Conservatism

On these pages I have lamented unfortunate choice between the Democrat and Republican Party candidates. The choice has most recently been between a dangerously incapable, delusional, and fundamentalist Republican administration and a Democratic candidate that openly supports policy that goes against my political views. Recently many political commentators have been decrying the Administration's abuse of the conservative title, claiming that the Admin. does not practice what are considered traditional conservative values. Glenn Greenwald takes many of the pundits to task:

All of this brings us back to Rich Lowry and Newt Gingrich and the emerging deceit which the conservative movement is attempting to perpetrate. In contrast to the vast majority of so-called "conservatives" who loyally stood by and cheered on the Bush Presidency and the "disgraced" Republican Congress, there were a handful of conservatives who -- long before Bush's popularity collapsed -- were pointing out just how "un-conservative" the Bush movement was. Sullivan was one such person, along with people like Bruce Bartlett and Pat Buchanan and The American Conservative. And they were treated like blasphemers and pariahs by the Lowry/National Review/Gingrich/Weekly Standard conservatives, because the "Conservative Movement" became synonymous with the Bush Movement, and it therefore became impossible to repudiate the latter without being cast out of the former.

One of the principal flaws of Sullivan's book is that it speaks of "political conservatism" in a way that exists only in the abstract but never in reality. The fabled Goldwater/Reagan small-government "conservatism of doubt" which Sullivan hails -- like the purified, magnanimous form of Communism -- exists, for better or worse, only in myth.

While it is true that Bush has presided over extraordinary growth in federal spending, so did Reagan. Though Bush's deficit spending exceeds that of Reagan's, it does so only by degree, not level. The pornography-obsessed Ed Meese and the utter lawlessness of the Iran-contra scandal were merely the Reagan precursors to the Bush excesses which Sullivan finds so "anti-conservative." The Bush presidency is an extension, an outgrowth, of the roots of political conservatism in this country, not a betrayal of them.

All of the attributes which have made the Bush presidency so disastrous are not in conflict with political conservatism as it exists in reality. Those attributes -- vast expansions of federal power to implement moralistic agendas and to perpetuate political power, along with authoritarian faith in the Leader -- are not violations of "conservative principles." Those have become the defining attributes of the Conservative Movement in this country.

That is why the warnings from Sullivan and others that the Republican Party was acting in violation of "conservative principles" fell on deaf ears and even prompted such hostility -- until, that is, Bush's popularity collapsed. "Conservative principles" are marketing props used by the Conservative Movement to achieve political power, not actual beliefs. Sullivan's principal argument that the Bush presidency never adhered to conservative principles is true enough, but the same can be said of the entire American conservative political movement. That is why they bred and elevated George Bush for six years, and suddenly "realized" that he was "not a conservative" only once political expediency required it.