How did this happen?

[DanielX]

George W. Bush is not far-right. If you ignore his stance on social issues (which is, in my opinion, more populist than anything), he's not a conservative at all (I'd call him something like moderate christian socialist).

- He supported expanding Medicare to include prescription drug coverage.
- He oversaw the fastest increase in non-defense spending since the Johnson administration.
- He has, for during his first six years in office, not vetoed a single spending bill, including some simply outrageous ones.
- He supports spending countless billions of dollars in pork-barrel spending (the fact that many so-called conservatives do so does not make this conservative, it makes them assholes - just as it does on their counterparts on the left; both should be shot on general principle.).
- He supports the existence of all of the following: the Department of Education (not to mention Public Schools), mandatory Social Security payments, Medicare, Medicaid, and most welfare programs. Any "Far-right" candidate would have to oppose most or all of these.

Of course, I'm a "radical liberal conservative" (or is it "Radical conservative liberal"? or just "right-libertarian"?) so my views may be skewed somewhat.

And of course, Gore isn't exactly a moderate either, he's just center-left on some issues and radical-left on others (like the environment). 

And then, some so-called "liberals" are really socialist-populists, like Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman (supporting morals regulations on video games...)

[DanielX]

(I'd call him something like moderate christian socialist).

Man, you are going to burn for even suggesting that...

Hey, in Germany one of the big right-populist parties is the Christian Socialist Union .

That, and I do not see how any economic capitalist could support the variety of government programs that Bush, or for that matter the majority of Republicans, do. I am skewed (in the opposite direction of opebo), but to me the Bush administration's economic policies have been, on the whole, center-to-center-left (even if everyone in Europe and most of the US would disagree with me on that point), using 'center' as the mean between an authoritarian-communist level of economic control by the government on one end ('radical left') and an anarcho-capitalist lack of economic control by the government ('radical right') on the other (and not 'middle of the road', which in the US is distinctly center-left or mixed-economy and in most of Europe left or socialist/social democratic). On this scale, I am probably a center-right or 'limited government capitalist' akin to, say, Milton Friedman (Ideally I would go for far-right, but I recognize that anarcho-capitalism is only slightly more practical than true communism i.e. not very). Friedrich Hayek would be 'right' or 'primarily lasseiz-faire capitalist'; this definition's 'radical right' would be represented by Murray Rothbard. John Maynard Keynes is center-left-to-left, Galbraith would be left, and most communists (excluding the more anarchist variety) would be far-left.