Republicans Determined Not to Get Fooled Again

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Steve Benen points out that the Republican candidates are finally talking about the Bush years. But they aren’t big fans:

We’ve reached the point in Republicans politics at which GOP candidates are considered too liberal if they sided with the Bush/Cheney administration on most key areas of domestic policy.

Indeed, as Jon Ward added, Rick Santorum felt the brunt of these criticisms because he was, by 2012 standards, too loyal to the conservative Republican president in office during his congressional career.

The message to the American electorate is therefore rather striking: “Vote Republican in 2012: We won’t be moderate like that Bush guy was.”

What to make of this? For starters, I actually have some sympathy for this position. I won’t repeat chapter and verse here, but I’ve argued a few times before that although George Bush was a temperamental conservative, he actually governed pretty moderately, especially on domestic issues. With the exception of tax cuts and judicial appointments, most of his legacy is either centrist or actively liberal.

This is an old argument that I won’t rehash except to say that conservatives unquestionably believe it’s true. And this explains a lot about the current race. In 2000, conservatives were determined to avoid another George H.W. Bush, so they picked a candidate whose dedication to conservatism seemed unassailable. And as far as they’re concerned, even that didn’t work out. Not because of Katrina or the wars or the economic collapse — all the stuff the rest of us hold against Bush — but because of NCLB and Sarbanes-Oxley and the Medicare prescription bill and the inexorable rise in spending during his watch. So what are you going to do? If even George W. Bush turned out to be a poser, this time around you’re going to demand absolutely ironclad guarantees of orthodoxy. Thus the right-wing game of one-upmanship that’s turned the Republican primary into such a clown show.

It all makes sense, in a weird kind of way. After all, you know the old saying: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, can’t get fooled again. No one’s going to get fooled this time around.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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