March 11, 2006
Bartlett: Bush is no Conservative
I caught The Daily Show from last night, where Jon Stewart was introducing Bruce Bartlett. Of course, I couldn’t see any reason why Stewart would interview Bartlett, until I realized that Bartlett wrote a book slamming President Bush. Jon Stewart rightly described Bartlett at the beginning of the interview as having “street-cred with Conservatives”, and although I disagree with Bartlett’s assessment of the FairTax, his conservative credentials are well established. And yet he’s been fired for writing a book explaining why the conservative movement is far to the right of Bush.
In his own words, Why I Wrote the Book:
Last week, I published a new book, Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy. A lot of my friends are not happy with me for writing it and I have been embraced by a number of people on the left whom I would ordinarily consider my political enemies. Both are mistaken about why I wrote the book and what I hope to accomplish with it.
Some of my former friends on the right have attacked me as an opportunist who sold out his party and his president to get a best-seller. They would not think so if they knew that I started this project knowing that I would probably lose my job with a think tank closely allied with the White House, which I did. My advance on the book was less than the salary I was making, so if I am an opportunist, I’m a pretty poor one.
My new friends on the left are, of course, delighted to find someone on the right who is articulating a critique of George W. Bush. But if they read the book, they will find that my criticism bears nothing in common with theirs. Just because I find fault with a president from my party doesn’t mean I’ve switched sides. On the contrary, I wrote the book in order to help my side win.
My basic argument is that Mr. Bush has enacted policies contrary to conservative principles on too many occasions.
It’s no secret that with each passing day, I find more reasons to regret my 2004 vote for George W. Bush. My only basis for support of that “big-government conservative” is his leadership in the War on Terror, something which angers both my leftist friends and the committed Libertarians. Given that I believe the war on terror is Job #1 of our government right now, and considering the inability (IMHO) of John Kerry to fight that war properly, I couldn’t have made that vote differently and felt good about myself. But I’m not feeling that good now.
There’s a large negative feeling about Dubya from the entire libertarian wing of the Republican Party. I hate to say it, but I’m thinking that will lead to some big losses in 2006, and possibly beyond. Given that the Republicans tend closer to the libertarians than Democrats on most issues important to me, that’s a bad sign.
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Bush is digging a nice big hole for the Republican party. I’m dissappointed in him too. I voted for a man who I though would curb spending, instead he is spending like a drunken sailor. He outsourcing our country and he doesn’t seem to be interested in our illegal immegrient problems. I think he is throwing money down a hole as far as Kartina rebuilding is concerned. I haven’t seen any changes and I wonder where that money is going. I still wouldn’t have voted for John Kerry but Bush is dissappointing me.
Geez. You’d think all this Bush bashing would make my heart burst with pleasure. After all, I was one of “those people” who actually voted for Kerry. But you know, I’m just not feeling it.
I tried not to get overly emotional about the last election like so many of my liberal cohorts. I didn’t want to fall into that trap I felt most conservatives fell into and convoluted the Clinton fiasco. Have you ever tried to have a productive conversation with people who just can’t — even post tidal wave and Katrina funds — hold a single positive sentiment about the man? Try having Thanksgiving at my house this year.
But maybe it will be different this year after all. When I spent the weekend with my parents last weekend I found us all shaking our heads in unison as we watched “W – The President” rambling off pre-spun, non-sensical phrases. At one point I actually caught my father wincing. The only political debate, and I use the term loosely, that arose was when my mom was going through my refrigerator while making a sandwich and said that they don’t buy Heinz ketchup anymore because of “that woman.” Ma! You’re still beating that horse? Good God.
The Republicans MUST be running out of ammo. The only problem (although I’m sure Brad will list off several more) with us damn liberals now is we don’t have a gun.
You know, a lot of Republicans say that Clinton was the worst president they remember. I can’t agree with that. He was a roughly average president. Had he not been hamstrung by a Republican congress pinching pennies, he might have been very bad, but it would be hard to think that he would spend more than this Republican president has… I think looking back at it, it’s pretty likely that Carter was the worst of the last 50 years. I don’t know how one person can wrong as consistently as Carter has been. And his actions since (snuggling up to Chavez and commies everywhere), have been just as bad. He should stick to building houses for poor people, he seems to be pretty good at that…
As for the liberals? They’ve got a gun, but they’re shooting themselves in the foot. They’re trying to shoot Bush, even though they seem to forget that he can’t run for office again. You need to propose positive ideas that the country can get behind, not just attack Bush for being incompetent. If the liberals had nominated someone other than Kerry, it’s quite possible they could have won. But he was an absolutely inept candidate, a spineless bag of “nuance” when America wanted a strong leader. Americans didn’t trust that he could get the job done, so we voted for the known quantity.