What are the terrible, unjustified regulations Mr. Bush proposes to scrap?

Carbon regulation must go, of course, because doing nothing about climate change has become an essential part of the Republican identity. So must Obamacare.

But Mr. Bush also proposes doing away with rules regarding the disposal of coal ash, a byproduct of coal-burning power plants that contains mercury, arsenic and other contaminants that can cause serious health problems if they leak into groundwater or are blown into the air as dust. Does trying to limit these risks sound like an arbitrary, pointless action?

Then there’s for-profit education, an industry wracked by fraud — because it’s very hard for students to assess what they’re getting — that leaves all too many young Americans with heavy debt burdens and no real prospect of better jobs. But Mr. Bush denounces attempts at a cleanup.

Oh, and he denounces the administration for “regulating the Internet as a public utility,” which can sound odd until you realize that what’s actually being regulated are Internet service providers, who face little or no competition in many local markets. Did I mention that in Europe, where Internet providers are required to accommodate competition, broadband is much faster and much cheaper than it is here?

Last but not least, Mr. Bush calls for a rollback of financial regulation, repeating the thoroughly debunked claim that the Dodd-Frank law actually encourages banks to become too big to fail. (Markets disagree: Judging by their borrowing costs, big banks have lost, not gained, since Dodd-Frank went into effect.) Because why should we think that letting banks run wild poses any risks?

The thing is, Mr. Bush isn’t wrong to suggest that there has been a move back toward more regulation under Mr. Obama, a move that will probably continue if a Democrat wins next year. After all, Hillary Clinton released a plan to limit drug prices at the same time Mr. Bush was unleashing his anti-regulation diatribe.

But the regulatory rebound is taking place for a reason. Maybe we had too much regulation in the 1970s, but we’ve now spent 35 years trusting business to do the right thing with minimal oversight — and it hasn’t worked.

So what has been happening lately is an attempt to redress that imbalance, to replace knee-jerk opposition to regulation with the judicious use of regulation where there is good reason to believe that businesses might act in destructive ways. Will we see this effort continue? Next year’s election will tell.