The other day, Rep. Ed Markey made the following mundane but true observation:

For years, the Bush administration's oil strategy placed the granting of drilling leases ahead of safety review.

This irked Neil Cavuto no end:

Ipso-facto — Bush to blame for the big leak-o. Just like he's apparently behind that big thousand-point swing-o. Just like he's to blame for the unemployment rate that's higher than when he left office, and the deficits that are much higher than any year he was in office. All problems, all Bush, all the time — probably until the end of time.

Cavuto wants a "statute of limitations" on blaming Bush. "Just give it a break," he pleaded.

Nuh-uh.

It's true that the miseries we're currently enduring are not merely the fault of the sole personage of George W. Bush, the man now widely viewed by conservatives as The Man Who Betrayed Conservative Values. He had lots and lots of help. In fact, he had millions of little helpers -- all those movement conservatives who now want to pretend that he wasn't a real conservative.

This is because, in reality, Bush is The Man Who Nearly Destroyed the American Economy. It wasn't Bush's "betrayal" of the "conservative values" they believe are so time-honored and proven that caused his abysmal failure -- it was those values themselves, and Bush's steady adherence to them throughout his tenure. Right-wingers like Cavuto and everyone else at Fox, however, simply cannot accept this cold reality; the resulting cognitive dissonance has now driven them pretty much insane.

The conservative approach to mis-governance comes up at every turn today for the liberals and centrists now dealing with repairing the damage, from managing the economy back onto its feet to fighting the two wars Bush got us into to coping with environmental disasters produced by his safety regulations. And it would be stupid to pretend that it's not what we're dealing with.

Because you see, if we don't constantly remind people of the disastrous consequences of conservative rule, they start listening to people like the talking heads at Fox News. They start forgetting just who got them into this big damned mess in the first place. Some of them even start blaming liberals for it (especially the hard-core insane conservative defenders).

We can't let that happen. Conservatives need to be slapped with the Bush legacy on a daily basis. Sure, they'll whine. But they have it coming.