Bushian Laboratory
NYTimes Actually sort of has a good point *shudder*
On Oct. 5, 1999, George Bush went to the Manhattan Institute and delivered the most important domestic policy speech of his life. In what was mostly a talk about education, he made it quite clear he was no liberal. But he also broke with mainstream conservatism as it then existed.
He distanced himself from the cultural pessimists, the dour conservatives who were arguing that America was sliding toward decadence. Then he bluntly repudiated the small government conservatism that marked the Gingrich/Armey era.
It's not enough to cut the size of government, Bush said, or simply get government out of the way. Instead, Republicans have to come up with a positive vision of "focused and effective and energetic government."

And that's it for the first post in a long time... Scary to see how I can start nodding along with crap like this. Arguing that Bush has a real, coherent (if unorthodox) political philosophy certainly fits with other arguments I've both made and found convincing. Either that, or he's just a totally irresponsible conservative pushed around by the various personalities he's gathered around himself and we're just 'imposing' a sense of reason. Nah. We'd never do something like that...

(Article is also available on our mirror site where I was testing designs for this one, as NYTimes is threatening to take down the article.)

EDIT - Typos fixed. BAM