Welcome, Bruce Bartlett, To The Real World! (UPDATED!)
by Vince Daliessio
UPDATE: Bruce Bartlett's latest column here!
We wrote a while back about townhall.com and NRO Online economist Bruce Bartlett and how out of the whole Heritage Foundation crowd he seemed to be the only one who even remembered the conservative, low tax, small government rhetoric of the earlier Republican Party of Goldwater and Reagan (UPDATE: Bartlett once worked for both Ron Paul and Jack Kemp)
Now Bartlett has been booted as a senior fellow by the National Center for Policy Analysis for writing a book: Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy
Lew Rockwell says that NCPA denied that any pressure came from the White House to dump Bartlett, but he has been making trouble for them for a while now on the policy side, virtually the only one on the right doing so. I guess he couldn't live with himself anymore as a court intellectual - even the title of the book is an audacious repudiation of the Bush regime.
The New York Times article about the firing has this to say;
In his next column, to be published on Wednesday, Mr. Bartlett wrote that it is dawning on many conservatives "that George W. Bush is not one of them and never has been," citing the administration's positions on education, campaign finance, immigration, government spending and regulation. The choice "of a patently unqualified crony for a critical position on the Supreme Court was the final straw," he wrote.
WOW. Consider this bridge decisively burned! I don't think Bruce will be getting any speaking engagements from Republican groups anytime soon.
So welcome, Bruce! We have a feeling your fine mind will soon be employed by a much more liberty-friendly organization. Just let go of any residual belief that the Republicans will ever live up to Reagan's rhetoric, and start looking at economics and policy from an Austrian Perspective.
UPDATE: A Bartlett quote re: 2004 election (answers.com);
If [George W.] Bush wins, there will be a civil war in the Republican Party starting on Nov. 3. - Bruce Bartlett, 2004.