In Sign of Conservative Split, a Commentator Is Dismissed

[Rose Siding]

In the latest sign of the deepening split among conservatives over how far to go in challenging President Bush, Bruce Bartlett, a Republican commentator who has been increasingly critical of the White House, was dismissed on Monday as a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, a conservative research group based in Dallas.

In a statement, the organization said the decision was made after Mr. Bartlett supplied its president, John C. Goodman, with the manuscript of his forthcoming book, "The Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy."

Mr. Bartlett, who was a domestic policy aide at the White House in the Reagan administration and a deputy assistant Treasury secretary under the first President Bush, confirmed that he had been dismissed after 10 years with the center but declined to make any further comment.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/18/politics/18bartlett.html

[jobycom]

1. Betrayed the Reagan legacy by bankrupting America?

These people really live in a world without facts, don't they? Bush has lived up perfectly to the Reagan legacy, bankruptcy and all.

[Erika]

3. Yeah, they both pushed supply side economics

which never trickled down to the working class.

[Lasher]

11. But Reagan wised up a little

Supply siders convinced Saint Ronnie of Reagan to support their tax cuts for the rich, promising increased government revenues due to all the prosperity this would create. Reagan cut taxes during his first year in office, but the promised prosperity & revenues did not materialize.

After that Reagan made no more rosy predictions about the deficit. At the end of his two terms in office, income taxes (including payroll taxes) were higher than they were when he first took office. I am certainly no Reagan fan, but I think he eventually realized supply side economics is nothing but a scam.

But not Dubya, no sir! Wreck the economy with tax cuts for the rich? Well, he's got a solution - MORE tax cuts for the rich. What, still no jobs and the deficit has reached Biblical levels? Those other tax cuts musta been too small. STILL MORE tax cuts for the rich. That'll do it. And cut social services. And it's Clinton's fault.

[jobycom]

13. He didn't wise up, that was his plan all along

He cut taxes across the board his first year, reducing payroll and capital gains taxes, and reducing taxation on the margins for the very wealthy. Then he signed eight straight tax increases, including the largest in history up until that time. Those tax cuts targeted the poor. So by the end, he had increased taxes on the poor and middle classes and reduced them dramatically on the rich and on corporations. That was his plan the whole time.

Bush was just less subtle about it.

[Lasher]

16. Know what? Your theory makes better sense than mine (EOM)

[grannylib]

5. Well said, took the words right out of my mouth. RayGun was nobody

to admire, look up to, be loyal to...he was filth, just like the BushCo whores are filth. He was out to bankrupt the country just like the current unelected sorry-assed mis-administration.
Talk about idolatry...the so-called Christian Right has some pretty weird notions about religion, the way they continue to worship that dim bulb.

[depakid]

7. Historians will look back and revile Reagan 50 years from now

for the trends he (and his followers) started- and for those which they reversed, particularly with respect to energy and environmental policies.

This will be a consensus- not just a majority- and it will apply by and large to the whole of the Republican party- just as it does today to Nazis and the KKK (only for slightly different- and longer term reasons).

[grannylib]

12. I hope you are right. What a disastrous course that fool set us on.

It's going to take decades to reverse the ill-effects of what he started, and what the imbecile continues today.

[enid602]

2. Bush

When your old man's deputy assistant Treasury Secretary writea a book with a title like that, you know your support base is evaporating.

[Carla in Ca]

14. Wow!

No need to read the book, that title is awesome. I'm going to use it for Wednesday's protest!

[niyad]

4. I just LOVE watching a shark feeding frenzy !!

[TexasLawyer]

6. The circular firing squad...

lovely!

[deadparrot]

8. I wonder if this will seriously affect the party in 2008.

The gap between the traditional conservatives and the far rightists is getting bigger every day.

[Neil Lisst]

9. Bruce Bartlett was a MADE MAN of the right. WOW!

This is huge. I cannot believe he is going against the Crown, though.


speaking of HUGE, guess who's in my comic today?
http://www.webcomicsnation.com/neillisst

[pansypoo53219]

10. guess he forgot

RR RAISING taxes.

[zbdent]

15. "Declined to comment" probably is code for

"I was told not to get on any small aircraft . . ."

[Roland99]

17. How dare he break ranks and expose the fraud in the White House?

[sepia_steel]

18. I love seeing them split

is that mean?