What Democrats Owe George W. Bush and the GOP

All of us Democrats owe George W. Bush a huge debt of gratitude.  He and his his reign created the modern Democratic movement.   It just took a while.

During his reign I could not understand why he was re-elected.   After such a disastrous first term, what possibly possessed us to keep him around?  It turns out we didn't.  Here is one example (of many) of what actually happened.

To use one of Bush's most famous statements, I misunderestimated the power of momentum and fear. It takes a while for people to realize their mistakes - and for people to build organizations and effort to take back the government. 

It's not enough to realize your are wrong.  We needed several other things to happen.

1. We needed (as always) for the older generation to die off a bit and be replaced by new younger voters.  Voters that remembered the misery of George Bush's disastrously long wars, rather than magic that was Reagan.  Voters that knew real gay people, rather than voters that believed deceitful lies about people they never realized they were friends with.
2. We needed for the conniving, liars of the GOP to retire - and let the innocent people that believed their lies take over.  Thus they stopped saying they were 'cutting the budget' while boosting it - thus keeping all sides happy (and blaming the Democrats for the budget deficits they created), and began to actually try to cut the budget, pissing off the actual people that really needed the services they tried to cut.
3. We needed to develop organizations to collect the money and motivate voting.   This takes time to create and work out the bugs.
4. We needed time to let people admit to themselves that the GOP had FAILED.  That their were no new weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, that they did not catch and kill Osama Bin Ladin in a reasonable amount of time (Doing it 10 years after 9/11 is a failure, not a success).   We needed to see what happens when you remove regulation (economic disasters - Enron, Madoff, Housing collapse)

In my opinion those are the reasons why George Bush managed to hold on for a second term.  Granted Kerry made a mistake or two as well.

But the new Democratic Majority - in both the electoral college and the nation as a whole is in my opinion, directly caused by the many failures of the GOP as a whole under George Bush.

Because lets be honest, it wasn't all Bush's fault.  At the very least, quite a lot of it belongs to Cheney.

They screwed up the economy, they screwed up the war effort, they screwed up our privacy, they screwed up our healthcare, they screwed up oh so very much.

It is only because the GOP did such a horrible job in the early naughts.   From 2000 to 2008, they did everything they could to breed a new generation of Democrats.

So I say Thank You George Bush.  Thank you Dick Cheney.  Without you, there is no way we could have the thriving liberal country that you created.