I’m sure you remember the “What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us” scene from Monty Python’s The Life of Brian. But if not, here is the best part:

All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

This comes to mind a lot these days. You may remember back to last week when Patrick Dollard tweeted, “George Bush kept us safe for 8 years and once again Barack Obama fails as terrorists bomb Boston Marathon.” (Of course, Dollard tweeted IN ALL CAPS.) As I noted at the time, Dollard seemed to be forgetting a little thing called 9/11 when almost 3000 people were murdered.

Now conservatives are getting a little more specific in their complaints. Jennifer Rubin wrote, “Unlike Obama’s tenure, there was no successful attack on the homeland after 9/11.” And Eric Bolling said more or less the same thing. In the tradition of Monty Python, Steve Benen at Maddow Blog provided a great response:

And then he goes on to explain just how ridiculous this business of the “9/11 exception” is:

The argument that Republicans will make tries to skirt this issue, of course. They say, “Sure, but after he understood the threat, he kept us safe!” This often goes along with the contention that “no one could have known” that a terror attack was on the way. But even if everything is granted, the fact remains that terror attacks did happen. It was mostly just dumb luck (and dumb terrorists) who kept us save. Is that Bush’s legacy? I was lucky?

Afterword

I know you want it:

The Irish portrait painter Nathaniel Hone the Elder was born on this day in 1718. The Russian cubist Lyubov Popova was born in 1889. And the Dutch abstract expressionist Willem de Kooning (who I can appreciate but really don’t like) was born in 1904.

Action film director Richard Donner is 83 today. Shirley MacLaine is 79. And Barbra Streisand is 71.

But the day belongs to the great filmmaker William Castle who was born in 1914. He was an amazing guy who pretty much invented the gimmick film. But regardless of that, he made good films. My favorite is House on Haunted Hill, which I never tire of watching. The character Lawrence Woolsey (played by John Goodman) in the film Matinee is supposed to be based on Castle, and I suspect he really was that colorful.

Happy birthday William Castle!

Jonathan Bernstein noted something really interesting at Salon yesterday, GOP Quits Public Policy. In it, he explains that in the House of Representatives, they number bill sequentially. So HR 101 comes after HR 100. But for some time, they’ve reserved the first ten number HR 1 to HR 10 for party priorities. For example, in the 2008, the Democrats used the first two for the stimulus bill and the expansion of S-CHIP. In general, the trend has been to not use all ten numbers, but the process is still used to signify what policies the party thinks are important.

Until now, apparently.

The House majority is currently only using one of the ten slots. And it is for a fairly pathetic initiative: “a bill to force the building of the Keystone XL pipeline.” And even that slot was only filled after a month and a half into this legislative session. So what’s going on?

Bernstein is quick to note that it is a liberal canard that conservatives have no ideas. Let me just say that I mightily agree with him. In fact historically, conservatives have had many clever ideas. Look at the individual mandate that they came up with even as they now say it is socialism. Since conservatives are not willing to support straightforward policies, they have to come up with clever ways of accomplishing things. Needless to say, I prefer the direct approach: if our employment-base insurance-crippled healthcare system is broken, it is best to change it. But I would never say that the clever schemes of conservatives to patch it up with duct tape and bubble gum are not real policy ideas that are even sometimes good.

So if the problem isn’t that conservatives have no ideas, what is it? Bernstein thinks it’s laziness:

My take, I’m afraid is a bit more partisan. I think that by and large conservatives are almost by definition not interested in improving society. The end of history and all that. So even when conservatives are being very clever with policy, it is all in an effort to do nothing, or barring that, as little as possible. That is after all what the individual mandate was all about: defending against single payer healthcare reform. When that was taken off the table as a threat, the conservatives turned against the individual mandate. At first they couldn’t do nothing, but things changed to the point where they could. Well, not nothing. Now they are down to the brilliant idea of allowing people to buy insurance across state lines. (This wouldn’t really help insurance customers, but it would help the big insurance companies.)

I’m sure that Boehner & Co see their jobs as preventing anything from happening and policies are not necessary to do that right now.

Afterword

The title comes from Rachel Maddow’s claim that the Republican Party has become “post-policy.”

This is really great.

Ted Cruz is one of the Republicans who have been running around whining about the Gang of Eight immigration bill. According to him it is 844 pages and no one could read it in the 5 days he’s had to read it (it was actually 6). Of course, reading the bill isn’t critical. People have staff and they can be provided with the important information. Needless to say, the complaint is just a delay tactic. This is SOP in Congress. Senators are rarely against something. It is usually more like, “I’d love to vote to outlaw child rape, I’m just concerned about [some pathetic, minor issue].” And note, if that issue is removed, the Senator will just find another reasons he would loved to vote for the bill but just can’t.

In the following clip, Cruz tries to trap Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. He asks her if she’s read the bill. Unfortunately for him, she has. So he has to talk about something else. It is wonderful to watch him because you can tell he’s pleased with himself for having come up with such a great zinger. Take a look:

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their last president. Yes, it is reevaluate George W. Bush time! And the pundits are out with their “Bush weren’t so bad” articles. (Yes, that was a little grammar humor with the subjunctive.) As you can probably guess, I don’t think much about this rethinking. The truth is that I have major problems with the current president and he is almost unimaginably better than the last.

Of course, the big thing now is for conservatives to come out in favor of Bush. Jennifer Rubin told us earlier today that Bush Is Back. And I’m sure we’ll see a lot more of that. Also today, Matt Yglesias tried to buff this iconoclast credentials with, Some Good Things George W. Bush Did. But sadly for Mr. Bush (but great for truth, justice, and the America way), he was not up to the task.

He mentions, as he said, some good things that Bush did. But they all come with negatives. Sure, Bush put more money into education; but he also enshrined our testing mania. He gave prescription drug coverage to seniors; but that was just a way to create one of the worst examples of corporate welfare ever. He created the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief; but he also limited sex education to abstinence only and spread disinformation about condoms. In the end, the best that Yglesias can say is, “Does this outweigh exceptional poor macroeconomic performance and well-known national security policy failures? Probably not.” That’s an understatement.

We’ve already read about Jeb Bush and others claiming that history will be kind to Bush. Yesterday, Jonathan Bernstein wrote an excellent article that destroys that claim, The Wrath of the Conquest of the Planet of the Bride of the Son of the Return of Cranky Blogging. He doesn’t look were most people have: at the disastrous outcomes of Bush’s policies. Instead, he looks at process and especially how disengaged Bush was. His conclusion:

And it isn’t like Bernstein is some radical. Earlier today, he wrote a mostly positive discussion of Max Baucus’ career. Regardless, I think Bernstein is correct. Bush’s improved polling numbers are just due to the fact that most people have forgotten how Bush governed. Historians will not be fooled by that. Time will only sharpen the historical lens on both his processes and his outcomes. What’s more, his partisan apologists will eventually die off and there will be no one to replace them. Bush will be remembered as a bad president, but I wouldn’t necessarily say the worst; there is so much competition for that.

Max Baucus is retiring. I’m beginning to think that by the time 2014 rolls around that every Democratic senator will have decided to retire. Jamelle Bouie at the Plum Line blog says that even though Montana is a conservative state, the Democrats have a good chance of keeping the seat because former governor Brian Schweitzer will likely run for the seat. He also cautions liberals from freaking out about Baucus’ announcement. Why would they do that? Well, Baucus voted against the gun bill. So many will likely question why he didn’t vote for it if he wasn’t going to be facing re-election.

Bouie argues that Baucus was likely just doing what he thought his constituency wanted. I agree with him that we shouldn’t get any more upset at Baucus than we already are, but for a different reason. The problem with politicians who make it to the national level is that they have become so used to compromise that they no longer have the original ideals that got them to go into politics in the first place. I’ve argued that President Obama really wants to cut entitlements and that it isn’t just a political maneuver. Well, Baucus is almost certainly the same way. His A+ NRA rating isn’t from pandering; the pandering is who he is.

There is a more fundamental problem with Bouie’s contention that Baucus is just doing the work of his constituency: he doesn’t seem to care about his constituency when it comes to economic matters. For example, he repeatedly voted to make bankruptcy harder for individuals. He’s for the elimination of the estate tax. He was in favor of the Bush tax cuts which primarily benefited the rich. He’s against getting rid of tax incentives for companies that move jobs overseas. He was against single-payer healthcare reform. And his delaying tactics hurt the reform that we did get. All of these things have cost the poor and middle classes huge amounts of money. Baucus is not a man who cares about his constituency, unless you consider his constituency the very rich.

As I’ve noted in the past, it is unfair to complain when red state Democrats are conservative. Just the same, when it comes to issues like bankruptcy and corporate welfare, I don’t see a groundswell of resistance. But when proto-fascists like Dianne Feinstein from blue states are for the Bush tax cuts and the elimination of the estate tax, it is no wonder that red state Democrats feel no pull to vote for liberal economic policies.

Still Baucus has generally been a good team player for the Democratic Party. (It’s the Democratic Party that is the problem.) If his seat goes to a Republican, it will be a bad thing.

Update (23 April 2013 5:33 pm)

Chris Hayes on All In just said almost exactly what I did here.

I’m not quite sure what Justice Banking is, except that it is some kind of social satire group. But you really should watch this video. What I particularly like about it is that it focuses on what I just wrote: bankers are the ones who are supposed to be looking out for their interest; the borrowers will naturally want money that they may have difficulty paying back. Of course, in this video, they take it further—which isn’t to say that it isn’t still absolutely accurate.

As we’ve seen over the last 20 years, the laws have been changed to make finance harder for individuals and easier for corporations. It is now very hard for an individual to file bankruptcy. But it is easier than ever for a corporation! Bankers have always had an easy time screwing the individual. But as banks have gotten bigger, they’ve been able to get their pals in government to make it even easier.

Check out this video. It’s really great:

H/T: Digby