Jonah Goldberg writes on NRO:
Today he [Ryan Sager] complains that conservatives are experiencing with the Miers appointment what libertarians have endured for years with Bush. That’s fine, to a point. But it seems his determination to stay true to his perpetual theme is skewing his analysis a bit. Any libertarian who voted for Bush did so knowing he was at best the lesser of two evils. There was nothing in his campaign in 2000 or 2004 a libertarian could have interpreted as a real overture to their concerns. Most of the libertarians I know voted for Bush with their eyes wide open, believing he’d better on foreign policy or less bad on domestic policy. Meanwhile, conservatives — or at least some conservatives — legitimately feel betrayed by Bush over Miers. He promised or (vide Ramesh) at least strongly lead conservatives to believe, that he would appoint Justices in the mold of Scalia and Thomas.
Libertarians have no such claim of betrayal because he made no such assurances to them that he would be a champion of small government. I’m sure someone can find quotes that run counter to this, but I don’t think anybody can seriously dispute the general point that Bush never ran as a government-is-the-problem conservative and to claim feelings of “betrayal” because he didn’t govern as one is simply dishonest.
Not being in any way a libertarian, Bush didn’t betray us. But this is a somewhat disingenuous statement by Goldberg, as the conservative media was huge on advancing the idea as Bush as Reagan’s true heir. Bush didn’t necessarily make assurances that he would be a champion of small government, but I daresay that most conservatives believed that he would be.
It is ironic, is it not, that the one valid argument that liberals could make regarding the stupidity of conservatives is one that they will surely never touch.