The Sky Was Yellow and the Sun Was Blue

Since the election of GWB and the administration's application of the philosophy deemed "compassionate-conservatism" by the practitioner-in-chief (i.e., Big-G Republicanism), the Republican Party, or the conservative-wing thereof, has all but abandoned it's limited government and quasi-libertarian roots. As I've been saying for quite some time, the Bush-Rove-Republicans are the antithesis of the Goldwater/Reagan party. So it goes. Two articles in this week's Newsweek present two more stark examples of the current upheaval, or inversion, taking place within and between the 2 parties.

Fareed Zakaria contrasts the foreign policies of McCain and Obama:

...[w]hat emerges is a world view that is far from that of a typical liberal, much closer to that of a traditional realist. It is interesting to note that, at least in terms of the historical schools of foreign policy, Obama seems to be the cool conservative and McCain the exuberant idealist...

George Will takes the Bush administration to task on its recent devotion to New Deal-like economic bailouts:

Today's conservative corporatism of the Republican administration might "work," meaning it might minimize the duration of, and damage from, the current crisis. It is, however, complicating McCain's task of depicting Obama as a reckless enlarger of government. McCain is losing recourse to conservatism's core message about the rationality of governmental minimalism that allows markets to inflict their rigors.

Perhaps this only means there are no longer any real philosophical differences between the 2 major parties; but, rather, only a matter of degree. Bleh.