No Country For Old Newt

by digby

If there’s one thing the conservatives are good at, it’s rewriting history. Already we see them hard at work pressing the lie that conservative Republicans were opposed to Bush’s free spending ways. C&L reports on Newtie’s latest:

“If the Republicans can’t break out of being the right wing party of big government, then I think you would see a third party movement in 2012,” Newt Gingrich said during a Wednesday speech in Missouri. Speaking on Fox News Sunday, the former Speaker of the House expanded on why conservatives might turn away from the Republican Party. “Republicans need to understand that there’s a country which did not like the big spending of the last administration, didn’t like the interventionist policies of the last administration and the country at large would like to see a genuine alternative to the Obama strategy of basically trying to run the entire economy from the white house and basically trying to increase government, I think, by 36% this year, which is the largest single increase outside of war in American history,” said Gingrich.

Oh please. Sure, there’s a “country” out there that didn’t like any of Bush’s policies and it’s called “America.” Contrary to his other assertion, they aren’t upset about Obama running the economy from the White House because that’s a load of bs that only addled dittoheads actually think is happening. And if there is a country of people who hate both Bush’s and Obama’s policies, they are pretty likely to be lefties who have a whole set of concerns that have absolutely nothing to do with concerns about too much intrusion into the private sector.
The right wing stuck with that mess Bush all the way to the bitter end and didn’t seem to be agitated at all about his big spending ways which were obvious from the first few months of his presidency when he started passing out thousand dollar bills to his millionaire friends. Here’s the beginning of Bush’s slide in the polls right after the 2004 election, from Gallup:

There have been double-digit decreases in Bush approval ratings among pure independents (those who are independent and do not “lean” toward either party) and moderate and liberal Republicans. Pure independents’ support has fallen from 42% to 28%, while moderate and liberal Republicans’ support has dropped from 83% to 69%. Conservative Republicans remain overwhelmingly likely to approve of Bush, but his support among this group has fallen below 90% in the past 11 months.

Here’s where he ended up in November of 2008:

Views of President Bush’s popularity are highly partisan. Only 6% of Democrats approve [and 18% of Independents] of the job he has done as president, while 57% of Republicans approve.

That 57% were the conservatives. It was the moderates Bush lost and contrary to Newties wet dream, they haven’t yet been brainwashed into believing that Obama is the second coming of Hugo Chavez. This “country” of Bush and Obama hating fiscal conservatives that he fantasizes about, can fit into his corner office at AEI.