With the election of George W.Bush in 2000 (he won, get over it), american conservatives had finally found the standard bearer of a new breed of conservatism: the compassionate kind.
Little did they know (and they should have known), Bush is more a political animal than even Bill Clinton was (and that one really gets them where it hurts). The minute he introduced Karl Rove to even the most casual observer was the moment the utopian conservative dream died.
Rove is a calculating partisan hack who cares not for the size of government, only the size of an electoral college victory. He sold the Iraq war to the public, in fact sold the country on George Bush in 2004. He actually convinced a majority of voters that Bush was competent and decisive leader.
Conservatives are reeling today (and liberals don't get to excited about this) not because of Katrina, the deficit or Bush's fear of the veto, but because they were sold a forgery. Conservatives believe they were promised a southern version of Reagan, but what they got was a combination of LBJ and Woodrow Wilson. A war they thought was just; a failure before troops were on the ground, a government that has swelled to a grotesque form, a lazy approach to the granduer of the office.
Liberals should be wary though. Rove still has a tight grip on DC (possibly not for long) and you can be sure he is cooking up new ways to lead the right slowly back to the promised land. Not to mention, has anyone heard any kind of democrat present a clear picture of his/her party since 1996?
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