I’ve discussed before how former Bush supporters and loyalists suffering from buyer’s remorse are now frantically trying to revise history and offer (lame) excuses for why they were so foolish. driftglass brings up another tactic that we’ll hear often: everybody went along with Bush. driftglass, who takes Chris Matthews to task over this rhetorical strategy, has a stereotypical calm, collected, restrained response to Matthews:

Uh, no Chris. “We” didn’t elect him, and “we” never thought having a halfwit sock puppet as the leader of the free world was a particularly good idea….
Uh, no.
Again, hate to stop you mid-blubber, but there is no fucking WAY that I can let this pass.
“Americans” aren’t dumb you overfunded meatbrick.
“Americans” don’t still think there really are WMDs in Iraq.
“Americans” don’t think Saddam was the mastermind of 9/11.
“Americans” don’t think the Earth is 6,000 years old.
“Americans” don’t think that global warming is just stuff a bunch of corporate-hating tree-huggers made up.
No, it is “Conservative Republicans” who believe this insane, idiotic shit, not “Americans“.
It is Republicans who demonstrate again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again that they are, in fact, abundantly stupid and hateful enough to believe the same boldface lies told by the same treasonous liars over and over and over, and how fucking dare you try to “we” the rest of us into the cesspit with the swine that cheered this disaster of an Administration on for the last six years.
Because as we on the Left (who have been Right all along) all know, in the Age of Dubya, you can either be a Good American or a Good Republican, but you no longer be both.