st\u00a0<\/sup>President of the United States, George HW Bush, passed away this weekend.\u00a0 He was 94 years old, the patriarch of the Bush political dynasty.\u00a0 With his passing, another member of the historic Republican Party, the Party that rejected the absolutism \u00a0of Robert Taft and Barry Goldwater; the party of Eisenhower, Rockefeller and yes, Richard Nixon; is gone.<\/p>\nWe have seen this Grand Old Party; tough on foreign policy, free marketeers on trade; a party that still had a heart; slowly pass away before our eyes this year.\u00a0 Barbara Bush, John McCain, and now the President, all revive memories of what a \u201ckinder and gentler\u201d Republican Party was.\u00a0 And, as the speeches are made and the memorials articles are written, we see the stark contrast between the Republicans of then, and the Trumpians of today.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not that President Bush 41 was soft.\u00a0 Mike Dukakis, his Democratic opponent for President in 1988, would beg to differ:\u00a0the raw racism of the Willie Horton Ad run by Bush, literally blaming Dukakis for murder, was as ugly as the ads of today.\u00a0 And it\u2019s not that the Republican Party of the era was so compassionate:\u00a0 the \u201c\u2026thousand points of light\u2026\u201d was about volunteering to solve the problems the government wasn\u2019t going to pay for.<\/p>\n
But there was a class, and an understanding of service to America, that is missing today.\u00a0 While Democrats might disagree with Bush, or Reagan, or even Bush 43; there was still a presumption that they were trying to do what they thought was best for the country, as opposed to what was best for themselves (OK, Dick Chaney might be the exception.)\u00a0 \u00a0Today, after a week of more Trump revelations of self-interest over country, it seems clear that the old GOP is gone.\u00a0 Even the lesser leaders of the Party, McConnell and Ryan and Graham, have remained silent as the drip-drip-drip of the Mueller investigation hammers away at the Trump Administration.<\/p>\n
I never voted for Bush 41:\u00a0the truth is that I have never voted for a Republican President.\u00a0 But, I could still have respect for them.\u00a0 For Gerald Ford, who took on the Presidency at its lowest point after Watergate, for Ronald Reagan who seemed like the \u201charbinger of the apocalypse\u201d before he took office (but we survived); for Bush 41, who was the last of the \u201cGreatest Generation\u201d to lead our nation.<\/p>\n
All of them are in stark contrast to the President of today.\u00a0 And that\u2019s the problem President Trump has this week:\u00a0 another funeral where by contrast his Administration will be held up to ridicule.\u00a0 Another ceremony where the grace of American politics and politicians will demonstrate what we are missing, and the shadow of the Mueller Investigation will continue to darken this White House’s \u00a0door.<\/p>\n
While I don\u2019t agree with them, I do feel for Ohio Republicans like John Kasich and Rob Portman (he served as a Bush 41\u2019s White House Counsel.)\u00a0 They are Republicans of the \u201cold school;\u201d one dared to speak out in opposition to the President, and the political price has been that his Party has left him.\u00a0 They must feel like they are standing on the beach, as the waves tumble onto the shore, and the sand dissolves into the sea under their feet.\u00a0 The ideas they built their careers on; the mentors and leaders they worked for; all are slipping away, leaving them standing alone in the waves.<\/p>\n
So we say farewell to George Hebert Walker Bush this week.\u00a0 We know he is where he wants to be; a man who\u2019s marriage was so strong he didn\u2019t want to live without his love.\u00a0 And we can admire the courage and the class of President Bush, and those others who will stand, gray and stooped, beside his casket. \u00a0\u00a0Perhaps seeing this contrast once again will embolden other Republicans to stand up for the ideals of their Party, rather than knuckle under to the bully in the White House.\u00a0 I\u2019m not holding my breath, but those Republicans may soon need to, as the tide of history washes their current President, and with him their Party, out to sea.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sand Slipping Away The 41st\u00a0President of the United States, George HW Bush, passed away this weekend.\u00a0 He was 94 years old, the patriarch of the Bush political dynasty.\u00a0 With his passing, another member of the historic Republican Party, the Party that rejected the absolutism \u00a0of Robert Taft and Barry Goldwater; the party of Eisenhower, Rockefeller … Continue reading “Sand Slipping Away”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nSand Slipping Away : Our America - 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