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All we've been seeing on FR is people screaming about the cost and threatening to bolt the party, with inflammatory language like "why should we pay for a bunch of old geezers."

This might be an appropriate place to vent....

The screamers you refer to -- the "purists" -- wrinkle their noses at this fact, but elections are won in the middle. The left is always going to vote predominantly for the Democrat. Conservatives (even if they grumble) are going to vote for the Republican. The independent voter in the middle decides elections. No hard-right candidate is ever going to win, just as no hard-left candidate is never going to win. I believe that the majority of the nation's swing voters are people who, for want of a better term, are "moderately conservative." They aren't conservative necessarily in ideology, because they don't think about the basis of their political convictions, if they think about politics at all. But while not ideologically conservative, I believe they are conservative in their instincts -- generally conservative in lifestyle, concerned about high taxes, traditional in their moral and cultural views -- but they also support certain government programs (e.g., Medicare, Social Security, and the welfare safety net, provided this safety net isn't abused by deadbeats). To win elections, we have to have a candidate who appeals to this moderately conservative middle...a candidate kind of like George W. Bush. Bill Clinton understood this, which is why if you go back and look at his campaign rhetoric in 1992, he sounded like a moderate Republican. We knew better, but the conservative middle felt comfortable with him.

The purists on the right never understand this. They sit in their ivory towers and look for reasons why they should oppose people whom they likely agree with two-thirds of the time. If the purists had their way, not only would we never elect a conservative as President, we'd never elect even a centrist with some conservative leanings. If the purists had their way, the left would win ever election. The purists aren't interested in winning elections, which is why they always threaten to "leave" the Republican Party. They get their jollys by sniping at those who aren't as "pure" as they are, which amounts to about 98% of the electorate.

We'll never get a pure conservative agenda out of GW Bush, because we'll never get a pure conservative agenda out of any candidate who actually has a chance to win. Even Ronald Reagan kept us in the UN, didn't eliminate the Dept. of Education, signed the Brady Bill, gave illegals amnesty, and signed a tax increase. The best we can hope for is to get someone in who will take care of the big issues -- appointing solid judges to restore the original intent of the Constitution; promoting American values and sovereignty in the world; resisting tax increases; holding of traditional values. We have this in GW Bush. The fact that these genuinely conservative aspects of Bush's instincts don't seem to impress the purists tells me that many of them aren't as "pure" as they try to appear.

Which brings me to this observation: Have you noted those occasional posts where some "purist" says that Bush isn't 65% of what they want – he’s more like 25% of what they want? The reason you see these curious declarations is that those "conservatives" care only about one thing -- government spending. What I've seen lately on FR are people who will skewer GW Bush on federal spending, and then will sniff at issues like the character of his judicial appointments, or his defense of American values in the world. These people are not conservatives. They are cranks who have adopted a lazy form of "conservatism", namely, "keep your hand out of my pocket!" All they care about, if you'll notice, is "their money," and their perception of what the government does with it. Have you ever seen one of these knuckleheads talk about the importance of judicial nominations, or the culture wars, or the defense of American ideals in a dangerous and hostile world? No. That is because they are not really conservatives. Frankly, I am very suspect of anyone who bitches about government spending, and then shows no alarm at the possibility of electing a John Kerry and giving him the ability to appoint up to perhaps four Supreme Court justices between 2005 and 2008. Anyone who shows no concern over this possibility isn't a "pure" conservative at all.