Night before last, courageous Senate Republicans, led by Sen. Corker, created a once-in-a-hundred years opportunity to restore America’s auto industry to health by refusing to go along with the House’s bailout unless the UAW and other unions agree to loosen their strangleholds on the big three American car companies. (See Apple-fy the Car Industry? below.)

As this report at Hot Air makes clear, they were on the very edge of succeeding . . . the impossible . . . the unthinkably wonderful was about to happen  . . .

Then the White House cut the legs out from under Senate’s brave conservatives.

President Bush and Paulson signaled that if the Senate measure failed, they would most likely reverse their initial refusal to make TARP funds available to the car companies. As Hot Air points out:

Would the union have agreed to Corker’s plan if they didn’t have Bush waiting in the wings to bail them out with TARP money? (Yup, says Corker.) After all, TARP is a sweeter deal for them than Corker’s bill since, as one White House source noted, the loans come with few strings attached. Thus have the inefficiencies of the initial Wall Street bailout made this bailout more inefficient, too.

Unbelievable.

It grieves me to acknowledge it, but the Bush presidency has been an epic tragedy for conservatism. And it seems that it will continue to be so right up until the last day.