Quote:
Originally Posted by crbcrbrgv
I bet that's happened a lot.
I wonder how many Republicans switched to Democrat due to Bush and Iraq?
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I don't know. But on my street, my neighbor directly across the street from me has a daughter whose husband went to Iraq. He returned safely and uninjured, and while he was gone, I talked to the young lady several times.
She went from worry to real despair before he came back home. The last time we talked, he was coming home soon, and his enlistment was up.
I asked if he planned to re-enlist, and she said she would not let him. She was prepared to divorce him and take their daughter before she would go through that again.
There came a time in Iraq when our army nearly broke during 2006 and 2007, and I think her attitude was very common among the military wives of that time. I think that a lot of the soldiers got out when they could at that time. He was one of them.
Things got better after Gen. Petraeus' big troop build-up late in 2008, and morale vastly improved with it.
2008 was also the year that Bush finally set a date for withdrawal- 2011, on Petraeus' recommendation. Rumsfeld was a total disaster as Sec. of Defense; while I never liked Bush, I have to give him credit for finally snapping out of it and firing Rumsfeld before the occupation became unwinnable, as it did in Viet Nam.
Bush was a different and better President the last 18 months in office. As a student of history, I think he finally realized just how much of a mess his hubris had created; Katrina may have been the event- who knows?
It all the more ironic to me that he was pimp-slapped by the banking collapse. I think he believed that he would leave office on a higher note, and got sandbagged right at the very end, with only a month left. It set his fate as being one of the worst Presidents forever. And that's possibly a reason he has laid low ever since.
In time, he may find a way to redeem himself, as Carter and Clinton did.
But I think he will never accept the destruction of his party that Rove, Cheney, and all of the other neo-cons in his administration put into motion. This may well prove to be his enduring legacy.
This is one big contrast between Obama and Bush. Bush was never the leader of his party as President, and Obama is.
The Republicans looked to Rove as leader, and the Democrats look to Obama as leader.
Obama got all the small donors in 2008 partly as a display of folk's revulsion at the way Big Money was running the Republicans, and his voters have not abandoned him nearly as much as the conservatives have convinced themselves. His small donations are running stronger now than in 2008 as proof.
When a voter contributes some money, no matter how small the amount, that's putting skin in the game. Watch the small donation amounts if you really want to know how a candidate is doing- those folks will definitely vote for the person who got a contribution from them.
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