The Compassionate Conservative He Might Have Been

So....David do you see any of the current GOP presidential candidates who can be the ACTUAL compassionate conservative that Bush "talked" about? I am looking forward to a blog post on that.

Sorry David I can't get to the same level of hope that you have. I see this as a PR ploy to pander to the people right/left who are now rejecting him whole heartedly.
Where is the love?

You know, he had another moment like this, I think in '05 when he was right on immigration and the port sales and some other issue that eludes me at the moment. Ideologically he has had his moments.
I wonder, though, if the same incompetence that's marked everything else he's done would have gotten in the way even if he had spent his two terms as the president he promised to be. I never believed that a lack of compassion was behind the failure to respond to Katrina. My sense of him is that its always been his lack of judgement, lack of humility and lack of preparation that have made his presidency a catastrophe. You are right to wish him well, though, on immigration, Darfur and AIDS. I certainly will add my prayers for an unexpected outcome.

"Conpassionate conseratism" is another word for "Partiallty". "Just us and no more".

That's another thing which is so despicable about Bush's announcements - there is no real cost to him. AIDS relief won't start until after Bush is gone so he doesn't have to worry about where that money comes from. Sanctions cost nothing. The immigration bill is nothing more than a way for Bush's business lobby to continue to have a source of cheap labor, and to collect exorbitant fees from the poor workers for the privilege of working here. Imagine a family living and working here unlawfully. As I understand the bill as written, in order to make themselves legal, verbiage which I find abhorrent BTW, they must return to their home country, pay $5000 each, apply to be admitted, then make their way back here again. And then repeat that process every 3 years! How many laborers can come up with that kind of money? And what of their US-born children -- children who actually are US citizens? No, the bill isn't worth the paper it's printed on....

Hi cs, Good to see you here again. Your remark reminds me of a previous discussion we had. $3 billion out of a budget of $3 trillion is rather small. And that budget number excludes the cost of the war, estimated to be $2 billion per WEEK! Priorities....

I don't dispute the money is a small part of the total budget. I do dispute your original statement that the funding for AIDS relief was timed for after Bush left office, simply because that statement is clearly false.

Ah, cs, still the Bush apologist? His funding request for $30B for AIDS would start fiscal 2009 and run through fiscal 2013. Unless Bush plans a coup d'etat, he will be out of office before fiscal 2009 begins. His proposed cuts include the following: $36B in spending reductions for Medicare $12B in spending reductions for Medicaid $3.5B cut in spending for the Dept. of Education $367M cut in funding for the Centers for Disease Control $300M spending cut for the EPA $252M cut in funding for the Health Resources and Services Administration (source NPR) I see nothing in the budget for funding any other medical work in Africa, though his AIDS fighting plan does include abstinence education and forbids condom distribution.