George H.W. Bush - Classic or Dud

I thought they did more or less come out publically against Trump (made easier because none of them actually held office, so they didn't have put that to the test, like Jeff Flake and the rest who criticize publically and then vote with Trump--plus one of them ran against Trump).

didn't Dubya actually admit he voted for Clinton? I have to check.

I think history is gonna judge every member of the 'sensible-gop' by whether or not they came out publicly against trump

it would be nice if they were also judged by like, their actions, but I guess this'll have to do

I remember feeling a deep sense of shame and anger when I visited the Amiriyah shelter in Iraq. George HW Bush killed more than 400 civilians huddled there on February 13, 1991. These are the crimes we should be discussing today.

— jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) December 1, 2018

And here's this from @MarkKUpdegrove's 2017 book called The Last Republicans. https://t.co/CYYhEkiMLv pic.twitter.com/QosOjCI3RR

— Michael Kruse (@michaelkruse) December 1, 2018

h/t Ned

(xpost)

H.W. voted for Clinton, but it sounds like he didn't say so publically:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/11/04/george-h-w-bush-voted-hillary-clinton-called-donald-trump-blowhard/

Trump going to the funeral. God if only he were able to get to the mic to give an euology, that would be 10-20 minutes of fucking disaster I'd love to see

goddamn that Josh Clark Davis tweet thread is infuriating

My moderate-liberal mom always liked this guy for some reason. Can anybody (e.g. Alfred) explain the fuck why to me?

He was good at projecting a mild-mannered and polite persona to the public. And, of course, the media played along and made him seem pleasant and generally harmless.

and now of course the mild-mannered mien looks like a master class in presidential timbre or something

I thought they did more or less come out publically against Trump (made easier because none of them actually held office, so they didn't have put that to the test, like Jeff Flake and the rest who criticize publically and then vote with Trump--plus one of them ran against Trump).

W has criticized Trump obliquely but the best quote was after the inauguration when he described the proceedings as "some weird shit" or something like that. I hope they seat Trump between him and Jeb at the funeral. Maybe throw the McClains in there too.

guess she's running for president

George H.W. Bush was an American patriot who lived his life and served our country with dignity. From joining the Navy during WWII to the presidency, his devotion to public service was unmatched. Bruce and I send our heartfelt condolences to his family.

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) December 1, 2018

trump ragged on dubya constantly and made a fool out of jeb - even ignoring the 'it would be nice of you to help america avoid fascism' factor, they really didn't have a shortage of personal reasons to come out stronger against him.

xp

Lol Bushes were never gonna publicly support the family that threw them out of the WH

many xps

this would have easily swung the election.

Strongly disagree with this. Every time somebody like the Bushes spoke out against Trump, that just strengthened Trump. With has hardcore zealots, obviously, but if the argument is that the Bushes could have swayed Trump's softer support--people who voted for him more because they didn't like Clinton--I don't believe that either. I don't know how to frame it exactly, but the formulation that "strong condemnation of Trump from the Bushes tips election to Clinton," that just doesn't fit with that election at all.

Always curious what ppl expect pols like Warren to do, tweet YO HW SUCK MY DICK FROM THE BACK FASCIST PIECE OF SHIT #SCUMGANG FOR LIFE!!

Agree with clem

If anything, that's what helped lose the election for Clinton (not second-guessing--I would have made exactly the same mistake): we won't go campaign in Michigan, we'll just wait until good Republicans speak out against Trump and everybody sees the light.

Always curious what ppl expect pols like Warren to do, tweet YO HW SUCK MY DICK FROM THE BACK FASCIST PIECE OF SHIT #SCUMGANG FOR LIFE!!

you would retweet, you have to admit

Well, yeah

hoping AOC has the good sense to say nothing tbh

Lol Bushes were never gonna publicly support the family that threw them out of the WH

at this point the families are pretty buddy-buddy

Strongly disagree with this. Every time somebody like the Bushes spoke out against Trump, that just strengthened Trump. With has hardcore zealots, obviously, but if the argument is that the Bushes could have swayed Trump's softer support--people who voted for him more because they didn't like Clinton--I don't believe that either. I don't know how to frame it exactly, but the formulation that "strong condemnation of Trump from the Bushes tips election to Clinton," that just doesn't fit with that election at all.

the republican party is a mix of legitimate crazies and vanilla party members who wait for signals and toe the line. the party elite - many of whom openly, but quietly admitted they weren't voting for trump - didn't do a great job at signaling to the second group that trump was dangerous and that they actually weren't supposed to just vote straight ticket republican like they do ever other year. multiple presidents coming out against their own party would have been a pretty good signal that this wasn't just another election and trump wasn't just another republican. the crazies were always going to support him, the rest of the party wasn't a given.

last one I promise -- quote remind you of anyone

On July 3, 1988, @USNavy blew a commercial Iranian airplane out of the sky over the Persian Gulf, killing all 290 civilians onboard, including 66 kids.

Bush defended this, saying, "I will never apologize for the United States of America, ever. I don't care what the facts are!" https://t.co/yofnaeOywC

— Nima Shirazi (@WideAsleepNima) December 1, 2018

goddamn that Josh Clark Davis tweet thread is infuriating

Seriously. I hadn't heard that story before.

wow, i didn't even know about that.

xp Flight 655

"Statement as Vice-president, during a presidential campaign function (2 Aug 1988)[1]. Some commenters at the time saw this as a reference to the Navy warship USS Vincennes having shot down Iran Air Flight 655 on July 3, although Bush did not explicitly mention the shoot-down in the speech. The quote of the week section of Newsweek (15 August 1988[2], p.15) described the quote as "George Bush, speaking to a group of Republican leaders about the accidental downing of an Iranian airliner", and in "Rally Round the Flag, Boys" by Michael Kingsley in TIME magazine (12 September 1988), the quote was described as "the Vice President's reaction to the shooting down of the Iranian civilian airliner"."

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_H._W._Bush

(not to defend him, but context)

the crazies were always going to support him, the rest of the party wasn't a given

If you weren't one of the crazies, did you really need one of the Bushes to spell out for you that Trump was potentially dangerous? I assume you would have been non-crazy enough to figure that out for yourself just from observing the campaign. I think we watched different elections. The only actions that were going to change the 2016 result would have come from Clinton, not external forces. (And again--it's a hard thing to search and round up comments--I'll stand by the statement that the Bushes did speak out publically against Trump. Maybe not as forcefully as you would have liked, but I think they did.)

If 35% of his support came from crazies, then 65% of his support came from non-crazy people who voted for him after the Access Hollywood tape. George H.W. Bush: "Please, America, do not vote for this guy--that tape strongly suggests he's not someone we want as president." And with that, millions of votes--especially in those key "Democratic firewall" states--migrate back to Clinton.

Doesn't compute.

I think the only republican elite who was super vocal about opposing trump at election time was Romney.

A reminder that one of the peculiar features of the 2016 election was that then, as now, Trump's ceaseless stream of outrageous pronouncements sucked almost every bit of public attention into its vortex, so that a choir of prominent Republicans leaders could have assembled on the steps of the Capitol and sung their disavowal of Trump in harmony and a week later few people would have remembered what they'd said. The man is an expert shit-stirrer.

If you weren't one of the crazies, did you really need one of the Bushes to spell out for you that Trump was potentially dangerous? I assume you would have been non-crazy enough to figure that out for yourself just from observing the campaign. I think we watched different elections. The only actions that were going to change the 2016 result would have come from Clinton, not external forces. (And again--it's a hard thing to search and round up comments--I'll stand by the statement that the Bushes did speak out publically against Trump. Maybe not as forcefully as you would have liked, but I think they did.)

it can be hard to get outside of our own reference point here and accept that most americans don't care about politics and certainly don't follow day-to-day events the same way that anyone on ilx does. if you're a longstanding member of the republican party in 2016, every presidential candidate you've voted for since 1988* is currently opposed to the current nominee and isn't voting for them. I would be surprised if 1/10 of them could have told you that fact.

I think it's nuts to believe that a coordinated effort by 3 decades of party figureheads wouldn't have had an effect in the election, and not just because the election was so close that anything would have swung it. I think they ultimately didn't because they thought trump was going to lose anyway and they didn't want to deal w/ the crazies.

*okay except bob dole

When he was in office I hated GHWB and his policies, and I didn't like him as an elderly ex-president either, but that Graeme Wood tweet upthread made me dig around a little and increased my respect on one (1) point; unilaterally cutting the US nuclear arsenal in half, over the heads of his Joint Chiefs and Secretary of Defense Dick Fucking Cheney, was by far his most significant act of presidential leadership:

https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Portals/68/Documents/casestudies/CSWMD_CaseStudy-5.pdf

most americans don't care about politics and certainly don't follow day-to-day events the same way that anyone on ilx does

Probably true, I don't know, I'm not American. But are you saying that such people weren't aware of the Access Hollywood tape (but one example out of many)? You'd have to be living under some kind of gargantuan rock to have dodged that story. And if you did see it, and went ahead and voted for Trump anyway, I don't see how any kind of coordinated effort to tell you not to was going to make one bit of difference.

Impasse--again, we observed different elections. (And I again plead guilty to the same kind of benign stupidity. Fifteen times during the election I concluded, "That's it--Trump can't win now.)

Actually nvm he was cool

Other people seem to be covering George H.W. Bush's life of lies and war crimes. So I will warmly remember when Bush told Gorbachev that all of America's "blockheads and dummies" loved Reagan because Reagan was "an extreme conservative." pic.twitter.com/gqquFDA8Nd

— Jon Schwarz (@schwarz) December 1, 2018

Probably true, I don't know, I'm not American. But are you saying that such people weren't aware of the Access Hollywood tape (but one example out of many)? You'd have to be living under some kind of gargantuan rock to have dodged that story. And if you did see it, and went ahead and voted for Trump anyway, I don't see how any kind of coordinated effort to tell you not to was going to make one bit of difference.

sure they heard about the hollywood tape, but they also heard about the clinton email scandal and BENGHAZI.

when discussing what it was like to experience the clinton/trump election, as well as every day since then, the AP Stylebook strongly recommends inserting ~^TRUMP~! with a semi-random frequency averaging between every 2-3 words. for example the last exchange between clemenza and iatee should instead read something like:

----AP Stylebook Approved------

Probably true~^TRUMP~!, I don't ~^TRUMP~! know, I'm not ~^TRUMP~! American. ~^TRUMP~! But are ~^TRUMP~! you saying that such ~^TRUMP~! people weren't aware ~^TRUMP~! of the ~^TRUMP~! Access Hollywood tape (but ~^TRUMP~! one example ~^TRUMP~! out of many)? ~^TRUMP~! You'd have to be ~^TRUMP~! living under ~^TRUMP~! some kind ~^TRUMP~! of gargantuan rock to ~^TRUMP~! have dodged that story~^TRUMP~!. And ~^TRUMP~! if you did ~^TRUMP~!see it, and went ~^TRUMP~! ahead and~^TRUMP~! voted for Trump ~^TRUMP~!anyway, I don't see how any ~^TRUMP~!kind of coordinated~^TRUMP~! effort to tell ~^TRUMP~!you not to was ~^TRUMP~!going to make ~^TRUMP~!one bit of difference~^TRUMP~!.

~^TRUMP~! sure they heard ~^TRUMP~! about ~^TRUMP~! the hollywood ~^TRUMP~!tape, but they also ~^TRUMP~! heard about ~^TRUMP~!the clinton email ~^TRUMP~! scandal and BENGHAZI~^TRUMP~!.

------

note that some stylebooks allow for ~^TRUMP~! to be inserted into the middle of words (ie consti~^TRUMP~!tution), and all stylebooks recommend that a ~^TRUMP~! be placed at the end of the sentence as the final word

Oh, I know, it's tiresome. This just seems like such a basic point to me. But I'll duck out and leave it to anyone else who wants to pick up the argument. (Rest easy about 2020, though: don't worry about nominating a good candidate to run against Trump, all you need is a coordinated effort from the likes of James Baker and David Frum to send Trump packing.)

If the media were willing to be more critical of dead elder statesmen, perhaps living ones would think harder before committing atrocities

— Natalie Shure (@nataliesurely) December 1, 2018

oh no, i'm with you clemenza. there was coordinated pushback against trump from many republicans, old guard and new, during the campaign. it wasn't very effective because ~^TRUMP~

Xpost

Narrator: ...they wouldn't be

True romance. pic.twitter.com/cq9dp7BNPe

— Christian Lorentzen (@xlorentzen) December 1, 2018

cmon if hilz had written that we'd have been wading through retweets of it for a fuckin month

oh he was a master of the creeping hand alright

in what universe does the recipient of that note not burn it up immediately, as soon as they read it, unless they were planning on filing for divorce

imagine Lindsey Graham writing that to Trump

https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP99-01448R000401580069-6.pdf

Oh man. Watch a couple minutes of this masterpiece of awkwardness. No one likes anyone:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUTfwTVXlto

I am practicing the loving look, and the creeping hand.