Bush strategist looks back in sadness - Views Bush with anguish and contempt

[Liberal_in_LA]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-dowd14nov14,1,2676979.story?coll=la-headlines-nation&track=crosspromo

Bush strategist looks back in sadness

Matthew Dowd helped win the White House. Now he views the administration with a mixture of anguish and contempt.

By Mark Z. Barabak, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

November 14, 2007

WIMBERLY, TEXAS -- Matthew Dowd knows sorrow and loss. He has been divorced twice. A daughter died two months after she was born. And then there is the added heartbreak -- a word he uses -- of his split with President Bush.

Dowd, 46, is one of the nation's leading political strategists, a onetime Democrat who switched sides to help put Bush in the White House, then win a second term. He spent years shaping and promoting Bush's policies -- policies that Dowd now views with a mixture of anguish and contempt.

He began expressing his disillusionment, tentatively at first, at a UC Berkeley conference in January. Since then, he has grown more forceful.

[kurth]

1. "Have you thought about maybe trying to save your soul by calling for impeachment?"

[MADem]

2. While Dowd beats his breast and cries out

"Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!!"

our pal the Monkey bellows:

"Me a cowboy, me a cowboy, Me a Texican cowboy!!"

Yee haw--it's not a foreign policy!!!


I am way older than this guy, and maybe my family is blessed with good genetic code, but this is the OLDEST looking "46" I've seen in some time:



On the administration's response to the Sept. 11 attacks: "I asked, 'Why aren't we doing bonds, war bonds? Why aren't we asking the country to do something instead of just . . . go shopping and get back on airplanes?' "

On the White House stand against same-sex marriage: "Why are we having the federal government get involved? . . . Does a thing limiting someone's rights and aimed at a particular constituency belong in the U.S. Constitution?"

On the war in Iraq: "I guess somebody would make the argument, well, the Iraq war was about defending ourselves. But it seems an awfully huge stretch these days to say that."

With a rueful laugh and, at one point, a catch in his throat, Dowd offered a lengthy account of his break with Bush during hours of conversation at his 18-acre ranch in the green Hill Country outside Austin. He puffed a cigar, and then another, as the fading sun glinted off the Blanco River. A CD player cycled through sacred music and country songs.

Dowd is not the first Bush ally to part with the administration. Former Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill contributed to a book that likened the president at Cabinet meetings to a "blind man in a roomful of deaf people." John J. Dilulio Jr., who led the White House office of faith-based initiatives, left with a shot at "Mayberry Machiavellis." Retired Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who once led U.S. forces in Iraq, accused the administration of going to war with a "catastrophically flawed" plan.

[Liberal_in_LA]

5. Notice the big cross hanging around his neck?

[MADem]

11. The article said he had a HUNDRED in the house....

You know the old joke about religious guilt? The Jews rent it from the Catholics!

[Toots]

10. Wonder if those cigars he is puffing on are Cubans

I have nothing but scorn for people like him...He quite obviously has no real convictions..

[Richard Steele]

3. Fuck you, Matthew. Fuck you right in the heart.

You helped the Dictatortot win his -SECOND- term;
are you gonna claim you didn't recognize him
for what he was after 4 years, but suddenly you do NOW?

You, sir, are a lying sack of shit whose name deserves
to be tied to B*sh's for all eternity.

[quiet.american]

4. Millions of lives ripped apart by Bush, but still -- he's a "good person."

What does it take?

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. I am possitive in person Bush IS charming

part of the pathology that is bush.

[Arkansas Granny]

8. Molly Ivins once stated that in a column of hers that I read.

[MADem]

12. Just because he says so, doesn't make it true!!! nt

[orleans]

7. this prick grows a conscience because his kid is going to iraq.

"Do you lose sleep at night knowing that you gave this country probably the worst administration we've ever had?" asked a young man. "I mean, have you thought about maybe trying to save your soul by calling for impeachment?"

"Dowd tensed and leaned forward. Rather than defend Bush, he spoke of the oldest of his three sons, an Army language specialist then facing deployment to Iraq. "Now, am I a person who stays up at night thinking about that? Yeah. . . .

and snip

"In the seven months since, Dowd has spurned book offers and the talk-show circuit, as well as the antiwar movement. He is not comfortable in the role of Bush basher. "I don't hate the guy," he said of the president, who has not spoken with Dowd since he aired his views. "I don't think he's evil or bad. I think he's a good person that didn't accomplish what he set out to do."

hey dowd, you piece of crap--what the hell are you staying up at night for if you think that fuckhead is such a good person. i mean, just because fuckhead didn't "accomplish what he set out to do" doesn't logically equate with you losing sleep over it. look at it this way you asshole--BUSH HAS PLENTY OF TIME TO ACCOMPLISH WHAT HE SET OUT TO DO.

and he's already done so much, thanks to you!
he's ruined our courts
he's screwed our justice department
he's put us TRILLIONS of dollars in debt over this bloodbath war that your iraq kid will have his children paying off
he managed to get saddam hussein killed to prove to his daddy what a limp dick daddy really had
he's fucked every family of four into $20,000 debt over this war
he divided the country into rednecks like yourself and bush haters like me
he gave us 9/11, katrina, and vetoed health benefits for soldiers like your kid
he doesn't give a rats ass about osama
he has raped and pillaged our environment so that your grandkids will need asthma inhalers all the fucking time

you know, matthew dowd--i'd say, outside of butt-fucking social security and privatizing our public schools (like he did with a good part of the army) i'd say it is pretty much mission accomplished.

with this laundry list of dirty deeds where the fuck do you get off saying bush is not an evil or bad person? pull your head out of your ass! he's the fucking devil incarnate.

now you look the american people IN THE EYE and tell us once again what a good person you think that monster is.

no sympathy for you, you fucking hypocritical shit. you deserve to not sleep at night. i hope you can't stand to live with yourself!

[mwb970]

9. Why did none of these people *do* anything when they had the chance?

We've had book after book, speech after speech, by everyone from this guy to Colin Powell, all about how clear it was to them that the bush administration they were part of was terribly off course, but of course they couldn't say or do anything until now, for Chrissakes, now that it's too late!

Thanks for nothing, Matthew.

[in_cog_ni_to]

13. Yeah well, I hope you live the rest of your freakin' life in misery, lotsa sleepless nights and

endless suffering at the loss of our country AT YOUR HANDS. Kiss my ass, traitor Matthew.