In accepting the Republican nomination for president in 2000, George W. Bush advocated for a political ideology he called “compassionate conservatism.” Reflecting on his message 18 years later, he said, “I felt compelled to phrase it this way because people hear ‘conservative’ and they think heartless. And my belief then and now is that the right conservative philosophies are compassionate and help people. Compassionate means you care about people and the policies you enunciate help people . . . It’s a simple political principle that good policy makes good politics, but good politics comes out of policies that affect people in a positive way.”
Twenty-six years after his election as president, Bush’s compassionate conservatism is dead at the hands of Donald Trump. The president and his MAGA Republicans didn’t just bury the political corpse, they dug it up out of the ground and killed it repeatedly.
