Look Back in Anger, Again

At the Conservative Political Action Conference, leading conservatives did not have fond memories of the Bush administration:

"Sadly, our former president propelled America to socialism - all the way to third base," with Obama set to bring it to home, said conservative columnist Deroy Murdock. "Our side emerged with neither principle nor power."

And John Bolton, former US ambassador to the United Nations, was equally non-nostalgic in speaking about his former boss: "We are better off, in some sense, not having the Bush administration to defend," the former Bush administration official said. "Too many people connected the Bush administration to conservatism, and as we all know, that didn't happen."

Even former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich - while winning laughs for deriding Democrats in power - slammed the recently-retired president. "We didn't get real change. We got big spending under Bush, now we have big spending under Obama," said Gingrich, author of the "Contract With America" that underlay the 1994
Republican takeover of Congress. "The great irony . . . is that we have a Bush-Obama big spending program that is bipartisan in nature," Gingrich told conference attendees.