Around here over the frontpage story in the Post this morning about Bush’s big government conservatism.

Here’s the opener:

President Bush’s second-term agenda would expand not only the size of the federal government but also its influence over the lives of millions of Americans by imposing new national restrictions on high schools, court cases and marriages.
In a clear break from Republican campaigns of the 1990s to downsize government and devolve power to the states, Bush is fostering what amounts to an era of new federalism in which the national government shapes, not shrinks, programs and institutions to comport with various conservative ideals, according to Republicans inside and outside the White House.
Bush is calling for new federal accountability and testing requirements for all public high schools, after imposing similar mandates on grades three through eight during his first term. To limit lawsuits against businesses and professionals, he is proposing to put a federal cap on damage awards for medical malpractice, to force class-action cases into federal courts and to help create a national settlement of outstanding asbestos-related cases.
On social policy, the president is pushing a constitutional amendment to outlaw same-sex marriage in the states and continuing to define and expand the federal government’s role in encouraging religious groups to help administer social programs such as community drug-rehabilitation efforts.
“We have moved from devolution, which was just pushing back as much power as possible to the states, back to where government is limited but active,” said John Bridgeland, director of Bush’s domestic policy council in the first term. Bridgeland and current White House officials see Bush’s governing philosophy as a smart way to modernize the government, empower individuals and broaden the appeal of the GOP.

Me: Here’s a whackily optimistic notion. Wouldn’t it be interesting if the Democrats actually decide to become a real deficit hawk party and the cross-over Republicans in the Congress end up being not Christie Todd Whitman type wets but more rock-ribbed Republicans? Everyone’s been waiting for the “social moderates” to assert themselves the way the Reagan Democrats did. What if the analysts were fighting the last war? Bush is actually pretty socially liberal when it comes to education spending and the like. The people who want to bolt are the budget-cutters and small-government crowd. If the Democrats were credible on that stuff, it might create an interesting coalition. After all, there really aren’t that many Lincoln Chafees and Olympia Snowes in Congress to begin with.

When Reid fretted about “the children’s” debt burden in his Sotu response and then immediately called for a Marshall Plan for America, he should have fallen through the floor into a tub of water like he was sitting in a carnival dunking booth.