Did George W Bush Sabotage the Republican Party Purposefully?

I put this idea out there, just because I thought of it while lifting weights, and it seemed to make all the pieces fit. These are the pieces which bothered me.

I was always puzzled by George W Bush’s choice of Dick Cheney for Vice President. Cheney is a fine man, even a great man and a patriot. He was highly qualified. And yet, he was in charge of the vetting process for W’s campaign. W is not a guy who seems to think outside the box often. I always saw him as a delegator, who assigned responsibility to experts, and then accepted their counsel. In that model, Cheney should have presented him with a list, and he should have limited himself to that list. Instead Bush chose a man whose health would, by necessity, both possibly impact his service and limit his ability to carry on the movement after the Bush Administration moved on.

Second, George W Bush refused to assign blame for 9/11, and appears to have given his staff the order to not place blame either. For eight years, he allowed the fiction to persist that his administration bore the primary responsibility for 9/11. Given Rove’s Machiavellian nature, I cannot believe it never dawned on any of them that they could have forever tarred the Democrat Party, and liberalism in particular, with the stigma of having caused 9/11. Had he done that, we would have had a Republican President for the next 20 years easily.

Third, Bush never fought the Democrats, except in the election for his second term. For eight years, and particularly in the last four, he allowed Democrats to assail him mercilessly. In so doing, he left office one of the most unpopular Presidents in history, and the Republican Party as a brand was utterly destroyed.

Fourth, in not fighting, he gave up Congress. How did he expect to be able to pursue his agenda without Congress? Not fighting back against the liberals and liberalism, when he held the bully pulpit, even to take back congress, seemed unbelievably strange.

Fifth was Bush’s smile as he handed over power to Obama. Cheney’s scowl in that shot spoke volumes. That Bush was so happy, and totally absent any reservations, seemed unusual to me. Anyone even vaguely conservative would have had reservations handing the reins to Obama.

I know he is smarter than that. I know he had advisors, and maybe more importantly a persuasive ability, which he could have used to win the ideological war in the time of K during which he led. He had the ultimate ace, 9/11. But he stood down, accepted all the barbs, and sabotaged the Party completely.

My realization was, what if losing massively was not a byproduct of some foolish adherence to some odd code of political non-violence, but was actually his entire plan?

I now wonder if he assumed he would run the Republican party into the ground, to the point Hillary would win in 2008, and make the nation sick of liberalism. Hillary would be unbelievably unpopular, she would not be able to blame Congress if the House was dominated by Pelosi, and then in 2012, Jeb would waltz in and assume office, maybe on a wave of Conservatism. Instead Obama took office, but who took him seriously? It could still have been Jeb in four.

Had Bush chosen a Mike Pence as his VP, who in eight years could succeed him, he would have had to either sabotage that candidate for his brother, or allow him to win, which would have delayed Jeb’s shot.

The idea is far from certain. But it does seem the one model which would make all of George W. Bush’s behavior not just understandable, but predictable, and provide a motive which would explain why he seemed so happy to hand the reins to Obama. Looking at the sense of outrage for Trump, and the petty slights the family has foisted upon Donald which they would never have foisted on Obama would seem to indicate they are all about the power and the dynasty.

We owe Donald much for vanquishing them.