Sigh. TNR's "&c" blog, while often a refreshing voice from the grown-up left, still lets this kind of selective quoting creep in. Note that the Club for Growth's Stephen Moore "gushe[s]" over the SOTU. Read his piece on NRO yourself. Yes, he compliments the "conservative points" in the speech. But as for the spending spree, the ostensible focus of the &c post, Moore says flatly:

I too cringed when Bush touted out his multimillion-dollar cockamamie proposal for hydrogen-fueled cars. George: Let the private sector do it. Yes, during that part of his speech W. was temporarily and eerily transformed into Al Gore ... One gets the sense that W. is a long way from ever uttering the famous Reagan maxim that "government is the problem not the solution." Few of the Bushies believe that anti-big-government piece of the Reaganomics puzzle. A four percent spending increase is about two percent too much. The spendaholic tendencies of this White House could be its undoing.

Hmmmmm. One of these things is not like the other. I suppose the hope at TNR is that no self-respecting reader would click through to a National Review piece and see what the author actually says.