Bush a 4-Letter Word at CPAC

Andy Barr, Politico
Sat Feb 28, 7:01 am ET

Bush a Four-Letter Word at CPAC

"Conservatives aren’t sure who’s the Republican presidential frontrunner in 2012. They disagree over how sharply to attack President Barack Obama and on the question of whether a back-to-basics approach is the path back to majority.

But if there’s one thing those attending the annual Conservative Political Action Conference this week agree on, it is this: They don’t want another George W. Bush.

Few come out right out and say it, but they don’t have to. There’s no nostalgia for the past eight years, no tributes to Bush and no sessions dedicated to exploring his presidency.

Indeed, for a president who publicly embraced conservative principles, there is little evidence that the movement returns the sentiment.

When the subject of the 43rd president has come up at CPAC — where he spoke each year of his presidency — it’s usually been in an unflattering context.

Conservative icon Newt Gingrich, the former House Speaker, railed against the “Bush-Obama continuity in economic policy” and the “Bush-Obama big spending program” in a speech Friday.

"We had big spending under Bush and now we have big spending under Obama," Gingrich said. "And so now we have two failures."

He wasn’t the only high-profile conservative taking shots at the former president.

“I wish the president would have laid [a stimulus package] out before he left office, so that in September, October, November, December, there would have been a stimulus plan,” former Massachusetts Republican Gov. Mitt Romney said Friday in an interview with POLITICO, adding that the GOP has yet to come up with unified policy proposals or a clear, positive voice.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, like Romney an unsuccessful candidate for president in 2008, pointed to the Bush administration’s failed response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

“You know what kind of conservatives we need most? Competent conservatives,” Huckabee said in a speech Thursday. “It’s when we lose our competence, that Americans lose their confidence.”

“We’re no longer Reagan’s shining city on a hill; we are the ruined city by the sea,” he added."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20090228/pl_politico/19433