Bruce Bartlett is a Highly Respected Conservative

Bruce Bartlett is a highly respected conservative…

…known for his intelligence and for his commitment to conservative principles:

“Today, much is known about the lack of verifiable evidence of Saddam Hussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction, and about how the White House bullied those urging caution into reluctant support and thoroughly screwed-up the Iraq occupation.

Among conservatives, another factor is also at work: the growing realization that Bush has never really understood or shared a Goldwater/Reagan vision of the nature of conservative governance. And even those who still cling desperately to the view that Bush is better than the Democratic alternative mostly concede that his performance in office on a wide range of issues has left much to be desired.

Following are just a few examples of Bush's actions that have worn them down:

-- The explosion of spending on Bush's watch, his strong support for numerous "big government" initiatives such as the No Child Left Behind Act and the vast expansion of the Medicare program for prescription drugs, and his unwillingness to use the veto to control an orgy of pork barrel spending on his watch. Bush's recent successful veto of the defense supplemental, which yielded a bill close to what he originally asked for, confirms the view that he could have kept wasteful spending under control all along if he had simply made the effort.

-- Bush's extraordinarily poor choices for high-level government positions. The choice of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court was perhaps his worst decision -- rectified only because conservatives finally protested one of his decisions en masse and forced him to choose the vastly more qualified Samuel Alito instead. But since then we have witnessed the gross incompetence of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in the continuing scandal over the unnecessary -- and still unexplained -- firings of several U.S. attorneys; the comically inept actions of former Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown during the Katrina disaster; and the forced resignation of Paul Wolfowitz as president of the World Bank, a position for which he was totally unqualified in the first place and which was given to him purely as a reward for obsequious loyalty to the president. Space prohibits listing many other such examples.

-- The incredible ineptness with which Bush has pursued conservative goals such as Social Security reform, while he has brought to bear every ounce of power at his disposal to ram though Congress an immigration bill that is viewed as abhorrent by most conservatives… Meanwhile, Bush gives short shrift to his conservative critics, just as he did in the Miers incident. This has led many of his formerly fervent conservative supporters to conclude that he essentially views them and their concerns with total contempt.”

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/BruceBartlett/2007/05/29/taking_ron_paul_seriously&Comments=true
Bruce Bartlett is a former senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis of Dallas, Texas. Bartlett is a prolific author, having published over 900 articles in national publications, and prominent magazines and published four books, including Reaganomics: Supply-Side Economics in Action.
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