Bottom line: The Bush economy was pretty much hunky-dory. Things started going to hell only after Pelosi and Reid took over Congress at the beginning of 2007.
Posted on 10/12/2012 5:46:50 PM PDT by tsowellfan
Despite much evidence to the contrary, a recent Gallup poll indicates that Barack Obama's scam of "what I inherited from eight years of Bush" is still working -- with some 68 percent of Americans still believing that George W. Bush is primarily responsible for America's ever-exploding budget deficits, our painfully high and long-lasting rates of unemployment, and our incurably anemic rates of economic growth.
But as the 35-year chart displayed below clearly demonstrates, this "inheritance" was not from the relatively healthy and steadily improving George Bush economy of 2004-06, but rather from the disastrous Pelosi-Reid congressional economy of 2007-08.
It is that post-Bush economy (with its loud anti-Bush promises of higher taxes, of larger deficit spending, and of radical "carbon-footprint" regulatory crack-downs) that Obama actually inherited in early 2009 -- and that two years earlier had given birth to the OPRAH (Obama-Pelosi-Reid-And-Hillary) Land Economy of today...
(Excerpt) Read more at truespeak.org ...
Bottom line: The Bush economy was pretty much hunky-dory. Things started going to hell only after Pelosi and Reid took over Congress at the beginning of 2007.
I still view this fact as one of the principal failings of the conservative movement:
The willingness to defend Reagan but adamant refusal to defend bush
Bush tax cuts cost nothing.
In fact they yielded the largest revenue results in us history.
Bush reduced the deficit by more than half prior to demc control of congress
Bush saved the auto industry not Obama and required funds to be paid back. Obama required bankruptcy of automakers just as Romney suggested.
Bush’s alleged failings are dwarfed by the failings of Reagan yet there is no grace.
Much of the current problems in defending the Romney tax plan is the failure to defend bush.
Perhaps if Bush had defended himself others may have backed him up.
Bush did. Too many conservatives didn’t.
When Obama doesn’t. His supporters try even harder.
So you’re saying Bush defended himself. Now that’s funny right there, I don’t care who you are.
I guess that’s why he was a one term president.
Bush hate is so strong. If one tenth the energy was expended on the truly noxious Obama regime this election would not even be close.
Bush got a lot of very important things right. Unfortunately, his WASP patrician sensibilities prevented him from defending himself, and also prevented him from being a movement conservative. He is what he is but the thought of Algore being in charge on 9-11-2001 is terrifying. Life is imperfect.
Accepting people for who they are is not hatred.
That is not who Bush was or is.
The continual abandonment of conservative advocates by conservative citizens is the dominant constraint on the movement.
It is fine to ignore or even criticize non conservative aspects of Bush or other conservatives.
The rationalizations that somehow he did not defend himself is not true. Bush had many more press conferences than Obama does— and yes that is probably because most of the media naturally defends Obama. Bush continually reinterpreted negative spin surrounding things such as Iraq.
The Republican establishment under the leadership of James Baker joined anticonservatives in constructing an inevitable shameful exit from Iraq along the same political trajectory as Vietnam in 2007.
Bush fought back for our troops and the democratic movements of iraq and sent tens of thousands of troops back into Iraq. He won forcefully.
Obama’s surge in Afghanistan is a pale and dismal failure by comparison— resulting in twice the casualties in less than half the time Bush lead our troops in that nation.
Palin, Keyes, Thomas, Cain, ODonnell, Angle, Bachmann, on and on it goes. These are good people left behind by a conservative movement that refuses to defend its own against a militant army of shouters and mockers.
Most of the arguments against Romney such as tax cuts and the auto bailout could be non-arguments today but conservatives refused to defend their ground [under Bush policies] and choose rather to collapse to a bipartisan pathology of Bush-bad.
Thinking they will pick up some elusive independents, they instead leave an ever more confused public that thinks Republicans and Democrats are the same. They both spend too much. They both war too much. They both undermine our values.
An excerpt:
PETER ROBINSON: In his memoir, Karl Rove says that perhaps his bitterest regret is that the Bush White House failed to go
on the offensive against the charge that they politicized the intelligence. This whole notion that ‘Bush lied, people died”—in
the White House they made the decision not to rebut it.
They didn’t want to look defensive.
DONALD RUMSFELD: Karl Rove is exactly right. It was a terrible mistake. It was a mistake on everyone’s part, and it’s a shame.
ricochet.com/main-feed/Donald-Rumsfeld-on-the-Bush-Administration-s-Biggest-Mistake
********************************
Number 24, Chapter 2, Starting at about 7:00
http://www.nationalreview.com/media/uncommonknowledge
There are all kinds of unethical truths held to be part of history.
This may be one.
We still each have the opportunity to defend what is right as individuals.
President Bush was one of the greatest presidents the nation has had.
Rove wants to be a political power broker today so he plays along with this silly mythology. Rumsfeld was the sacrificial lamb for the culture of hate that conservatives played along with and now condone.
The Bush tax cuts INCREASED revenue to the government.
Bush not Obama— saved the auto industry and required fiscally conservative principals of repaying the loans with interest.
Our culture celebrates president Clinton as a modern political truth teller. The man engaged in serial sexual assault and perjury.
Conservatives as individuals refuse to defend and speak for what is right. That is why things are the way they are and will continue to be so.
Bush makes a convenient scapegoat but we will not escape this nonsense until we admit our individual responsibility.
I don’t think you understand my posts.
W understood the Islamic threat, understood the value of the free market, and understood the importance of conservative values. Those are to his credit.
My point is that W failed to vigorously defend his policies. That is a fact that everybody who was paying attention at the time knows to be true. Those of us who supported him for eight years waited and waited for the Bush administration to fight back against the slander, but, being a Bush, W felt that it was somehow beneath the dignity of the White House to engage in politics. The two exceptions were the fight in the aftermath of the 2000 election in Florida, and during the 2004 election. His failure to fight back resulted in the American people believing the lies told about him. The false impressions that the Democrats were able to fix in the minds of the American people because he refused to fight back are there today, to the point that no Republican dare associate himself with his administration. Americans falsely believe that our economic troubles are his fault.
Karl Rove revealed that not defending himself was a conscious decision of W’s. Everybody knows it. And it was an obvious mistake.
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