Bruce Bartlett to Republicans: Come Back to Reality

He lays out a pretty good case that in an earlier era Obama would be considered a moderate Republican (when there was such a thing):

In my opinion, Obama has governed as a moderate conservative—essentially as what used to be called a liberal Republican before all such people disappeared from the GOP. He has been conservative to exactly the same degree that Richard Nixon basically governed as a moderate liberal, something no conservative would deny today. (Ultra-leftist Noam Chomsky recently called Nixon “the last liberal president.”)....
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was enacted in February 2009 with a gross cost of $816 billion. Although this legislation was passed without a single Republican vote, it is foolish to assume that the election of McCain would have resulted in savings of $816 billion. There is no doubt that he would have put forward a stimulus plan of roughly the same order of magnitude, but tilted more toward Republican priorities.
A Republican stimulus would undoubtedly have had more tax cuts and less spending, even though every serious study has shown that tax cuts are the least effective method of economic stimulus in a recession. Even so, tax cuts made up 35 percent of the budgetary cost of the stimulus bill—$291 billion—despite an estimate from Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers that tax cuts barely raised the gross domestic product $1 for every $1 of tax cut. By contrast, $1 of government purchases raised GDP $1.55 for every $1 spent. Obama also extended the Bush tax cuts for two years in 2010.
It’s worth remembering as well that Bush did not exactly bequeath Obama a good fiscal hand. Fiscal year 2009 began on October 1, 2008, and one third of it was baked in the cake the day Obama took the oath of office. On January 7, 2009, the Congressional Budget Office projected significant deficits without considering any Obama initiatives. It estimated a deficit of $1.186 trillion for 2009 with no change in policy. The Office of Management and Budget estimated in November of that year that Bush-era policies, such as Medicare Part D, were responsible for more than half of projected deficits over the next decade.
Republicans give no credit to Obama for the significant deficit reduction that has occurred on his watch—just as they ignore the fact that Bush inherited an projected budget surplus of $5.6 trillion over the following decade, which he turned into an actual deficit of $6.1 trillion, according to a CBO study—but the improvement is real.

Amen.  Back in 2008, I felt the same as the Obamacons Bartlett mentions at the beginning of the article.  I really thought that Obama was somebody who would be able to work with Republicans much more smoothly than Hillary Clinton would have been able to.  I always thought Bill was a smarmy crooked politico who just was specially galling to Republicans, and that they'd react much more sanely with Obama in office.  Wow, I was incredibly incorrect on that one. 

I quickly realized that it wasn't Clinton personally who made Republicans act crazy, it was the fact that Americans would have the nerve to reject their candidate for President.  That turns them into tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy-mongers who suffer a psychotic break from reality when a Democrat enters the White House.  If congressional Democrats would have been half as hostile to Bush as the mouth-breathing idiot kings in the GOP House caucus have been to every completely sane proposal Obama has brought them in six years, all the loons on Fox News would have been calling the Dems traitors and saboteurs of our great nation.  Actually, what am I talking about, the loons on Fox News call the Dems traitors no matter what.  It just pains me to hear people I generally respect pour out the crazy talk over this president who, if he would have done what's best for the country, would have been a lot more liberal than what he has.  He's tried to get the half the country which has checked out from this world into bizarro world to work with him, and that has failed miserably.  As Bartlett says, maybe they will realize how conservative this president is when they get an actual progressive president, but at that time they'll be really, really losing their shit.  Some days, I worry that if that happens, we'll have a giant Republican Jonestown or Heaven's Gate mass suicide event.  But then I flip on Fox News or read something from a right-wing website, and wonder if it might not happen anyway.  I really wish I could talk to those folks and try to convince them that reality does not match up with what they think it is, but that's a mug's game.  You just can't convince them of anything.  Hey guys, look, a comet....