Few people nowadays are aware of what the political landscape was like in the era following FDR’s “New Deal” program right up to the 1964 presidential contest. There was, in effect, only one major party — the notion of the welfare state as the only social model was simply a given. There was no debate about whether the entitlement state should exist between Republicans and Democrats —just a question of just how big such a state should be.

All of this changed at the 1964 GOP convention with the nomination of Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater as the party’s presidential candidate. Famous for the acceptance speech in which he said, “[E]xtremism in defense of liberty is no vice,” Goldwater is frequently written off by historians as a right-wing radical, likely due to his landslide defeat to LBJ (largely after an onslaught of monstrous propaganda such as the infamous “Daisy Girl” commercial which implied Goldwater’s election would result in a catastrophic nuclear war. This incidentally was also the first emergence of negative campaigning as we now know it).

Despite his defeat, Goldwater’s candidacy was a turning point for American politics — no longer was support of the welfare state monolithic across both parties.

His candidacy energized a political movement for a return to constitutionally limited government and federalism — a battle cry which was taken up in particular by then-Goldwater staffer Ronald Reagan when he eventually made his run for the presidency as well as the 1994 “GOP Revolution.”

Nearly all of the “small-government” rhetoric that comes from Republican circles these days traces its lineage directly back to Goldwater and his seminal campaign work, “Conscience of a Conservative,” where he laid out his opposition to unlimited government in stark and uncompromising terms.

This, of course, is also where modern liberals complain of the “radicalization” of the GOP away from liberal Republicans like Nelson Rockefeller, who competed against Goldwater for the nomination.

Flash forward to today, where we have a Republican and ostensibly “conservative” Congress and president. Despite all of this, we’ve managed to see a spending explosion from Washington which, contrary to the propaganda of GOP apologists, has little if anything to do with the War on Terror.

In the course of his term, President Bush has managed to rack up hundreds of billions of dollars in federal deficits, ballooning spending, all while managing to show nothing but contempt for the very principles to which his party pays so much lip service.

A quick review of Bush’s record demonstrates his hostility to his own limited-government principles when they might cost him political support.

For example, the now-infamous steel tariffs — put forth in a craven effort to win Bush support in battleground steel-producing states and repealed long after it was evident that they had backfired, wreaking an untold amount of damage among domestic manufacturers.

Likewise, his Medicare prescription drug benefit “compromise,” in which shortly after its passage it was revealed that the White House was sitting on estimates that the new entitlement would cost far more than the president had originally told Congress. -Bush’s track record on federalism issues proves little better. For example, the bipartisan “No Child Left Behind” Act constitutes nothing less than a federal mandate consuming what was once the province of states and counties in managing education.

Yet this naked federal power-grab is a double-whammy — not only does it disenfranchise states in their responsibility to manage their educational systems, it also comes as an unfunded mandate: states are expected to not only comply but come up with the scratch to do so themselves.

Finally, there’s the spending explosion itself — Bush’s record for the growth of government spending is only overshadowed by the great social “architect” LBJ. Analysis by Veronique De Rugy of the Cato Institute shows that annual increases to real discretionary outlays (optional spending by Congress, adjusted for inflation) have increased by 10.3 percent, 9.7 percent, and 8.3 percent respectively through FY2001-FY2003, only exceeded by LBJ’s FY1967 and FY1966 budget increases of 14.8 percent and 12.4 percent.

Despite what Republicans may say about Clinton’s own profligacy, his FY2000 budget (the largest of his terms) was but a 4.2 percent increase — well above the 40-year average of 1.7 percent annually, but pale in comparison to Bush’s spending binge.

One can directly attribute some of this spending spree to Bush’s utter lack of spine when it comes to signing legislation — carrying out a record only matched by John Quincy Adams, Bush has yet to lift his veto pen once in his entire term.

Are we to believe that everything was simply unobjectionable enough for him to sign, without protest? If anything, this is a far more revealing portrait of his hostility to spending restraint.

For pointing out this reckless growth in government, advocates of small government have been treated only to more empty rhetoric. Bush has promised to cut the deficit in half by 2009 — yes, half — not even eliminating the spending overruns by the end of his second term if he should get it.

That’s certainly a case of Washington-style ambition — by placing limits on the growth of but a fraction of total federal spending, Bush hopes to yet again fool conservatives into thinking he’s their ally.

Yet what right-minded conservative could in good conscience possibly support a second term of such reckless and unchecked growth in government?

Despite characterizations of Bush being of limited intellectual capacity, he has accomplished one of the most ambitious political transformations this century — he has hijacked his own party, single-handedly undoing the revolution Goldwater set forth in 1964, and then convinced these same people that this is in fact a good thing.

Any advocate of limited government principles who votes for Bush — even with the stated aim of stopping a bigger spender like Kerry from taking office — does a grave disservice to the legacy of opposition to unlimited government that Barry Goldwater set forth in his 1964 campaign.

A Bush victory in November will spell the end for the GOP as a party of limited government, returning us to the de facto one-party rule following FDR’s political coup.

The question is, will you be a part of facilitating it?