Back Words

by Andrew Sullivan: “Bush could have laid out an agenda for the future last night.

Instead, he dwelled on the battles of the last three years.”

This is not Reaganism. It isn’t Gingrichism. It’s Big Government Moral Conservatism: fiscally liberal and socially conservative. It will please the hard right and the base. And it will alienate libertarians and moderates. It struck me as a speech that comes out of a political cocoon, from a president who doesn’t grasp that he is in fact politically vulnerable, and who intends to run not on what he plans for the future but on what he has done in the past. That’s a high-risk strategy. We won’t know how high a risk until the Democrats produce a nominee.

Sick Joke

by Jonathan Cohn: “Bush’s heath insurance proposals were a hodgepodge of unserious

retreads…The ideas are so unserious they’re barely worth considering, except insofar as they demonstrate just how far out of touch this White House really is.”

Offensive Stance

by Michael Crowley: “Far from rising above the fray of the campaign, Bush used last

night’s speech to define his Democratic opponents in the most

unflattering ways possible.”

Marriage of Convenience

by Michelle Cottle: “Bush’s new marriage initiative is unlikely to work. Then again,

it’s not supposed to.”

…(C)heap-ass, feel-good initiatives aimed at promoting strong marriages–all in the name of happier, healthier children, of course–are something only the most amoral neo-Marxist feminazi could object to. Who cares if the programs actually work? Nearly all of us can agree that they should work–that it would, on the whole, be a positive thing if somehow they could work. And, in an election year, that kind of broad consensus is as good as gold.