There are plenty of conservatives who point at Bush as well. They’re also uncomfortable with Perry.
Well, there are some. Most conservatives choose to ignore Bush's domestic policies and their effects on the US economy.
For example, this article by Paul Sperry, an otherwise trustworthy conservative on staff at IBD, completely ignores the actions Bush took while in office that not just exacerbated the housing situation, but IMO, actually helped bring about the housing crash.
The article jumps from Clinton to Obama and the effects they had while skipping Bush's actions completely.
In the article, no mention is made at all about the goals of Bush's Partnership for Prosperity Agreement (with Mexico) or the agreement's effects on the housing market.
No mention is made of the New Alliance Task Force and the ways that US banking laws were fundamentally changed for the worse.
He also ignored Bush's stated goals to see 5.5 million new minority homeowners by the time he left office or that he wanted to see Fannie and Freddie increase their commitments to the 'minority' markets by $550 billion dollars or that he allowed banks that served the hispanic 'minority' markets, a euphemism for illegal aliens, to claim CRA credit.
Sperry overlooks Bush relaxing the banking rules that allowed Mexican illegal aliens to participate in the US banking market.
He also looks the other way at Bush trying to give US Social Security benefits to Mexican illegal aliens.
Or, that he ordered interior and border immigration enforcement virtually halted.
Not to mention that he publicly championed Mexican granting citizenship to tens of millions illegal aliens all the while telling US citizes lies, like "They're just doing the jobs Americans refuse to do".
All of this was done to get more people into the US housing market. And, if Bush couldn't find enough Americans, then he was going to market to the Mexicans and see to it that there were no barriers to them entering the US markets.
These are just the bullet points. Once you start diving into the details of what Bush did, it gets just as ugly as what Clinton or Obama has done.