In today's world of metrosexual mealy mouthed politicans who talk a lot but don't really say anything and certainly don't follow-up on their own policies, George W. Bush is indeed a hero and I'm delighted to read that Koch get it.
Bush isn't perfect and he'd be the first one to admit that. But he's better than we deserve and has taken a devil of a beating, sometimes at the hands of his own party.
It might do some so called "perfect conservatives" some good to remember Ronald Reagan's own words in his autobiography:
"When I began entering into the give and take of legislative bargaining in Sacramento, a lot of the most radical conservatives who had supported me during the election didn't like it. "Compromise" was a dirty word to them and they wouldn't face the fact that we couldn't get all of what we wanted today. They wanted all or nothing and they wanted it all at once. If you don't get it all, some said, don't take anything.
I'd learned while negotiating union contracts that you seldom got everything you asked for. And I agreed with FDR, who said in 1933: 'I have no expectations of making a hit every time I come to bat. What I seek is the highest possible batting average.'
If you got 75 or 80% of what you were asking for, I say, you take it and fight for the rest later, and that's what I told these radical conservatives who never got used to it."