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If you talk to one, you know that they refuse to face the facts. They have their own version of reality which bears no resemblance to the reality the rest of us know. My son went camping with one last week. One Bushbot and 3 liberals. When they got the kid backed into a corner with facts, the kid would say: "We don't have to worry about it, God will fix it."
Here's a take from Bruce Bartlett (the GOP guy who wrote the recent book trashing Bush) and the reply from Sullivan. Sullivan has done some serious Bushbashing lately but here he goes after the whole party. Notice his take on the "liberal media" defense.
"Given that this is the case , I have never understood why so many people — both inside and outside the administration — continue to give Bush so much loyalty. I can only conclude that it is borne more from fear than agreement with his policies. I think there is genuine fear of crossing the president, although I have never been able to uncover the precise mechanism through which it is communicated — even in my own case. Nevertheless, it is real — just as fear of the unknown is real. I think somehow he communicates to everyone he comes in contact with that they will suffer if they go against him. And his obsessiveness about leaks — combined with Patriot Act powers — has shut off back channels that have previously existed in every presidency.
There is a CRYING NEED for an investigative reporter to plumb the depths of how this works and why so many people submit to it — even when Bush has poll ratings so low as to barely show a pulse. Even behind closed doors, with guarantees of confidentiality, I cannot get FORMER administration people to say a bad word about the guy even when they have been badly treated by him in some way. The climate of fear is pervasive."
Sullivan's response:
Part of this may be due to the fact that Bush is personally a nice guy. Many people like him too much to tell him what a shambles his presidency has become to his face. An alternative theory to explain the mystifying deference and persistent fear is that the Bush presidency is based on religious adherence, not political judgment. Karl Rove has accelerated the transformation of the GOP from a party of limited government and individual liberty to one of Christianist fundamentalism and big government largess. The party is now essentially a religious grouping with some business interests glommed on for the ride - and a retinue of sleazeballs and lobbyists gleefully in the rear. If your career is related to that party, then any criticism of the president, regardless of the grounds for that criticism, is deemed indistinguishable from congregants taking on a fundamentalist pastor. It's forbidden. You will be cast out of the church. His authority is rooted in his faith; to question it is to question religious authority.
The key element that binds Christianism with Bush Republicanism is fealty to patriarchal leadership. That's the institutional structure of the churches that are now the Republican base; and it's only natural that the fundamentalist psyche, which is rooted in obedience and reverence for the inerrant pastor, should be transferred to the presidency. That's why I think Bush's ratings won't go much below 25 percent; because 25 percent is about the proportion of the electorate that is fundamentalist and supports Bush for religious rather than political reasons. They are immune to empirical argument, because their thought-structure is not empirical; it is dogmatic. If the facts overwhelm them, they will simply argue that the "liberal media" is lying. Bruce poignantly thinks the GOP is still the secular, empirical, skeptical party it once was. It's not: it's a fundamentalist church with some huge bribes for business interests on the side, leveraged by massive debts. So all criticism is disloyalty; and disloyalty is heresy. The facts don't matter. Obey the pastor. Or be damned.
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