Impostor:How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy

Though widely viewed as an arch conservative in the major media, Bruce Bartlett increasingly finds himself alienated from the president of his party. Bush's policies, he warns, have been anything but conservative.

Bartlett faults Bush for moving away from free trade, adopting Keynesian economic theories, increasing government regulation and doing an extremely poor job of developing and selling conservative initiatives, such as Social Security reform. As such, George W. Bush, he says, has been a disaster for conservatism. Criticism of Bush from the right has largely been confined to fringe elements outside the mainstream of the conservative movement. Bartlett is the first from within the conservative mainstream to make the case that Bush is not "one of us" and does not deserve conservatives' support. As the next presidential election looms, Bartlett warns, a new standard bearer must be found who will correct the many errors of this administration and get America's fiscal house in order.

After September 11, America declared war on Islamic militancy that required huge new expenditures on defense. In the face of this, it was folly, says Bartlett, to introduce the Medicare drug benefit, a middle class entitlement program that, according to its own actuaries, burdens the American taxpayer with a new $18.2 trillion debt, an amount much larger even than the (once-) dreaded Social Security crisis. To pay for this vast new expansion of the welfare state, Bartlett warns, taxes can only go up—way up. Getting sufficient revenue out of our current tax system will be futile, making something like a European-style value added tax a near-certainty. It is noteworthy that Governor Bush once appointed a Texas tax reform commission that recommended a VAT, which he then supported.

On top of the Medicare drug benefit, Bush has rammed through huge expansions of federal education and agriculture programs. He has done nothing to restrain Congress's pork barrel spending and is the first president since James Garfield not to veto a single bill.

The administration's massive increases in government spending, Bartlett says, makes a sharp increase in taxes inevitable. There are many reasons to believe that a financial crisis may be brewing as a result. The Federal Reserve, for instance, is raising interest rates, which will put pressure on the stock and bond markets, and eventually prick the housing bubble, just as Fed tightening ultimately popped the stock market bubble of the late 1990's. When this happens, Washington policymakers who have been ignoring the budget deficit for years will suddenly see deficit reduction as the only way of restoring confidence. At this point, Bush will have to reverse course on taxes and spending.

Actual results mean nothing to you. Kinda of like a liberal, it's the ideal that is uber alles.

I see you are willing to bypass the Constitution when you feel the ends justify the means. I must respectfully disagree. If crime dropped in an area with recently passed gun laws, I certainly hope you would not support continuation of such laws.

"...there is a strain within conservatism which neurotically resents being a majority, and hankers for the "good old days" of the 1950s when they could howl at the moon, promote a wacked-out negative perspective on things, and represented no more than 20% of the electorate..."

Interesting that you have such a low opinion of the fifties, I myself think the Eisenhower years were pretty good for America. He secured the border, a task bushbots today maintain is impossible. Government spending as a percentage of GDP was lower, but produced better results with a larger share being spent on defense and infrastructure such as the Interstate Highway System. The economy grew at a faster rate and millions of people were able to afford homes and cars for the first time and an American family could do all of this with the father as the sole breadwinner.

Today the average American family requires the incomes of both parents to stay afloat, with the mothers labor being removed from her own home to earn extra income. Consider that in the average family the wife earns 40% of the income, which approximates the averages families tax bite. When RINOcrats lavish social services on the welfare class and illegal aliens they are transferring income away from working families. But they love to proclaim how pro-family they are.

Eisenhower made some mistakes, such as appointing Earl Warren as Chief Justice, which he freely admitted afterward. But there is no doubt that his efforts were focused on the best interests of the American people. He was a nationalist, a secure and prosperous America was the ends he worked for. With Bush it is obvious that he has no such interest, he is merely using America as a means.

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