. . . And Grows . . .

Bruce Bartlett is a Reagan-era conservative who also believes that George Bush has sold out the movement. That view got him fired from a conservative think tank, but he's back with a new book, appropriately entitled "The Imposter."

Bartlett does not mince words, saying:

I've long viewed George Bush as a temperamental conservative, the kind of guy you meet in a bar who slams down his drink and asks belligerently, “You know what this country needs?” — and then proceeds to tell you. He's a conservative who is defined by a visceral loathing of '60s-era “moral decay,” not one who's read the collected works of Russell Kirk and Milton Friedman or who has been inhaling National Review since he was a teenager. Still, even if the guy in the bar is indeed one particular type of conservative, Bartlett makes the reasonable point that a conservative president needs to have at least a few vague guiding conservative principles, and those are hard to find in Bush. If you raise spending, increase tariffs, and create new entitlements without blinking an eye, even belligerence doesn't make you into a genuine conservative.