Same as the old boss

At last, we have a budget (covered pretty comprehensively in print, but fragmented on-line: can it really be old news already?), and it's much as one would have expected: tax cuts, goodies for the construction industry, regional development stuff... 'stimulus', as they say. I'm skeptical as to how stimulated anyone will be, but what really baffles me is the assumption repeated ad nauseam that this is some massive departure from Conservative principles. I've been following North American politics for over thirty years, and I've never had an actual sighting of those fabled conservative principles. Mulroney ran deficits, Reagan ran deficits, both Bushes ran deficits. Harper hasn't been doing so, but then until the recent meltdown it would have been politically impossible for any leader to do so after the anti-deficit campaigns of the preceding Liberal governments. During my lifetime, a conservative has consistently been someone who hates paying taxes, hates the poor and hates the environment; but government spending and deficits have been neither here nor there ideologically (as opposed to rhetorically, of course). And if in a few years all this spending makes it easier to cut social programs and blow off environmental regulation, in the name of fiscal responsibility -- and you just know that's how they're going to play it -- the Conservative base will be tickled pink.