In his July column in NR, John Derbyshire notes something recently written by Peggy Noonan:
The Republican establishment . . . spent the first decade of this century backing things a truly conservative party would not have dreamed of — careless wars, huge spending and, most scandalously, a dreamy and unconservative assumption that it would all work out because life is sweet and the best thing always happens.They were fools.
Funny how Noonan just walked briskly by at the time. Derb notes how Bruce Bartlett was emphatically not a fool, citing his 2006 book on Bush, “Impostor”. Money quote:
Bartlett’s book — I have it on my desk here — reads pretty well after five years. At the time, however, it was greeted with a chorus of Bronx cheers from establishment Republicanism. Bartlett was actually fired from his job at a GOP suck-up think tank — not as bad as being raped by Ajax Minor then slain by Clytemnestra, but humiliating nonetheless. So as we contemplate the current federal fiscal mess — $2 trillion per annum coming in, $4 trillion going out — let’s bow our heads for a moment in apology to the premature anti-spenders.
I’m banned from being mentioned at NRO, but here’s a link to my 2003 Time essay on Bush’s excessive spending. Money quote:
In three short years, this President has so ramped up government spending that he has turned a fiscal surplus into a huge and mounting debt. Far from taking responsibility for the nation’s finances, the President has shirked basic housekeeping and foisted crippling debt on the next generation. If a President is in some sense the father of an extended family, Bush is fast becoming a deadbeat dad, living it up for short-term gain while abandoning his children to a life of insecurity and debt…
One thing we know: the era of the end of Big Government is over. Bush has ended it. The choice now is between Big Insolvent Government (under the Republicans) or Big Slightly Less Insolvent Government (under the Democrats). No wonder voters are restless. And no wonder fiscal conservatives who backed Bush in 2000 are beginning to feel not so much disappointed as betrayed.
Where were the Tea-Partiers then? Throwing people like me and Bartlett out of mainstream conservatism. I might add that my recent forgiveness for Obama’s spending in a deep recession is not a new position. In that same piece, I wrote:
Not all borrowing is bad, of course. When a recession hits or a war breaks out, it makes sense for governments to borrow–as long as they pledge to run surpluses in better times.
I know it’s a little pathetic to point out I was a tea-partier avant la lettre – unlike the GOP establishment or the current tea party. But surely that gives me some credibility to be more than a little skeptical of them. They say they are against debt, but they did nothing when Bush splurged and even now, rule out one half of the equation, taxes. What they are against is government, especially when run by an effective, mixed-race Democrat, doing his best to deal with the fiscal and military catastrophes they once cheered on.
The Dish 