"I think the president has actually hewed closely to conservative fiscal principles," Mr. Bolten said.
"Conservatives in our state really appreciate him for standing strong on his fiscal principles".
They opportunistically abandon their party's supposed fiscal principles, as the Republicans have done under Mr. Trump.
Republican US senator James Lankford said Costello was "passionate about our nation, conservative fiscal principles, and the people of our state".
"I was successful in business for 30 years because I stuck to core, conservative, fiscal principles," she said.
She pulled a poker face: "Doesn't it show he adheres to his conservative fiscal principles?" (Through a spokesman, the governor declined to comment on the book).
They see her as a champion of conservative fiscal principles even though she said yes to the Bridge to Nowhere and presided over a state that ranks No.1 in federal pork.
Similarly, Senator Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania, a fiercely antitax Republican, said in an interview that the election results gave him little incentive to compromise on fiscal principles, including in the coming negotiations with Democrats over deficit reduction.
On Capitol Hill, Mr. Bush's brand of Republicanism has put some lawmakers in a bind, caught between their loyalty to the president, their party's Congressional leaders and their fiscal principles.
To read: In New York, Jonathan Chait opines on the state of the Republican Party: "America is approaching a 'tipping point' beyond which the Nation will be unable to change course," announces the dark, old-timey preamble to Paul Ryan's "The Roadmap Plan," a statement of fiscal principles that shaped the budget outline approved last spring by 98 percent of the House Republican caucus.
To deflect this attack, the Republicans should take on corporate welfare as discordant with fiscal conservative principles.
