From NRO:
I disagree with the President on illegal immigration but I can’t honestly say that he “betrayed” me. Most of the stuff the base is mad about are things he openly championed in the 2000 race. He ran the most pro-Mexican, pro-federalization-of-education, pro-prescription-drugs-for-seniors campaign of any Republican Presidential candidate ever. The convention in Philadelphia was a non-stop riot of mariachi bands playing the Cucaracha alternating with cucaracha bands playing the Mariachi. I bumped into my own Senator, Bob Smith of New Hampshire, in downtown Philly and asked him how he was enjoying it. He said he’d tried to get in but he’d been denied entry. That’s how multicultural and diversity-celebrating it was: guys with suspicious names like “Bob Smith” couldn’t even get past security.
President Bush has, broadly speaking, governed as he said he would seven years ago. Unfortunately, a big bunch of sophisticated types in the Republican base told themselves, “Hey, don’t worry. This ‘compassionate conservative’ mumbo-jumbo is just a cunning feint to sucker the media and the swing voters.” Au contraire, he meant it.
I agree that Bush telegraphed his anti-conservative governance. But nearly every commentator vehemently denied this was the case and nearly every conservative Republican bought into those denials, not once, but twice, so it’s not fair to say that they were consciously signing onto his neosocialist program.
Conservative Republicans may be reliably stupid patsies, but they’re seldom overtly evil.
UPDATE: Dreher manfully admits it too:
Few of us stood up to Bush when he took us to this disastrous war in Iraq. Few, if any, stood up to him over his foolish support for Rumsfeld, long after it became obvious what a disaster Rumsfeld was. Few, if any, stood up to him over his amassing of power in the executive branch. Few, if any, stood up to him on the spending. Few, if any, stood up to him over the massive prescription drug benefit. Few stood up to him over the political hackery pervading his administration, which became distressingly obvious during Katrina (indeed, there are still Republicans now who insist that the corrupt politicization of the Department of Justice is a non-issue, because these people “serve at the president’s pleasure”). Correct me if I’m wrong, but the first time any of us stood up in significant numbers, and with full-throated voice, against the president was over the Harriet Miers debacle. And then we fell silent again, for the most part.
I merely note that he forgot to include the Patriot Acts, NAU and the various UN treaties.