Conservative Agenda/My thoughts on the Republican Party

This has been inspired in part by the article that our own Mr. Kau posted on the site a short while earlier (the NYPress article). I happen to be very much in agreement with the author of that article, for several reasons. I feel that my conservative values have been betrayed by the current president, and that my party has been hijacked by the radical right. For the time being, it looks as if the neo-cons are in control of my party. I hope this will change in the 2008 election, with either McCain or Rudy running for president (one a moderate Republican, the other a conservative Republican but not sealed off from debate and not unwilling to work with the other side). Hopefully (but very unlikely) the Constitution will be amended and the Govenator can become the Presinator. Ok, after that short digression I shall return to the point of my article: why I feel the Republican party of late has betrayed the conservative values it purports to stand for. I will outline this betrayal in a few points:1. The huge amount of spending that President Bush has forced through, without any way to pay for it. Conservatives (in my view) are supposed to stand for small government, i.e. less government programs, less taxes and less government regulation. However, during President Bush's term, the average increase in the annual budget was 6.7%, as opposed to 3.2% under President Clinton. Yes, this did have something to do with the split government (I was hoping that the Democrats would seize the Senate this year to at least have some ability to curb Bush's spending), but it also had to do with a fairly conservative fiscal policy on the part of President Clinton and the Republican Congress, who did work together to control spending during the 90s.2. The atmosphere of super-patriotism that Bush has created. This idea of "if you don't support your government you're unpatriotic" is nonsense. Dissent from the government is one of the proudest American traditionsm, and I believe any good conservative stands for the protection of individual rights, which goes hand in hand with the protection of private property.3. The expansion of Medicare through the recent $440 billion dollar bill. I thought that conservatives were against big government programs, but apparently I was wrong. It seems to me that unfortunately the Republicans have caught on not only to the Democratic idea of stealing the other party's issues, but they have also realized that bills such as this are the quickest and surest way to buy votes. With any luck the next generation of Republican legislators will not be so gung-ho about giant social bills.4. The push against free trade by the Bush administration. The steel tariffs were pure protectionist pork for the steel industry, something I would expect from the Democrats, but not from my party. If America is really serious about free trade (as I believe it should be) , then we must not only avoid such foolish tariffs as this, but we must also make our best effort to cut or eliminate industry subsidies, which are a gross waste of the taxpayers' money.5. Finally, the new Bush policy of nation-building. To me, a conservative does not support at all the idea of American tax dollars going overseas to build a foreign nation in our image, due to the fact that not only is it a waste of taxpayers' dollars on foreign people, but it has recently not been in our national interest at all. We would be better served using that money to influence politics in current countries in our favor, such as supporting the democracy movement in Iran or fostering political change in Saudi Arabia. It is crucial that America create strong bonds with the Muslim world, as this "civilization" will be one of the major players on the world stage in the years to come.I'm interested in the liberals' response to this, so Tim, Jai and James get on here and give it a shot.