From the Philadelphia Inquirer:
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Conservative: It's a label that doesn't stickDouglas Pike
George W. Bush is a hard-line conservative disguised as a moderate. That has been a running criticism at the Republican Convention, but it is wrong.
Yes, this President Bush is different from his father, a traditional, alliance-building Republican at home and abroad. Yet it is simplistic to call George W. Bush a conservative. He is a big spender, tax-cutter and debt-maker. He's a preemptive warrior, "cultural conservative," and fact-twister.
Think back to the Republicans who won control of Congress 10 years ago, who acted like real conservatives, at least for a while: They actually cut spending. A decade later, the party's principle of "limited government" survives only in throwaway lines, not in the record of G.W. Bush & Co.
The brand-new, Republican platform touts Bush's budget-busting initiatives on education, drug benefits for seniors, Iraq, etc. His critics at the Cato Institute have rightly dubbed him the "Mother of All Big Spenders." Bush has added $2 trillion to the national debt in four years.
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