re: #505 iceweasel
George Bush was pretty moderate, actually. Conservative on taxes, liberal on spending. Strong foreign policy, which has become conservative mostly in reaction to him and liberals decrying Iraq. Consevative socially, sure, but he did work with democrats on education and medicare, to the result of expanding the federal gov.

I like the man and don’t expect perfection in a president; he was a conservative on some things, forced to compromise on others, and not at all conservative to begin with on others.

Another way to sum this up is in the saying “Conservatism can never fail; it can only be failed” — that is, some people do not believe that conservative policies or people ever fail, instead saying that the failure of those policies or those people is only proof that they were insufficiently conservative: not conservative enough.

the concept of a policy success is nebulous, and the real world more complicated than ideology; complete success is impossible and even well-intentioned politicians fail to look past stage 1. Even still, I’ll say that not everything called conservative is so by the common definition.