"If Republicans would at least be willing to concede that Republican policies actually created these messes in the first place, it'd be a helpful step forward."

Good luck with that.

What is this "Bush" you speak of?

They won't listen to him either.The next step will be attacks on Bartlett for not being conservative enough.

because bruce bartlett is an honest conservative, he makes the fundamental error of assuming the gop is full of honest conservatives.

gop anger is very easy to understand: these people believe it is their divine right to rule the country. it is not conceivable, in their minds, for a democrat to win an election, much less shape policy. and when reality doesn't fit their fantasy, they get angry.

because fundamentally, the gop is dominated by unhealthy personalities with real problems with rational thought.

The only time conservatives will talk about Bush is when making excuses for referring to Obama as Hitler.

If only he had thrown in a Nazi reference, or shouted, his comments might actually have been picked up by the MSM.

We have a conservative in the White House. (Well, Rockefeller REpublican variety) The problem is that he is not a member of the cult.

Here I am sitting on the dock, smoking a fag, and watching rats come down the hawser. I jostle my baddy, point, and say, "Hey, isn't that Bruce?"

The next step will be attacks on Bartlett for not being conservative enough.

Way past that already. Four years ago, he was fired from a wingnut think tank for similar heresies.

Nice try Buce; however, it looks to me like 'conservatives' and 'Republicans' are angry because the Black guy beat the White guy, and therefore they are justified in doing everything and saying anything in hopes of deligitimizing or overturning the election.

You're right, penalcolony, I think Bartlett is one of Slate's token conservatives.

"If Republicans would at least be willing to concede that Republican policies actually created these messes in the first place, it'd be a helpful step forward."

Never happen! Everyone knows that every problem in country that is not the fault of The Chosen One is because of Clinton or FDR.

Wouldn't it be simpler for conservatives to put their hands over their ears and scream?

"Never happen! Everyone knows that every problem in country that is not the fault of The Chosen One is because of Clinton or FDR."

You forgot Jimmy Carter

This assumes that Republicans are interested in an honest debate about the issues. They are not. They want to destroy Obama's presidency in its infancy (see DeMint, Jim). That's all it's about, and it's helpful to keep that in mind.

bcinaz, Bartlett said:

In my opinion, conservative activists... are less angry about Obama's policies than they are about having lost the White House in 2008. They are primarily Republican Party hacks trying to overturn the election results, not representatives of a true grassroots revolt against liberal policies.

Not sure why you apparently think you're refuting him by saying virtually the same thing.

Anyone see the women at one of the town hall meetings crying "I want my country back"? First thing I thought was that she means "I want my white republican president back".

"they're," not "their."

Bartlett nailed it.

So-called conservatives aren't conservatives at all. They're plutocrats. They don't really care about small government and/or fiscal conservatism. They care about what's best for the big business. As evidence, these plutocrats/non-conservatives fight against reductions in obsolete/dysfunctional military purchases (e.g. the F-22), they fight against reductions in agricultural subsidies, they're implicitly fighting for higher taxes for the middle class when they're fighting for lower taxes on corporate income, dividends, capital gains and estates. So-called conservatives presidents consistently proposed larger goverment and so-called conservative congresses consistently imposed larger government and higher taxes via more spending and bigger deficits.

The conservative/small government label is marketing that has no basis in reality. They don't hold Republicans to the same standard because their standard isn't what they claim. Bigger government is just fine, preferred in fact, specifically for the benefit of big business.

Following up, I'm not making the assertion that Republicans seek a "plutocracy" for shock value. It's a fact.

If not already familiar with it, look the word up and use it with confidence. Because unlike their faux cries of communists/fascists, they actually are plutocrats (see Benen's previous post on the new gilded age for further support).

it looks to me like 'conservatives' and 'Republicans' are angry because the Black guy beat the White guy,

Give it a rest bcinaz. They are angry because the Democrat beat the Republican. End of story. The temper tantrum right behaved in exactly the same way throughout the 90s.

Bartlett nailed it. -Chris

I happen to think he's way off and making a simple situation overly complex.

The conservative base has become unhinged because a Democrat who happens to also be a black man was elected president.

We saw the same thing to a lesser degree during the Clinton Administration, but I think we underestimated just how angry it would make them to have a black President.

The people who are raging have no understanding of deficit and debt. They don't know what a progressive tax is, or why corporations are considered people in this country. They often don't even know that Medicare is a government entity. They must think it comes from rainbows and fairies. They're just mad because he's on a different team and a different race than they are.

The elected officials and media personalities who should and likely do know what's going on are far too interested in stoking the fires for political gain, but they're not angry. They're just playing their usual game.

I don't think this has to do with misplaced rage at all; I think it's racism and political elitism.

The temper tantrum right behaved in exactly the same way throughout the 90s. -Rob Mac

Yeah, I remember when they tried to delegitimize Clinton by claiming he was a Muslim from Africa.

Bush was a white guy, remember.

Obama said it best when he inferred that the federal government can't run a Postal Service...........what makes you think it can run a health care system. Same for the SS program which is threatening to go belly up along with a Welfare system which is saturated....Good Luck Uncle Sam

This is yet another manifestation of the fact
that Bruce Bartlett REALLY hates GW Bush.

I hate Bush too, but I also noticed Bartlett first
said that the economy does not turn on a dime,
but he then made a series of economy comparisons under which Bush suffers that start on Jan 1, 2001
or Jan 1 1993 or Jan 1, 2009.

If he pushed those back by 6-8 months or so to match his statement that the economy does not turn instantly, Bush would look substantially (but not qualititatively) better.

I agree with everything he says, and still think
Bush was a disaster. But he hates Bush with an abiding passion.

Mr. Bartlett seems to have bona fide conservative credentials and parlayed them into DC jobs ending with appointments in the Reagan and George HW Bush administrations. Right now, he appears to be in the Republican Party of the 1950s and early 60s as it appeared in the Upper Midwest. The party of Main Street. People who thought that government could do good things for society. That is, after they gave up looking for commies behind every bush.

But, have no fear. The inmates are running the asylum. Mr. Bartlett's observations will soon relegate him to the side of the road as a RINO and, if he doesn't STFU, a Socialist.

I can't hear you. I can't hear you.

Doubtful, one minor quibble: Most people don't seem to understand progressive taxation. A friend of mine who is very well-educated (and not a conservative) was bitching about how his new job put him in a new tax bracket, and he'll end up making less money since he's now getting taxed at 28%. I had to explain to him that it was only the marginal increase that was getting taxed.

"middle class guy" @12:33 made my point.

He claims to care about the inefficiencies of government and supports his claim with examples of programs that primarily help the poor (and middle class in the case of SS) while remaining silent (and possibly deliberately uninformed) on government spending that amounts to welfare for the rich.

"middle class guy" is a plutocrat who only believes in smaller government for the poor and middle class and bigger government for the wealthy few.

The Republicans seem to exist as a pure base of power. There are some basic tenets of a conservative policy underlying it but most of what they talk is pure opportunistic attack on the other party. And the content of those attacks really doesn't matter - just the intensity. I don't think this element has a counterpart on the other side of the aisle. And the media has really been taken for a ride on this - covering the conflict not the substance. With only one side actually attempting to solve problems and the other side doing nothing but attacking - it really doesn't bode well for the US as a polity.

"middle class guy" is a plutocrat who only believes in smaller government for the poor and middle class and bigger government for the wealthy few. -Chris

I guess I just feel like you're giving 'just a middle class guy' too much credit. I think he's nothing more than a human tape recorder stuck on loop.

He's saying what his 'team' told him to say.

Repubs don't concede shit. That's their Prime Directive. Concedin' and backin' down is for liberal pussies.

The only reason Bartlett is pointing this out is to add another brick to the "Bush was not really a conservative" wall. Conservatism never fails, it just IS failed by its imperfect adherents.

Bush's failures, are, I'm sure, to Bartlett, a reason we should be giving REAL conservatism a try. Don't this this column means he's rational or anything.

"In my opinion, conservative activists, who seem to believe that the louder they shout the more correct their beliefs must be, are less angry about Obama's policies than they are about having lost the White House in 2008."

In other news, the sun rose this morning.

bcnaz: The trouble with your notion is that they did exactly the same thing to Clinton, who is white. Possibly Obama's race puts a particularly nasty edge on the rage against him, but it's not substantively different from the efforts to delegitimize Clinton's presidency, or destroy his health care reform mainly to deprive him of a political victory. As Bartlett said, the basic problem is that they just cannot and will not accept the verdict of an election that goes against them.

Finally, someone gets it. Bush's laissez-faire attitude toward the banking and insurance industries ran created the housing bubble that burst and drove our economy into the ground. Bush's war of choice grew the national debt to record levels. Why is the rising national debt only a travesty under Democratic Presidents?

I think about this every time someone ridicules the fact that President Obama inherited the banking crisis and the economic recession. When everything spun out of control last September, it was George Bush who was President. The bank bailout that people blame on Obama happened on Bush's watch. If only Bush had been able to stall the financial meltdown until January, but he couldn't. The bubble burst too soon, yet Bush has gone relatively unscathed by the public. Perhaps it just takes a while for it all to sink in but how quickly we forget who held the reigns when everything fell apart.

It was the same with 9/11. Although he had been in office nearly 9 months, Bush blamed the largest domestic terrorist attack in U.S. history on Bill Clinton. Never mind that Bush ignored intelligence reports about alQuaeda and he and his cabinet held meetings to plan the invasion of Iraq as early as January 2000.

Yes, the American people are angry about unemployment, increasing debt, bailouts for banksters and the auto industry, and outrageous bonuses for CEO, but they are directing their anger towards the wrong guy.

"Until conservatives once again hold Republicans to the same standard they hold Democrats, they will have no credibility and deserve no respect. They can start building some by admitting to themselves that Bush caused many of the problems they are protesting."

Amen. Sadly one has to exist outside Cosmoland to do so.

If you look back over the past 100 years or so of American history, it's clear that there would be no liberal/progressive agenda in this country were it not for the egregious failures of "conservative" policies diplomatic, fiscal, and social. Basically liberalism is about cleaning up the shit left behind by conservatism while conservatives then turn around and complain that liberals smell.