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Baker: Having Sold Your Soul Once, Now Please Sell Your Body As Well

In Britain Thatcherism is not in favour and in America Reaganism is not on offer. But that doesn’t mean reformist conservative candidates are inferior to their socialist and liberal opponents. In a hostile political environment a scaled-down conservatism is still better than no conservatism at all. The current generation of Republican and Conservative leaders recognise […]

In Britain Thatcherism is not in favour and in America Reaganism is not on offer. But that doesn’t mean reformist conservative candidates are inferior to their socialist and liberal opponents. In a hostile political environment a scaled-down conservatism is still better than no conservatism at all. The current generation of Republican and Conservative leaders recognise this and are working to renew conservatism rather than destroy it.

The right thing to do is not to make faces at this bandwagon but to jump aboard and keep trying to drive it in the right direction of freer markets, freer people. If they hang together in this struggle, conservatives have a good chance of advancing their cause as a governing strategy, not as an angry protest. It they do not, they will, most assuredly, hang separately. ~Gerard Baker

This seems to be an increasingly widespread justification for backing bad, unrepresentative leadership based on little more than intimidation and dread of the other side.  This is essentially the GOP campaign theme from 2006.  Perhaps it was understandable that blinkered incumbents could offer nothing more than, “Hey, at least we’re not those guys!”  That was, of course, the exact same appeal the Democrats were making last year.  The difference is that it was much better to not be Republicans last year, and if their continued cluelessness and hopeless commitment to Iraq continue it will certainly continue to be better to be anything but a Republican.  The old “we’re not as bad as they are” spiel only makes works if there is some flickering memory of what real, competent and good conservative government looks like.  Lacking that, many people will laugh at the idea that the people who brought you Mr. Bush are here to help you, the conservative. 

It is bizarre to watch, but there is at least a certain consistency in these appeals to backing the party that “represents the conservative interest” (even though, when in power, they did stunningly poor jobs of representing the conservative interest, preferring instead the corporate interest and always reliable self-interest).  It is the same appeal that party men make at each stage.  They start this way: back the party because it believes what you believe.  When that is proven to be obviously untrue, they say: back the party because it will help you get what you want.  When that doesn’t happen, they say: back the party so that we can get “back” to a point where the party will actually believe what you believe.  Since the party was never really there in the first place, do you have much confidence that it will be returning to a place it never was?  The question for conservatives is this: having been duped at least twice, will you play the fool a third time?  Gerard Baker says that you must and threatens you with hanging (figurative, we assume) if you don’t agree.  Somehow, I don’t believe him.

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