Hey, Big Spender

This week's column is a question, a brief one addressed with honest curiosity to Republicans. It is: When George W. Bush first came on the scene in 2000, did you understand him to be a liberal in terms of spending?

The question has been on my mind since the summer of 2005 when, at a gathering of conservatives, the question of Mr. Bush and big spending was raised. I'd recently written on the subject and thought it significant that no one disagreed with my criticism. Everyone murmured about new programs, new costs, how the president "spends like a drunken sailor except the sailor spends his own money." And then someone, a smart young journalist, said, (I paraphrase), But we always knew what Bush was. He told us when he ran as a compassionate conservative. This left me rubbing my brow in confusion. Is that what Mr. Bush meant by compassionate conservatism?

That's not what I understood him to mean. If I'd thought he was a big-spending Rockefeller Republican--that is, if I'd thought he was a man who could not imagine and had never absorbed the damage big spending does--I wouldn't have voted for him.

Peggy Noonan

Maybe Peggy wants to admit to being duped by Karl Rove and join the Democrats in singing the tune of "We were fooled, but now we're mad," but somehow I doubt it. What she is missing is that Bush really is a conservative because he now embodies the status quo: big government, big spending, imperialist designs. A porkbarrel by any other name would smell as sour, Peggy. In any case, welcome to the realities of early 21st century America.