On BBC Radio from London, they recently interviewed someone from an institute connected with former President Bush. He was talking about why he thought Romney lost the election. Basically Romney was more harsh than Bush, if you can believe that. I can. Bush did support some immigration reform that included a guest worker program. Bush added prescription drug benefit to Medicare, Bush funded a lot of AIDS work in Africa, Bush often called himself a "compassionate conservative." Romney and Ryan's talk about cutting Medicare, and so forth was harsher and didn't go over with the voters. Interesting perspective.
I feel that the Republicans have gotten worse for several reasons. One reason (besides the power of the hateful mega churches) is that people are freaked out about the deficit. Tea party Republicans feel we can't have "business as usual" when it comes to the deficit. Bush was often accused of spending like a drunk sailor as he cut taxes, started wars and expanded, rather than proposing to slash, Medicare. Romney/Ryan came along later with a slash, slash, slash message that even made George Bush look nice. Maybe Romney was just set up to it. As governor of Massachusetts, he might have been more moderate, but harsh conservatism was taking over the Republican party at that time. Now the Republicans are doing some soul searching and it is interesting to hear the various perspectives.
I'm glad Obama won.
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