Victory Soap v. 2.0

Or thereabouts. I've been in a kind of uninspired funk lately, as should be obvious from the quality, or lack thereof, of my posts over the last few weeks. Be that as it may, a thought still does surface every now and then in what is left of my brain. Sometimes I am able to lasso these thoughts and tie them down long enough so as to compose an actual nubbin of an idea around them. I will demonstrate:

Several rightwing (for want of a better term -- many of these people are actually about as "rightwing" as Angela Davis, the definition having been applied to them solely on the basis of their not wanting to submit to Islam right this moment) bloggers have been spouting off on how they regret voting for Bush, he isn't what they thought he was, and they are even having second thoughts on the War on Terror. The reasons for this seem to consist mainly of 1) the immigration thing, upon which Bush and Co. are admittedly obstinately wrongheaded (is Bush really that afraid of his Mexican sister-in-law?), and 2) many of these bloggers really do seem shocked that a war in the chaotic Middle East, which P.J. O'Rourke called "God's monkey house," would get a little messy.

But I don't really care about all of that. What stands out for me are all the former Bush supporters who say "I regret voting for him." Well, really, what does one say to that? It's hard to qualify the depths of idiocy... Does anyone but me recall the special crew running against him? It's not like we had anyone better. Anyone that had a likelihood of winning, that is. In the first contest it was basically Bush, or Gore. Just say to yourself "President Gore." Hurts, doesn't it? And then there was the second go 'round, where we had a choice of Bush, or John "Seared! Seared!" Kerry. We literally had no choice but to vote for Bush. He's no oil painting, but he's not completely insane like the other two. (Though at least Kerry has kept relatively quiet, and hasn't gone about the country selling disaster-porn snake oil like Gore has.)

Spare me the mea culpas. I'm not impressed. You all knew what you were doing.

Update: here's more from Mark Steyn:

Most of the stuff the base is mad about are things he openly championed in the 2000 race. He ran the most pro-Mexican, pro-federalization-of-education, pro-prescription-drugs-for-seniors campaign of any Republican Presidential candidate ever.

In almost all respects Bush is really a Democrat, old-school style. In fact, if it hadn't been for the World Trade Center attack, what would have distinguished his administration from Clinton's, except for more decorum? (Bush seems to have well and truly left his frat boy days behind him, at least, and also doesn't give off that skirt-chaser vibe that makes Clinton so bad-boy attractive to women and men alike -- in fact I'm beginning to think that a major reason so many liberals despite Bush is because they aren't sexually attracted to him.)