"A patchwork quilt of left and right measures."

It still seems way too early to put the Bush presidency in historical perspective. (It may even be too early for such action with the Clinton presidency.) Given that, I do think the Bush presidency highlights a key challenge(s) for conservatives:
-if skepticism regarding the limits and power of a central government is a core tenant, how does that belief inform governance (i.e. "What shall we do if what we will do is more than likely to cause harm?")
- How do you sell "not doing something" to the public? The financial crisis has brought that difficulty into keen focus (and exposed John McCain's essential dilemma with conservatism; he's a "man of action". Ironically, in deeds, candidate Obama conveyed the more "conservative approach".)

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there's too little content in "compassionate conservatism" for anyone to be called one of those

Not only beg to differ, but a loud B******T! from this quarter.

To quote Gerson (whom O'Sullivan makes such a point of sneering at and savaging for heresy and apostacy) "Compassionate conservatism is the theory that the government should encourage the effective provision of social services without providing the service itself." Com/con existed well before W made the national scene, and has inspired some of the most successful ACTUAL government reforms and low-funding/no-funding projects of the last two decades, such as workfare.

O'Sullivan uses Bush as a caricature to declare com/con hollow and to practice the CPD™ of declaring it a heresy in the conservative church while displaying his own right-sided BDS. As convincing as a Baptist minister declaring his own congregation the One True Faith, and those darn so-called cross-town Baptists a bunch of Godless heathens because their minister once patted a married woman on the butt at the Sunday picnic. Or a Jesuit sneering at Trappists as Satanists because they brew strong ale.

O'Sullivan in the end tells us NOTHING substantive about either Bush or com/con, only about himself and his own political hatreds and snobberies, and whom he wants out of the One Club of True Conservatives (for which he has apparently declared himself the entire membership committee). Which is pretty much anyone and everyone who criticizes or doesn't agree with O'Sullivan's definition of "real" conservatism.

echoes my sentiment somewhat here:

Now, the invasion of Iraq can be reasonably described as radical. But there is nothing particularly right-wing about dislodging a fascist dictator on grounds that combined democracy promotion, humanitarian intervention, opposition to nuclear proliferation, and the enforcement of U.N. resolutions. Indeed, the case for the Iraq invasion is a litany of liberal-interventionist beliefs. That perhaps explains why almost every prominent Democrat except for Barack Obama (who hadn’t been elected to the Senate yet) supported the invasion (and why many right-wing radicals such as Pat Buchanan were firmly opposed to it).

This is true, that the liberation of Iraq was in many ways a stroke of muscular liberalism, although I don't think Bush understood that, I think this partly explains why there were so many missteps in the execution of the policy pre-surge.

Bush may not be a right-wing radical, but he is a reactionary. Casting his immigration policy as strictly left-wing is laughable, and I'm still not buying that because his did increae spending, and was more moderate on education, and AIDS relief than the base, makes him a liberal.

Oh, and I'm not trying to defend Bush, or anything, but his broadsides against compassiative conservatism, and many of Bush's own motivations are so so over the top, that I almost end up symnpathizing with him.

Forget "conservatism," please. It has been Godless and therefore irrelevant. Secular conservatism will not defeat secular liberalism because to God both are two atheistic peas-in-a-pod and thus predestined to failure. As Stonewall Jackson's Chief of Staff R.L. Dabney said of such a humanistic belief more than 100 years ago:

"[Secular conservatism] is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today .one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt bath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It .is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth."

Our country is collapsing because we have turned our back on God (Psalm 9:17) and refused to kiss His Son (Psalm 2).

John Lofton, Editor, TheAmericanView.com
Recovering Republican
JLof@aol.com