<...Tough choice. I mean, you can respect someone with values, even if they aren't your own. It's tougher, but less confusing, to realize they don't have principles which reach beyond their words.

Boy, you said a mouthful. I'm sure Democrats were also disappointed when they found out what Clinton really was. Don't know where Bush is really coming from any more. He still has enough going for him (tax cuts, Second Amendment, a few other things) that he is better than a Democrat would be (faint praise indeed). But...

His commitment to limited government seems, well, limited, to say the least. He pushes tariffs, and enthusiastically supports spending programs. The original budget concept of spending on effective programs and cutting ineffective ones has been lost by the wayside. Okay, even Reagan and Gingrich battered uselessly against the ever-increasing flood of Federal income redistribution, with Gingrich winding up floating face down, but at least Bush, while riding huge approval ratings, could make a principled fight of it now and then. That pen on your desk, George? The one that says, "veto?" For Pete's sake at least pick it up once.

- Campaign finance reform, which could have been fought on a solid, constitutional basis, was signed. He held his nose, but he signed it.

- The steel tariffs. These are going to bite us back big time in the trade department.

- The farm bill, hell, he didn't even hold his nose, but smiled the whole time. Also going to bite us back in foreign trade, and we have lost a lot of credibility in our world-wide support of free market principles.

- The Bush Doctrine, an admirable piece of foreign policy, seems to be running into a rather Orwellian concept of "some terrorists are more equal than others." Afghanistan terrorists are dying in caves. Palestinian ones get plane flights to Cyprus and are put up in hotel rooms.

- The flood of immigration from Mexico and elsewhere seems not to concern him at all.

And this doesn't count the stuff being sat on by Democrats in the Senate. This is stuff Bush is doing on purpose.

It is becoming clearer that the very structure of our government, very little of which is related to the Constitution any more, may make it impossible to reverse, or even slow its runaway growth. Some Democrats enthusiastically push towards the totalitarianism waiting inevitably at the far end of the curve, certain that when the smoke clears it will be them standing on the huge parade podium with medals hanging off their chests and arms raised to their adoring subjects. Other Democrats just go along because they don't know any better. The Republicans are ignorant of the philosophy which should be their foundation, and having accepted the Democratic premise of the citizen as legitimized looter, are incapable of raising any serious or consistent objections.

As an example of this, both parties are thoroughly convinced that simply by virtue of reaching a certain age, a person has the right--not the privilege, but the RIGHT--to have his fellow citizens pay his pharmacy bill. Why? Because he NEEDS it. And need is all it takes now to claim the productivity of your fellow citizens in perpetuity.