Bush has been good on foreign policy, but, with regards to his domestic policy, he needs to take into account that conservatives outnumber moderates in the party. He will not be re-elected if conservatives sit on their hands, which is a good possibility right now. Conservatives won't get their way on everything, of course, but Bush and the Republicans aren't even making a token effort right now to keep conservatives happy.
What I would really like to see happen is for Bush to dispense of his use of the term "compassionate conservative". It is insulting to conservatives because it implies that conservatives lack compassion (which is definitely not true), while the use of the term is nothing more than a cover to spend taxpayer dollars irresponsibly. Bush is clearly not a conservative, so he shouldn't be using the term to describe himself.
Hopefully there will be no more Bush family members running on the GOP presidential ticket- two is enough.
There is nothing inherently contradictory about the concepts of "compassionate" and "conservative."
If a person is both sincerely compassionate and sincerely conservative, though, the issue is what that person does about it. Here is where the mental challenge starts—especially if that person is a candidate for president of the United States. The contradiction Bush faces in running as a "compassionate conservative" is between the idea that the leader of the national government can solve all sorts of social problems and the idea that the national government is a dangerous institution that can invariably do more harm than good, especially in areas of "social welfare"..
This is not a problem for traditional, "non-compassionate" conservatives. They don't like the governments intrusion into unconstitutional areas, and therefore they don't want it to take on any ambitious social projects. Traditional conservatives believe that present social pathologies are caused by pro-active social policies enacted by the national government in the past. There is much evidence to support this view. "Limited" decribes the scope of government power to the traditional conservative.
Bush is not a dim bulb.
It's not that he is incapable of thinking through the apparent contradictions in his own alleged core philosophy. He just seems to be able to hold two opposing ideas in his mind at the same time.
How he does that I don't know.
If socialists are our only option in national elections, as is obvious, and socialism is to be our form of government then democrats are better qualified to head our government because they offer a clear picture of their vision...and they took the lead in this direction beginning with FDR. But Bush is fast making his mark on history.
I don't like socialists or socialism. But I can't deny that I live under a form of socialist democracy.
Can anyone?