Leadership Quote by Jim Cooper

The line is a quiet little act of triangulation: Jim Cooper uses the right’s own referees to indict a Republican president on the one charge that’s supposed to be disqualifying inside conservative mythology - runaway spending. By naming Heritage and Cato, he’s not just citing sources; he’s laundering the critique through institutions that carry credibility with fiscal hawks and swing voters who might reflexively dismiss a Democrat’s attack as partisan. It’s an appeal to an internal betrayal narrative: Bush didn’t merely govern differently, he violated the brand.

The phrase “big increases in spending” is blunt on purpose, stripped of policy detail, because the argument isn’t about line items; it’s about identity. Cooper’s subtext is that “small government” often functions more as a campaign posture than a governing discipline. The comparison to “the Clinton era” tightens the screw. Clinton is coded in Republican messaging as the archetypal big-government liberal, so claiming Bush “far exceed[s]” Clinton’s spending flips the usual partisan script and invites a kind of cognitive discomfort: if the numbers are true, what exactly is conservative governance conserving?

Context matters: the Bush years brought tax cuts alongside expanded federal commitments (wars, homeland security, Medicare Part D), and the conservative movement was wrestling with whether to defend power or police principle. Cooper’s intent is to exploit that fracture, positioning Democrats as the adults with spreadsheets while Republicans get cast as sentimental about markets but addicted to appropriations.