RALEIGH - Back in the day when George W. Bush's poll numbers were through the roof, there was much talk of a Republican realignment. President Bush was being compared with Ronald Reagan as a new leader for the conservative movement and the Republican Party.

But he and his political strategists had a very different plan. The Bush administration would outflank the Democrats by outspending them on education for the young, prescription drugs for the elderly and on domestic programs. Generally, the administration would leave the other party no political issues with which to gain political support.

The big-government expansion spree began by siding with Sen. Ted Kennedy on the No Child Left Behind Act, which ended up by increasing federal spending on education by 99 percent. But that was small potatoes compared to the arm twisting by former Republican House leader Tom DeLay that resulted in passage of the Medicare prescription drug bill, the largest expansion of government since the New Deal.

Seeing a mandate with a mere 51 percent of the vote in 2004, Bush rolled the dice and spent his political capital by making reform of Social Security his signature issue for the start of the second term. At the time, many conservatives questioned the sequencing of the president's legislative agenda and would have preferred that the administration lead by making the first-term tax cuts permanent. Republicans were in the majority, and making the tax cuts permanent seemed much more doable to many of us than taking on Social Security, the "third rail" of American politics, a program near and dear to the true believers in the Democratic Party and to many others besides.

Before one could bat an eye, less than a year into Bush's second term, the president's approval rating was down near 40 percent. Many apparently thought that "earmarks" and even more government largess were key to political recovery. But coupled with an unpopular and mismanaged war, the inability to secure the U.S. southern border, the ineptness of the response to Hurricane Katrina, the Jack Abramoff and the Mark Foley scandals, the stage was set for a disastrous 2006 election.

The result was predictable. Republicans lost both the House and the Senate.

"Spend, spend, elect, elect" may work for the Democrats, but it clearly did not for the Republicans. In fact, it has not worked for the Democrats in recent years, either. The new Republican strategy was proved a disaster, not only against its conservative principles but in strict political terms, too.

Now, Bush's approval rating hovers in the low 30s, and the party is torn apart by the disconnect between the Washington elites and the grass-roots, especially on how Bush collaborated with the Democrats on the immigration bill. The president even accused conservatives of not wanting "to do what's right for America" when it comes to illegal immigration. That went down to defeat also, resulting in further political weakness.

What is clear is that the conservative movement and the Republican Party are in a rebuilding phase. Ironically, despite the fact that most of the administration's domestic policies are anything but conservative, George W. Bush has replaced Reagan as the face of conservatism to many, especially younger voters.

The center-right Republican majority forged by Reagan and Newt Gingrich has been squandered by the pipe dream that big-government programs enacted for the sake of power rather than based on principle could forge a permanent Republican majority.

The damage to the country, the conservative movement and the party may take years if not decades to repair.

(Marc Rotterman is a Republican consultant based in Raleigh who worked with the 1980 Reagan presidential campaign and in the Reagan administration. He is a senior fellow at the John Locke Foundation and a former board member of the American Conservative Union.)