The centrism of 1992 and 2000 eventually yielded welfare reform, education reform and prescription drugs for millions of seniors. ~Michael Gerson

Via Ross

There is plenty to ridicule in Gerson’s column, ranging from the claims that a federal role in education has something to do with Catholic social thought (subsidiarity alert!) to the idea that disregarding immigration laws is somehow supremely Catholic.  Leave it to the treacly evangelical to tell us what is and isn’t Catholic!  The quote above captures pretty well the chasm that separates Gerson and the “centrists” from both progressives and actual conservatives.  The “centrism” of 1992 and 2000 did yield welfare reform, education “reform” and a prescription drugs entitlement–this is why so many people are angry at “centrists.”  Many of us regard these things as horrible pieces of legislation.  (It seems to me that the latter two really are truly horrible pieces of legislation for which there is no good excuse.)  If they are the defining achievements of “centrism” over the last 11 years, then “centrism” be damned! 

The first was deeply unsatisfying to conservatives who wanted to dismantle or significantly reduce the welfare state, the second has managed to offend conservative constitutionalists and progressives with its centralisation and idiotic enforcement of “accountability” (punishing poor schools for poor performance by depriving them of resources is the obvious way to raise standards!), and the third is a bloated entitlement that is also even more expensive than it had to be, because it has been arranged via a “market” solution (a.k.a., a corporate boondoggle).  Add on the attempted amnesty bill as one more Gersonian type of reform that serious people on both sides of the spectrum regard as simply horrible.  Gersonian “centrism” seems to define itself by embracing the worst of both worlds: run entitlements through the pharmaceuticals, thus committing the errors of expanding government and subordinating the common good to corporate interests at the same time; amnesty 12 million illegal immigrants and create an indentured labour force for big business at the same time; meddle in local control of schools and punish minority school districts at the same time.  This is what “centrists” call compromise, and what the rest of us call a nightmare.  While the “centrists” are doing this, it is imperative that they self-righteously lecture the rest of us on how we lack either moral responsibility or compassion or both if we fail to embrace their hideous expansions of government and corporate power; if we really strongly protest, they are obliged to denounce us as racists and the like. 

If Bushism were actually a coherent political view rather than a collection of payoffs to special interests and constituencies, it would be a political view designed to maximise the worst results from the worst ideas of both sides of the political spectrum.  It would not shock me if both parties and the public wanted to flee from such a thing.  Unfortunately, with the exception of complaints about excessive spending, the GOP field (except for Ron Paul and, on some things, Hunter and Tancredo) is quite happy to carry on with Bushism almost in its entirety.  Despite a lot of rhetoric about their dislike for big spending and endless mentions of the name Reagan, this field does not, aside from the exceptions mentioned above, clearly reject any of the legislation passed over the past six years.  No Republican (except for Ron Paul) is campaigning on undoing what Bush has done at home.  Two of the top three GOP candidates as of right now are the most robustly pro-immigration Republicans in a presidential field since, well, George Bush last ran.  Gerson is denouncing a Republican Party that has, on everything except immigration, basically submitted to Bushism, and whose field of prospective nominees includes no less than four supporters of amnesty (plus Romney, whose views on this have changed considerably). 

If Gerson doesn’t want a GOP of “libertarians” and “nativists,” he is in luck–most of the candidates and a lot of the Republican establishment don’t want a presidential field with Ron Paul and Tom Tancredo.  I happen to like both Paul and Tancredo, but I am sorry to say that they unfortunately only speak for a minority of Republicans (though I suspect Tancredo may speak for as many on immigration as Paul does on foreign policy, perhaps up to a quarter or a third). 

Gerson complains about current political trends leaving some people politically homeless, but Mr. Bush is the one who has evicted far more people from the GOP.  The libertarians, the “nativists” (otherwise known as cultural conservatives and a major part of the core of the Republican vote), the traditional conservatives and the constitutionalists are not welcome in the Bushist GOP, and some of us have known that for a while.  Depressingly, as of right now national polls suggest that the embodiments of the evils of “centrism” (Clinton, Giuliani) are the leaders.  If there is a repudiation of the bad, old “centrism” taking place in this country, I would be very glad to see more evidence of it.