White House Letter: Criticism of Bush leaves conservative in the cold
Elisabeth Bumiller
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2006
GREAT FALLS, Virginia What happens if you're a Republican commentator and you write a book critical of President George W. Bush that gets you fired from your job at a conservative think tank?
For starters, no other conservative institution rushes in with an offer for your superb analytical skills.
"Nobody will touch me," said Bruce Bartlett, the author of the forthcoming "Impostor: Why George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy." He added, "I think I'm just kind of radioactive at the moment."
Bartlett, a domestic policy aide at the White House in the Reagan administration and a deputy assistant Treasury secretary under the first President Bush, talked last week at his suburban Washington home about his dismissal, his book and a growing disquiet among conservatives about Bush.
Although "Impostor" is flamboyant in its anti-Bush sentiments - on the first page Bartlett calls Bush a "pretend conservative" and compares him to Richard M. Nixon, "a man who used the right to pursue his agenda" - its basic message reflects the frustration of many conservatives who say that Bush has been on a five-year government spending binge. Like them, Bartlett is particularly upset about Bush's Medicare prescription drug plan, which is expected to cost more than $700 billion over the next decade.
He is unhappy, too, with the president's education and campaign finance bills and his proposal to overhaul the nation's immigration laws, which many Republicans call a dressed-up amnesty plan. The book, to be published by Doubleday on Feb. 28, also criticizes the White House for "an anti-intellectual distrust of facts and analysis" and an obsession with secrecy.
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http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/02/12/business/letter.php
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