Right Cross: Is George W. Bush a conservative?

Dallas Observer | Robert Wilonsky:

“Author Bruce Bartlett doesn't think so, and saying that cost him his job. ... Bush-bashing from the right has almost become a trend. By month's end, Bruce Bartlett will be the trend's poster boy. On February 28, Bartlett's book Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy will arrive in bookstores, adding its author to the growing list of conservatives who are lashing out at the president for his being what Bartlett calls ‘a pretend conservative [who] has more in common with liberals, who see no limits to state power as long as it is used to advance what they think is right.’”

Ed Cognoski responds:

What drives George W. Bush? Tax cuts have been a consistent pillar of his political philosophy. But to what purpose? Conservatives have always thought it was to reduce the size of government. Starve the beast. How do you square that with the growth in government under Bush? Defense and Homeland Security spending. The hugely expensive Medicare prescription drug plan. The earmark process that facilitates out-of-control pork barrel spending? The promise to spend whatever it takes to rebuild New Orleans?

There are winners and losers in both tax cuts and increased government spending. The clear winners are wealthy individuals whose tax bill is cut and whose stock portfolio is fattened. The so-called military-industrial complex. Drug companies. Insurance companies. Oil companies.

The traditional conservative theory was that, by reducing government, free enterprise would thrive and, all by itself, lead to prosperity for all. The new theory seems to be that government must grow in size and power to ensure that the country's wealth is invested in the right kinds of enterprises. Free enterprise must be funded by government, as paradoxical as that sounds. Bush economic policy makes most sense as a scheme to use government to redistribute wealth to the wealthy, so it can be put to good use and not immediately just consumed.

Power follows wealth. And wealth follows power. The recent claims of executive power in the name of national security have people talking again about the imperial Presidency. Hardly the stuff of President Reagan's vision of small government. President Reagan famously declared, "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." President Bush seems bent on obliterating that notion, from Big Brother domestic spying to defense of marriage Constitutional amendments to federal education officials grading the performance of neighborhood elementary schools.

The surprise isn't that a lifelong conservative like Bruce Bartlett would write a book like Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy. The surprise is that other conservatives are offended by the book. Just what is it about George W Bush and his political philosophy that can still be considered conservative?