"We're working to roll back decades of governmental largesse, to root out political fraud and corruption, and to champion causes which further conservatism in America."
You're free to decide how much that's been the guiding principle of GWB's administration. Others have certainly drawn their conclusions.
[[It's not like conservatism is some secret cult that only the properly initiated know the Mysteries of and everyone else has to guess. At least in the context of this forum, FR's homepage gives a pretty reasonable idea of what it is:
"We're working to roll back decades of governmental largesse, to root out political fraud and corruption, and to champion causes which further conservatism in America."
You're free to decide how much that's been the guiding principle of GWB's administration. Others have certainly drawn their conclusions.]]
But there is the whole in your argument as well as the crux. You seek to adhere to a narrow definition of conservatism, in reality, it covers a wide swath. Classical liberalism is a conservative ideology, not to be mistaken with the bastardization of the word by today's left. The basic tenet and foundation of classical liberalism is individual freedom and liberty, both economic and social, within the structure of a society and its mores.
You have paleo-conservatism, neo-conservatism and the list goes on and on. So any claim to ideological superiority or purity is simply hogwash and elitist. It is when one tries to narrowly define what are the correct ideals that one relegates themselves to minority status. That is political reality, unless one can raise a big umbrella under which many can fit, you achieve nothing.
You seek to chastise Bush for not meeting up to your claimed ideological purity and remove his claim to being a conservative. Is he not socially conservative ? Hasn't he cut taxes ? Hasn't he used conservative economic principles to spur the economy ?
IMO, the far left and far right have not grasped the change in the world 9/11 has brought about. The far right loses perspective in their analysis. Homeland Security, the biggest increase in government, was brought about by 9/11. I think the Patriot Act needs to be reviewed periodically and revised, it should not be permanent. I vehemently disagree with Bush's Prescription Drug Bill, but I also look at it from the perspective of what the democrats offered as an alternative being almost three times as large and including tax increases. It was all about politics and taking an issue away from the democrats. His approach to reconstructing the Gulf is a conservative approach - tax incentives, entrepreurship, etc, as well as his approach to addressing poverty - home ownership, etc. Weaning those who have been programmed to be dependent on the government out of that vicious cycle has to be an incremental process.
I am a constitutionalist, a free-market capitalist, a pragmatist and a political realist. I am not a globalist, I believe in sovereignity but also acknowledge the global aspects of economic interdependence. I believe the UN needs to go the way of the League of Nations, it is a flawed institution that gives equal voice to dictators and oppressors on the world stage. I believe in individual freedom and liberty, as my tag line espouses. I am every bit the conservative that you are, but I am a big picture conservative, I look at the end game and the realities of the process to get there. There will be times it is necessary to take one step back so you can take two or three steps forward after that. You can't turn around decades of systemically and institutionally ingrained leftist government in one fell swoop. The right is slowly eroding the three remaining pillars that prop up the left, the 'old media', academia and the judicial branch of government. Sites like Free Republic play a key role in the dissemination of information that was once buried from public view. Unless conservatives of all stripes can keep sight of the end game, they risk doing exactly what has happened to the left, becoming fractured and losing power. That does not mean being silent, it does mean being constructive rather than destructive in one's criticism, leave the demonization to the left. Slow and steady is the only way this government can be restored to what the the Founding Fathers intended it to be, as Ben Franklin said, "A republic, if you can keep it."