To disprove your claim that conservatives never attacked Bush, here are some thing said about Bush after the AIG bailout:
Newt Gingrich: “You can’t be for capitalism on the way up and socialism on the way down.”
Rep. Mike Pence: “If government now becomes the safety net for every private enterprise too big to fail, we are going to end up with an economy that looks a lot more like France than like the United States.”
Rush Limbaugh also attacked Bush on immigration and on many of his spending programs.
And today I heard Rush Limbaugh defend Obama’s decision regarding the pirates, even arguing the military was wrong to delay action after Obama told them to act on the matter.
As for myself, I do argue that what the conservative are doing is wrong in these regards — but I also argue that so do the Democrats/liberals. Your arguments tend to boil down to a defense of your tribe over the other tribe. I think much of what the Democrats are now doing undermine the Constitution. How is that good citizenship?

Wow! At the end of his term, with his popularity plummeting, some conservatives had the cojones to criticize their Dear Leader.
Troy, that you had to go that late in his term and find those examples mostly supports my point.

What has dismayed me, as a Sixties marching/protesting liberal in Sixties and Seventies San Francisco, is the supine silence of our citizens that met our Dear Leader, as the Unitary Executive powers and signing statements became more and more evidence of a neo-dictatorship. Karl Rove and Rummy and Condi and Feith and Wolfowitz should’ve sent us into the streets in protest, but only a whimper came out of the body politic. We heard more protest from foreign leaders and governments. Then we voted the Democrats into place and saw Pelosi rise to most powerful woman. Cheney had his wings clipped. The Dear Leader became more and more inarticulate, sullen, and incompetent. We nearly went to war on Iran, but stopped short.
Maybe it was something in the water? Maybe we had national PTSD?
Why were we so accepting of the invasions of privacy, polity, and prosperity?

That’s what I found immediately. Now you’re just making me look up things I remembered over the past 8 years. Here’s an article from 2006 listing Republicans who criticized the Bush administration’s warrantless domestic spying program:
http://mediamatters.org/items/200601040002
Calling that action an “impeachable offense” is a pretty harsh criticism, don’t you think?
Here’s an article from 2005 on conservative criticism of Bush over spending:
http://www.larryhaasonline.com/opedpages/Washington-Examiner.10-31-05.PDF
The article is a criticism of how they are criticizing Bush.
Here is a more recent piece by someone recently addressing exactly this claim:
http://factreal.wordpress.com/2009/03/15/conservatives-criticized-bush/
Come on, Gus. You act like it was a huge Bush love-fest for the past 8 years among conservatives. My experience was that they could only just barely stand him, except on taxes, the military and a handful of social issues. Most of the time they were disappointed with him on social issues, and they mostly couldn’t stand his domestic spending. Other than the one big tax cut, he didn’t even seem to have an economy policy other than to let Greenspan send false signals to the housing sector that lots of risk was okay. Take away Iraq and the tax cut, and most conservatives would have abandoned Bush long ago far more than they did. The only ones who really stuck with him were the neocons who think democracy can be imposed by sword (those of us who know our Gravesean psycho-sociology know better).

I am glad to be in (cyber) company with people who think it’s important to look at the truth of what is unfolding in our nation, no matter who is responsible. I am aware of many who worked for Obama’s campaign and voted for him who are reluctant to look at the truth of what is happening, so your posts on this matter are especially gratifying, Gus.
A recent article in Mother Jones describes yet another attempt to give the office of the president more powers to spy on Americans: “Should Obama Control the Internet?” A new bill would give the President emergency authority to halt web traffic and access private data. —By Steve Aquino http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/04/should-obama-control-internet
I am puzzled, however, at your citing Nancy Pelosi as someone legitimately criticizing the Obama administration regarding similarities with things done under Bush II. If any one person can be said to have condoned what was done under Bush II, it is Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House and invested with the power to initiate impeachment proceedings. She was the one who most actively colluded with the wrongdoing committed by Cheney et al. Even before her term had really begun Pelosi said that impeachment was “off the table.” That is like saying the First amendment is off the table. It is like saying that because someone holds a certain office we are going to let him get away with murder — in this case literally (e.g. Iraq). This collusion was in the face of ample evidence that crimes had been committed, including when Bush announced on TV that he had been intentionally breaking the FISA law.
Under the rule of law wrongdoing is wrongdoing no matter who does it. This country is meant to be a place where the rule of law prevails. And the Constitution is the supreme law of the land.
Looking at the morals associated with political actions, and the effects that these have on the people of our nation and our planet, ties back to the spiritual theme of this web site.

Troy-
Of course I said “most” and equivalent terms in my post. There are liberals as tribalistic as most conservatives, and conservatives, well, classical liberals anyway, who are not tribalistic at all. Take a look at http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6533 to see a genuine classical liberal who was critical of Dear Leader back when most ‘conservatives’ were throwing every principle they said they had overboard.
Only one of your examples strikes anywhere near a rebuttal of my point. (To mention Ann Coulter, who has fantasized in print and word about killing liberals, as a rebuttal of my basic point about ‘conservative’ tribalism because she is critical of Bush’s more humane acts is surreal.)
However, your reference to conservative politicians is a good counter example, and merits a careful examination. First, words are cheap. Nothing these political worthies did led to any real investigation of Bush’s actions. Nothing at all. The oversight fiunction of government broke down under Republican rule.
You can find an Arlen Spector quote on every side of every issue, but when the chips were down he was a Bushie to the core. Susan Collins was little different. Given many opportunities to actually investigate misbehavior by Bush and his allies, she never did. When push came to shove, almost all backed down until the waning days of his rule.
Hagel didn’t, and he retired the last election, I suspect in disgust. Lugar loves his country enough eventually to have seen incompetence in foreign policy. But no leading Republican was in that list you provided, no equivalent of Pelosi in government or Olbermann in the media. Nor will you find them. Most of your examples other than a few politicians making valid points they did not follow up on criticized Bush because he was not quite as demented as they were.
Now maybe Pelosi is just words as well. Time will tell. If so, she will be no different from the Republicans you cited and she will be as big a zero in my eyes as her current Senate equivalent, whose defeat in the next election I deeply hope for.
Many conservatives who criticized Bush for legitimate reasons were essentially drummed out of their “movement.” And simple citizens were savaged unmercifully for failing to know their place. Do you remember what happened to the Dixie Chicks, who dared to be critical of the moron from Texas? They were no longer played on most Clear Channel owned radio stations and their recordings were burned.
Now that Bush is seen as the disaster he was, people are trying very hard to find times when they were critical. They were few and far between.
By contrast Obama is coming under strong criticism on basic constitutional issues where he shares Bush’s position. It is happening early in his administration and when his popularity is high. Republicans were silent on these issues until late in his administration with his approval in the dumps, and even then did nothing about them but offer a few cheap words.
Your memory of those times is very very selective.

There are indeed days when I find myself feeling very strongly that for every year a politician spends in elected office, they need to spend two more years in prison before they can run for another term.
And that’s being very generous towards the power-grubbing money-hungry deceivers of the public trust. Remember, to be a successful politician, one must become a proficient profesional liar, in addition to one’s committee work.
I’m pretty sure that if we shipped the members of Congress to GTMO and locked them up there, and then shipped the political prisoners Bush has been holding down there to DC and installed them into the halls of Congress, that they would be hard pressed to do our country more harm than our elected “representatives” have done over the past 12 years.

And I think you too have very selective memory of the time. Or maybe we were both listening to completely different people and their completely different interpretations over the last 8 years. I suspect it is in fact the latter. Now, I didn’t say I agreed with the things Bush was criticized about by people like Coulter and Limbaugh (with the exception of some economic issues and spending) — but they did in fact criticize Bush. A lot. Most of the Republicans worth anything were drummed out well before Bush took office — the people Gingrich helped elect were all run off by people like Hastert, leaving nothing but the Nixonian Republicans in charge. Bush was just like them.
But I argue these points not because I liked Bush or supported the Hastert GOP (I certainly didn’t — Hastert I found particularly odious). I argue them because you make it sound like it was a giant Bush love-fest, and I certainly do not remember it that way.
Now, this is what I think actually happened:
When Clinton was elected, the conservatives overreacted and tried to vilify him. When Bush was elected, the left decided to give the conservatives a taste of their own medicine, and began attacking Bush and vilifying him (this isn’t to admit that Bush didn’t later gave them plenty of reason to). Basic tribal rules apply: you attack a member of my tribe, no matter what I think of him, and I will defend him. He may be an asshole, but he’s our asshole. Under such circumstances, the defenses get pretty ridiculous at times. The conservatives, forgetting that the reason Bush was so strongly attacked was because the conservatives had so strongly attacked Clinton, are now attacking Obama in revenge (again, not that he doesn’t deserve considerable amounts of criticism). The problem is that neither side can seem to see that this is what is going on. Both sides romanticize their own group and villianize the other, each not seeing the plank in their own eyes as they focus on the mote in the others’ eyes (though both sides look like they have not just planks, but entire trees in their eyes).
In the end, I see no difference between the GOP and the DNC. Both sides are a bunch of corrupt crooks who steal elections from each other by gerrymandering, bribery, and court decisions from friendly courts. Both want larger, more intrusive government. Both only want democratic elections and court decisions that are convenient to them, otherwise they protest the vote or the decision (one man’s activist judge is another’s defender of the Constitution). Romanticizing either side, positively or negatively, isn’t going to help anybody.

Troy-
I agree we read different sources, but let me be blunt, mine were more honest. Evidence?
Look at the basic opinion data for the early years of the Bush and Obama Presidencies. Go ahead, look. You will find that liberals and Democrats were much more willing to give Bush a chance to prove himself. It was true for me and it’s present in the data. Clinton got no such treatment and Obama has not either. And now right wing liars are saying Obama’s lower rating among Republicans than Bush’ among Democrats at the same time is evidence he is ‘polarizing’ and too ‘partisan.’
No, it is a sign of the collapse of Republican’s capacity to be citizens of a democracy rather than a theocracy. Am I too harsh? In 2006 a Pew poll reported that 60% of white evangelicals said the Bible – their Bible – should over rule popular self-governance when the two conflict. And they are the Republican base. They control who wins the primaries.
There are no Democratic equivalents.
We all favor our side over the other, and all to some degree treat our guys a bit more leniently than the other side. But there is such a thing as keeping a sense of proportion.
In addition, Conservative popular and even relatively intellectual media focuses not so much on their opponents’ arguments as on their opponents’ supposed moral depravity, lack of character, and perverse personal motives. I read repetedly that Obama is a Muslim, a socialist, a communist, a fascist, hates America, etc. They are like monkeys throwing feces.
This is standard operating procedure for prominent personalities in the right wing. You have to go to marginal jerks unknown to most liberals and people on the left to find the equivalent – like the jerk Ward Churchill from the University of Colorado. The right trumpeted his name everywhere. Few of us had ever heard of him before then.
Liberal blogs ad media did not do this to anything like the same degree. And for a long time I read both. Not so much anymore.
I am if anything overly focused on giving reasons for my views and evaluating the reasons others give. Not as much fun as writing zingers, but I hope over the long run it’s more productive. I try to save my zingers until after I’ve given my reasons.
The right wing for the most part does not give reasons, and lies repeatedly. To pick a nonpolitical example, the distortions of science given by the intelligent design crowd, and attacks on scientists’ character by MOST global warming deniers. then of course there are attacks on the patriotism of anyone who disagrees, and so on. It’s a pattern. There are exceptions, but they are few.
There is NO left-wing equivalent of Ann Coulter or Michelle Malkin or Don Beck. None. Michael Moore? Tell me when he fantasized about killing his enemies, as Coulter has repeatedly. Or given a voice to those advocating violence, as Beck repeatedly does. Or advocated concentration camps for ethnic and religious groups, a la Malkin.
You are comparing two different styles of relating to others – one that at least tries to give reasons and generally holds its side to the same standards on the abuse of power as it does the other, and one that does not even try.

Are you talking about the same people who invented political correctness and tend to call those who disagree with them fascists and Nazis? The same people who profess to believe in evolution, but then turn around and attack E. O. Wilson as a right-wing Nazi because of sociobiology and who further reject evolutionary psychology because its discoveries disprove the blank slate theory on which most of the Left’s theories are founded? Evolution is fine for the Left until it has something to say about human beings. Then it’s all right-wing nonsense.(Don’t get me started with the creationist and intelligent design nonsense — I have fought long and hard against it for many years now.) Elevated rhetoric (and obvious satire a la Coulter) aside, Moore’s approach is to take facts and by transposing them visually creating a lie from those facts. Brilliant editing work, but highly unethical. Which is worse? Neither approach qualifies as rational discourse. Of course, you’re only focusing on the conservatives because these people have managed to be successful in the media. Those on the Left who are the same and act the same for some reason don’t succeed in the market. The question one should raise is why and how can that be?
Disagree with all too many on the Left, and you’re a racist, sexist, homophobic bourgeoisie. Yeah, right, that’s rational discourse.

No, Troy, I am not writing about those people.