Letter: When will enough be enough for America?

Wednesday, April 5, 2006 | 7:20 a.m.

Will American voters ever elect another neo-conservative president? An interesting topic to mull. It really turns on the question of whether George Bush is innately inept or whether the neo-con philosophy is unappealing.

Certainly Bush is not a wise and judicious leader. No one doubts that - even as his administration tries vainly to justify Iraq as a success because a tyrant is gone. Nobody, but nobody, ever said Saddam was a nice guy or that his regime was less than monstrous. What enlightened people said was this: What for heaven's sake, is the rush? Why go in without the 1991 coalition providing moral authority?

Any reader of history knows that you never get what you thought you were going to get once a war starts. George W. blew it big time, even as he promoted and honored the people who were wrong and booted the people who were right.

Has the American public had enough of neo-con philosophy? That's a trickier question. Certainly many conservatives are abandoning ship. If the voters hold neo-cons responsible for warrantless wiretaps, pre-emptive wars, torture of prisoners, go-it-alone diplomacy, cronyism, subversion of science, theocratic statism, borrow-and-spend economics and shameless lapses of integrity, they would be gone, at least for a generation or two.

Ah, but wait! They've got the religious right and talk radio to save them. Perhaps. But what if the truly religious people among the neo-cons' present supporters begin examining their Christian ethics and squaring them against the moral lapses of the neo-cons? And what if the talk-radio faithful begin looking at the Limbaughs, Hannitys, Reagans and such and realize that these are the geniuses who thought sticking a land army in the rubble of Arab cities occupied by fanatic Muslim extremists was a good idea!

There may come a time when mouthy bluster just won't get you over.

Roy Grosser, Las Vegas