Jonah Goldberg notes that conservatives are cooling to George W. Bush. While we generally support him on the war, his domestic agenda is driving the diehards away.

For some it started with his plan to offer amnesty-lite to illegal immigrants. For others, it's his fence-sitting on gay marriage. For others, like me, it was his signing of the campaign finance reform bill even though he thought it was unconstitutional. Or maybe it was his support for steel tariffs. Or the farm bill. I forget.

Of course, there is also his lack of commitment to limited government.

...compassion doesn't come cheap at the Bush White House, on whose watch overall spending from 2001 to 2003 grew at 16 percent and discretionary spending went up 27 percent. That's double Bill Clinton's rate.

Bush's defenders are eager to point to the war on terrorism as an excuse for increased spending. Fine. But that's only a small part of the story.

Under Bush, spending on education has gone up 60.8 percent, on labor 56 percent and on the Department of the Interior by 23.4 percent . The price tag for the president's Medicare plan alone starts, but won't end, at $400 billion. The farm bill was a pork horror show, pure and simple. More people work for the federal government now than at any time since the end of the Cold War.

Sure, Bush has been pushing a Democrat agenda, and has taken away issues that were once owned solely by Democrats. Medicare, immigration, farm spending, education spending, "professionalized" security workers, etc. But what Goldberg fails to mention is that all of this "compassionate conservatism" hasn't gotten Dubya very far. Bush is still hated and demonized by the left. No matter how much he's increased spending on education, for them it wasn't enough. No matter how much he's kowtowed to the unions, they're still endorsing the democrats.

When it comes down to it, other than the war on terror and tax cuts, Bush is basically a Democrat. And even though they don't have much to complain about, they're still complaining. And as long as they are out of power, they always will.