The Gop Looking Glass by Jonah Goldberg
Was George W. Bush a conservative president?
For liberals, this is a settled question. Bush is not merely a conservative, he is the conservative. He is the ur-right-winger, the Platonic ideal of all that is truly Republican.
For some liberals, this is clearly just a tactical pose. Bush is unpopular, so they hope to discredit conservatism by marrying it to Bush, just as Barack Obama succeeded by painting John McCain as a Bush clone. This is the moment, as Obama might say, to permanently block the right-hand fork in the road so the country can only move leftward.
The view on the right is very different, and the debate about the Bush years will largely determine the future of the Republican Party and the conservative movement.