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The republican party was taken over by a pack of lunatics (Terry Schiavo, anyone?), and the last Republican president made a decision that he'd never allow himself to lose political support by refusing to spend money or by acting with fiscal prudence. So you had a big government busybody under the Republican banner doing some insane things. Bush was many things, but a Goldwater/Reagan style conservative isn't one of them. NCLB wasn't remotely conservative, and neither was much (thought not all) of his foreign policy. Bush was a do-gooding born again Christian evangelist, and if you look at his presidency you'll see that his mindset that one must do good and preach good was driving much of his decisionmaking. Whatever else that may be, it's not conservative. It looks nothing like the Reagan model or even the Bush Sr model. The only thing he took from them is some of the rhetoric.
I don't particularly care because I'm not a conservative. It's clear that my own views probably won' t be adopted by either party because there's nothing in it for the politicians. Like most people, they look out for themselves first and foremost.
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