Deserting Bush

What prompted the conservative exodus? One reader credits a blogger:

As for Bush supporters jumping ship over the last three months, I think that a lot of credit can go to Glenn Greenwald’s much-discussed post entitled, "Do Bush Followers Have a Political Ideology?," which used you as a prime example of how Conservatives had abandoned conservatism in their loyalty to Bush. Greenwald wrote it in February and after I read it I told my friends that it was the equivalent of the "touch of death" delivered by Uma Thurman’s character in Kill Bill, with Bush’s followers in the David Carradine role. They were dying and they didn’t know it yet, so they blathered about his piece for a while and about how you weren’t really a Conservative, but the noise they made became weaker and weaker as they were forced to accept reality. They’re toast.

At CATO, when Bruce Bartlett and I let rip on Bush’s betrayal of anything faintly resembling the conservatism we knew from the recent past, I noticed the absence of real dissent in a roomful of right-wingers. Fear and loyalty kept up the pretense for a while; and a hatred of the president’s enemies. When all else failed, some resorted to glib avoidance. But in the end, reality does indeed undermine even the most rigid of ideologies. And when reality wins, real conservatives cheer.