I'm resigned to the fact that conservatism has entered a wilderness for a while. Bush and Rove killed it, and it will take a period out of power to restore it. And if you're going to have a big government philosophy you might as well have the government run by people who believe in it, rather than by those who think it's just a useful vehicle to get their second cousin a job.
Let's hope that this line of thinking is peculiar to him.
The argument that Bush ruined small government conservatism is also interesting, inasmuch as Bush never practiced small government conservatism. If anything, his unpopularity should hurt -- not help -- the idea of big government...