"...conservative ideology--such as signing a balanced budget..."

Was it the Nixon or Eisenhower administration that produced the last republican balanced budget? When are we going to give up the myth of a balanced budget being any part of a "conservative ideology." I mean, seriously, the two most self-professed conservative administrations, Reagan's and Bush II's, have spent like drunken sailors.

Clinton and Gore's reinventing govt plan actually succeeded in eliminating over 200,000 govt positions, tho' a great deal of it was thru attrition - lots of people from the Johnson yrs retiring. But, they managed to eliminate the positions. With Mr Conservative Bush II, there is some elimination of govt positions, but they are merely being outsourced to the private sector, often to firms with republican political connections, and the taxpayer is still footing the bill. Unfortunately, these private firms don't appear too grateful for the work. Halliburton and many other private contractors, like the numerous private security firms, in Iraq have taken the US taxpayers to the cleaners. But, due to the political connections there is very little govt oversight.

The orignal point of privatization was to create competition, wasn't it? Yet, we are in a position now where no one can compete with Haliburton and Bechtel in certain areas related to supporting combat troops.

It's beyond me as to why so many "fiscal conservatives" in the repub party are willing to close their eyes to the current fiscal disasters in the name of party unity.

"the political equivalent of a menu in an old-fashioned Chinese restaurant: one issue from a conservative Column A and another from a more liberal Column B."

Sounds a lot like Bush as well (foreign policy hawk + Medicare increase + SS reform + steel tariffs + faith-based initiatives + relaxing immigration rules, etc.). Seems to me like an obvious side-effect of our plurality electoral system, where presidential candidates have to first appeal to their bases in the primaries and then to the electorate as a whole in the election.

And again, this would be solved by removing primaries and going with a voting system that handles more than two candidates gracefully, like Approval voting, the Condorcet method, or IRV. Or even a two-round runoff system.