One of the curious things about the recent Presidential election was the characterization of President Bush as a de-regulator. Bush was probably second only to Richard Nixon (another non-conservative Republican) in terms of regulation. Here is an article that discusses regulation, and mentions that Bush was not a de-regulator.

http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2009/01/09/sunstein-obama-regulation-oped-cx_gr_0109reynolds.html

Recent news is that Robert Rubin has resigned from Citigroup. Rubin was the Treasury Secretary under Clinton and was the guy who pushed the deregulation that led to the current financial crisis. Democrats blamed that deregulation on Bush, and, with the aid of the media, made it stick in the minds of the public. At Citigroup Rubin pushed for ever more leverage to be employed to increase return. That also increased risk, which was ignored. Congress is talking about "clawback" to recoup the bonuses paid to people like Rubin, Raines, and Gorelick. I doubt that happens since most of the people who got those undeserved payments were Democrats, and
contributed a lot of their ill-gotten gains to the Democrat Party.