My subject line's just riffing on yours, and actually I'm feeling a lot less concerned about Bush these days myself. We may have arrived there from different directions, but I agree that Bush really doesn't matter anymore. The die is cast, and now, instead of feeling like I have to be implacable in my support of efforts to drive Republicans from power, I feel more like I just need to keep paying attention in case they try something sneaky, but otherwise we've just begun a two-year process of showing them the door.

By now I shouldn't be surprised at your independent opinions, but I'm guess I'm just so used to confronting all-or-nothing dogmatism that every time you speak up I'm a bit startled. People debate what's going on with George Bush and all that emerges is the kind of tangled picture you present. It boils down somehow to "messed up", but who can really say if it's a naive integrity, a nominally-smart brain gone flabby from the silver spoon, hidden agendas or other sinister possibilities...who knows?

I wouldn't say "fealty" is a bad word any more...more than anything, it's a somewhat obscure word in a barely-literate population. I personally don't think it's a bad word, any more than concepts like loyalty and honor. But those things do have their downsides--the potential for group-think and abuse of trust by a bad leader. The postitive emotions of loyalty and faith need to be leavened by a little judgment and skepticism; you perform due diligence before making an investment, including an investment of trust.

From my perspective I think that the neocons who've taken over the Republican Party have to some degree betrayed the trust of their own loyalists. A lot of Republicans these days are scratching their heads trying to figure out what this newfangled Republicanism is all about, because it's not quite what they thought they were getting when they voted for those people.

I mention all that because the next couple of years have the potential to be pretty ugly, as on the one hand a lot of Conservatives are going to be feeling bad about (per your last sentence), not being on the winning side after all, some of them feeling defensive about having been fooled; while partisans on the other side are going to succumb to the temptation to whoop it up and not miss a chance to rub the nose of Republicans in things. The feud will be kept alive and polarization will deepen, and the political swings will tend to become even more extreme.

This is not good. I'm taking the pledge to keep the gloating to a minimum, and restrict my energy to pushing back only when I see a danger of a turnaround. It's not right to kick people when they're down.

Not just happy-face positivism. Since the 2004 election Democratic activists and interested kibbitzers have been obsessively studying the Republican playbook, and while half the reason I'm confident the Republicans are on the way out is due to their own mistakes and overreaching, the other half is that Democrats will be using Republican techniques against them. No matter your politics, it's hard to deny the pure political skill of the Republicans over the last couple of decades.

The problem I have is that many of those techniques seem underhanded and sneaky--that is, subversive of democracy--and none of these Democratic operatives stop and question whether they should adopt those tactics. I see the distinctly unhappy prospect ahead of having to rein in the inevitable excesses of Democrats when it's their turn. Long term, we need deeper changes than just spinning the revolving door of two-party politics.