The American Conservative

How often do I get to praise The Weekly Standard? There’s much to disagree with in this P.J. O’Rourke essay from their current issue, but where O’Rourke is right, he’s very right:

… a low tax rate is not–never mind the rhetoric of every conservative politician–a bedrock principle of conservatism. The principle is fiscal responsibility.

Conservatives should never say to voters, “We can lower your taxes.” Conservatives should say to voters, “You can raise spending. You, the electorate, can, if you choose, have an infinite number of elaborate and expensive government programs. But we, the government, will have to pay for those programs. We have three ways to pay. Read More…

Yesterday I commented on how Bill Kristol from his NYT bully pulpit was attempting to define the Republican Party malaise in his own terms, stating his belief that the conservative agenda has to be “refreshed” and “regenerated.”  The narrowing of the terms of the debate is deliberate and it avoids any critique of the policies embraced by Kristol among others, most particularly the fearmongering that brought about ruinous foreign and security policies that have led Washington to initiate disastrous wars in the Middle East and Asia.

Today was the more compassionate and subtle David Brooks’ turn, with his NYT op-ed “Darkness at Dusk.”  Brooks also seeks to define the debate in terms that invite speculation on conservative ideology but which do not really permit any consideration of the Bush administration policies themselves.  He identifies “traditionalists” and “reformers” in the conservative movement.  He calls himself a moderate reformer and basically attributes to Republicans like himself a willingness to address issues like inequality, economic anxiety, and global warming.  He also wants to court Hispanic, independent, and younger voters, though he doesn not explain how.  The reformer agenda is, per Brooks, best articulated by David Frum’s book “Comeback.”  Brooks doesn’t mention preventive war,  nation building, globalism, illegal immigration, or government deficits, though he does deride the Republican Party obsession with small government.  It is difficult to discern what Brooks sees as a uniquely conservative quality to his vision as he basically is describing Republican reformers as Democrats-lite, which is perhaps not too surprising.

Brooks dismisses the traditionalists, whom he identifies with Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, as reactionaries who want to return to core conservative values of small government, low taxes, and restricted immigration. He sees them as rallying behind Sarah Palin and dismissive of the “sensibilities of the educated class and the entire East and West coasts,” a group which clearly includes Brooks himself. He describes traditionalists as obsessed with discredited core ideas, even somewhat pleased with the poor election results because the Republican Party has now been purged of its moderates.

Brooks’s simplification, like that of Kristol, ignores actual policy issues that he has supported and that proved to be disastrous.   He also does not recognize the existence of the many conservatives who read The American Conservative and the millions of primarily young voters who supported Ron Paul.  The traditional conservative values that Brooks derides have a plus side that he clearly does not understand.  They are core beliefs rooted in constitutionalism, respect for fundamental liberties, belief in the sanctity of life, and the desire to resist arbitrary government intrusion. The values are not Medieval in nature and are completely compatible with a realistic and modern approach to the world and its problems.  The Bush Administration, for which Brooks was a prominent and intellectually acceptable cheerleader was the aberration, not conservatism.  If Brooks really wants to come clean, he should sit back and admit that most of what he has advocated in the past seven years has been misguided, to say the least.  Advocating a reformed conservatism that he is more comfortable with without addressing the downside of the truly dreadful policies that he has been supporting smacks of hypocrisy.

For decades, before a heedless congregation, some of us have preached the old Hamiltonian gospel.

Great nations do not have trade partners. They have trade competitors and rivals. Trade surpluses are superior to trade deficits. Tariffs on foreign goods are preferable to taxes on U.S. producers. Manufacturing, not finance, is the muscle of the nation.

Economic independence is vital to political independence.

Following Hamiltonian precepts, the United States grew from 13 rural and agricultural colonies into the greatest industrial power in all history, producing 42 percent of the world’s manufactured goods. We were the awe and envy of mankind, the self-sufficient republic, maker of half of the armaments produced by all the nations in World War II.

That is the America we grew up in — that has now vanished. Read More…

Fareed Zakaria makes some good points today, arguing that the the Bush administration’s foreign policy, and in particular his “ideology of regime change — armed Wilsonianism” contributed to the Republican electoral defeat:

Something similar has happened in foreign policy. The electorate has
seemed to sense that there is a new world out there and that the nostrums
presented by McCain in his campaign are irrelevant to it. As with
economics, these feelings developed after watching the ideas in action.
Bush embraced a series of radical policy stances — many of them long
espoused by neoconservatives — especially during his first term.
But the vigorous unilateralism openly advocated by the administration is
recognized by most Americans to have weakened the country’s influence
abroad. Its excessive reliance on military force has yielded few results
worth the costs.

But Zakaria also suggests that the Iraq War was not a major issue in the election campaign. I don’t buy that. It’s true that the economy ranked higher than Iraq among the concerns of the voters. Nevertheless, the same polls also suggest that two-third of the voters strongly or somewhat disapprove of the war in Iraq. You don’t have to be a pollster to figure out that those who supported that war ended-up voting for McCain. And that’s the guy who lost the election. Final polls also found that those who thought the decision to go to war in Iraq was wrong backed Obama by better than 5 to 1; those who thought it right supported McCain by a nearly identical margin. Logic tells me that opposition to the war did play a role in the outcome of vote.

Moreover, opinion polls also reflect declining public support for U.S. global interventionism. In short, there is clearly no enthusiasm for new global crusades, which means that the general public would welcome a more realist foreign policy approach by the Obama Administration.

Whicn brings me to the current debate over the fate of the Republican Party and the conservative movement. If Obama resists the pressure from the liberal imperialists in his camp, he and the Democrats clearly have an opportunity to achieve an electoral realignment when it comes to foreign policy, especially if the Republicans continue to espouse the same old neoconservative ideas. And such a realignment could also take place among the “elites” if the liberals and not the conservatives would be identified with foreign policy realism.

In any case, according to Steve Clemons it seems that our old friends from the PNAC are back in business. I wonder why…

For those who believe that Rahm Emanuel, in his position at gatekeeper to the president, will not further skew US foreign policy because of his strong ties to Israel, I would offer the following, which appeared in The Guardian on Saturday.  “Emanuel’s position has raised concerns among those looking for an even-handed approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In an interview with the Israeli daily Ma’ariv, Emanuel’s father was quoted as saying: ‘Obviously he will influence the president to be pro-Israel. Why wouldn’t he be? What is he, an Arab? He’s not going to clean the floors of the White House.’”

Emanuel’s dad is reported to be a former Irgun terrorist who blew up the King David Hotel and massacred Arab villagers, so he knows how handle Arabs, one presumes.  What he knows about cleaning floors is not clear.

Just in case anyone hasn’t seen Gore Vidal’s glorious election night performance on the BBC: here it is in full.

The big tree house club meeting at Brent Bozell’s went exactly as I thought it would, a lot of sour grapes and talk about better organization. You really can’t expect much to get done when someone like Tony Perkins talks like this:

” The conservative leader Friday laid the Republican Party’s poor showing at the polls at the feet of moderates who, he argues, led the party away from its core principles

So in other words, it’s all Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, and Christopher Shays’ fault! Well, at least after this election, they won’t have Shays to kick around anymore.

You can count the number of “moderate” Republicans in Congress on one hand. They are neither Congressional leaders, nor were they in charge in the White House and very few are governors or state legislators. The idea that this minority wing of the party is somehow responsible for everything that’s gone wrong is not only silly, it’s a typical excuse made every time the GOP loses an election. It’s not our fault, say the “conservatives”, it’s the moderates fault! We have to take back the party!

Isn’t amazing that conservatives have to keep re-taking the Republican Party back every four to eight years?

Or perhaps the cause of their dismay is the fact current conservative ideology, which is hardly conservative at all in any real sense, simply cannot stand on its own as a national governing philosophy and quickly becomes right-wing social democracy as soon as the politics calls for it. Many politicians once reasonably described as “conservative” 20 to 30 to 40 years ago, travel down this path (Bob Dole is a good example. Lindsay Graham too.)

Instead of focusing on how to get the politics and the politicians back to a truer definition of conservatism, The Tree House Gang wishes to exorcise the ghosts of Nelson Rockefeller and Jacob Javits. It’s tempting to say these Beltway Conservatives need to look at themselves to find the answers to their problems but I figure Brent Bozell probably hid all the mirrors.

David Cameron, the head of the British Conservative Party, has long sought to position himself as the “heir to Blair”, the proper successor to the most successful European politician of recent years. Now, in Obamaworld, it is suggested that Cameron should pass himself off as a British Barack, the hope and change candidate. Prime Minister Gordon Brown is attempting the same thing. But it’s a tricky image makeover for both men. They are both white, for one. And Brown, who has spent the last ten years ruining the British economy, can hardly echo Obama in denouncing “the failed policies of the past”; while Cameron, an old Etonian aristocrat and a direct descendant of King William IV, doesn’t exactly symbolize the triumph of merit. the audacity of hope. (UPDATE: Jack Ross is quite correct to say that Obama is hardly a proletarian champion. Still, the story of his rise to power is somewhat more remarkable than Cameron’s.)

The FT has a good pastiche of what David ‘Barack’ Cameron’s victory might sound like in 2010:

And today we can wear our Bullingdon tailcoats with pride ( shouts of “Hear, hear” ); we can dunk oiks in the fountains and deflower maidservants – or footmen if that’s the way you swing (shouts of “Hurrah”) . We can stand tall and speak plummy. But tonight, after years of oppression, the upper class has spoken out ( loud cheers and champagne bottles hurled ).

Today I saw a 106-year-old woman – lumme, she was wrinkled. But she saw this country defeat the general strike – yes we can. She saw us bash the Hun, not once but twice (thrice if you count Wembley) – yes we bally well can. She saw us roll back the frontiers of the state then roll them forward again – yes we bally well can. She saw us back the masses against the classes and now back the classes once again. Gawd bless you all. Floreat Etona. Bottoms up.”

Bill Kristol’s weekly column in the NYT is a gift that keeps on giving, always good for a laugh.  His latest piece “GOP Dog Days?” maintains that there is nothing to worry about, that there will be an inevitable Republican resurgence because the nation identifies itself 78% as conservative or moderate and only 22% as liberal.  As he puts it, “…conservatives will have to develop refreshed ideas and regenerated political skills to succeed…”

As usual Kristol, who refers to himself as a conservative but keeps forgetting to add the neo, doesn’t quite get it.  It is not a matter of political philosophy but rather of policies, consequences, and competency.  Think of all the bad policies, many of which were either crafted or incompetently implemented by Kristol and his friends – Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Katrina, acceptance of illegal immigration, healthcare in crisis, and now a collapsing economy.  While the Democrats have been complicit in the disaster, most of the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of President Bush and his claque, Kristol included. 

Kristol’s language is both suggestive and wrong-headed:  “refresh” and “regenerate.”  Nowhere is there a suggestion that the actual policies are bad and will have to change.  More of the same, only refreshed.  I would humbly submit the following suggestions for what to fix in the Republican Party:  No more preemptive wars, no more imperialism and democracy promotion, no more unrestrained globalism, no more illegal immigration, no more staffing senior government positions with incompetent cronies, no more big government period.  No more bailouts of Bill’s friends on Wall Street.  I could go on and on…  Best of all would be no more having to read Bill’s columns in the NYT or see him and his buddies on television telling the rest of us what we should do.  That would be the kind of real change that most genuine conservatives would embrace.

Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam have exactly the wrong prescription for what ails the Republicans, I argue in my Reason review of their Grand New Party. Check it out.