Compassionate Conservativism Strikes Again

Eric Alterman has a good post on Bush's plan to abandon the sick children of America.

So this is the point. Bush's argument is explicitly ideological. He wants children to get sick and die in order to prevent what he believes will be a slide toward what he calls "socialized medicine." Conservatives may not wish to claim him anymore, but this speaks to a fundamental difference between liberals and conservatives, and it's not just about letting kids get sick and die.

snip

As the apostate conservative, Kevin Phillips observes, "The Bush Administration is not against big government." What it opposes is merely that "portion of it that regulates business and requires tax increases, against a welfare system. When it's the latter, they're against big government, but when it's big government that takes care of the oil industry or bails out financial institutions or pumps money into the Pentagon, then they tend to be in favor of that."