The Conservative Revolt

Jeff the Baptist is unhappy with President Bush's performance:

So what is the real problem? The real problem is that the President has done a piss poor job of demonstrating any form of conservatism. In his first term, we forgave a lot of this because he had a war to fight, trouble in the Senate, and hopes for a second term. But now? There can't be a third term. Iraq is greatly improved, but government spending remains out of control. Furthermore domestic security, one of the things we trusted him to take care of, was proven insufficient by Hurricaine Katrina. His first term staff was an impressive brain trust. With the exception of Cheney and Condi, I wouldn't trust his second term staff to out-think my old high school trivia team.

He also offers Bush some advice:

Most of this is fixable. Get fixing. You base is your problem. Make us happy. Stop pandering to a left that will never even like you and throw us a bone. And not the kind you find in the bottom of a barrel of pork.

Note to the GOP: when you've lost people like Jeff, you are seriously screwed. As I've written before, there really isn't much future for the Right. Whereas Reagan at least gave lipservice to the notion that small, restrained government is better than large, intrusive government, Bush doesn't even pretend to believe in small government.

This would appear to be his mistake, most notably with the Miers nomination. He assumed that the Right had so completely embraced statism that strict constructionists would not be able to mount any resistance -- or would be so afraid of a Democratic victory in any situation that they would be willing to compromise. Conservatives gnashed their teeth and put up with the prescription drug benefit, unwillingess to clamp down on illegal immigration, and massive expansion of the federal budget because they wanted one thing on the domestic front: a conservative Supreme Court. And Bush stabbed them in the back by nominating some unprepared hack who gave every indication that she would high-tail it to the Left once she got a leather chair on the Court.

It's rather reassuring to know that there is a sufficiently powerful anti-statist movement within the conservative movement that can and will fight back against Bush's leftward tilt. Now to finish the present task, Zack Welding has a question for our President:

Second, for Bush, "What did you learn from all this?"

I'd like to hear an answer.