Funding FEMA and having a superb civil defense are very much part of conservatism’s real core… The reason I’m mad as hell over Katrina is precisely because I’m a conservative and this kind of thing is exactly what government is for. Bush in this sense is not now and never has been a conservative. A man who explodes government spending but can’t run a war or organize basic civil defense is simply a fiscally reckless incompetent. If this were a parliamentary system, we’d have a vote of no confidence. Instead we have three years of more peril.
There’s actually lots of good writing about the hurricane response on Andrew Sullivan’s website. (And here’s an anticipatory “piss off” to a particular reader of mine. You know who you are.)
Andy might be a conservative by British standards, but in American terms, he sits comfortably in the center/left with the Joe Liebermans, Hillary Clintons and Joe Bidens of the world. Nothing wrong with that, but by referring to himself as a conservative all the time, I worry that he gives cover to the real wackos who masquerade under that name.