Moved from the comment section of Idiocracy.
We need to separate the idea of conservatism from the Republican party (in much the same way, though to a lesser degree, we need to separate the word progressive from the Democratic party, but that's another post). In other words, I don't think we have a conservative party. All we have are Republicans.
The Bush administration is not a conservative administration. Under Bush the national debt has soared and government size and spending has increased dramatically. The Bush Doctrine ratcheted up the level of interventionism in our foreign policy to unprecedented levels. States have lost a good amount of autonomy under an increasingly overbearing federal government. There has been an all out assault on individual liberties, especially privacy. Competition in a free market has given way to a pattern of cronyism, no-bid contracts, and bailouts for those favored firms who are too big to fail. Lastly, the rule of law has been consistently trashed, whether from ignoring democratically enacted laws with signing statements, spitting in the face of international laws and treaties, unprecedented secrecy, a politicized justice department, and the shielding of cronies and lackeys from any accountability. Take almost every idea of the conservative movement, and Bush has done the opposite.
The Bush administration defines the Republican party today, a party that is not liberal or conservative, but rather in a category of its own. I don't mean to be melodramatic, but the combination of an extremely secretive, anti-democratic form of governance, interventionist policies both domestically and abroad, and the open collaboration of corporate and public interests makes the administration almost proto-fascist. If there was ever a time for a genuine three party race, now would be that time.
Interestingly, the Republican primaries started to go in that direction. Each candidate ran against some aspect of the Bush administration, and each candidate embraced Reagan, not Bush, as the party standard-bearer. Reagan brought a lot of disparate factions together under one tent, but under the later Bush years that coalition started to fall apart. The Republican primaries this year were incredibly revealing, in that they showed these various forces battling each other for control of the party. You had Huckabee, representing the Christianist-wing of the party; Paul, the libertarian-wing; Romney, the corporate-wing; Thompson, the personality-wing; Tancredo, the xenophobic-wing; and Giuliani, the authoritarian-wing. (The fact that McCain is not easily categorized is telling).
Each of the candidates exaggerated some parts of the platform at the expense of others. Huckabee was an economic populist, Romney (despite all his efforts) was an elitist, and Mormon (read: not-quite-Christian). Giuliani was too socially-liberal, to metropolitan. Thompson was a joke. Ron Paul, the closest thing the party had to a small-government, fiscally-conservative, non-interventionist, pro-individual rights conservative, was universally dismissed.
In the end, with a fractured base, independents pushed McCain over the finish line. The fact that he was disliked by much of the base would be a short term problem. One of the defining characteristics of the Republican base is a team mentality. During the primary, the talk-radio, Fox-news crowd attacked McCain as not being sufficiently "conservative" enough for the base. No matter. It was only a matter of time before they came around to a his side, especially against the threat of an Obama or Clinton presidency. Again, you don't go against the team. (As an aside, I read on a right-wing blog a complaint from one the readers that too much of the internal disagreement within the party had been voiced to the public. In his mind, you only mention your doubts about a candidate in private, lest you hurt the team)
So that brings us to today. We have a collapsing economy, two collapsed wars, and a President who is giving Nixon's approval rating a run for his money. Congress has single digit approval ratings as well. McCain is clearly going to follow in Bush's policies in every meaningful way. The only thing Republicans have to run on is the team itself. Team McCain must win, team Obama must lose. Is it any wonder that McCain's only approach is to paint Obama as a traitorous Muslim sleeper-agent? Hence, the idiocracy.
So, are conservative principles discredited? Tough to say. We know that Bush's policies are thoroughly discredited. Going further back, I think we can agree that Reaganomics, trickle-down economics, is also thoroughly discredited.
But what about conservatism? I guess that depends on how you define it. Is deregulation all bad, or is the problem simply the mix of deregulation in some areas and tacit/explicit regulation in others? As Andrew Sullivan pointed out on Bill Maher's show a few weeks back, even tax policies such as the home mortgage interest deduction distort the market, encouraging owning a home rather than renting. What about moral hazard? Business' need the threat of failure in order for the market to function properly. My opinion is that we need regulation, but I don't think you can say with certainty that deregulation is entirely discredited based upon the economic crisis. This may be academic, though. Is Communism a discredited philosophy, or simply the way Stalin and Mao practiced it?
I don't think many people have the stomach to answer that question, and the same goes for deregulation.
In sum, the Republican party is no longer the party of Reagan. In the same way I would say the Democratic party is not the party of FDR. We have a political landscape in which the language and party cliches we use have not caught up to the reality of the political situation. Only an intense lack of self-reflection allows McCain to tout his party as the party of fiscal responsibility and individual freedom. Our Republican politicians live in an irony-free zone, unwilling or unable to see that the Republican boat has left the harbor, and conservatism was left on the dock.
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2 comments:
Thoughtful response, Chris. You make a lot of really excellent points and bring much greater nuance to this discussion.
The first point you make is really important and I should have been more explicit about it in my post: the Bush administration's policies and conservativism share very little in common. He's hijacked the good name of conservativism, but followed a completely reckless policy that veers away from some of the core tenets of the philosophy. I believe that Bill Clinton was much more of a conservative president than Bush, actually - and as Wick Allison writes, Obama is a more reliable conservative than McCain. But that's precisely the problem with conservativism. I agree that out there somewhere there is a form of conservative politics that is sensible, realistic, smart, and intellectually rigorous. But who actually represents this in politics? Certainly the true conservatives are a dying breed among the GOP and actually more of a fixture of the Democratic platform these days.
That a decoupling occurred between conservativism and the GOP is becoming more and more evident every day. But it does make you wonder: is "conservativism" something altogether different now? I think that perhaps, instead of bifurcating from the party, the notion of "conservativism" has just transformed radically since Reagan. To most people, "conservatism" today IS George W. Bush. The majority of those who identify themselves as conservatives stick to the Republican party, even though that party has abandoned the old conservative ideas. The link between party and principles has been severed.
To me, then, this phenomenon has effectively destroyed the idea of "conservative." When Democrats behave more conservatively while Republicans tout their conservative credentials, I think it's fair to say that the term has little power or meaning anymore, besides in the purely political sense of getting people to vote for you based on your "conservative values." It's just an empty term in the GOP today - and the Dems, while following many of those principles, aren't exactly rushing in to claim the "conservative" mantle. The word is too tainted now. This may be semantic, but I would argue that, yes, there is a difference between conservativism and the GOP, but that difference hardly matters anymore.
Classic conservatism is in no way discredited (although you could make a compelling argument that that's the case). The disturbing fact, however, is that politically speaking, neither have W's policies been discredited. As Obama loves to point out, McCain voted with Bush 95% of the time. And while McCain may be quickly losing his chances of victory, in large part because of the discredited Bushian economic policy that McCain tied himself to, there are still a lot of Americans who will be voting for him in November. The true conservatives out there wandering in the desert might vote for either candidate - we know that Wick Allison is going for Obama - but for the masses, GOP = conservative = family values, traditional and God-loving, and that's enough to push the button for McCain/Palin. Bad policies be damned. And you're very right in pointing out that there is a powerful team mentality at work here - Dems can be that way too, but I think they tend to be a bit more pragmatic.
Great dialogue, guys! Actually, I've been feeling sorry for some of the intellectually engaged conservatives. How would you like to be David Brook or George Will these days? Who would you vote for? What a quandry! Their leader, a true believer in the sacred free market and one who came into office bent on creating a "permanent Republican majority" has, instead, decimated his party, and sponsored the partial nationalizing of the financial system. Not only that, but their presidential candidate has brought an airhead onboard as a running mate. Bummer.
Chris, you did an outstanding job enumerating all the unrepublican shenanigans this administration has been up to. But then, Bush and his advisers never have been accused of being thoughtful spokespersons for any well-articulated political philosophy. They've just been cynically bent on winning the game of politics--governance be damned.
What I have a hard time understanding is how people such as Pat Buchanan can take such a cotton to Palin. I mean, the guy is smart. What on Earth is he thinking? Even Charles Krauthammer thinks she's a nitwit.
Zach, the point you make correlating the Walmarts, obesity and education to Republican party membership is fascinating--and disheartening. As long as we have Fox News screaming at people and whipping up emotional fervor among the righteous, I see a bleak future for the Republican party and for the United States. Just as the level-headed Muslims must rein in their fanatical fringe, so too must the level-headed Republicans rein in Fox News or, as George Bush so eloquently puts it, "this sucker is going down."
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