Then all hell broke loose. Suddenly, all these long-term Bush supporters were lashing at Bush in anger: Rush Limbaugh, Peggy Noonan, Newt Gingrich, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Michelle Malkin, Bill Kristol, Brit Hume, and Anne Coulter (to name a few) all began saying or writing some pretty rotten things about P. Bushy.

For instance, in her May 30 column, Coulter called the president a “really stupid American.” Noonan, a former Reagan speechwriter, said in a scathing anti-Bush column in The Wall Street Journal that he had no wisdom. And Newt Gingrich compared the Bush presidency to Jimmy Carter’s administration, which, to conservative Republicans, is as insulting as saying, “Your mama is a queer, slut, communist who farts on the bible and bangs Michael Moore.”

It was amazing to see, really, all these former avid Bush supporters tearing him apart. And the whole time they were ripping into him, a question kept coming to my mind—a question that seemed implausible, yet there could be no other explanation for the brouhaha we were witnessing. The question is this:

“Did the troops just get pulled out of Iraq?”

The reason I ask is because this was some pretty harsh language coming from a group of people who, not that long ago, were incessantly ranting about how wrong it is to criticize a sitting president during wartime. They actually said out loud that doing so is an act of treason because it gives aid and comfort to the enemy and jeopardizes the troops? Remember that? Sean Hannity said it. Laura Ingraham said it. I know Michelle Malkin did. So did Bill Kristol. Gingrich said it. Rush Limbaugh certainly said it. And sure as Satan is her sugar daddy, Anne Coulter said it, too. “All American people that don’t support President George W. Bush are traitors,” she once wrote in her column. Now she calls him stupid.

Now, I have no doubt that if confronted with this hypocrisy, they would all start backpedaling like a rodeo clown in a sexy cow suit. They’d probably claim that they never meant to say you couldn’t criticize the President during a war, but, rather, that you couldn’t criticize his policy about that war. In other words, it’s perfectly OK to criticize Bush’s domestic policies, such as immigration, just not his war policies.

Only problem is, isn’t immigration reform part of the overall war on terror? That’s what they’ve been telling us, right? That it’s not about bigotry; it’s about tightening the borders to keep terrorist cells from sneaking in and setting up shop.

So, if immigration is part of the war on terror, and it’s treasonous to criticize a president about his war policy while troops are engaged—then either the troops have been withdrawn, or all these hypocritical über-patriots actually hate America and do not support the troops.

Oh, sweet reversal.

You know, it’s so easy to demand unconditional support for the president when you agree with everything he does. It’s when you don’t agree that it matters. That’s the true test of unconditional support. And you failed miserably.

Of course, this is all about hurt feelings. The pundits are bummed that Bush would ditch them after they have, as Limbaugh put it, “stood by him through thick and thin.” Noonan agrees. In her Journal column, she wrote, “conservative Bush supporters have felt like sufferers of battered wife syndrome.”

Now, reasonable people could disagree about who betrayed whom first, but what does that matter? Since when did hurt feelings become reason enough to jeopardize troops on the ground? Oh, I get it. When liberals criticize the president because they think the war was immoral and that it creates more terrorists—that is hurtful to the troops. But when conservatives criticize the president because their feelings got hurt—well, that’s understandable. “Sorry, troops, nothing personal, we do have our egos to consider.”

Speaking of hypocrisy, when President Bush accused his opponents of, ahem, fear mongering—every person in the country simultaneously spit up milk through their noses. The administration that brought us the Color Coded Chart of Everlasting Fear to keep us in a constant state of elevated alert is now complaining about scare tactics?! That’s rich. Even Old Faithful spout up a mile-high geyser of greeny-white nose-milk when he heard Bush say that one.

Isn’t it just wonderful to watch these hypocritical maggot lickers getting splattered with all the same horseshit they’ve been slinging at us for years? All the fear-mongering and patriotism-questioning. Poetic justice may be cliché, but it sure is lovely to behold. And it’s certainly lovely to watch the Republican Party as we know it collapse in the same manner in which it ascended—with scare tactics, name-calling and an utter lack of substantive debate.

EJD
06/09/07