The federal government posted its largest monthly deficit in history in February at $223 billion, according to preliminary numbers the Congressional Budget Office released Monday morning.

That figure tops last February’s record of $220.9 billion, and marks the 29th straight month the government has run in the red — a modern record. The last time the federal government posted even a monthly surplus was September 2008, just before the financial collapse.

Ouch… Just how prolific a spender is Pres. Obama? Well, the February budget deficit was larger than Bush’s entire 2007 deficit.

I think Ed Morrissey is right… I must be getting old, because I too can remember the good old days when a $223 billion deficit would send “Democrats screaming to cable news shows about the profligacy of George W. Bush and his ruinous economic policies.” But now days nary a whimper.

The real question now is whether this will cause both sides to get serious about making meaningful spending cuts. Frankly, I’m not hopeful.

Related

• U.S. Treasury Drew Down Its Cash Balance by $81.6 Billion in Just First 4 Days of March – CNSNews.com

There’s been a lot of talk about Jeb Bush over the last few days. If he does run, he should consider Liz Cheney as a running mate. They won’t even have to design new stickers.

I’m assuming that he’s being tongue in cheek here, but on the off chance he isn’t… Not just no, but hell no.

I love Liz Cheney and I’d love to see her run office, but when it comes to the Bush clan — no more. I came of age during the Reagan ear and I watched as George H. W. Bush and then George W. Bush squandered the Reagan legacy and did far more damage to the conservative movement than Democrats ever could.

No more Bush’s — not now, not ever.

The Wall Street Journal last week published two columns that are absolute must reads, first is Daniel Henninger’s Op-ed titled “It’s the Spending, Stupid“:

At a backyard town-hall meeting in Fairfax, Va., Monday, President Obama explained why Christine O’Donnell was going to beat Mike Castle in the GOP’s Delaware Senate primary:

“They saw the Recovery Act,” he said. “They saw TARP. They saw the auto bailout. And they look at these and think, ‘God, all these huge numbers adding up.’ So they’re right to be concerned about that.”

Of course Mr. Obama was speaking generally about the public mood. Let’s call it his “generic” explanation for the current voter impulse to wipe out GOP incumbents now and Democrats in November.

Here’s your bumper sticker for the 2010 elections: It’s the Spending, Stupid.

And the president didn’t mention the two $3 trillion-plus budgets passed on his watch or the trillion-dollar health-care entitlement. They, the voters, are not “concerned” about Uncle Sam’s spending floating toward the moon. They are enraged, furious, crazed and desperate.

Pennsylvania’s shrewd Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell, scripting the new conventional wisdom, says the tea party movement supporting Christine O’Donnell, Sharron Angle in Nevada and Joe Miller in Alaska proves the GOP is in the grip of crazies. With luck, none of his audience will wake up from this delusion before November.

Back in April, the New York Times/CBS did a poll of tea party supporters. When asked, “What should be the goal of the Tea Party movement,” 45% said, “Reduce federal government.” That is, cut spending. Everything else was in single digits.

While I agree with Mr. Henninger that out of control government spending is significant issue in this election cycle I don’t think it’s quite as simple as cutting spending. At its core this still a center-right country — that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a conservative country. In fact I’d argue it’s probably more libertarian than conservative, there has always been a certain tension between the American people and their government. In many respects the Tea Party movement is the embodiment of that tension… The people want as little governmental involvement in their daily as possible, the government on the other hand wants what all governments want… Power — or more specifically the power to control and influence the people.

Reducing the federal government isn’t simply about cutting spending, it’s about reducing the power and influence of the the federal government in our daily lives… It’s about the thousands upon thousands of pages of government regulation that by some  estimates represent roughly $1 trillion in stealth taxes on the private sector.

To quote Ronald Reagan “The federal government has taken too much tax money from the people, too much authority from the states, and too much liberty with the Constitution.” that’s the bottom line and it leads us into Peggy Noonan’s “Why It’s Time for the Tea Party” column.

I’ve had more than a few disagreements with Ms. Noonan over the last couple of years, in fact pretty much stopped reading her column after she endorsed Barack Obama during the 2008 elections.

Anyway Ms. Noonan seems to have regained some of her senses and her current column perfectly encapsulates the  tension between the Republican Party establishment and the Tea Party movement:

Everyone has an explanation for the tea party that is actually not an explanation but a description. They’re “angry.” They’re “antiestablishment,” “populist,” “anti-elite.” All to varying degrees true. But as a network television executive said this week, “They should be fed up. Our institutions have failed.”

I see two central reasons for the tea party’s rise. The first is the yardstick, and the second is the clock. First, the yardstick. Imagine that over at the 36-inch end you’ve got pure liberal thinking—more and larger government programs, a bigger government that costs more in the many ways that cost can be calculated. Over at the other end you’ve got conservative thinking—a government that is growing smaller and less demanding and is less expensive. You assume that when the two major parties are negotiating bills in Washington, they sort of lay down the yardstick and begin negotiations at the 18-inch line. Each party pulls in the direction it wants, and the dominant party moves the government a few inches in their direction.

But if you look at the past half century or so you have to think: How come even when Republicans are in charge, even when they’re dominant, government has always gotten larger and more expensive? It’s always grown! It’s as if something inexorable in our political reality—with those who think in liberal terms dominating the establishment, the media, the academy—has always tilted the starting point in negotiations away from 18 inches, and always toward liberalism, toward the 36-inch point.

Democrats on the Hill or in the White House try to pull it up to 30, Republicans try to pull it back to 25. A deal is struck at 28. Washington Republicans call it victory: “Hey, it coulda been 29!” But regular conservative-minded or Republican voters see yet another loss. They could live with 18. They’d like eight. Instead it’s 28.

I’m not sure what I can add, Ms. Noonan has explained the conflict perfectly… Thank you Peggy, your column just crystallized the what I’ve been thinking for months, but haven’t been able to articulate.

~ ~ ~

Alright shifting gears… For most of the last decade the Democrats and the pop-culture obsessed soundbite media have been harping the “The Bush tax cuts only benefited the rich” line. With those tax cuts about to expire, the Associated Press at least, is finally admitting the fallacy of that line:

Expiring tax cuts hit taxpayers at every level

Hmm, let’s dig a little deeper in to Stephen Ohlemacher’s report:

Before watching the video see if you can answer the following questions:

1. Bush or Obama? This president spent a record-breaking $3 trillion in a single year.
2. Bush or Obama? This president bailed out hundreds of large banks and corporations.
3. Bush or Obama? This president spent billions of taxpayer dollars on “stimulus” spending during a recession.
4. Bush or Obama? This President increased spending by many times the rate of inflation across most non-defense categories – such as education, Medicare, Medicaid, income security and regional development.
5. Bush or Obama? This president passed an expensive healthcare bill.

The answers are here and supporting documentation are here.

That’s right the answer to all five questions is both… I’ve made this point before, but it’s worth repeating:

Every presidential administration and every Congress since Ronald Reagan left office has grown government.

When Richard Nixon left office the Federal Register, where the government publishes all current and proposed regulations, contained just over 29,000 pages. It ballooned to roughly 58,000 pages under Ford, and to nearly 73,000  pages under Carter. Under Ronald Reagan it shrank to roughly 55,000 pages, since then it has grown steadily to over 79,000 pages at the end George W. Bush’s term.

Yes, I know, counting the number of pages in the Federal Register is crude way measuring the size or intrusivenss of government, but it helps illustrate the the problem… Neither party has been particularly faithful to our Founders Fathers idea of limited, fiscally responsible government.

A New York state appeals court on Tuesday dismissed former TV newsman Dan Rather’s lawsuit against CBS Corp in which Rather claimed he was made a scapegoat in a scandal over a 2004 report on then-President George W. Bush’s military record.

The ruling on Tuesday by a panel of judges of the New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division said Rather’s $70 million complaint should be dismissed in its entirety and that a lower court erred in denying CBS’s motion to throw out the lawsuit.

Rather, 77, sued CBS in 2007 after his career collapsed following a 60 Minutes II report on the Pres. George W. Bush’s Vietnam-era military service. The report relied in part on documents that could not be authenticated and that appear to have been generated using modern word processing  software rather than a typewriter in the 1970s.

More from the Los Angels Times:

In its ruling, issued more than five months after the parties argued the case before the appellate division, the court reversed Judge Ira Gammerman’s decisions on the case.

“This Court finds that the motion court erred in denying the defendants’ motion to dismiss the claims for breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty, and therefore we find the complaint must be dismissed in its entirety,” the ruling said.

The appellate division found that Gammerman should have dismissed Rather’s breach of contract claim against CBS, rejecting the anchor’s argument that he was warehoused by the network constituted a violation of his deal.

“This claim attempts to gloss over the fact that Rather continued to be compensated at his normal CBS salary of approximately $6 million a year until June 2006 when the compensation was accelerated upon termination, consistent with his contract,” the court wrote. Rather’s contract did not require “that CBS actually use Rather’s services or broadcast any programs on which he appears, but simply retains the option of accelerating the payment of his compensation under the agreement if he is not assigned to either program.”

The appellate division found that Rather failed to support his claim that CBS damaged his future business opportunities, saying “it would be speculative to conclude that any action taken by CBS would have alone substantially affected his market value at that time.” And the appeals judges wrote that he could not sue for breach of fiduciary duty because CBS did not owe Rather a fiduciary duty.

The appellate division wrote that Rather had no grounds on which to claim fraud, dismissing his argument that he is making substantially less money at his current job at HDNet than the $4 million annually he believed he could have made at CBS as speculative and irrelevant. And the anchor failed to prove that the fall-out from CBS’ handling of the Bush story curtailed other job prospects.

Ouch, that amounts to total repudiation of Rather’s claims… One hopes Dan Rather will save himself further humiliation and just fade quietly into obscurity, unfortunately, that’s not his style… He’s reportedly planning to appeal the decision.

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — CBS Sports golf analyst David Feherty apologized Sunday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for a morbid joke that went bad in a Dallas magazine.

Feherty, one of the most popular golf analysts for his sharp wit and self-deprecating humor, was among five Dallas residents who wrote for “D Magazine” on former President George W. Bush moving to Dallas.

“From my own experience visiting the troops in the Middle East, I can tell you this though,” Feherty wrote toward the end of his column.

“Despite how the conflict has been portrayed by our glorious media, if you gave any U.S. soldier a gun with two bullets in it, and he found himself in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Osama bin Laden, there’s a good chance that Nancy Pelosi would get shot twice, and Harry Reid and bin Laden would be strangled to death.”

Feherty, a former Ryder Cup player who grew up in Northern Ireland, has gone to Iraq over Thanksgiving the past two years to visit with U.S. troops, and he created a foundation to help wounded soldiers.

Sure, Mr. Feherty’s joke was in bad taste but it was no worse than comedian Wanda Sykes jokes about September 11th and Rush Limbaugh at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.

For the record I’m not excusing David Feherty, it was a bad joke… I’m just curious when Ms. Sykes is going to apologize to Rush Limbaugh?

Forced to the ramparts to defend Rush Limbaugh against the spurious, low-down attacks of the Obamedia-plus-hangers-on, conservatives are letting the real enemy of  conservatism slip away. That enemy would be George W. Bush, whose stealth political legacy is a tectonic lurch Left for what is popularly thought of as “conservatism.” The resulting chaos–crisis, in fact–is exactly what the new collectivist-in-chief has seized on, not to change America’s direction, but to accelerate its Leftward shift. This continuity is what conservatives are failing to appreciate and assess, much to the detriment of their own coherence and political message.

West is entirely right, George W. Bush’s brand of neo-conservatism has done serious, and possibly lasting, damage to the Republican party and to the conservative movement. We can’t simply ignore his legacy or the effect it has had on the Republican Party or the conservative movement. We need to confront it and repudiate the out of control spending and leftward lurch that defined the Bush years.

H/T: Michelle Malkin.

A Reign of Error has finally ended

It has been said by others that “the highest patriotism is love of one’s country deep enough to call it to a higher standard.”Now that an eight-year Reign of Error is ended, an American Renewal can, at torturous last, begin.

And if W’s large evangelical base is correct about the existence of a hell and a heavenly quid pro quo, dear W will be warm, now, in Texas and then, later, forever be considerably warmer than he might like.

John Katz

RIDGEFIELD

Oh Lord, BDS — Bush Derangement Syndrome is a live well in Ridgefield.

There’s plenty of room for criticism of George W. Bush’s record as President… There is, however, no need for the kind hate filled rhetoric used by Mr. Katz.

Newsmax.com has detailed two part examination at the Bush legacy:

Bush’s Legacy: Conservatives Were Betrayed

“This administration has had a good, solid record, and I’m very proud of it. I tell people I leave town with a great sense of accomplishment and my head held high.”
—George W. Bush, Jan. 13, 2009

As the 43rd president waves goodbye to Washington, relatively few Americans share his proud assessment of his own presidency.

George W. Bush leaves the White House with one of the lowest approval ratings in history. According to Gallup, only Richard Nixon and Harry Truman, who suffered the double whammy of a bad economy and the unpopular Korean War, had lower approval ratings when they left the White House.

Today, Bush’s legacy to his successor is two unresolved wars, a global image that is deeply tarnished, and the greatest economic crisis in modern times.

Conservatives who backed Bush in two successive elections have little to show for their efforts. Bush, in fact, has decimated the Republican brand.

Bush oversaw the greatest increase in discretionary social spending in history as the federal government usurped new powers in its war on terror. He placed the United States on a global interventionist path for the elusive goal of “democracy.” Ronald Reagan would not be able to recognize the party he knew, which espoused limited government, protection of personal liberty, and the idea that the U.S. should lead globally by example rather than by force.

The best that can be said of President Bush is that he kept America’s homeland safe. During his watch, we did not experience another terror attack on U.S. soil after Sept. 11. Read the rest…

Part II:

The Bush Legacy Part II: Trillions in Deficits For Years to Come

As Barack Obama assumes the mantle of the presidency and duties of the office, he has inherited from his predecessor a federal government that has a staggering national debt of more than $10 trillion, a ballooning federal deficit this year estimated at $438 billion – and a government that recently assumed responsibility for some $5 trillion of the nation’s consumer debt.

The irony is that George W. Bush, who billed himself as a conservative in the mold of Ronald Reagan, leaves a legacy of profligate federal spending, record debt and an economy in shambles.

A broad range of conservative thinkers, surveying the political and economic fallout of the two Bush terms, are openly voicing their concerns that it may take years for the Republican Party and the nation to repair the damage Bush policies have inflicted.

“Bush has added a staggering $32 trillion to unfunded government liabilities future generations of Americans will have to bear,” wrote the London Sunday Times’ Andrew Sullivan, a maverick conservative who described Bush’s economic policies as “fiscal madness.”

The huge spending increases came despite the fact that fellow Republicans controlled Congress for six of Bush’s eight years in office. And Bush did not veto a bill of any kind, including spending, until July 2006, and left office having cast the fewest vetoes of any modern president.

Ultimately I think history will judge George W. Bush relatively well in the war on terror his record on domestic issues was at best mediocre.

Where Edwards loses me is here:

The Republican Party that is in such disrepute today is not the party of Reagan. It is the party of Rush Limbaugh, of Ann Coulter, of Newt Gingrich, of George W. Bush, of Karl Rove. It is not a conservative party, it is a party built on the blind and narrow pursuit of power.

Not too long ago, conservatives were thought of as the locus of creative thought. Conservative think tanks (full disclosure: I was one of the three founding trustees of the Heritage Foundation) were thought of as cutting-edge, offering conservative solutions to national problems. By the 2008 elections, the very idea of ideas had been rejected. One who listened to Barry Goldwater’s speeches in the mid-’60s, or to Reagan’s in the ’80s, might have been struck by their philosophical tone, their proposed (even if hotly contested) reformulation of the proper relationship between state and citizen. Last year’s presidential campaign, on the other hand, saw the emergence of a Republican Party that was anti-intellectual, nativist, populist (in populism’s worst sense) and prepared to send Joe the Plumber to Washington to manage the nation’s public affairs.

The problems faced by the Republican party aren’t the fault of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter or the grass roots of the party. Conservatism is alive and well on main street, where its failed is in Washington… The party’s leadership and of its political consultants have abandoned the principles and ideas that made Ronald Reagan successful and replaced them with a brand of populist, politically expedient “republicanism” that has more in common with the Democratic party than it does with conservatism.

If  republicans are going to have any chance in 2012 or in the 2010 mid-terms the party leadership has rediscover core its core conservative principles and begin crafting policy ideas rooted in those principles.

H/T:  Hot Air.

Other McCain has a slightly different take.

As the nation prepares for the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama, a leading Democrat is not letting up in his criticism of President George W. Bush.

“I really do believe President Bush is the worst president we’ve ever had,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

With all due respect Senator I think your historical compass is a little  out of whack… I’m no fan of the Bush Administration but I wouldn’t go so far as to call him “the worst president we’ve ever had”. That honor without a doubt belongs to Herbert Hoover.

Personally, I’d rate Bush well ahead of James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Calvin Coolidge, Jimmy Carter or Richard Nixon.

Ultimately I think history will judge Dubya well in the war on terror but his record on domestic issues is mediocre.