Too Little, Too Late

Conservatives at a Cato Institute panel ripped into President Bush...

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank has details-

[T]he first speaker [was] former Reagan aide Bruce Bartlett. Author of the new book "Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy," Bartlett called the administration "unconscionable," "irresponsible," "vindictive" and "inept."

It might also have had something to do with speaker No. 2, conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan. Author of the forthcoming "The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It; How to Get It Back," Sullivan called Bush "reckless" and "a socialist," and accused him of betraying "almost every principle conservatism has ever stood for."...

...True, the small-government libertarians represented by Cato have always been the odd men out of the Bush coalition. But the standing-room-only forum yesterday, where just a single questioner offered even a tepid defense of the president, underscored some deep disillusionment among conservatives over Bush's big-spending answer to Medicare and Hurricane Katrina, his vast claims of executive power, and his handling of postwar Iraq.

So nice of you to join us... where have you been?

This new trend of Bush-bashing (and it is new) by many on the right (all except for the Bush cultists who populate the Pajama sites) is nice to see... but fuck them. Seriously. I wouldn't read Bartlett's book if you gave it to me for free. The things he's saying are all true (and he's being too kind), but to pretend that these revelations are new is insulting to my intelligence. As if suddenly President Bush just became a horrible leader and a reckless conservative. He's been one since DAY ONE. The left has been saying these exact same things about Bush since day one and were we listened to? No. We were called fifth columnists and traitors and terrorist sympathizers. So welcome to the club Bartlett, but where the hell have you been?

Where were these people in 2004? Oh that's right- they were too busy swift-boating John Kerry, accusing liberals of undermining our country, and praising Bush's heroic god-like qualities to give a shit that all of this was true then. They are not doing this because of principle. It is purely selfish- President Bush is going down in flames and they don't want to go down with him. I make exceptions here for the few like Andrew Sullivan who abandoned Bush on principle before the election and threw their support toward Sen. Kerry. The rest are just opportunists who want to pretend that they themselves aren't complicit in the corruption of conservative values over the last 30 years. George W. Bush didnt start it- he just finished the work of the others who came before him.

And as for pretending that President Reagan was any better (instead of just smarter in branding his policies in a more marketable, cynical '80s fashion) than Bush... No thank you. That's one myth that the facts just don't support. President Bush is Reagan, by way of Richard Nixon.

My question is... How do these conservatives think should Bush should be held accountable for all this? Would they support impeachment now as they did in the '90s? Or are they simply hoping to save face long enough until 2008 when they try to push George's pal John McCain into the White House? I'll assume the latter.