I think that when the "honest conservatives" reject Bush they're just setting up their assault on the Democratic president they expect to see elected next year. Their way of digging themselves out from under the Bush disaster (and obscuring their own massive role in that disaster) will be to swear that "Never again can an American President be allowed that kind of free hand!" This will justify their fighting the new Democratic President tooth and nail for every inch of ground.

For example, Bush's politicization of the career staff in Justice and elsewhere was a very bad thing, no? And certainly this kind of thing has to stop, no? So we will forbid the new Democratic President to interfere with career personnel, with the result that all of the political hacks Bush put in civil service positions will be untouchable. (When that happens, can we expect the media to understand what's going on? No, of course not. Can we expect the Democrats to understand? Not really, but this is one area where I'd trust Rahm Emmanuel. Send a hack to catch a hack.)

Now that they've stolen the horse, they're going to lock the barn door. It's just like January 2001: once Bush was inaugurated, the media and the Republicans decided that sabotage by impeachment and Gingrichean nastiness are really very bad things after all. So now the same people who worked so hard trying to impeach Clinton for almost nothing are telling us that it's unthinkable to do anything serious about Bush's much graver crimes.

In the long run we need a two-party system, and ultimately we want the Republican Party to be rebuilt on sane, civilized principles. But let's not rush into this. For the moment our task is to boot the Republicans out of office and start repairing the damage they've done. The role of the sane conservatives in this will be to sit quietly in the back of the room with paper bags over their heads and their hands folded on their laps.

(From Brad Delong's comments and Seeing the Forest.)

Supporting your view about conservatives is the way in which they villified Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont when he bolted from their party. Jeffords was one of the few who, early on, understood that he could not stomach George Bush as the leader of the Republican party, let alone the free world.

Yes, the Republicans tried to distance themselves from Bush in the debate last night, but they only mentioned deficit spending, poor execution of the war in Iraq and failure to be racist against Mexicans. I think I remember one passing reference to the need to restore integrity, but no speaker had the courage to mention Bush's illegal wiretapping, torture, suspension of habeus corpus, destruction of the Justice Department and general lack of respect for truth and the law. Then again, I haven't heard nearly enough on that front from the Democrats, either. They need to campaign relentlessly on these points and illustrate the guilt by association for any Republican who refuses to acknowledge them.

Keep pounding away Glenn, maybe these topics will emerge into the general discussion in time to have an impact on the 2008 elections. At least getting Howie to understand one point is massive progress!

One cannot say -- and I never have said -- that there are no conservatives who dissented from the Bush worldview, but their numbers are so tiny as to be irrelevant.

And they weren't given any media attention, unless there was some WH-directed smear undertaken. It lies solely at the feet of the puppet MSM that no dissent could be allowed unless it was tagged with treason.

Conservatives as a group are definitely fair game, as is any misguided idiot who voted for Bush in either year and is complaining now. But a special ring of hell should be set aside for those talking heads that played pile-on when someone expressed doubt along the way.

WT--Once the Republicans are returned to their true base and destiny as a regional party of Confederate Irredentists, Military-Industrial parasites and irresponsible capitalist swine in general, those of us who want any future at all, let alone a decent one, will have to go after the Democrats -- and yes, I mean you, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton -- who still think that there's political hay to be made in increasing our military budget.

What! Policy differences! I guess that means Mama and Bama aren't true... what ever it is that you are. Politically that is. It's positively scandalous.

By the way, what marvels of modern life brought to us by "irresponsible capitalist swine" have you eschewed to remain morally pure? Anything, or are you just striking a pose? Heh.

Well of course it's only a matter of time before Faux News "accidentally" labels Junior as a Democrat. By the way, is it just me, or is anyone else, while watching alleged "highlights" of the Gopers all playing Quien es mas macho? reminded of the 'Seinfeld' in which George, fighting a losing battle against a burn victim for the affections of a certain female, tells her in a last ditch attempt to win her over, "I'll burn myself; I'll burn my parents!"?

I can hear Romney, Giuliani, et al.: "I'll torture bin-Laden; I'll torture my parents!"

I'm not going to let these guys think into the cornfield the time not so long ago when George W. Bush Jr. was regarded as a daring renewal of Conservative Majesty combined resurrection of Ronald Reagan, King Solomon, and Sgt Rock, both the lunatic anti-Constitutional gang of "conservative" thugs AND the fawning, weak-kneed, bowled-over-by-His-Manly-Cod-Pieceyness major news company journalists and pundits.

If they want to have their 20th Party Congress / Kruschev moment when they come out and denounce Bush's Stalinist crimes, then they need to actually repudiate the things Bush Jr. did and stood for -- which they applauded to an extremely sickening and homo-erotic degree.

Sure, America's leading conservatives have every incentive to pretend the last 6 years never happened and that they were always in the graveyard sodomizing Reagan's corpse and they were never, ever in Washington DC with that filthy, bad, not-conservative George W. Bush Jr. whom they never, ever kneeled to and worshipped.

But there's no reason on this still somewhat green Earth that anyone else should allow them too, particularly since this is the 21st century, and we have, you know, like, recording devices, and TV archives, and other, you know, like, evidence of their loudly declared and mindless fealty.