War Is the Health of the State

DAve Weigel and Daniel Larison ask why George W. Bush was able to stary so far from conservative ideas without provoking a backlash from his base while Barack Obama has gotten big pushback from his base for far less.

The reason? Republicans stood strong behind Bush because of the Iraq War.

This leads Larison to write:

As long as the war remained the defining issue, it bonded the movement to Bush to an extent that has never happened with liberals and Obama. Conservatives might reflect on that and consider whether waging an unnecessary, costly war that harmed U.S. interests was worth the massive expansion of the welfare state before and after 2006 that it enabled