> Conservatives who backed Bush in two successive elections have little to show for their efforts. Bush, in fact, has decimated the Republican brand.
Well, let’s see. Bush described himself as a “Compassionate Conservative”, and to be fair he tended to tell things the way they were.
Guess what? He was precisely what he said he was. Some Conservatives now see that “Compassionate” doesn’t really mean “Hard-line”, it means something a little more soft than that.
People have no cause nor excuse for feeling “betrayed” by this: Truth in Advertizing — they got from Bush what he said he’d deliver. Compassionate Conservatism. More to the center than to the far right.
Uhhh, "compassionate" turns out to have meant, "everybody in northern Mexico gets to immigrate free", and it means "let's bump off strong conservatives in local government and education" and "let's go ahead and succumb to Democratic budget blackmail".
People did not bargain for Open Borders -- Bush sprang that one on them after he won South Carolina and sewed up the nomination in 2000, remember? He announced after the fact that the GOP was going to take the OBL line.
With Karl Rove guiding his steps, he steadily walked away from conservatives from 2000 on, except when they dragged him kicking and screaming back to performing his constitutional duty to enforce immigration laws and to defending DOMA, which cost him the alliance with the Log Cabins that he and Rove had been working on for years.
Giving him credit where it's due, he did take a strong line against euthanasia (an insurance-industry project), human sacrifice for science and the creeping practice of infanticide-at-will.
DieHard,
What you write was true until this past Autumn, but now we have a socialist system in place and a budget spinning utterly out of control, thanks to President Bush and his treasury secretary.
In addition, while some of us may have expected the illegal alien debacle (although I don’t know that any of us thought President Bush would fight so hard for amnesty), I don’t think anyone expected him to fail to veto legislation at any cost, letting the budget grow as it did. In particular, he was so resolute about bringing home-ownership to poor Hispanics that he did nothing about Fanny and Freddie beyond making a speech or two.
No, we knew what he was.
But it was still a better alternative than Gore or Kerry.
I just wish we, as conservatives, would stop going along with the RINO’s when served up a Dole, or a Bush, or a McCain.
It’s not the conservatives who did this to the Republican party, it’s the RINO’s.
I am really curious. Why do you continue to equivocate for Bush being from NZ? What's your interest in propping up a man who showed no inclination whatsoever in maintaining very few social or any fiscal conservative policies?
I’m surprised more people don’t “get” what you wrote.
Conservatives didn’t expect “Compassionate Conservative” to mean spending taxpayer dollars like LBJ. It all was an ambiguous ruse to get elected.
Bush has decimated the GOP and limped away as a dismal failure.