And you thought progressive talk show host Ed Schultz was the only one? It turns out that those who loudly question the Bush administration line are in for traumatic experiences — even at Bush-friendly conservative groups:
WASHINGTON, Oct. 17 – In the latest sign of the deepening split among conservatives over how far to go in challenging President Bush, Bruce Bartlett, a Republican commentator who has been increasingly critical of the White House, was dismissed on Monday as a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, a conservative research group based in Dallas.
In a statement, the organization said the decision was made after Mr. Bartlett supplied its president, John C. Goodman, with the manuscript of his forthcoming book, “The Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy.”
Mr. Bartlett, who was a domestic policy aide at the White House in the Reagan administration and a deputy assistant Treasury secretary under the first President Bush, confirmed that he had been dismissed after 10 years with the center but declined to make any further comment.
The statement from the organization said Mr. Bartlett had negotiated a deal last year to reduce his workload to give him time to write a book about economic policy and taxation for which he had received a six-figure advance. The statement said that the manuscript he showed Mr. Goodman was “an evaluation of the motivations and competencies of politicians rather than an analysis of public policy.” The statement said the organization did not want to be associated with that kind of work.
Yep.
In response to a question about whether the administration had pressed the organization about Mr. Bartlett, Mr. Goodman relayed a reply through a spokesman saying he had never had any conversation about Mr. Bartlett with anyone in the White House.
So, let’s guess. A few folks bumped into each other at Hooters…
But, the dismissal of Mr. Bartlett comes as the White House is facing a revolt by many conservatives and the prospect of an enduring deep divide within what had been Mr. Bush’s most reliable base of grass-roots, financial and intellectual support. Up until the last few months, Mr. Bush had been reasonably successful in two political challenges: presenting himself as a conservative while also laying a claim to the political center, and holding together a conservative movement that has always been prone to internal divisions.
If you look at what happened to The Ed Schultz Show, you look at this, you look at what’s happening to those conservatives who have been opposing the Miers nomination (who find themselves, basically, being called elitists and sexists) isn’t there a pattern here? Isn’t there a time when independent-thinking people of both parties as well as independents begin to ask: “Isn’t this different than anything we’ve seen before in the way opposing viewpoints are treated? Specific issues aside, can we explicitly or tacitly support this?”