Lee, as Gerson says, is trying to build policy bridges between the populist Tea Party and the Republican establishment. And Lee’s communitarian rhetoric is, in many ways, the polar opposite of what establishment Republicans like Mitt Romney have run on. In particular, Lee’s tax plan is a direct repudiation of Romney’s individualist 47 percent line.

But Gerson goes, on to claim, “Lee’s specific agenda … is well within the broad tradition of … compassionate conservatism.”

This is just plain false. Bush’s compassionate conservatism oversaw the largest expansion of the entitlement state since President Johnson and before President Obama. Bush greatly expanded the scope and power of the Department of Education and he signed the pork-filled 2005 transportation bill.