The Republican Party Needs to Do Penance

So says Bruce Bartlett.

I have a couple of friends who think I should "move on" from the Bush/Cheney era. This, IMHO, is ridiculous. It's simply not clear to me how anyone who reveres American principles can just forget about the crimes of the last administration. It is an enormous error to think that we can just forgive and forget in a case like this.

I'd agree with Bartlett except that I don't see that doing penance will help. The fact is that the GOP selected, elected and rabidly supported a criminal administration for eight years. American conservatives have demonstrated that they are deeply confused, and that their judgments about who ought to lead the government and how it ought to be led are deeply defective. It is not as if they made a wee mistake, nor that they recognize that. Rather, the men who were strongly representative of conservative principles turned out to be irrational, criminal, and deeply confused about the world--and conservatives continue to support and admire them despite irrefutable evidence of their awfulness. No amount of "penance" will make this fact go away.