Peggy Noonan - Where's All the Love Gone?

Peggy Noonan ripped into BushCo and Dubya big time on the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal recently. I was really shocked as the WSJOJ has consistently fellated BushCo for the last six years (oops, that's a bud pun - the kind that might get a guy impeached). She wrote June 1, 2007:

What political conservatives and on-the-ground Republicans must understand at this point is that they are not breaking with the White House on immigration. They are not resisting, fighting and thereby setting down a historical marker--"At this point the break became final." That's not what's happening. What conservatives and Republicans must recognize is that the White House has broken with them. ...

For almost three years, arguably longer, conservative Bush supporters have felt like sufferers of battered wife syndrome. You don't like endless gushing spending, the kind that assumes a high and unstoppable affluence will always exist, and the tax receipts will always flow in? Too bad! You don't like expanding governmental authority and power? Too bad. You think the war was wrong or is wrong? Too bad.

But on immigration it has changed from "Too bad" to "You're bad."

Wow, them's some harsh words. Let's play the way back machine to see what Peggy's been saying over the years. January 31, 2002:

In the old days elite opinion held that Mr. Bush was a scripted trust-fund dullard whose rise was greased by luck and birth. Those were the days. Those of us who stood with Mr. Bush then were a small and hardy band of criticized contrarians. It was fun. We had secret handshakes and everything. Now everyone's in on the act. ...

[T]hose who once dismissed Mr. Bush and now praise him are demonstrating an honesty and high mindedness that is wonderful to behold after the sapping, sour 1990s. It really is refreshing--literally refreshing--to have a president people admire and can follow cleanly again.

January 30, 2003 (Commenting on the SOTU):

Mr. Bush seems uniquely resolved to be as courageous as the times require and as helpful as they allow. There is a profound authenticity to him, and a fearlessness too.

A steady hand on the helm in high seas, a knowledge of where we must go and why, a resolve to achieve safe harbor. More and more this presidency is feeling like a gift.

November 4, 2004 (Commenting on Dubya's re-election; I would have substituted
'millionaires' for 'than a million', but what the heck):

The leaders of the Bush effort see it this way: A ragtag band of more than a million Republican volunteers who fought like Washington's troops at Valley Forge beat the paid Hessians of King George III's army. Savor.

By 2006, the strains had become more obvious February 2, 2006:

The president's State of the Union Address will be little noted and not long remembered. There was a sense that he was talking at, not to, the country. ... [The speech wasn't] precisely a pudding without a theme, but a thin porridge.

You can see the wheels start to come off in the Spring of last year May 18, 2006:

I continue to believe the administration's problem is not that the base lately doesn't like it, but that the White House has decided it actually doesn't like the base. That's a worse problem. It's hard to fire a base. Hard to get a new one.

Thus, we see the full evolution of Peggy Noonan's views. By the way, don't cry for her; she's gone back to fellating the corpse of the Gipper. But I would ask her, Peggy, how could you be so fucking wrong?