The conservative movement seems to be running out of steam, but Rep. Eric Cantor has the solution -- a virtual "solutions factory." Hm. Alternatively, the right could take David Brooks' advice and read more blogs written by my right-of-center friends (and even a few people who I've never met) and buy Grand New Party. Brooks has, I think, the sounder view. Ultimately, though, the trouble even with his solution is that some of these folks' ideas are bad, whereas the ones that are good will never be implemented by conservatives. Why? Because, as I've said before, "the problem is actually much worse -- the problem with the conservative movement is that it's fundamentally malign." If we're lucky, liberals will steal the right's better ideas only to see the conservative movement eventually turn on them (see, e.g., EITC, Section 8 vouchers, cap-and-trade) in the interests of greater evil.
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Solutions Factory
27 Jun 2008 10:16 am
Comments (37)
The conservative movement seems to be running out of steam,
I disagree. It foundered back in the late 1990's and has been on the mat ever since. What we have now is the neoconservative movement, and it appears to be running out of steam. Think about it. Let's look at just a piece of the record:
- Preemptive war in Iraq with little real evidence of a threat.
- Failure to accomplish the mission in Afghanistan.
- Refusal to discuss nuclear technology with Iran. (Do you think Nixon, Reagan, or Bush I would have blown them off?)
- Torture.
- Indefinite detention of American citizens.
- Wholesale disregard for the Constitution.
- Wholesale politicization of the DoJ?
- Overspending.
- Weak dollar policy.
- Failure to help American citizens hit by a major disaster.
Do these really sounds like conservative viewpoints to you?
"the problem with the conservative movement is that it's fundamentally malign."
This statement is nothing more than an abidication of thought for hatred. I'd be shocked if you actually believed this. I am sure there may be some conservatives who are "fundamentally malign" such as Pat "Hitler wasn't so bad" Buchanan, but do you think you friend Ross would align himself with a "fundamentally" malign movement?
I believe the way the GOP works is to read liberal blogs, look for good policies and then take exactly the opposite position.
Well, of course you're right, LFC, but every single movement conservative signed on for all those things. So regardless of what the platonic ideal of Conservatism would have us do, the fact is that conservatism has been discredited by self-professed conservatives.
I've been calling movement conservatives and the GOP "deeply irrational," but "fundamentally malign" might be more accurate.
Dave, simply take Matt's sentence and replace "conservative" with "neoconservative" and it makes much more sense. I've read where George Will is disparaged as a traitor for speaking the truth and not falling in line.
The neoconservative movement DEMANDS obedience and lining up behind the president 100%. It does not admit error, it does not admit failure. It attempts to hide any news contrary to it's predicted outcome. This is NOT conservative. It is a borderline cult.
If you want to see examples of neoconservatives, just visit the Weakly Standard, Clownhall, or Nutional Review's "The Corner".
do you think you friend Ross would align himself with a "fundamentally" malign movement?
Well not entirely. This is why Brooks says:
Moreover, most of these writers did not rise through the official channels of the conservative or libertarian establishments. By and large, they didn’t do the internships or take part in the young leader programs that were designed to replenish “the movement.”
You have better ideas from people whose affiliation with the movement is looser.
Again with the superfluous italics! I can't take it anymore, Matt. Matt!
"the problem is actually much worse -- the problem with the conservative movement is that it's fundamentally malign."
Matt is just a typical, naive liberal. He thinks being malign is a bad thing. How can we defeat the terrorists unless we out-malign them?
"deeply irrational", "fundamentally malign", or my personal favorite "intellectually bankrupt" are all imprecise ways of describing a large group of people. Really, are these terms so divergent?
"the fact is that conservatism has been discredited by self-professed conservatives."
This honestly makes no sense to me. Self-professed conservatives can obviously discredit themselves. They can even discredit the ideologies they actually hold. But I don't see how they can actually discredit conservative ideologies they don't hold, just because they like to claim they are the one and only true conservatives.
I think the reason that the conservative movement is "fundamentally malign" is that its core constituencies have not changed, nor have the interests of those constituencies changed.
The Republicans have been handing out tax breaks to the rich, pseudo-unification of church and state to Southern Baptists and conservative Catholics, de-facto segregation for Afro-phobic suburbanites, etc. for a long time now. Yet those groups still want those same things, and the Republicans have not added any new groups to their base.
Hence, the conservative movement remains "malign."
Part of the issue also is that modern liberalism has also integrated into itself a lot of conservatives' critiques of the New Left and also a lot of conservatives' best ideas. This has pushed the Right even farther to the right to the point that the Eisenhower family have left the GOP and Jay Rockefeller is now at the right edge of the Democrats. Bush I's defeat to Clinton taught the GOP to never raise taxes no matter how high spending gets, thus meaning they can no longer be considered the party of balancing budgets and such. The GOP base and leaders have rejected realists and threw Hagel and Scowcroft overboard while nominating a candidate who prefers young neocon hotheads to older, wiser realists. At this point, the GOP is the party of bloated budgets, hating gays and immigrants and blowing up Muslims. The only way it's still a small government party is in hating any domestic spending that could help people because that's somehow socialism and will also bring electoral benefits to Democrats.
Section 8? Don't you read your own magazine?
Section 8? Don't you read your own magazine?
"Bush I's defeat to Clinton taught the GOP to never raise taxes no matter how high spending gets, thus meaning they can no longer be considered the party of balancing budgets and such.
At this point, the GOP is the party of bloated budgets, hating gays and immigrants and blowing up Muslims. The only way it's still a small government party is in hating any domestic spending that could help people because that's somehow socialism and will also bring electoral benefits to Democrats."
This is exactly how I see it. The whole "responsible government" stuff the Republicans used to talk about in the 90s (remember the balanced budget amendment crap?) was apparently a bunch of snake oil used to lure in moderates. I don't believe that any of them actually believed that. I like to say the George Bush and Ron Paul are opposite sides of the same coin. Ron Paul wants to implode the Federal government outright. George Bush wants to implode it through incompetence and mismanagement (IE appoint an incompetent cronie to run FEMA and then watch as FEMA fails and let people suggest that FEMA doesn't work and needs to be eliminated).
GOP has been a virtual solutions factory all along. None of the solutions that they have ever offered was real, and they failed to solve any problems. Instead, they only made us less secure as a nation, both economically and physically.
The Republican Party turned into a party of gargoyles with the Southern Strategy. It rejected its own roots. Voodoo Economics and killing Muslims are just its modern narcotics.
I'm looking forward to the Democrats tearing themselves apart under an Obama presidency.
Just like similar leftist movements have done over the past decade in Europe, a congressional Dem majority will fall into some serious disagreements over policy. Elite urban liberals and backwoods blue-dogs in the party aren't held together by much.
The best thing is, a faltering economy won't allow any of them to pursue their unifying economic populist impulses to raise taxes, expand entitlement handouts and squash entrepreneurialism as some sort of sick criminal thing. And if they do follow their misguided economic policies, the resulting economic misery should cause public mood to turn against them.
I'm looking forward to the Democrats tearing themselves apart under an Obama presidency.Just like similar leftist movements have done over the past decade in Europe, a congressional Dem majority will fall into some serious disagreements over policy. Elite urban liberals and backwoods blue-dogs in the party aren't held together by much.
The best thing is, a faltering economy won't allow any of them to pursue their unifying economic populist impulses to raise taxes, expand entitlement handouts and squash entrepreneurialism as some sort of sick criminal thing. And if they do follow their misguided economic policies, the resulting economic misery should cause public mood to turn against them.
MarkG lives in a world where the last 7.5 years have not actually occurred.
the problem with the conservative movement is that it's fundamentally malign."
I think that about covers it. I suppose if one is feeling generous, you can say it's shortsighted. I think this analogy sums it up beautifully:
If the Goverment is a car setting out to give every one a ride to work, then for 40 years the Republicans have been puncturing the tires, pouring sand in the gas tank, stealing the distributer cap, and, whenever they can get their hands on the wheel, driving it straight into the nearest ditch and then, pointing to the wreckage as the tow truck backs up to it, saying, See, this proves that people were meant to walk.
And they do this so that they don't have to chip in on gas.
Just like similar leftist movements have done over the past decade in Europe, a congressional Dem majority will fall into some serious disagreements over policy.
I certainly hope so because if they don't, then they are just lockstep politicians doing the bidding of a handful of party leaders ... kinda' like Republicans.
The best thing is, a faltering economy won't allow any of them to pursue their unifying economic populist impulses to raise taxes,...
...because it failed so badly under Clinton, and taking on vast amounts of debt is SOOOOO much better...
expand entitlement handouts
...as the GOP did without one thought of how to pay for it...
and squash entrepreneurialism as some sort of sick criminal thing.
Yeah, it's a shame Clinton destroyed the entrepreneurial spirit in the 1990's. Who knows what new innovations and industries might have sprouted up.
Nice series of talking points you got there, MarkG. It's a shame your party either didn't adhere to them, or did to disastrous results. Today the Dow is under 11,400, the dollar is at .635 Euros, and oil is over $140 a barrel. Heckuva' job, GOP.
It is nothing but malign. That's the big picture here. The USA is in its current crisis because one half of its democratic spectrum is fundamentally malign. How can a country function with half its house gone mad?
Funny thing with Brooksies musing though, he's describing where the Democratic Party is today, and where the Republican Party can probably never go. Not until there has been complete generational renewal and the bitter old coots who form the base of the GOP have passed away.
You consevative complainers want to see hate? Read your own press sometimes would ya, hell just turn on the TV and watch a regular news program and you'll have some idiot from your faction preaching that the Democrats are going to kill every man woman and child in America with their "pinko" policies. That's inbred ideological hate, hate beyond reason, old fashioned conservative hate in the mould of Goldwater and his bastard decendents.
I'm looking forward to the Democrats tearing themselves apart under an Obama presidency.Just like similar leftist movements have done over the past decade in Europe, a congressional Dem majority will fall into some serious disagreements over policy. Elite urban liberals and backwoods blue-dogs in the party aren't held together by much.
The best thing is, a faltering economy won't allow any of them to pursue their unifying economic populist impulses to raise taxes, expand entitlement handouts and squash entrepreneurialism as some sort of sick criminal thing. And if they do follow their misguided economic policies, the resulting economic misery should cause public mood to turn against them.
MarkG lives in a world where the last 7.5 years have not actually occurred.
Malign?
O sure, peaceably ending the cold war. Reforming the tax system from marginal rates exceeding 70%. Taming inflation. Ensuring competition through free trade, thus enriching both ourselves and the rest of the world. Ushering in the greatest period of growth in American history. Maintaining the rule of law - yes, maintaining the rule of law -- by limiting the clear legislative proclivities of liberal judges.
So malign? Of course, matt would prefer appeasement to dictators (Jimmy Carter), a weak national defense (Jimmy Carter), high taxes (Jimmy Carter), limitations on trade favoring unions over consumers (current Democratic dogma), taxes and regulations that discourage entrepreneurship and innovation, and judges with a "the law is what i say it is" approach. Great ideas! Bring 'em on!!
MarkG lives in a world where the public rounded on the GOP for the GOP's own excesses and failures. The GOP will still have to undergo a few more years in the wilderness for all of congressional corruption, moral bankruptcy, and mismanagement. The congressional GOP still needs to define a coherent agenda that can appeal to the public.
That said, I think the Democratic congressional majority is in for some serious disagreement when it's not playing political games with its agenda, which is now held together by bashing Bush. But a unifying negative agenda is not the same as a coherent forward-looking government agenda.
the problem with the conservative movement is that it's fundamentally malign
As I've often commented before, there's a big difference between conservatives and liberals.
Conservatives think liberals are wrong.
Liberals think conservatives are evil.
DTM: Self-professed conservatives can obviously discredit themselves. They can even discredit the ideologies they actually hold. But I don't see how they can actually discredit conservative ideologies they don't hold, just because they like to claim they are the one and only true conservatives.
DTM, I sympathize with you. One can make the case that socialism, much less communism, has never been tried, yet both ideologies have been discredited by those who called themselves socialists and communists. A few years ago I gave up caring about ideologies and decided to think for myself and not give a damn where my opinions fell on an ideological spectrum. It was the most liberating thing I ever did. Among other things, it enabled me to instantly call bullshit on the case for the Iraq invasion while those who cared about labels and positioning (liberal hawks, anyone?) swallowed the Bush/Cheney BS.
As Kant said, dare to think for yourself. Go where the evidence and your reason take you, regardless of the company you find yourself in once you get there. I recommend this to everyone. I truly feel sorry for people, like David Brooks and the young writers he seems to admire, whose sense of identity is dependent on ideological labels.
Hey BigA@bigA.com, you seem to have missed the point. You had to dig all the way back to Carter and Reagan, but the Republicans now would sneer at Reagan's positions if brought forth today. Talk to the Soviet Union? Appeasement! Raise taxes (which he did ... several times)? Liberal tax and spender! (To be fair, Reagan did run up an enormous amount of debt like today's Republicans.) And waddya' mean 13,000 earmarks are too many?
Of course, Reagan did sell arms to a country run by radical Muslim clerics who supported terrorism.
BigA:
You rather prove the point. Every achievement you cite (with the notable exception of defense spending) amounts to curbing perceived excess. That's the conservative vision of government, in a nutshell - it provides physical security.
After the New Deal and again after the Great Society, conservatism had a legitimate case to make that corrections were needed. That there were excesses that needed to be curbed. And it performed that role, paring back some elements of the social welfare state while leaving the core largely untouched.
The problem is that conservatism has no positive agenda for government. At best, it's a necessary evil; at worst, an unnecessary one. This makes conservatives very, very bad at actually governing. They're either dedicated to the curtailment or destruction of the agencies they purportedly serve, or to the enhancement of their own status, position, and fortune. After all, if you believe that the free market always provides better solutions than government, why on earth would you enter public service?
That, I take it, is the nub of Matt's point here. The old GOP was the party of the elite, driven by a sense of noblesse oblige. They didn't much like taxes or government interference in their lives, either, but felt a profound obligation to serve their nation and to provide for the unfortunate. The Goldwater insurgency fundamentally changed the character of the party, reorienting it around ideology instead of social position. In its new form, it has repeatedly proven adept at advancing devastating critiques of existing policies, and at advancing proposals to rectify them. But it has proven just as inept at implementing these ideas. To do so requires belief in the efficacy of government, and dedication to its service. And outside of the defense establishment, conservatives just can't seem to muster that.
Uh, Matthew?
About that point that Brooks makes about how these young hepcats did it all without the usual cast of wingnut sugar-daddies?
Uh, not so much.
http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2008/06/those-fiercely-independent-young.html
Uh, Matthew?
About that point that Brooks makes about how these young hepcats did it all without the usual cast of wingnut sugar-daddies?
Uh, not so much.
http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2008/06/those-fiercely-independent-young.html
So Brooks contends that these dazzling young hepcats got there without the help of the usual wingnut sugar daddies?
http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2008/06/those-fiercely-independent-young.html
Jesus, he's not even trying any more.
Cynic, not only did Matt read it, he commented on the story. His take then (and I suspect it continues to be so) was that Section 8 has some very serious drawbacks but these do not inherently obviate the good that it has done.
DSP,
You're preaching to the choir. I think the one-dimensional ideological spectrum is a fundamentally silly concept, and therefore I generally don't bother trying to locate myself on it.
But I also recognize that a lot of people don't think it is silly, and some of these people nonetheless have ideas, information, etc. worth listening to. And in my experience, sometimes those people call themselves conservatives.
So, just as I personally think the ideological spectrum is silly, I also think it is silly to dismiss people out of hand just because they think of themselves as conservatives (or liberals, or centrists). Which is why I objected to the idea that some particular self-described conservatives could be taken as discrediting all self-described conservatives, even though I do not identify myself as a conservative.
Look at the fascists denounce their ideological opponents as "fundamentally malign" and therefore evil, deserving of no further concern.
Coming from a Jew who calls himself a big city liberal, that's fairly pathetic. Didn't the Jews get rounded up somewhere on similar concerns that they were fundamentally malign?
I hate Jewish Nazis.
Didn't the Jews get rounded up somewhere on similar concerns that they were fundamentally malign?
As a matter of fact, they were - by an organization that everybody, around the world, now recognizes as having been fundamentally malign.
The problem is not that anybody's being called "fundamentally malign", because some organizations are fundamentally malign. The question is whether that appellation is justly used. MY makes the case that it is, here, and you haven't begun to address that.
Comments closed July 11, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Assuming all this is true, it just means future conservatives are unlikely to be members of the "Movement", and that said "Movement" will lose control of the conservative party in the United States (whether that be the GOP or some replacement).
Generally, I think Matt has been a little gullible on this. "Movement" conservatives like to fancy themselves the only true conservatives, and they have had institutional support on this point with Bush as President. But that was always a bit of B.S., and it appears young Matthew fell for it.
Posted by DTM | June 27, 2008 10:28 AM