Keeping a Lid On the Crazies

Many Americans, myself included, thought the Bush administration did the unthinkable by allowing the crazies out of the basement. No doubt the neocons were allowed unprecedented access to governance with the Bushies-- something Reagan warned against. And no doubt the self-labeled Christian Right (the theocons) was granted special access to those in charge.

What we didn't realize was the crazy that George Bush was able to keep a lid on.  The tea baggers, the militants, the birthers, the tenthers, the truthers and a whole array of other conspiracy theorists best known in libertarian circles.  True enough, all those are encompassed in some way or form in the tea bagger movement.  Not to suggest that all crazies are tea baggers.  It's just kind of where they all meet.  Now that Bush is gone there's no restraint on these groups.  There's no one there to calm their fears.  The power structure of the GOP collapsed after 8 years of Bush and the void is yet to be filled, except by the crazies that are popping up everywhere.

Fair enough the tea baggers have always been around.  The sentiment has always been there.  But Bush was able to calm them, to keep them at bay.  All this explains why there were no tea baggers marching in the streets when Bush enacted TARP or his 8 other tax payer funded bailouts.  Or when he grew government exponentially with No Child Left Behind, with his completely unfunded expansion of Medicare or his trillion dollar redistribution to Iraq and Afghanistan.  Or when he took the largest surplus in history and turned it into a $1.4 trillion deficit.  They were no were to be found during all that.  It's not that the tea baggers and their ilk are against any of it.  They just want a Republican in charge when it happens.  If not, there's no one to hold them in check and in their view enemies are in control and must be stopped.

Anyway, the Bush Void has left the country as a whole in a much better position.  But the GOP and its right wing collapsed, and all the little crazy conspiracy theorists we rarely saw during the Bush years are now front and center.  Bush's ability to control the crazies lurking in his party is an accomplishment that went unnoticed during his tenure even if the neocons and theocons gained great power.  Now that he's gone, this is one of those times we should give him credit for doing something that was a great service to the country.