Wednesday, May 9, 2007

The Truthers Are Out There

I recently observed that a winning Republican candidate has to coddle the sensibilities of folks who believe stuff that just ain't so -- in particular, the creationist types who tend to support Republicans in great numbers.

Well, the Republicans aren't the only ones with nutty relatives in the closet. Via Photon Courier, this poll says that 35% of Democrats believe that Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks in advance, while 26% aren't sure if he knew. It is, I suppose reassuring to find out that 39% don't think he knew. If the poll is right more than a THIRD of Democrats think Bush knew, and more than 60% think he might have known. That's crazy!

Anybody who looks at my posts on Bush knows I am a frequent and vociferous critic of this administration. I think that George W. Bush has been a spectacularly bad President, and that the damage he has done will take decades to be undone. But one thing that has helped him is that many of his harsher critics have become utterly unhinged, divorced entirely from reality. One is in a far better position to weather criticism if your critics are obvious lunatics.

It's not even logical. If Bush had known, would he have been reading "The Pet Goat" to schoolchildren? Would he have then spent the rest of the morning jetting around America and letting Rudy get all the TV time? If Bush had known, wouldn't he have leaped into action, jetted back to Washington, stood defiantly on the lawn of the White House and given a rousing speech?

Besides, if this administration had known, could it really have kept that under wraps? I mean, come on.

1 comment:

J. Allen said...

You are in all likelihood correct, sir. But some of us dislike this administration so much, that it feels good to think that they are so bad that maybe they knew...maybe they let it happen...maybe they caused it!

Yeah, that's it...Now I feel better.