedly inconsistent views to shame, the suddenly socially-conservative Mormon seems alright. Except that along with stating that Guantánamo should be doubled (a notion that is positively Cheneyesque), he recently fumbled with a question about whether or not he would appoint a Muslim-American to his cabinet, saying that because Muslim-Americans do not make up a large portion of the American population such an appointment would not be justifiable (he would, however, allow Muslim-Americans to be appointed to “lower levels” of his administration—how kind of him). In typical Bush-like fashion, the list of prejudiced, disconcerting beliefs goes on.

But the most disturbing contender is former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee—not necessarily because his views are more radical than his comrades’ (though some are), but because of the ease with which those views are propelling him to the top. His astounding decision to raise his hand in response to the question, “Is there anybody on the stage that does not believe in evolution?” at a debate in May, raises the level of the out-of-touch-with-reality scale to new heights. I’m not convinced that even W. would have been that brazen. How, in today’s modern age when evolution has been confirmed and reconfirmed as indisputable, can any presidential candidate—Republican or Democrat—get away with believing that the existence of evolution is even slightly debatable? Yet Huckabee is getting away with it; he now leads Romney in Iowa, and the first-in-the-nation caucuses are little over a month away. Huckabee is riding on the wave of his nice-guy attitude and folksy demeanor, and he appears poised to at least really shake up the GOP race, if not win it altogether.

So in 2006 when Bush was sent a message that the country wanted a change in direction, the Republican Party did not reassess. They did not try to revert to their old-fashioned, Eisenhower-like ways. They did not refocus on fiscal-responsibility, something Bush has run from faster than Reagan could ever have imagined. They did not become a party of centrists and align themselves with the majority of the country. No, they took a different direction altogether—the same one they’ve been pursuing the past seven years. Funny.