Stigmatizing dissent: Bush weighs in

Bush says his critics shouldn't be uncivil. Oh, my, isn't that a nice thought? It would be funny if it weren't so cynical. Bush made the comment in an interview scheduled to be broadcast in full Monday on Fox News, the unofficial but faithful voice of the Republican Party:

I don't mind people trying to pick apart my policies, and that's fine and that's fair game. But, you know, I don't think we're serving our nation well by allowing the discourse to become so uncivil that people say - use words that they shouldn't be using.

What makes this a sad joke are the endless rantings of drooling-at-the-mouth Republican cheerleaders like Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Fox's own Bill O'Reilly, and many others of their kind. Being civil would wreck their whole act.

I'm sure the Republicans would like the war critics to tippy-toe around with their criticisms, while the likes of Ann Coulter run around accusing the Democrats of being traitors. As one of Clint Eastwood's characters said, "I don't think that's gonna happen."

Bush was responding to the comment last week by Senator Edward Kennedy:

There was no imminent threat. This was made up in Texas, announced in January to the Republican leadership that war was going to take place and was going to be good politically. This whole thing was a fraud," Kennedy said.
Kennedy said a recent report by the Congressional Budget Office showed that only about $2.5 billion of the $4 billion being spent monthly on the war can be accounted for by the administration. "My belief is this money is being shuffled all around to these political leaders in all parts of the world, bribing them to send in troops," he said.

Bush's comment follows House Republican firebrand Tom DeLay saying that the Democrats "have spewed more hateful rhetoric at President Bush than they ever did at Saddam Hussein." This is the Bush Republicans' idea of civil discussion.

And it's a continuation of a trend I discussed in earlier posts of the Republicans trying to deligitimize criticism of Bush and his policies.

Tags: bush, edward kennedy, iraq war, tom delay