George W. Bush and his big government Republican majority rejected conservatism, promoted lavish spending at every turn, remade the US as if Woodrow Wilson were guiding it. American voters were tired of their soldiers being used to dig toilets for foreigners

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The Republican party was repudiated in 2006. Americans were tired of their soldiers being used "to dig toilets for foreigners."...

Below, articles from Oct. 2010 and Dec. 2006:

"George Will wrote in 2004 that “Republicans are swiftly forfeiting the perception that they are especially responsible stewards of government finances.”" p. 4

Oct. 25, 2010, "The Tea Started Brewing Under Bush," Dr. Timothy Dalrymple, patheos.com

p. 1, "The tea started brewing under Bush. It’s important that Democrats and Republicans alike understand this. Democrats know that they are about to suffer a rebuke of historic proportions (in Nov. 2010) ["shellacking"]....The Republicans will recapture the House (if they do) not because Americans love the GOP but because the Democrats doubled down on the Republicans’ big-government tendencies."...

p. 2, "If the Democrats had properly understood the Tea Party movement, and if they had seen the water coming to a low boil during the Bush administration, they might have avoided their present fate. There are two steps to their misunderstanding of the Tea Party. First, the Bush administration was wrongly viewed as thoroughly and quintessentially conservative.

Second, the public’s eventual rejection of the Bush administration was viewed as a repudiation of conservatism and a fundamental political realignment of the electorate (perhaps even the basis of a permanent Democratic majority in “America the liberal”). The important point is this: many who now comprise the Tea Party were not Bush die-hards, but disapproved or largely disapproved of the Bush administration’s big-government tendencies....

To take the first point, President Bush was alternately viewed as a scheming arch-conservative or else a congenial dunce
manipulated by scheming arch-conservatives. In his famed “Case for Bush Hatred” in 2003, Jonathan Chait (in spite of the fact that Bush had increased government spending in his first three years at a rate unseen since Lyndon B. Johnson) wrote that “Bush would like to roll back the federal government’s spending to something resembling its pre-New Deal state.” James Traub concurred in the New York Times magazine, writing that “today’s Republican party is arguably the most extreme-the furthest from the center-of any governing majority in the nation’s history.”

Examples could be added, but anyone who remembers the Bush administration will surely recall that he was painted as conservatism’s avatar.

The point is not exactly that President Bush was not a conservative, but that his administration precipitated a crisis of conservative identity within the Republican coalition....He took an activist view of government in the foreign sphere, leveraging the American military to transform the world order in pursuit of democracy, and in the domestic sphere, leveraging the American government to transform the social order in pursuit of conservative virtues."...

p. 3, "When Governor Bush articulated his vision for “compassionate conservatism” at a speech to the Manhattan Institute in 1999, he rejected the typical Republican “disdain for government,” and sided with Benjamin Franklin, arguing that “the general opinion of the goodness of government” is foundational to America. The government must concern itself with the “human problems that persist in the shadow of affluence,” and conservative ideals should be utilized in the interest of “greater justice, less suffering, more opportunity.” Bush even criticized the Republican-controlled Congress for “balancing the budget on the backs of the poor.” Instead, the showcase for his compassionate conservative government was to be his education plan, which would not shrink or dismantle the Department of Education but would use it to deliver substantial sums of money to vouchers and charter schools, spurring competition for federal dollars in order to fund a free market reform of the American educational system. 

This was not mere posturing. Compassionate conservatism was put into action. The Bush administration achieved its most notable domestic victories in Congress -- from the tax cuts to No Child Left Behind, the prescription drug benefits for seniors, support for faith-based organizations, and its expansion of the national security apparatus -- with substantial Democratic support, and all save the tax cuts expanded government influence. As Fred Barnes noted in 2003, Bush was forming what Irving Kristol called “the conservative welfare state.”...The conservative ends justified the liberal means.

Still, members of the liberal intelligentsia believed Bush’s governing philosophy is that “the government can have no positive role in its citizen’s [sic] lives.” Deficits were seen not as evidence to the contrary, but as part of a plan “to rid social programs of their funding.” It is difficult to overstate the profundity of the misunderstanding when George Lakoff writes that Bush represents the quintessentially conservative commitment “to get rid of protective agencies and social programs” and establish a government “limited to security and maintaining a free market.”"...

p. 4, "The result was government growth and deficit spending even as the country was cutting taxes and prosecuting two wars. Whether this approach was right or wrong, however, it is completely and demonstrably false that “nobody was angry about the deficit under President Bush.” Bush’s big government did arouse substantial opposition within conservative ranks.

Liberal politicians and their fellow travelers in the media seemed to assume that Americans disapproved of Bush for the same reasons they did. Yet many rejected Bush because he was not their kind of conservative (or, they might say, no conservative at all). 

William F. Buckley was tactful in 2006 when he said that Bush suffers from “the absence of effective conservative ideology--with the result that he ended up being very extravagant in domestic spending.” 

And George Will wrote in 2004 that “Republicans are swiftly forfeiting the perception that they are especially responsible stewards of government finances.”...

These are hardly figures on the fringe, and they object to Bush’s government growth and deficit spending. Another example from the same year is Richard Viguerie, a pioneer of conservative strategy, whose (Aug. 2006) Conservatives Betrayed: How George W. Bush and Other Big-Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause, is a clear precursor to the Tea Party movement.

Yet the rejection of big-government conservatism, amongst libertarians, reaches further back. A Cato Institute article from 2003 calls Bush “the most gratuitous big spender to occupy the White House since Jimmy Carter.” It was not possible to blame this on the wars alone, since non-defense discretionary spending had increased by even more (20.8%) than total spending (15.6%). 

“Government agencies that Republicans were calling to be abolished less than 10 years ago, such as education and labor, have enjoyed jaw-dropping spending increases under Bush of 70 and 65 percent respectively.” While some expenditures are matters of political expediency, this only means that Bush “spends like Carter and panders like Clinton.” The chairman of Cato even hoped for a divided government, and Doug Bandow at The American Conservative lamented (in Dec. 2003) the Republican majority that was “promoting larger government at almost every turn.”"...

"Despite occasional exceptions, the Bush administration, backed by the Republican-controlled Congress, has been promoting larger government at almost every turn. Its spending policies have been irresponsible, and its trade strategies have been destructive. The president has been quite willing to sell out the national interest for perceived political gain....President George W. Bush has made Woodrow Wilson the guiding spirit of Republican foreign policy.

A candidate who criticized nation building is now pursuing global social engineering. The representative of a party that once criticized foreign aid is now pushing lavish U.S. social spending abroad, demanding that it be a gift rather than a loan. And the administration has advanced a doctrine of pre-emption that encourages war for allegedly humanitarian ends. Attempting to justify the Iraqi war retrospectively by pointing to Saddam Hussein’s manifold crimes, the president apparently believes he may attack any nation to advance human rights....Liberals should identify with the Bush record....He has expanded social engineering from the American nation to the entire globe. He is lavish with dollars on both domestic and foreign programs. For this the Left hates him?...George W. Bush enjoys neither royal nor religious status that would place him beyond criticism. Whether or not he is a real conservative, he is no friend of limited, constitutional government. And for that the American people should be very, very angry." (Dec. 1, 2003)

(continuing): "Further examples abound, reaching back as far as 1999. Or witness Robert Trancinski in 2001: “the heart of conservatism is dead” when “its leaders endorse a total surrender to the welfare state -- and announce that, if we can’t beat the Left, we should join them at the federal trough.” [2/5/2001, "The Conservative Welfare State," by Robert W Tracinski, Capitalism Magazine]

p. 5, "The American people as a whole were not ready for a rapid expansion of government amidst debts and deficits unseen since the Second World War. America as a whole has remained center-right....

Many Americans, and not only the Tea Party activists, feel that rapid government growth and the national debt constitute severe threats to the health of our economy and our nation....

The tea started brewing under the Bush administration, and now it’s scalding hot....It may burn Republicans too if they don’t change their ways."...image of tea kettle from patheos

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Dec. 2006 article:

The Republican Party lost in 2006 because they joined the looters: "If you, as Republicans, want to regain control of your party and end its malignant alliance with the looting left, then you must stop being looters yourselves....The purpose of the government is to prevent criminals from preying on us....Support for the war in Iraq has collapsed because there are no goals being pursued except the sacrifice of our youth for strangers, and no accomplishments except a demonstration of America’s weakness."...You use "our soldiers to dig toilets for foreigners."... Republicans need to become advocates of a foreign policy of self-interest, by which we fight to defend the freedom of Americans, and only the freedom of Americans."...
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12/6/2006, "An Open Letter to Republicans," John David Lewis, Capitalism Magazine

"There are two things that all Republicans know today: that you lost the mid-term election, and that the loss was a repudiation of President Bush’s policies. What you must now figure out is why. 

Why did Americans vote as they did? What specific policies did they reject? The answer you accept will determine whether you discover a road to victory for your country and your party, or whether you stumble further into defeat.

You have heard–and will continue to hear–many explanations for the election results. You have been told, for instance, that Democratic obstruction stymied the president, and leftist defeatism undermined support for the war. These answers will not cut it.

Republicans held a political majority in Washington for six years, and the President was given all the resources and authority he asked for–including a solid re-election two years ago....

The president has increased spending to a degree not seen since LBJ and FDR, and has not vetoed a single spending bill....

Religious conservatives–such as Senator Santorum–were also soundly defeated. The American people expressed no desire for more religious values in government.

It remains telling that the American people were solidly on the president’s side when he promised a reduction in government coercion at home, and a victory in the war overseas (over 80% supported the invasion of Iraq)–and that they withdrew their support only after he failed to follow through on his promises.

I’ll offer a different reason for your defeat. You lost because you ceased being Republicans, and became new, “Neo-,” Conservatives....

What Republicans once stood for, despite many compromises and errors, was preserving and extending American freedom. But where in recent history have you upheld this value? Have you, for instance, defended America’s freedom against foreign enemies?

The “Forward Strategy of Freedom” uses our soldiers to dig toilets for foreigners, claims success when a hostile government is elected, and promises years of American casualties. The result has been permanent airport checkpoints at home and armed guards on our borders. Whatever happened to the idea of driving to victory over avowed enemies?

Have you preserved freedom at home? Did you demand spending reductions along with your excellent tax cuts, or rather settle for deficits in the hundreds of billions of dollars? Who doubled the size of the Department of Education, which some of us once hoped that Reagan would eliminate, and which is now pursuing a de facto federal takeover of the schools? Who enacted the Sarbanes-Oxley persecutions of businessmen?...Who showered government money onto churches as replacements for the local welfare office?

Fiscally, you have accepted without question a God-given imperative to distribute other people’s money by force–not as a compromise with the Democrats, but with a commitment to outdo them....

You have accepted that moral goodness means sacrificing for the (alleged) good of others, and you have worked to shape America in this image. This ideal has defined President Bush’s policies overseas, which purport to wage war by bringing benefits to enemy nations. It has defined a domestic policy that sees moral goodness in expanding programs of redistribution.

Whereas the Democrats do this in the name of socialism (a discredited doctrine that has wreaked havoc wherever it has been tried), Conservatives do it in the name of “compassion.” Democrats base their vision on class warfare and revolution; Conservatives base it on charity. But the practical results are the same: Socialism, now anchored not in Marx, but in civic religion.

Is this what you want for your party? If so, then stay the course, and continue your competition with the Democrats. But if you wake up one day and find that no area of life is beyond the reach of government power, and that we are all wards of the state, then you may rejoice....

The root of the moral views shared by leftists and Conservatives remains the conviction...that we must rely on the authority of feelings, whether from the immediate consensus (vox populi) or from claims to divine sanction (vox dei). The clash between the leftists and the Conservatives is a clash of feelings. Neither side appeals to the mind; each wishes to impose its views by force.

This elevation of Feelings over Reason is precisely what you must reject....Your feelings will not tell you how to run a business, how to protect freedom, how to win a war, or how to distinguish good from evil.
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If you, as Republicans, want to regain control of your party and end its malignant alliance with the looting left, then you must stop being looters yourselves, both in mind and in matter....

If you Republicans want to become true rightists–and a real alternative to the left–you must accept a morality of reason and become its advocates across the board: in classrooms, in newspapers, in board rooms, and in town squares....

Grasping this makes it easy to evaluate the numerous issues swamping political discourse today. Domestic programs? Redistribution means taking from one person by force because another (allegedly) needs it. The principle is not changed if extended to millions–only the scope of the destruction is broadened....

The purpose of the government is to prevent criminals from preying on us. We need a domestic policy that does this and this alone–rather than turning police into social workers, and courts into moral censors and persecutors of businessmen. Republicans need to become voices for objective, rights-based, reason-based law, as a matter of principle.

What of foreign policy? Support for the war in Iraq has collapsed because there are no goals being pursued except the sacrifice of our youth for strangers, and no accomplishments except a demonstration of America’s weakness. Republicans need to become advocates of a foreign policy of self-interest, by which we fight to defend the freedom of Americans, and only the freedom of Americans, with the goal of a fast and decisive victory when we do fight, as a matter of principle.

To preserve and extend the freedom of Americans was once the mission of the Republicans. But this mission was never properly understood. This is what you must discover. Your choice is: Conservatism (i.e., faith, self-sacrifice, and religion-inspired socialism) and its consequences of enslavement, self-loathing, and further defeat–or proper Republicanism (i.e., reason, self-interest, and individual rights) with its consequences of freedom, self-respect, and victory."....








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