Abandon Ship!

Can you hear it?

Can you hear the scuttling of tiny feet on the hardwood of the deck?

Know what that sound is?

It’s the sound of conservative rats leaving the sinking ship that is the Bush Administration.

It’s a lovely sound, you must admit.

Does your heart good to realize that these people – some of whom have written more gushingly about Bush in the past than Ronald Martin about Monica Crowley – are now coming to their senses, a little belatedly.

Here’s Peggy Noonan:

“If I'd thought he was a big-spending Rockefeller Republican--that is, if I'd thought he was a man who could not imagine and had never absorbed the damage big spending does--I wouldn't have voted for him.”

And it took her how long to figure that out?

Noonan again:

“I believe it is fair to say most Republicans did not think George W. Bush was motivated to run for the presidency for the primary reason of cutting or controlling spending. But it is also fair to say that they did not think he was Lyndon B. Johnson. And that's what he's turned into.”

With, she doesn’t bother to say (but then does she really have to?) his own personal Vietnam.

CNBC’s Larry Kudlow (of “Kudlow & Co.”) doesn’t even think Republicans should continue to control Congress:

“[Senate Budget Chairman Judd] Gregg has thrown in the towel on mandatory spending cuts because he says he doesn't have the votes. Well then, I don't think that the American people should "have the votes" to keep the Republicans in charge of the Senate--or the House for that matter.

This is a pathetic state of affairs.”

I couldn’t agree more, Larry.

Doug Bandow, a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute (who, to his credit, made a principled case for why conservatives shouldn’t vote for Bush in 2004), is even more sweeping:

“ ... the neocons have led the Republican Party and larger conservative movement to disaster. The administration's crusade for democracy is consuming precious lives and prodigious amounts of money while empowering forces hostile to both the U.S. and Western political ideals.

The debacle in Iraq has further unsettled (amazing but true) the Mideast. America is more hated and has less credibility around the globe. Spending has exploded, both on pork and on social programs. Washington has gained even more authority, creating a handy tool for the left when it eventually regains power.

No surprise, then, the GOP fears the results of the mid-term elections, just eight months away. The Republicans might even lose control of Congress.”

Even William F. Buckley, the doyen of American conservatism, stands athwart the Bush Administration yelling “Halt!”:

“One can't doubt,” he writes, “that the American objective in Iraq has failed.”

Keep in mind that none of these people are liberals. With the exception of Bandow, they have all supported Bush in the past – and even they admit that his administration is in shambles.

With friends like these...

Tom Moran