[Jim Cane]

What is a "principled" conservative?

One who believes in reducing the size and scope of the present federal government to accord with it's Constitutionally enumerated powers.

No Child Left Behind? Senior Prescription Drugs...the biggest new entitlement since Medicare? Please...he makes LBJ, Nixon and Clinton look like a Scotsmen with their wallets sown shut.

[Miss Marple]

Both the education bill and the prescription drug bill were campaign promises he made. Apparently you weren't paying attention.

[Wolfstar]

One who believes in reducing the size and scope of the present federal government to accord with it's Constitutionally enumerated powers.

This is a political fault line that is older than our Republic. While I am for the Jeffersonian vs. Hamiltonian vision, the fact of the matter is that Hamilton won the debate during the presidency of George Washington. What vestige was left by the mid-1860's was wiped away by the Civil War. Then Teddy Roosevelt made us an internationalist nation, the politicians of the Wilson era gave us the income tax and direct election of senators, and FDR gave us socialism — which the American public had a great appetite for and still does.

Result? The nation we are today is not the one bequeathed to us by the founders. So how do we overturn over two-and-a-quarter centuries of history?

[NathanR]

One who believes in reducing the size and scope of the present federal government to accord with it's Constitutionally enumerated powers.

Nice goal!

Too bad there will be no man who wants to do that and who can be elected president in this century. (At least, until FEDGOV actually goes broke.)