Conservatives aim to limit government spending. Increasing such spending may be “compassionate.” But it’s certainly not “conservative.” And Bush has done plenty to increase spending. Far from being a conservative on fiscal matters, Bush has been “Tony Blair with a ranch,” as columnist Mark Steyn likes to put it.

He laid out his governing philosophy during a visit to California in 2002. “America doesn’t need more big government,” Bush explained then. That sounded too good to be true, so he swiftly clarified. “Yet we cannot have an indifferent government either. We are a generous and caring people. We don’t believe in a sink-or-swim society.”

Well, that last part came true, at least. The federal government has already spent $350 billion (nobody’s exactly sure where it went) propping up businesses that made poor decisions. Now it’s getting set to double down with another $350 billion. A bad bet all the way around, and not conservative in any way.

This follows similar big-spending programs such as “No Child Left Behind” (which gave the federal government even more control over education policy), Medicare Part D (which created a massive new prescription drug entitlement plan), the partial nationalization of American banks and the steady growth of pork-barrel spending under a Republican president and Republican congress. Whew. That’s quite a “conservative” record.

The fact is that, while George W. Bush has frequently been painted as a wild-eyed extreme right-winger, he’s frequently governed as a moderate squish. Far from aiming to destroy his political opponents, Bush has often gone out of his way to help them.

There should be a lesson here for the next “conservative” who gets elected: You’re going to get knocked around by liberals and the press (but I repeat myself) no matter what you do. So you should go ahead and implement nothing but genuinely conservative ideas. They just might work.