Incidentally, after the bailout vote failed, the market lost about 1.2 trillion dollars in value. That alone is greater than the cost of the bailout. Not to mention the trilliions that we stand to lose throughout the economy.

But the point of this thread, I thought, was “conservative principles”, and I don’t see how you have justified the notion that the proposed bailout violates those principles. I’m all for real debate about the best course of action, and I’m glad that you aren’t suggesting no action at all, but to me it seems that the best “conservative principles” are those that practically conserve our way of life, which you seem rather contemptuous of, and seem to enjoy the idea of it being dramatically altered by adverse economic circumstances. You say that people are putting comfort above principle, as if most Americans were actually living comfortably. They are not. Most of us are just getting by. The idea that the bailout somehow takes liberty away from ordinary people seems a little bit crazy. What are you actually talking about? Economic disasters are what take liberty away form ordinary people, because to ordinary people liberty means having money in your pocket to do with as you like. The bailout certainty takes some liberties away from very rich people who control stock and credit markets, but that’s because they’ve squandered their liberties and destroyed the wealth created by those who actually work for a living, and they need to be regulated more closely. I don’t like helping these people, but taking greater control over those people does not seem to me to be an infringement on the liberties of ordinary people, but a protection of those liberties. In principle, at least. The devil is always in the details, of course.

Instead of having a real debate about viable alternatives for providing more capital to banks and leaving the MBS market to its own devices, bailout supporters said it was basically their plan or nothing, and so we got nothing. Yes, conserving our way of life is the goal, which is why a plan that would radically change the relationship of the government to the financial sector and alter our way of life in many ways, some of them entirely unpredictable, is not one that conservatives should be backing. Maybe now we can contemplate real alternatives that have a chance of winning broad support.

This is conservatism. Conservatives represent the aristocracy. They believe gov’t should serve the interests of the wealthy (Hamilton favored an aristocracy). The wealthy are in danger of losing some of their wealth, financial instruments may not have their expected future value if someone is willing to buy them at their future value, the gov’t must step in to help them, the gov’t must be that buyer who primes the pump.
This doesn’t seem very ‘conservative’ but then most people don’t understand the ideology. “Limited government’ is one of the terms they use to appear populist but the only limits they want imposed on gov’t is limiting the amount of tax the gov’t can levy on the wealthy or limiting the rules that can be imposed in the financial markets.

Here are my bailout talking points, far more prosaic than yours.

Aside from that,

I’m writing haiku
While the country goes to hell
In a handbasket.

.