fbpx
Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

RFO

Technical problems seem to be resolved now.  Posting should return to a more normal basis.  Many things have happened over the weekend and today that merit some comment, not least of which is the surprising defeat for the GOP in IL-14, but this item flagged by Sullivan caught my attention.  The press man for Republicans […]

Technical problems seem to be resolved now.  Posting should return to a more normal basis.  Many things have happened over the weekend and today that merit some comment, not least of which is the surprising defeat for the GOP in IL-14, but this item flagged by Sullivan caught my attention.  The press man for Republicans for Obama, Tony Campbell, appeared recently on the Laura Ingraham Show.  As it happens, I caught the interview, such as it was, as I was driving home from my lecture, and his account doesn’t match what I recall hearing.  He complains:

I told her she was the one who wasn’t a Republican, that she and others like her had given up the core of the party with this cultural/socialism kick they’ve been on; making personal decisions about people’s private lives, from the FCC’s ruling on Howard Stern to Congressional intrusion in the Terri Schiavo case. All she could say at that point was that I must be liberal because I teach at a university. But people like Laura Ingraham have basically paid for their houses and cars by feeding on the fear and division of the American people. Partisanship is not the end-all, be-all of our existence. Obama, at least, seems to recognize that.

As far as I remember, Mr. Campbell didn’t say much of anything, and he didn’t say half of what he claims he did.  Part of the reason for this was Ingraham’s aggressive approach, as she kept demanding Campbell to identify why he supported Obama on the basis of policy and he kept trotting out the rather tired “I don’t agree with him on everything” dodge, which made for a very uninteresting interview.  Ingraham hardly covered herself in glory, repeatedly conflating the categories of conservative and Republican (which, judging by her endorsement of Mitt Romney, she does not care to distinguish very carefully) and at one point she did indeed declare that Campbell had to be a liberal because he was an academic.  Nonetheless, the rest of this account does not ring true, since Campbell barely had a chance to get a word in edgewise, and when he did he made an entirely unpersuasive claim about Obama’s “leadership,” of which he had no examples. 

This new material referring to the “cultural/socialism kick” is remarkable, which fits nicely into the bizarre fiction that social conservatives somehow dominate GOP priorities.  The reference to the Schiavo episode is particularly revealing, since Obama did not oppose the unanimous consent motion that allowed federal intervention in the Schiavo case, which he has said recently in a debate he regrets.  Obviously, people can change their minds, but what does it say about his “leadership” that Obama ducked on a controversial case where non-intervention was actually the right move both legally and morally?  Again, when the going gets tough the hopeful are nowhere to be found. 

Why invoke this episode as a reason for abandoning the GOP when Obama did nothing to oppose it either?  It is typical of this kind of critique of the supposed hyper-moralism of the GOP that the episode that purportedly demonstrates so-con dominance more than any other actually had members of both parties acquiescing in a bad decision.  What’s more, the episode reflected no real policy initiative and has advanced the cause of life not at all, and has probably functioned more as a political setback.  It was a symbolic gesture without any greater significance.  It reflects the shallowness of the GOP leadership’s support for life, not its intensity.  Meanwhile, in his desire to transcend partisanship Mr. Campbell goes from backing the party that went overboard in the Schiavo case to supporting the candidate who voted “present” on the state version of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act, going literally from one extreme to the other.  That is apparently what “pro-life” post-partisanship involves.

Advertisement

Comments

The American Conservative Memberships
Become a Member today for a growing stake in the conservative movement.
Join here!
Join here