I could not disagree with you more on the Iraq war. Bush has been one of the only stalwarts in seeing to it the job gets done. He said when he went in that we would toss out Saddam and stand up an allied democratic gov't. It is not easy work, but it is necessary work. To level towns and cities then leave would in its wake an Iranian influenced terror state, or something equally bad.
Bush has sown "discord" among conservatives since he ran in 2000, on a platform that included prescription drugs and eudcation "reform". He never ran as a small government conservative, and he certainly has not governed as such. That being said, his list of conservative accomplishments is quite robust.
I understand your points and partially agree with them.
Given the choice again, Bush is still better than any DemocRat.
I just wish he was MORE conservative and stopped this nonesense about pandering to Mexicans and other illegals.
Not to deny that he has any. But asides from the marginal tax cut, and the hopefully strict constructionist judges, I am forced to ask: Such as?
For balance's sake, it needs to be pointed out that his liberalism greatly transcends the issues you alluded to, the running roughshod over a balanced budget with his deficits, and his trampling of fiscal sanity with the prescription meds, and his misconcieved increased federalizing of education...not to mention the McCain/Feingold constitutional travesty. No, these are merely the Tip of the Iceberg. His multiculturalism is clearly liberal. His endorsement and continued pushing for totalization with Mexico is clearly liberal. His illegal alien scoff-lawism is difficult to reconcile as "conservative". His SPP is at best, suspicious. His Feminist rights stance in the military is clearly liberal...catering unseemly to the PC lobby. Same with his don't ask, don't tell policies. His use of the liberal Harriet Meiers for his General Counsel for 6 years has severely damaged countless conservative causes, from sabotaging the reversing of affirmative action, to creating a climate where the Kelo decision could even happen.
His pushing for the Law of the Sea Treaty, which Reagan terminated and fired its negotiators, is Globalist Marxism on Steroids. It will allow the UN to directly tax the U.S.
His defense of the World Trade Organization...letting it's cabal of anti-Americans cavalierly disregard the factual findings of U.S. bodies authorized to investigate foreign market manipulations, such as dumping, and recommend appropriate self-defense policies. All "rights" supposedly guaranteed in the WTO's Bylaws, which are now shown to be worthless.
Egregious from the get-go was his "New Tone" keeping on Clinton-holdovers, en mass, who then returned the favor: from their Federal sinecures they were able to successfully sabotage and frustrate W's policies with political sniping and monkey-wrenches thrown into the works. And then still-ongoing refusal to enforce laws against any of the Clintons, such as Sandy Berger, is just plain "whack." More liberal than conservative.
Meanwhile, the core conservative value is national defense, not phoney free trade, and he has been unilaterally disarming the United States of its primary strategic deterrents, such as the land based missiles, and the bomber forces, and even our submarine deterrent. The Navy has been allowed to atrophy frm the 344 ships he inherited, down to 286 ships...with most of the retirements being of ships still having over half their service life. He has proven remarkably and obtusely unwilling to recognize...and logically respond with a comprehensive Reagan approach to China's Declaration of intent to deploy a Blue Water Navy which can only have as its purpose...the sinking of the remaining U.S. Navy.
Bush has consistently refused to deploy an robust missile defense, but intentionally keeps it "limited" to far under what is needed to protect the American populace against the vast majority of missile attack avenues. He killed "Brilliant Pebbles 2". He killed Theater Ballistic Missile Defense. He killed deploying dedicated Aegis Missile Defense ships as a functional NMD bulwark (22 recommended by NMD advocates). He killed deploying (despite repeated Navy insistence on it being needed) Aegis SM Mark 3 Flight IIa, which would have been an inexpensive replacement for the killed-TBMD. He killed deploying Patriot missile and air-defense batteries around our cities. All to "reassure" the Russians and Chi-Comms? Reagan would not have done this...remember him walking out on Gorbachev over their demand that SDI stop? Bush's "limits" are a defacto "stop." Such "limits" to ineffectualness, are nothing if not liberal.
I will give Bush credit for appointing Donald Rumsfeld and John Bolton in the first place. But then, when confronted with a Liberal Congress... he fired them. Those were not volunteered resignations. They were asked for. Not the behavior of a staunch conservative. He's doing the liberal's dirty work. Reagan successfully kept his seriously conservative Cabinet members onboard in the face of a Democrat Congress.
And these faults are the Short List.
His de facto globalism is much more evident than you credence. Not so different from his father after all.