Interesting essay on "Common Conservatism" :
www.commonconservative.com/fiore/fiore101606.shtml

A lot I agree with, but I have to object to:
"Though the economy is the best that it's been since the late 90s, it
still remains the most underreported story of the last five years."

...well, to be brutally specific, the economy is the best it's been
<b>since the end of Clinton's term</b>. That when the budget was
running a surplus, and George Bush said he would take that surplus and
"put it in a lock box."

"...Budget deficit lower than expected ($111 billion less)?"

I don't see how this is anything to crow about. "We're spending the
country into trillions of dollars of debt, but we're not spending it
quite as fast as we expected last year, so we will call that a gain!"
I mean, even if you ignore the use of debt accounting that's so fuzzy
that it's basically a con game (
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14756403/site/newsweek ), it's hard to see
how "our budget deficit is 'only' a quarter of a trillion dollars" is
"fiscal conservatism".

I have to say, thought, that I'm no longer even sure that "vote GOP,
because the alternative is even worse than we are" even works for me
any more. I've lost track of why the Repubicans call themselves
conservatives-- they seem to have abandoned all the principles that I
would call the core of conservatism, and have turned into the party
that spends tax money like a kid in a candy store.

I'm still chewing on the fact that a Democrat president can balance the
budget and even make a surplus, but a Republican president, with a
Republican congress, can't. Who are these people, and what did they do
with the actual Republicans?

(to be fair, though, I have to admit being more of a libertarian than a
conservative. For while, during the Reagan revolution, there wasn't
much difference, but that's no longer true; the younger Bush doesn't
seem to have any interest in libertarian principles-- or liberty, for
that matter.)