It is almost amazing to see the self-delusion going on in conservative circles. For example, conservatives cling to Ronald Reagan is this model, yet they ignore that Reagan (like Bush) caused record deficits due to irresponsible tax cuts that were not off-set by spending. Reagan, like Dubya after him, realized that he could win elective office by talking about tax cuts and spending in the abstract without discussing which federal programs should be cut. Everyone wants to cut federal spending. However, if you cut social security, you are a deadman politically.
The intellectual dishonesty of conservative writers like Jonah Goldberg is appalling, particularly since it is based on the lie that Reagan was fiscally responsible. Does Ross Perot ring a bell? Ross Perot became a viable candidate due to Reagan's deficits.
http://www.latimes.com/news/columnists/la-oe-goldberg11-2008nov11,0,6850395.column/snip
For liberals, this is a settled question. Bush is not merely a conservative, he is the conservative. He is the ur-right-winger, the Platonic ideal of all that is truly Republican.
For some liberals, this is clearly just a tactical pose. Bush is unpopular, so they hope to discredit conservatism by marrying it to Bush, just as Barack Obama succeeded by painting John McCain as a Bush clone. This is the moment, as Obama might say, to permanently block the right-hand fork in the road so the country can only move leftward.
The view on the right is very different, and the debate about the Bush years will largely determine the future of the Republican Party and the conservative movement.
Bush's brand of conservatism was always a controversial innovation on the right. Recall that in 2000 he promised to be a "different kind of Republican," and he kept his word. His partner in passing the No Child Left Behind Act was liberal Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy. Bush's prescription drug benefit -- the largest expansion of entitlements since the Great Society -- was hugely controversial on the right. He signed the McCain-Feingold bill to the dismay of many Republicans who'd spent years denouncing campaign-finance "reform" as an assault on freedom of speech. The fight over his immigration plan nearly tore the conservative movement apart.
* * *
And Bush admitted as much. In an interview with the Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes, Bush explained that he rejected William F. Buckley's brand of anti-government conservatism. Conservatives had to "lead" and to be "activist," he said. In 2003, Bush proclaimed that when "somebody hurts" government has to "move." This wasn't a philosophy of government as much as gooey marketing posing as principle. Ronald Reagan would have spontaneously burst into flames if he'd uttered such sentiments.
/snip
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