The so-called "conservative" complaints against Bush all involve variations on the theme of either "spending too much" (mislabeled as "socialism" by the real hacks), signing a so-called "unconstitutional" Campaign Finance Reform bill, or not militarizing our border with Mexico to shoot illegals on sight. Those aren't "conservative" issues so much as they are all themes of various levels of paranoid xenophobia and misguided interpretations of what precisely is and is not Constitutional (e.g. the Patriot Act is constitutional, and no one to date has shown a single sentence of its actual legal text that exceeds constitutional authority and mandates).
I think you're exaggerating your case in the first paragraph to the point of charicature.
Bush does spend too much. He's expanding government and proposing new programs far beyond the needs of the WoT and rebuilding the military. He's doing it at a faster rate than Clinton did, and he's doing it with with GOP Congress, which the last I heard, should be fiscally restrained... but they ain't.
CFR is, on it's face, unconstitutional. It only becomes muddied by the earlier Supreme Court decisions upholding the speech-restricting campaign reforms of the Watergate era. The rationale is that Bush didn't veto CFR because the SCOTUS was sure to strike it down, thereby taking a Democraty issue away. Two problems with that strategy... CFR never had political traction with the electorate, despite years of efforts by the Dems and the press to sell it; and nothing is ever a sure thing with the SCOTUS anyway. It's long past time that Bush vetoed something, and his hesitence to do so is ill-advised.
As for the borders, most people don't want to shoot illegals on sight. That's plain nonsense. In fact, most American from both parties have had quite enough of politicians coddling Illegals. That's an issue that naturally should cut for conservatives, if only our politicians had the sense and fortitude to uphold the laws of our land, in compliance with the wishes of the American people. Furthermore, making the Dems defend Illegals is a means by which Republicans can start to shake loose black votes from the Democrat coalition, as some of that captive constituency in the black economic underclass are hurt as much as anyone by the flood of Illegals at the entry rungs of the ladder of class mobility.
All of these issues are conservative issues, and I'm not certain how thinking otherwise does anything to help Republicans win elections, or make our country a better place.
"It's long past time that Bush vetoed something, and his hesitence to do so is ill-advised."
Ill advised politically, or ill-advised from a conservative ideological viewpoint?
Politically, what Bush is doing is brilliant. No one can paint him as an obstructionist, and the ball is constantly put back in Congress' court.
Democrats would **love** to see Bush veto something, anything, any thing at all, in fact. They would love to be able to show either that Bush doesn't care about some group, or that Bush is reversing his principles, or that Bush is standing in the way of some great thing. Not that the specifics would matter to the Democrats, whatever Bush vetoed they would find an angle to bash him on it.
Moreover, they would use his veto as evidence that he had lost control of his Republican-majority Congress. They'd paint him as out of touch with his own Party.
Instead, Bush is getting **everything** that he wanted. Oh, the federal judicial appointments are taking longer than would be desireable in an ideal world, but by and large Congress right now is afraid to withhold any funds that Bush wants. Every campaign promise that Bush made, Bush can deliver on.
Why would he blow that sweetheart deal?!
Now granted, I'd like to see less money spent by Washington A.C. / D.C., but the level of spending is manageable, and it is buying us every conservative thing that we want (e.g. partial birth abortion ban, national ABM defenses set up in Alaska, death of the Kyoto global warming nonsense, death of the ICC madness, two raises for our military, full military funding, two major income tax cuts, the death of the estate tax, the death of the dividend double-tax, etc.).
And if we weren't at war, I'd be even more concerned about the spending, but I'm hardly going to want my Senators to stand up in a 1942-style Congress and tell FDR that we shouldn't be spending all this money on ships and certainly shouldn't be funding this black book "Manhattan Project" thing for $2 Billion, or whatever the modern day equivilent would be.
The overspending is sad, but should hardly surprise anyone. Bush's campaign promises weren't cheap wishes, and Bush is the style of leader who delivers.
Moreover, in a nation so evenly split ideologically, getting Conservative victories passed through Congress is going to come at some not-so-cheap price. No doubt that there will be many on FR who bicker like mad at the looming price tag on private school choice vouchers, but how else are we going to kill the power of the public school teachers' unions without them? So, the price must be paid.
Blood and treasure. We are spending both.
What I don't want to hear is that we aren't getting anything for our blood, or that we aren't buying anything with our treasure. 'Tis one thing to spend so much, 'tis another altogether to spend and lose the battle anyway. That's the path that we must avoid.
And so far, Bush has been avoiding such defeats admirably.