by Mark Luedtke

Created on: November 19, 2008

So many conservative writers and pundits have compared Sarah Palin to Ronald Reagan lately, I wonder if they actually remember Reagan. More likely, conservatives, like the rest of the country, are so disgusted with the Bush/McCain/liberal wing of the Republican party, they're overwhelmed to see a true conservative in anticipation of 2012.

Who can blame them? For 8 years George Bush has pretended to support limited government while expanding the size of government so brazenly he made LBJ blush. Bush has pretended to support free markets while doing more damage to US markets than any president since FDR. In the tradition of Hoover and Nixon, Bush is a stealth liberal who grabbed unprecedented power over our economy and ran it into the ground, all the while pretending he didn't want to do so and finally blaming the markets themselves instead of government interference in them.

John McCain isn't a stealth liberal he's outright liberal. He supports the same government intervention in our economy Bush and Obama do. When McCain used the word maverick during his campaign, he really meant liberal. Like Bush and Obama, McCain wants to reward illegal aliens with citizenship. McCain sponsored McCain-Feingold, the most egregious attack on the First Amendment on the books today. McCain drank Al Gore's man-made global warming kool-aid and wants to force the same cap and trade restrictions on our economy Obama supports. Like Obama, McCain never supported drilling in ANWR. McCain's so-called maverick positions are really mainstream liberal positions. McCain, like Democrats, most Republicans today, and Bush, doesn't respect the Constitution and has a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of the federal government.

By contrast, in Alaska, Sarah Palin cut spending. And by cut, I don't mean slowing down the rate of increase of spending like McCain and Washington Republicans mean. Twice Sarah Palin cut over 10 percent out of the Alaska state budget. She fought corruption in her own party and won, putting several corrupt Republicans in prison. The last president to govern with that kind of integrity and effectiveness was Reagan. She was the only limited government candidate on either major ticket this year. She sparked a tremendous grassroots movement. So, yeah, conservatives are understandably excited about Sarah Palin because she's a true maverick and a proven reformer in US politics, something that's been absent in Washington for far too long.

But the differences between Sarah

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