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THE DEMISE OF THE REAGAN-NUTS
02/09/2008
As we watch the conservatives fight amongst themselves this election season, let us all rejoice!
It's about time the so-called conservative movement came crashing down, because it was and is a morally bankrupt group of ideologies, which could never become the permanent majority of Karl Rove's dream. What remains of the conservative movement, aside from the corporate power brokers at its core, is really just the cult of Ronald Reagan.
In fact, if it wasn't for Ronald Reagan, the conservatism that we see floundering today would have died out in the eighties, or simply remained three or four separate and competing interest groups. It is impossible to overstate how important Ronald Reagan was to the success of the conservative movement. Previous conservative spokesmen were intellectuals like William F. Buckley, or divisive figures like Barry Goldwater. And Republican nominees for the presidency, both before and after Reagan, have been dull and lacking in charisma. Without an attractive figure to provide the rhetoric, conservatives were going nowhere. But Reagan succeeded in convincing operationally liberal people to vote against their interests. He made them feel good about themselves and that was enough. (This is one reason Republicans are so terrified of Barack Obama; they know how well eloquence plays with the people.)
But once Reagan was gone, the house started to crumble. First Bush I disappointed in not being Reagan and was defeated by a charismatic Democrat. It is amazing, really, that Bush II became president, and of course he wouldn't if it weren't for a lot of fancy footwork on the part of the Republican Party. Down and dirty political maneuvering, the "Southern Strategy," wedge issues, slander, lies and voter suppression were required once the sainted Republican no longer provided the rhetoric. But these Rovian tactics seem to have run their course, and the nation is ready to return to where it was before it got bamboozled by St. Ronnie's charm and glibness.
And where is that? According to George Will, "the American people are rhetorically conservative and operationally liberal." People liked it when Reagan said the government was bad, for example, but they don't want their Social Security check taken away. They liked it when he made fun of government bureaucracies, but they wouldn't think of giving up their Medicare. They cheered when he fired the air traffic controllers, but they really would like to see more job protection and the high wages that unions provide. They applauded whenever he sang the praises of the free market, but they know that money doesn't really trickle down to them, and they are tired of scandals like Enron and the sub-prime mortgage meltdown that takes money from their pockets and puts it into the bank accounts of the wealthy.
Reagan appealed to the rhetorical part of Will's equation, and for a while he was able to hypnotize the people with his smile, leading them to put aside their best interests to join his bandwagon, but the stark failures of conservatism to solve the nation's problems have been made clear in the Bush administration, and the people are turning back to embrace the more populist and progressive position they have always believed in. We see, for instance, that no matter how much a handful of conservatives scream "conspiracy," nearly ¾ of the American people believe global warming is a real problem created by man and one that must be addressed by the government. We also see that over half of all Americans want some kind of major change in our system of health insurance. Americans are also quite satisfied with Social Security and Medicare and do not want any part of the conservative plan to privatize these safety nets.
What has caused this "conservative crack-up?" In a word: exposure. In a name: George W. Bush.
George W. Bush represented the confluence of all that was destructive in the conservatism approach to government. He brought to the White House two elements of the three main conservative factions at that time: the religious right, or theo-conservatives, whose goal seemed to be the unification of church and state, and the corporate power brokers, or free market conservatives, whose goal was the dominance of corporate interests over interests of the individual.
Bush was happily playing corporate conservative, handing out money to the wealthy in the form of massive tax cuts, and keeping the theo-conservatives satisfied with his coded speeches and hints about appointing the right kind of judges, but it was 9/11 that offered the opportunity to include the third faction (and ultimately add a fourth faction) to the mix.
With 9/11, the American Empire conservatives, or neoconservatives, gained enormous power. It was this group that achieved their goal of war in the Middle East, something they wanted long before 9/11. And led by Bush's vice president, a fourth faction, the monarchist faction, worked to co-opt powers of the Congress, and bring vast new powers to the presidency. This segment of the party has no qualms about violating the Constitution in order to achieve their ends. Hence, these conservatives embrace torture, unlawful incarceration, suspension of Habeas Corpus, warrantless wiretapping, and the "unitary executive theory" which allows the president to, among other things, attach signing statements to laws passed by Congress, statements that authorize him to disobey those laws.
So we arrive at 2008, and a presidential contest to replace the man who has fully embodied and thus exposed the utter destructiveness of the conservative movement. And we see that, because they each have different agendas, the Republican factions have been unable to enthusiastically line up behind one candidate. Early dropouts like Tom Tancredo and Sam Brownback were one-issue candidates, while three other men emerged to represent various factions of the party. Romney appealed to the corporate anti-tax faction, while Huckabee appealed to the theo-cons. McCain appeals mainly to the neocons, but because he also appeals to more independent minded Republicans, he seems to have the nomination in sight. But the prospect of his nomination is angering the so-called base, the corporate anti-tax guys like Grover Norquist, and the evangelical theo-cons like James Dobson. The monarchist guys don't trust him either as he is opposed to the use of torture.
His potential nomination is also angering the "pure conservatives," or what are sometimes called "movement conservatives," those who believe all the factions of conservatism must be combined in one candidate. In order to qualify as an acceptable conservative, pure conservatives insist a candidate must condemn illegal immigration and "amnesty," approve of the War in Iraq and America's ongoing presence there, pledge to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, oppose abortion, condemn gay marriage and support a constitutional amendment to ban it, refuse to reform health care in any meaningful way, talk about privatizing Social Security, support free trade and job outsourcing, give no more than lip service to global warming, and promise to appoint radically conservative judges who will protect corporate power, overturn Roe V. Wade, and grant more and more power to the executive branch.
And so we hear Laura Ingraham at this week's CPAC conference indirectly criticizing McCain by saying "It's not enough to say you're a foot soldier for Reagan. The question is: 'What have you done for conservatism lately?' " Here she exposes what movement conservatives are all about. They demand allegiance not to the country, not to the American people, not even to the Constitution, but to conservatism itself. This is the sign of a morally bankrupt movement.
These movement conservatives have annointed Ronald Reagan the ideal conservative, regardless of his actual record, and must invoke his name to reinvigorate conservatism. And so we have debates at the Reagan Library, constant references to Ronald Regan by the candidates, and homage paid to his widow. The political operatives in the Republican Party know that the alliance of all four factions of conservatism, formed by Karl Rove, is a tenuous one, one that is falling apart because the things each faction stands for are not approved of by all of the other factions, nor by the vast majority of Americans. They hope that the American people, who are returning to their operationally liberal side, might still be tempted to accept the rhetoric of Ronald Reagan.
Without the actual Reagan, however, they won't. The conservative movement that Reagan began, Bush-Cheney has finished. The unholy and impossible alliance that Rove cobbled together has fractured, its various factions fighting amongst themselves.
The future of the Republican Party, if they have one, is that of McCain and Schwarzenegger, men who are practical enough to address problems like global warming and the crisis in health insurance. If the Republican Party wants to survive, it must let go of its absolutists, people like Limbaugh, Coulter, O'Reilly, and Ingraham, who represent, at best, a small segment of the American people. They hold onto rhetorical conservatism at a time when operational liberalism is what the nation wants and what is needed to solve its many problems, most of them initiated by conservatives.
Conservatism has brought us recession, corruption, endless war, poverty, deficits, trade imbalances, indebtedness, economic inequality, oil dependency, pollution, a degraded planet, and health care that is unaffordable. And while all of these problems accumulate, the corporate power brokers pocket more and more money.
Jacob Heilbrunn, writing in 2006 in National Review, put it well:
"In reality, though, conservatism hasn't really changed all that much. The Christian right has certainly infused it with moralism and anti-Darwin mumbo-jumbo, but what's more striking about the GOP over the past 100 years or so is its continuity. The party's main, almost sole, purpose has been to ensure that as much money as possible goes to those who need it least and that as little as possible goes to those who need it most. In a party of moneybags, Theodore Roosevelt was the exception, not the rule. Whether Bush manages to extricate the United States from Iraq or not, his avalanche of tax cuts has already justified the main reason that Republican pooh-bahs selected him to become their candidate for president. "
The American people can be and have been fooled, but as Abraham Lincoln famously said, not all of the people and not all of the time. And the American people have figured out that while conservatism promises much to many, it never delivers except to its corporate wing.
We are seeing, I believe, the demise of the Reagan-nuts. Hallelujah!
All content © 2005 outragedcitizen.com
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