Is Conservativism Finished ?

Commentary Magazine via Real Clear Politics ^ | Wilfred McClay

[gusopol3]

Consider Reagan’s address to the British parliament on June 8, 1982, a self-conscious echo of Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech 36 years earlier:

We must be staunch in our conviction that freedom is not the sole prerogative of a lucky few, but the inalienable and universal right of all human beings. . . . The objective I propose is quite simple to state: to foster the infrastructure of democracy, the system of a free press, unions, political parties, universities, which allows a people to choose their own way to develop their own culture, to reconcile their own differences through peaceful means. This is not cultural imperialism, it is providing the means for genuine self-determination and protection for diversity. Democracy already flourishes in countries with very different cultures and historical experiences. It would be cultural condescension, or worse, to say that any people prefer dictatorship to democracy.

[gusopol3]

great article; I can't find that it's been posted in Search

[kittymyrib]

Didn't we read this after Barry Goldwater's defeat? Conservatism has been buried more times than Osama bin Laden.

[Zenith]

Until Cnservatives realize they don't have enough to WIN a majority, they are FINISHED.

[gusopol3]

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/cm/main/viewArticle.aip?id=10812

[VRWC For Truth]

Liberals never win in the long run. Conservatives always triumph because they do what is right to survive and not what is wrong.

[gusopol3]

this guy's answer is emphatically NO and with plenty of intellectual firepower.

[VRWC For Truth]

There was no majority in favor of the Revolution in 1776. Somehow those with the better idea triumphed ... those with idea were willing to win.

[Czar]

"Until Cnservatives the GOP realize[s] they don't have enough RINOs to WIN a majority without conservatives, they are FINISHED.

That's the real lesson of the last election.

[gusopol3]

Have you heard of this McClay ? He has a book entitled Figures in the Carpet: Looking for the Human Person in America's Past that I am going to get after reading this article. It sounds like good reading for the kinds of parallels you suggest.

[SWAMPSNIPER]

If I have to vote for rino liberals the republic is dead anyway.

[backtothestreets]

"That's the real lesson of the last election."

Another lesson learned, don't expect loyalty to the party from voters abandoned by the party. Loyalty is a two way street.

[hosepipe]

[ Is Conservativism Finished ? ]

NO, its the right wing that is finished..
Most conservatives are LEFTISTS...

Conservatives would gouge out their eyes, throw dust in the air, and tear their clothing if the (SSA) Social Security Administration was abolished..

Social Security is PURE SOCIALISM... And will be the tip of the iceberg to Hillary Clintons New United States.. Whatever happened to the right wing?... There is NO organized right wing in the United States.. We used to have one... What happened?..

[BW2221]

If an exit poll conduct by the Pew Research Center is to be believed, the election of 2006 was a repudiation of George Bush (who a number of FReepers consider a lukewarm conservative) rather than conservative principles. The poll concluded:

"As expected, the election turned out in large measure to be a referendum on President Bush and the war in Iraq -- bad news for Republicans. About six-in-ten voters (59%) said they were either dissatisfied (30%) or angry (29%) with the president. By more than two-to-one, those dissatisfied with Bush supported the Democratic candidate in their district (69%-29%); among those angry with the president the margin was more than fifteen-to-one (92%-6%).

Bush was much more of a drag on his party's candidates than was former President Clinton in 1994, the year that Republicans won control of Congress. More than a third (36%) of the electorate said they voted to oppose Bush; that compares with 27% who voted to oppose Clinton in 1994, and 21% in 1998, the year Congress impeached the president."

[x]

The whole article is here.

Our system rests on "rotation in office" -- the two parties alternating in power, taking office, becoming arrogant or sloppy or lazy, losing elections, reorganizing and redefining themselves, making stronger appeals, and then retaking the positions they lost. And that's what's happening now.

In the 1930s and 1940s Democrats assumed that they could hold power forever with New Deal policies. Twenty years later, Eisenhower was elected and reelected with large majorities, and Stevenson and Kennedy represented the beginnings of a different kind of Democratic Party.

So now it's twenty years or so after Reagan, and the same messages don't have the power they had in his day. All the more so, since voters recognize that Republican politicians don't always mean them, anymore than the post-Roosevelt Democrats really meant most of the things they said.

Sooner or later, after the Democrats mess things up, the Republicans will straighten out get their chance again. As McClay notes, the country is still basically conservative, as it was essentially FDR's country in the Eisenhower and Nixon years.

A liberal country didn't want to go to the extremes of liberalism then and elected Republicans. Today, a conservative country now is leery of Republican dominance in Washington and gives the Democrats a shot. After seeing what the Democrats make of their chance, voters will come back around to the GOP.

[gusopol3]

give the article a read; it hangs every conservative who's abandoned Bush from Viguerie (whose screeds against Reagan are listed) to Sullivan to Jeffrey Hart out to dry.

[Chi-townChief]

After every election, win or lose, it is always announced by someone that conservatism is finished.

[gusopol3]

I'm concerned we're entering an end game because of demographics and the end of the moat as a protection against the forces hostile to our security. We need to do better than take three downs and punt.

[himno hero]

IF conservatism dies

THEN capitalism withers and dies

and consumerism disappears

[inpajamas]

If I have to vote for rino liberals the republic is dead anyway.

I don't have to vote for them and I won't so your statement is true. Conservative were to conserve what? - The republic, that's what.

If they have to move away from preserving the Constitution then as you say our nation is dead. A move to the middle is a half-way house to socialism and destroys enough of the system's checks and balances that the big government liberals will be able to reel the country in the rest of the way.

What has happened by forsaking conservatism to enlarge the party, the party grew in size but became weaker in policy and failed destroying the party and allowing Democrats even as a minority to control by virtue of the RINOs.

Conservatives would have been better off with a smaller but strongly committed Conservative base than a larger weak one that can be disillusioned and persuaded that they were wrong and support liberal policies.

[Vaquero]

Until ...the GOP realize[s] they don't have enough RINOs to WIN a majority without conservatives, they are FINISHED.......That's the real lesson of the last election

BINGO!!!