Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin wrote, "For all intents and purposes, conservatism — as a national movement — is completely and thoroughly dead. Barack Obama did not destroy it, however. It was George W. Bush and John McCain who destroyed conservatism in America."
David Boaz of the libertarian CATO Institute explains that Bush "delivered massive overspending, the biggest expansion of entitlements in 40 years, centralization of education, a floundering war, an imperial presidency, civil liberties abuses, ... and finally a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street that just kept on growing in the last month of the campaign. Voters who believed in limited government had every reason to reject that record."
These modern Republican policies have nothing to do with traditional conservatism, but have much more in common with big-government liberalism. So how did politicians claiming to be conservatives end up acting like big-government liberals? The explanation lies in understanding the rise of neoconservatism, which has come to define modern conservatism and the GOP.
BUMP!
lame-melodramatic-slow-newsday-alert.
.
Ironically it was the Libs that where right all along about Neocons. Neocons are Washingtonian elitists.
Only in Washingtonia. The Washingtonian’s days are numbered.
Republicanism dead, Conservatism alive and well!
BS
I love and live conservatism, in a libertarian sort of way as much as anyone, but sadly I believe it is dead on a national level.
The stupid, public school educated masses that have the intellect of a grapefruit aren’t compatible with conservatism. It’s too hard for them. The liberal media tells them what to think, what to believe in, and how to vote. Combine that with the tens of millions of illegals that have no core belief in the greatness and traditions of our country, and you are looking at a dead conservative movement. I’ve barely scratched the surface here with regard to what we are up against. Conservatism is under attack from all sides, and there is no great conservative leader to counter it all.
The attacks of 911 was 7 short years ago, and we just elected Hussein for God’s sake!!! I needn’t say more......
Not in my house!
Bush and McCain are not Conservatives... nor could they be remotely described as neo-conservative, either.
The best description to tag them would be quasi-liberal. IE - just one calorie, almost liberal enough... for the Democrat party.
Bingo!
Silly article but the fact is, IMHO, we have to decide what a “conservative” is, or we will keep getting our butts kicked.
Is a “conservative” one on the basis of their economic, or their social policy? Someone vehemently against abortion, gay marriage and sexual ‘education’ in the schools might still support massive social programs and government intervention in the private sector in the name of morality. Someone against government spending for social programs, intervention in the economy, the attempts of muslims to integrate Sharia law, and who insists on a balanced budget might not think of America as a ‘Christian Nation’, care one whit about abortion or consider gay marriage any issue at all.
Is the Republican party going to be one of fiscal conservatism, social conservatism, both or neither? Not that the Democrats are doing much better, their Achilles heel is in the churches - concern about abortion and the disintegration of the family are a huge weakness in the coalition that elected Obama, and the gun control issue often results in Democrats shooting themselves in the foot in areas with demographics favorable to them.
The party that best defines itself will win the next election.
Just a cranky .02
Conservatism isn’t dead.
But this “reach across the aisle” bullsh*t probably is....unless of course, anyone actually likes being the tiny minority...
not hardly
----
Send treats to the troops...
Great because you did it!
www.AnySoldier.com
I don't know why its taking so long for the facts to sink in.
Probably because our leftist press doesn't want to raise the alarm.
Since 1919, we have now enfranchised all of the groups that the Founders (looking to history and why Republics fail) warned us against; non freeholders, women, children under 21, felons, and imbeciles.
This has been accomplished via constitutional amendment and Motor Voter, with groups like ACORN thrown in for good measure.
Coupled with a national press operating as a public relations and propaganda machine for the socialists (not hard to imagine an outraged media broadcasting 24/7 if a GOP POTUS elect wouldn't produce his BC) , it should be no surprise that the likes of this creature HUSSEIN OBAMA could get enough votes to win and every branch of the government is now controlled by socialists.
THE REPUBLIC IS DONE.
THE FALL IS IN PROGRESS.
THERE IS NOTHING THAT CAN BE DONE WHILE THESE GROUPS HAVE THE VOTE.
IS ALL OVER BUT THE SHOUTING.
Will Neo-Conservatism Die For Compassionate Conservatism’s Sins?
http://www.dcexaminer.com/opinion/Will_Neo-Conservatism_Die_For_Compassionate_Conservatisms_Sins_2009.html
Paul Mirengoff, Examiner Contributor
- 1/4/09
President Bush will leave office with an approval rating of under 30 percent, and the Republican Party is not faring much better. In the past two elections, it has shed more than 50 House seats and more than a dozen Senate seats.
The conservative label, though, does not appear to have taken much of a beating. On Election Day 2008, exit polls showed that more voters still identify themselves as conservatives than as liberals.
Conservatives can thus spare themselves the kind of re-branding liberals felt compelled to attempt earlier in the decade when they dubbed themselves “progressives.” Precisely what is progressive about protecting the regime of Saddam Hussein, protecting public schools from meaningful competition, and refusing seriously to consider entitlement reform was never clear.
Conservatives will not absorb much blame for the Bush administration for the excellent reason that this administration was not particularly conservative. It was Bush, after all, who created a drug entitlement program, worked with Ted Kennedy to create a more nationalized education policy, declined for years to veto any spending programs, and doled out hundreds of billions in bailouts.
But with the nation mired in an economic slump and still engaged in two wars, some ideology must take the fall. Accordingly, a scapegoat has been lined up: Neo-conservatism.
Neo-conservatives make convenient fall guys. They have long been despised by the left for having defected from their ranks, albeit decades ago, and even more unforgivably, for being right about the Cold War. And as former leftists, neo-cons have never been viewed warmly by certain elements of the right. Meanwhile, mainstream conservatives are just relieved to see the finger being pointed away from them.
But is it fair to blame neo-conservatives for what went wrong in the Bush administration? The question turns on whether neo-cons were responsible for the policies that caused the administration to go astray.
This was not the case domestically. Rightly or wrongly, the Bush administration will be blamed for the recent economic downturn. But no neo-conservative policy contributed to our current economic woes.
Neo-conservatism was born in part as a reaction against the social experimentation associated with the Great Society and the cultural turmoil associated with the 1960s. It was hardly neo-conservative, then, to promote home ownership for low income families by inducing lending institutions to make unsound loans. Neo-conservatives have never favored lowering standards to benefit a particular group.
Some attribute the current crisis to lax regulation or de-regulation. Whatever the merit of this view, it has nothing much to do with neo-conservatism. Neo-cons tend to focus on social and cultural issues, avoiding the intricacies of regulatory matters.
Even before the current economic crisis, Bush had encountered harsh criticism from traditional conservatives for, among other reasons, creating a prescription drug entitlement, supporting eventual citizenship for illegal aliens, and failing to control federal spending. None of these policies or practices was part of the neo-conservative agenda.
Bush’s domestic policy was dominated not by neo-conservatism but by “compassionate conservatism.” Compassionate conservatives believe, in Bush’s words, that “when somebody hurts, the government has got to move,” but that the government should act less through its bureaucracies than through alternative private mechanism.
By contrast, neo-conservatives perceive no general imperative for government remedial activity. For them, the best reforms are usually ones that limit the government’s capacity to do harm. Welfare reform (implemented with the help of Bill Clinton) and the end of governmental race preference programs (opposed by George W. Bush) come to mind.
But perhaps neo-conservatives led Bush astray in the realm of foreign policy. Neo-cons certainly favored the invasion of Iraq. But so did 77 U.S. Senators among whom only Joe Lieberman might answer to the description of neo-conservative (and only as to foreign policy).
The primary advocates of invading Iraq were Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, neither of whom had ever been considered a neo-conservative. And the primary reasons behind the decision to topple Saddam Hussein were not neo-conservative ones.
The most commonly articulated reason – the threat posed by the WMD nearly everyone believed Saddam possessed – did not stem from neo-conservatism, but rather from the more general concept of self-protection, coupled with faulty intelligence.
Vice President Cheney reportedly was motivated by the desire to demonstrate the price of supporting or harboring terrorists. This desire is not distinctively neo-conservative. Rather, it is rooted in old-fashioned militaristic American nationalism.
The neo-conservative moment occurred after the invasion, when the U.S. decided to promote democracy in Iraq. The sentiment in favor of this approach was hardly unique to neo-conservatives. The liberal pundit Thomas Friedman favored essentially the same approach under the “we broke it, we own it” theory. Even the more radical Paul Krugman warned against simply imposing a strong man in Iraq and washing our hands of the situation.
Nonetheless, a democratic post-war Iraq can fairly be viewed as a neo-conservative (and a compassionate conservative) project. But was this project a mistake?
The answer depends in large part on how the alternatives would have worked out. One alternative was to leave. But in this scenario, key parts of Iraq might well have fallen under Iranian domination, while other portions could easily have disintegrated into something resembling Afghanistan under Taliban rule.
Another alternative was to back a strong-man. But given the Sunni-Shiite divide, this course might have produced an all-out civil war.
The “democracy project” came pretty close to producing a civil war, too. But in hindsight, this seems to have been due to mistaken decisions about troop levels and anti-insurgency strategy. These flawed decisions were not neo-conservative ones. In fact, prominent neo-cons were among the early advocates of the “surge” that seems finally to have brought us success.
Even success in Iraq would probably not rescue neo-conservatism’s good name, however. The movement has made too many influential enemies, and the hostile narrative is already in place. Would anyone like to join the neo-progressive movement?
Sunday Reflection contributor Paul Mirengoff is a lawyer in Washington, D.C., and a principal author of Powerline.com.
The same question was asked in 1992. It’s damaged, but not destroyed.