A rare disagreement with Peggy Noonan
I think Peggy Noonan is one of the politically brightest and best writers ever. I was surprised by this column where she asks:When George W. Bush first came on the scene in 2000, did you understand him to be a liberal in terms of spending?In a word, YES! True conservatives want the government to be small and unobtrusive. They want to be left alone and take care of their own. If that is true, what could a "compassionate conservative" be?
In my view there were only two choices. Bush planned to molify the Dems to get the rest of his agenda through by letting them overfund their social programs. Or, Bush planned to change the social programs so they worked in a more conservative way (think religious private/public endevours that he touts all the time) while continuing to increase their funding at above inflation rates.
The problem is that there wasn't a Ronald Reagan running. And let's face it, even Reagan had to bargain for some of his agenda by letting a Democratic controlled Congress overspend on liberal social programs. Our choices were a pseudo-conservative who spent like a liberal ........ or a liberal-liberal who spent like a liberal and didn't even pretend to be conservative about anything. Once again I voted for the lesser of two evils and I am glad I voted the way I did but I would have been happier to vote for a true conservative.
Read the column, it is well written even if I wasn't surprised by what she was.
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