John McCain said that Teddy Roosevelt was his role model:
“I count myself as a conservative Republican, yet I view it to a large degree in the Theodore Roosevelt mold.”
Conservatives come in several varieties. These include the limited-government, Jeffersonian variety; the big-government, militant, national greatness variety; the nanny-state social conservative variety; and the country-club Republican variety.
Republicans come in several varieties. Conservatives do not.
Conservatism by its definition is small government. Nanny state Republicans and Country Club Republicans and other Big Government Republicans can’t be Conservatives. Baby Bush fancied himself a Conservative but in the end, he proved not to be one with the TSA, Homeland Security, big wars, Medicare D and the bailouts.
We haven’t had a Conservative president since Reagan.