Expect a conservative revolt at the polls. Conservative leaders are going public with their outrage at the betrayals of the Bush administration over what they consider to be bedrock conservative principles: Fiscal restraint; avoidance of unnecessary foreign wars and entanglements; low taxes; personal privacy, and more.

Item: Former Rep. Bob Barr (R-GA) has been battling the administration on the excesses of the Patriot Act from the beginning. He was a speaker a the presidential nominating convention of the far-right Constitution Party, and he recently told the media he could not vote for Bush.

Item: Former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice, Roy Moore has been touring the country with Constitution Party candidate Michael Peroutka – much to the consternation of fellow Republicans.

Item: The Lone Star Iconoclast, the weekly newspaper of Bush’s home town of Crawford, Texas broke with Bush and endorsed Kerry. “He let us down,” wrote W. Leon Smith, the Reaganite editor and publisher.

Item: Doug Bandow of the conservative/libertarian Cato Institute, has posted a major article on Salon.com titled Why Conservatives Must Not Vote for Bush. While some conservatives will send a protest vote to the Constitution Party, the Libertarian Party, or even Ralph Nader, Bandow is up front that it would be better for conservatives if Kerry is president. His basic argument is that on the issues of primary concern to conservatives, Kerry could hardly be worse. More importantly, he believes that if the Republicans control both houses of Congress, they will provide a check on Kerry on everything from the budget to judicial nominations. Kerry will have to deal.

Bandow notes that many conservatives are horrified by Bush’s record on the budget deficit and the disastrous war in Iraq. He cites Dan Devine of the American Conservative Union, who says, “A rational conservative would calculate a vote for Kerry as likely to do less damage fiscally.”

“Iraq, already in chaos, is no conservative triumph,” writes Bandow. “The endeavor is social engineering on a grand scale, a war of choice launched on erroneous grounds that has turned into a disastrously expensive neocolonial burden.”

“Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, contrary to administration claims,” Bandow continues, “and no operational relationship with al-Qaida, contrary to administration insinuations. U.S. officials bungled the occupation, misjudging everything from the financial cost to the troop requirements.”

Still, there is no question that many, probably a vast majority of conservatives are loath to vote for Kerry. But Bandow makes clear that of those who are also loath to vote for Bush, merely not voting for Bush, (by staying home or casting a protest vote) does not necessarily defeat Bush. Obviously, the only way to be sure that Bush is no longer president, is to vote for Kerry. In some ways, conservatives share the same dilemma as those progressive voters who are horrified about Bush, (for overlapping, but also very different reasons) but are also loath to vote for Kerry and are tempted to vote for Ralph Nader or Green Party candidate David Cobb.

No one can say what people will do in the privacy of the voting booth. But one thing is certain: many intelligent, thoughtful, and conflicted conservatives and progressives, whatever their differences, are deeply concerned about the state and direction of the country. I think they may surprise the world, and maybe even themselves.