For instance, you can fight your own base over immigration, or split the Dems over school choice. Instead we got a first term "me too" Kennedy education bill. For instance, at the top of a business cycle you reduce spending to balance budgets. Instead we got a "me too" giant new middle class entitlement in the form of medicare drug benefits. For instance, the blue collar labor left is abandoned on trade and we had a massive current account deficit. While I'd never advocate protection, it is a political loser and economically stupid, we could have pressured China over the Yuan in the upswing, and we could have taken other measures to raise the savings rate (e.g. lift contribution caps, raise the income limits on saver matching incentives, etc) and so reduce the trade deficit.
The main focus of the second term should not have been any of that minutae, however. It should have been winning in Iraq fast enough to bring everyone home by election day. Bush did do Fallujah after the 2004 election, to his credit. Then they went right back to the Rumsfeld small footprint idiocy. The only other major item to be on watch about was the business cycle, and it is entirely clear by now they were asleep at the switch. The Fed did its job, none of the rest of the regulatory apparatus did theirs.
Superior economic stewardship and smarter military strategy were the major Republican "brands" since Reagan. Bush the younger's second term comprehensively trashed both, with our army and Fed barely saving either situation out of sheer professional competence. Despite being handed ridiculous situations and working conditions.
The American people's standards are higher than what we delivered. Conservatives have to acknowledge that to recover and succeed in the future. Pretending we were always right all along and only those dastardly Dems undermined us, won't cut it. There were too many "own goals" along the way.
Insightful. Thank you.