Fred Barnes, WTF?

I read about politics a lot, that's why I was super confused tonight while watching The Daily Show and hearing from Fred Barnes about his new book. The book sounds like a bore...President Bush is a renegade politician, he does stuff differently...yawn....

Here's why I was confused: Fred throws around labels like "Republican" and "Conservative" while talking about the current administration, when they are anything but. These days, with the current Republican agendas, if you vote straight Republican ticket, you basically believe in wealth redistribution and big government.

Frightening statistics from this Christian Science Monitor article:

"During the first five years of President Bush's presidency, nondefense discretionary spending (i.e., spending decided on an annual basis) rose 27.9 percent, far more than the 1.9 percent growth during President Clinton's first five years"

"the number of congressional "pork barrel" projects under Republican leadership during fiscal 2005 was 13,997, more than 10 times that of 1994"

"Certain trends have been favoring the left for the past several decades. In the early 1960s, transfer payments (entitlements and welfare) constituted less than a third of the federal government's budget. Now they constitute almost 60 percent of the budget, or about $1.4 trillion per year."