61% of historians agree: W. Bush is worst ever

[Irvine511]

wise words from Peggy Noonan, former Reagan speechwriter, and possibly the sharpest, smartest voice writing from a conservative perspective today:



[q]Many are ambivalent, deep inside, about the decisions made the past seven years in the White House. But they've publicly supported it so long they think they . . . support it. They get confused. Late at night they toss and turn in the antique mahogany sleigh bed in the carpeted house in McLean and try to remember what it is they really do think, and what those thoughts imply.

And those are the bright ones. The rest are in Perpetual 1980: We have the country, the troops will rally in the fall.

"This was a real wakeup call for us," someone named Robert M. Duncan, who is chairman of the Republican National Committee, told the New York Times. This was after Mississippi. "We can't let the Democrats take our issues." And those issues would be? "We can't let them pretend to be conservatives," he continued. Why not? Republicans pretend to be conservative every day.

The Bush White House, faced with the series of losses from 2005 through '08, has long claimed the problem is Republicans on the Hill and running for office. They have scandals, bad personalities, don't stand for anything. That's why Republicans are losing: because they're losers.

All true enough!

But this week a House Republican said publicly what many say privately, that there is another truth. "Members and pundits . . . fail to understand the deep seated antipathy toward the president, the war, gas prices, the economy, foreclosures," said Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia in a 20-page memo to House GOP leaders.

The party, Mr. Davis told me, is "an airplane flying right into a mountain." Analyses of its predicament reflect an "investment in the Bush presidency," but "the public has just moved so far past that." "Our leaders go up to the second floor of the White House and they get a case of White House-itis." Mr. Bush has left the party at a disadvantage in terms of communications: "He can't articulate. The only asset we have now is the big microphone, and he swallowed it." The party, said Mr. Davis, must admit its predicament, act independently of the White House, and force Democrats to define themselves. "They should have some ownership for what's going on. They control the budget. They pay no price. . . . Obama has all happy talk, but it's from 30,000 feet. Energy, immigration, what is he gonna do?"[/q]

 

[financeguy]

Extract from a speech made by Richard W. Fisher, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

Eight years ago, our federal budget, crafted by a Democratic president and enacted by a Republican Congress, produced a fiscal surplus of $236 billion, the first surplus in almost 40 years and the highest nominal-dollar surplus in American history. While the Fed is scrupulously nonpartisan and nonpolitical, I mention this to emphasize that the deficit/debt issue knows no party and can be solved only by both parties working together. For a brief time, with surpluses projected into the future as far as the eye could see, economists and policymakers alike began to contemplate a bucolic future in which interest payments would form an ever-declining share of federal outlays, a future where Treasury bonds and debt-ceiling legislation would become dusty relics of a long-forgotten past. The Fed even had concerns about how open market operations would be conducted in a marketplace short of Treasury debt.

That utopian scenario did not last for long. Over the next seven years, federal spending grew at a 6.2 percent nominal annual rate while receipts grew at only 3.5 percent. Of course, certain areas of government, like national defense, had to spend more in the wake of 9/11. But nondefense discretionary spending actually rose 6.4 percent annually during this timeframe, outpacing the growth in total expenditures. Deficits soon returned, reaching an expected $410 billion for 2008—a $600 billion swing from where we were just eight years ago. This $410 billion estimate, by the way, was made before the recently passed farm bill and supplemental defense appropriation and without considering a proposed patch for the Alternative Minimum Tax—all measures that will lead to a further ballooning of government deficits.

Storms on the Horizon - Richard Fisher Speeches - News & Events - FRB Dallas

 

[INDY500]

But nondefense discretionary spending actually rose 6.4 percent annually during this timeframe, outpacing the growth in total expenditures.

The shame of the Bush years and one of the reasons even conservatives answer 'no' to the question "Is the country on the right track?"
But, show of hands, who really believes non-defense discretionary spending is in-any-way-shape-or-form going to be reined in under the leadership of Reid, Rangel, Pelosi, Obama or, God bless him, Ted Kennedy?

 

[BVS]

The shame of the Bush years and one of the reasons even conservatives answer 'no' to the question "Is the country on the right track?"
But, show of hands, who really believes non-defense discretionary spending is in-any-way-shape-or-form going to be reined in under the leadership of Reid, Rangel, Pelosi, Obama or, God bless him, Ted Kennedy?

It's not so much a question of will it be reined in as much as it is will they continue to bury their collective heads in the sand and act like it's not happening, like Bush and Co.?

 

[Irvine511]

The shame of the Bush years and one of the reasons even conservatives answer 'no' to the question "Is the country on the right track?"
But, show of hands, who really believes non-defense discretionary spending is in-any-way-shape-or-form going to be reined in under the leadership of Reid, Rangel, Pelosi, Obama or, God bless him, Ted Kennedy?

could they be any worse than Bush, Cheney, Lott, McConnell?

you can say "yes," but are you drawing on anything other than stereotypes?

and are they going to pour $3trillion down a ravine in the Middle East?

genuine conservatives have never had more compelling reasons to vote Democrat -- and for a calm, measured, clear thinking, pragmatist Democrat -- than they have in years.