The Fall of Conservatism

The Political Scene: The Fall of Conservatism: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker

I thought this New Yorker Article was well on the longish side, but had some points worth looking at. The following is something that I think bears comment:

In its final year, the Bush Administration is seen by many conservatives (along with seventy per cent of Americans) to be a failure. Among true believers, there are two explanations of why this happened and what it portends. One is the purist version: Bush expanded the size of government and created huge deficits; allowed Republicans in Congress to fatten lobbyists and stuff budgets full of earmarks; tried to foist democracy on a Muslim country; failed to secure the border; and thus won the justified wrath of the American people. This account—shared by Pat Buchanan, the columnist George F. Will, and many Republicans in Congress—has the appeal of asking relatively little of conservatives. They need only to repent of their sins, rid themselves of the neoconservatives who had agitated for the Iraq invasion, and return to first principles. Buchanan said, “The conservatives need to, in Maoist terms, go back to Yenan.”

The second version—call it reformist—is more painful, because it’s based on the recognition that, though Bush’s fatal incompetence and Rove’s shortsighted tactics hastened the conservative movement’s demise, they didn’t cause it. In this view, conservatism has a more serious problem than self-betrayal: a doctrinaire failure to adapt to new circumstances, new problems. Instead of heading back to Yenan to regroup, conservatives will have to spend some years or even decades wandering across a bleak political landscape of losing campaigns and rebranding efforts and earnest policy retreats, much as liberals did after 1968, before they can hope to reëstablish dominance.

My fundamental analysis is that "Conservatives became too purist". The Buchanans and Wills just think that things will be OK if the Republicans "get back to the basics". The problems I see with that are:

1. Republicans never successfully REALLY sold smaller government. They sold the IDEA, but when they actually cut the RATE OF GROWTH in programs, they paid dearly for it and Clinton took the credit for the resulting budget surplus. This hurt them in MANY ways. Politically, it was expensive and simply ended up handing a feather to Clinton, and internally, it made Republicans feel that cutting spending wasn't worth it.
   
2. Tax cutting has pretty much OVER run it's course. The fact that people below say $50K pay so little tax today is dangerous. Much as a tithe to the church isn't about helping God, it is about helping YOU (because you see that this is a universe of plenty and gratitude for that is critical to your well being), paying some taxes on your income isn't only about "government revenue", it is about all Americans feeling that they are "paying their fair share". When folks decide that "taxes are for people that make more money than me to pay", we have a big problem, and I think we have it.
   
3. Republicans QUICKLY forgot how painful it is to be in the wilderness. They only controlled all three branches from 2002-2006, 4 short years out of the last 50+. When handed the keys to actual governance without the excuse of "the other party", the coalition promptly decided "this better be perfect or we are going to pout". Without a recession, with only the smallest of military difficulty relative to history (see WWII, Vietnam, Korea, etc), and a natural "disaster" that hardly even qualifies as such (try <2k>

This quote is unfortunately exactly where I think we are at. The remaining issue now is "how long will Republicans be in the wilderness"? Unfortunately, I have to HOPE that it will be a long time, because I think it is going to take a national disaster of something greater than the late 1970s but hopefully not as bad as the depression.

Sam Tanenhaus summed up the 2008 race with a simple formula: Goldwater was to Reagan as McGovern is to Obama. From the ruins of Goldwater’s landslide defeat in 1964, conservatives began the march that brought them fully to power sixteen years later. If Obama wins in November, it will have taken liberals thirty-six years.