Kathryn Lopez has written an excellent article on "the Right’s love-hate relationship with George W. Bush," as the article’s subhead puts it, for National Review Online. Lopez writes,

For many conservatives, this immigration business over the last week has felt a lot like the last stages of Bush Estrangement Syndrome. Even though the bill went down in the end, it leaves deep wounds — far from the first. As [radio talk show hostess Laura] Ingraham made clear, many conservatives never really bought into “compassionate conservatism” — conservatism didn’t exactly need George W. Bush to become compassionate. Ending the Cold War had an element of compassion in it, after all. Speaking of wars — God bless him for being a leader, but he’s never quite consistently made the case for the current war as well as others outside the administration have. (And he invited to the White House, for state dinners, editors of papers that leak national-security information.)

Then there was the Bush-Kennedy No Child Left Behind bill. We sucked up the big-government approach, and Ted Kennedy photo ops, “for the children.” But the real breakdown moment between the Right and the president who — we thought — had some respect for us even though he isn’t really one of us came when he nominated Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court. His patronizing pitch — she is a good lawyer, for a woman! — followed by insulting name calling (you’re elitists and don’t want her because she didn’t go to Harvard; you’re sexist and don’t want another woman on the Court) was a low point for this administration. You’d think after conservatives forgave and forgot and fought hard for Samuel Alito the White House would consider thinking twice before kicking its friends again. Instead, you’re reminded that — back when the president was governor of Texas — he always prided himself on working with Democrats rather than with his natural allies 

As all readers of this site are well aware, I’ve been a big critic of Bush and the Republicans during the Bush years, for squandering the Reagan legacy, and Lopez’s article summarizes the case very well. Hence, perhaps this is the right time for the right to reconsider whether we really are conservative.

Bush’s conservatism led directly to big-government Republicanism, as I argued in my post-election NRO piece:

After all, what there is to conserve today in American politics are a high-taxing, high-spending welfare state; a political system in which incumbents have all the advantages; a flood of illegal immigration; increasing state-level socialism; a public education system that appears deliberately designed to keep people ignorant; the worst, most libertine aspects of the Sexual Revolution; a health-care system that is increasingly under government control; a new Cold War in which Islam and the West remain just short of open war; and so on.

Look at the list, and you can see that Bush aided the Democratic New Age Conservatives in all of these items (with the possible exception of the Sexual Revolution, about which he did little, not having been sent a bill on defense of marriage), when what is really needed is Burke-Smith-Hayek-Buckley-Reagan classical liberalism.

We should add to the list of things that are being conserved in modern America the open hostility of state toward church and the forced marginalization of Christianity and Christian values. Plus, now the Democrats even want to preserve the current global temperature, for goodness’ sake, as if that were even possible, much less proven to be wise.

What we really need now, by great contrast to all of this, is a push for a true opportunity society, one which allows local control over most political questions, which would necessarily allow the Christian roots of this nation to be expressed.

Conservatism today preserves a host of evils.

It seems clear to me that it’s time we started calling Democrats conservatives, noting their reflexive opposition to true progress and freedom, and that we began pointing out that the right, including its Christian element, is the truly liberal force in America today, in the positive, classical sense.

Perhaps it is time we began a debate over these terms as they determine both our self-image and the general population’s impression of us and our values.