I was too nice in ascribing merely a trillion dollar deficit bequeathed to Obama, as a reader reminds me:

According to the treasury department's Bureau of Public Debt, the federal deficit went from $5,728,195,796,181.57 on January 22, 2001 to $10,626,877,048,913.08 on January 20, 2009. Bear in mind that the allegedly fiscally conservative Republican Party ran this government for six of those eight years. Roughly two trillion of that debt was added after Democrats took over Congress in 2007.

Adding $5 trillion in debt in eight years is unprecedented in US history outside the Second World War. But that's what Bush and Rove and the GOP did. And now they lecture everyone else about fiscal responsibility.

Here's my litmus test for the Tea Party right: when they hold up effigies of Bush and Cheney as socialists, I'll take them seriously. Until then, they're more partisan than principled.

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