Was George W. Bush a conservative president? Does back-to-basics mean breaking with the precedents of the last eight years or building on them?
Goldberg then goes through a series of "on the one hand" and "on the other hand" looks at the 8 years of the Bush presidency. He tries to be evenhanded in his retrospective but it doesn't work for me. Bush did too many things that were RINO.
My conclusion: Bush 43 was a not-conservative president who nevertheless did some conservative things. In this he was like Clinton who was also a not-conservative president who nevertheless did some conservative things. And I'm afraid John McCain was a not-conservative candidate who took some conservative stands.
I don't want my party to be Democrat-lite. We already have a "mommy" party, it is the Democrats. We need the Republicans to be the "daddy" party, not the "metrosexual" or androgyny party.
In 4 or 8 years there will be a reasonable chance to elect a president. I want the GOP to nominate an attractive candidate who runs on a Reaganite platform of "limited government, low taxes and strong defense." Being the "daddy" party doesn't prevent the nomination of a woman candidate in the Margaret Thatcher mold.
Perhaps David Brooks, et al. are correct that Reaganism won't sell any longer. I hope they are wrong; we won't know unless we try.
