Trapper John over at dKos makes the interesting observation that if you consider "conservatism" to be a desire to maintain the status quo, Kerry is a conservative and Bush is a radical.

He is launching an assault on the pillars of the New Deal, in an attempt to resurrect a Gilded Age that predates even his father's adulthood. It's as radical a course as could be taken in this day and age. And it's not like Kerry is proposing any huge new government programs. He's looking to pretty much keep things the way they are, and have been for his entire life. That's fundamentally conservative. Bush's agenda, by contrast, is that of a radical who hates the institutions of the nation in which he was raised.