A disconnect within the GOP

Re “Bush urges GOP to back nominee,” Feb. 9

President Bush obviously has Sen. John McCain in mind in trying to persuade conservatives to rally behind the Republican nominee, but the 43rd president is in denial if he thinks that he’s going to soften the fulminations of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter and company. It’s obvious that the animus of the right-wing punditocracy toward the Arizona senator, who enjoys an 82.3% lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union, has less to do with his occasional departure from strict conservative orthodoxy than its desire to maintain a stranglehold on Republican Party dogma.

Clearly, the right has concluded that this will be a bad year for the Republican presidential candidate, no matter who the party nominates. Only by making McCain the whipping boy can it hope to avoid a repeat of the discrediting it suffered after Barry Goldwater’s trouncing in 1964. This way, the right can attribute the party’s defeat at the polls to a less-than-perfect conservative candidate rather than the disastrous policies of the Bush administration, where it belongs.

William Cooper

Pasadena

While addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference, Bush said: “This is an important election. Prosperity and peace are in the balance.”

What Orwellian universe is Bush living in? The United States is in a recession and has been at war for five years. If this is Bush’s definition of prosperity and peace, I’ll take just about any alternative right now.

Raymond Hull

Orange