Peggy Noonan Asks A Tough Question

Writing at OpinionJournal.com, Peggy Noonan asks a question that many conservatives have been asking:

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.

She's got a point. I certainly never expected that Bush would expand the Federal government in the way that he has, even if you remove Iraq/Afghanistan from the picture. Medicare prescription drugs, signing McCain/Feingold, No Child Left Behind and all the money that went with that - all of these things seem to run counter to what most conservatives thought they were getting with Bush. The dissatisfaction with Bush that's now being heard from conservatives has been a long time coming.