Pat Buchanan seems to have abandoned ship. You’ve got to read his blistering attack on Bush’s leadership and how his policies have generally caused huge problems for us.

This remarkable piece attacks Bush and his advisors for:

• The awful Iraq debacle
• Deficits, trade balance, illegal aliens
• Considering a national leadership shakeup as a public relations stunt to save Bush’s poll numbers
• Supporting Condi and Harriet Miers

Here’s the link, if you don’t want to wade through my comments or scroll down to see my excerpts of the Buchanan article: RealClearPolitics - Articles - Are the Neocons Losing It? - Pat Buchanan.

I think it’s fair to say that Buchanan Keelhauls Bush and his neocon friends. See the links below. You’ve got to read the piece for yourself, because it expresses something approaching a complete lack of respect for Bush’s ability to govern.

Pat Buchanan is a steady Christian-conservative with a libertarian streak. He’s anti-Iraq war.

Buchanan is honest enough to blame Bush for the USA’s biggest problems: ” …huge deficits, 12 million illegal aliens, a trade deficit running at $800 billion a year and a no-win war that is bleeding our country” [see below for links and more quotes].

Buchanan blames the neocons for the huge Iraq war debacle and says the neocons were plotting the Iraq war while Bush was still governor of Texas - Reflect on this …

Stop for a minute and reflect on something. Anti-Bush liberals have for three years been accusing Bush of lying about the reasons for the Iraq war. Critics have said that Bush’s neocon friends have been plotting the Iraq War since the early 90s, and the justifications for the Iraq War were essentially fabricated, and that the war was going to happen regardless.

Republican apologists in the media, like Limbaugh and Hannity and Coulter, etc, have viciously defended Bush’s Iraq War justifications.

But Pat Buchanan seems to fully accept the earliest anti-war criticism, about how this war is a neocon war, the culmination of a longstanding neocon Iraq War plan.

Between Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter and Buchanan, give me Buchanan for intellectual integrity. [Although Buchanan can be just as much an apologist and an attack-dog as those others sometimes]

Here are some snips from this remarkable piece by Buchanan, where Pat seems to abandon the sinking Bush ship.

RealClearPolitics - Articles - Are the Neocons Losing It?

While President Bush appears serenely confident about Iraq, the same cannot be said of the War Party propagandists who were plotting this conflict when Dubya was still a rookie governor of Texas.

[ … ]

That Bush is in trouble is undeniable. But his people are not Bush’s problem. His policies are. It is these policies, not his advisers, that have given us huge deficits, 12 million illegal aliens, a trade deficit running at $800 billion a year and a no-win war that is bleeding our country.

If Bush should follow Barnes’ advice and throw his most loyal people to the wolves as a P.R. stunt, he will have earned their lasting contempt, and that of the country. For all will know he was scapegoating them for his own failures — failures that come of having listened to the neocons who are even now slipping out of camp, rehearsing alibis and blaming Bush for not heeding their brilliant advice.