The Tearing of the Conservative Fusion

Townhall.com ^ | January 6, 2008 | George Will

[Kaslin]

WASHINGTON -- Like Job after losing his camels and acquiring boils, the conservative movement is in distress. Mike Huckabee shreds the compact that has held the movement's two tendencies in sometimes uneasy equipoise. Social conservatives, many of whom share Huckabee's desire to "take back this nation for Christ," have collaborated with limited-government, market-oriented, capitalism-defending conservatives who want to take back the nation for James Madison. Under the doctrine that conservatives call "fusion," each faction has respected the other's agenda. Huckabee aggressively repudiates the Madisonians.

He and John Edwards, flaunting their histrionic humility in order to promote their curdled populism, hawked strikingly similar messages in Iowa, encouraging self-pity and economic hypochondria. Edwards and Huckabee lament a shrinking middle class. Well.

The Tearing of the Conservative Fusion By George Will Sunday, January 6, 2008 Send an email to George Will Email It Print It Take Action Read Article & Comments (393) Trackbacks Post Your Comments

WASHINGTON -- Like Job after losing his camels and acquiring boils, the conservative movement is in distress. Mike Huckabee shreds the compact that has held the movement's two tendencies in sometimes uneasy equipoise. Social conservatives, many of whom share Huckabee's desire to "take back this nation for Christ," have collaborated with limited-government, market-oriented, capitalism-defending conservatives who want to take back the nation for James Madison. Under the doctrine that conservatives call "fusion," each faction has respected the other's agenda. Huckabee aggressively repudiates the Madisonians.

He and John Edwards, flaunting their histrionic humility in order to promote their curdled populism, hawked strikingly similar messages in Iowa, encouraging self-pity and economic hypochondria. Edwards and Huckabee lament a shrinking middle class. Well.

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee removes his microphone after a interview at a hotel in Manchester, New Hampshire, January 4, 2008. Mike Huckabee's surprising victory in Iowa on Thursday turned the Republican race for U.S. president upside down, but his path to the party's presidential nomination was far from certain. REUTERS/Carlos Barria (UNITED STATES) Related Media:

VIDEO: 'I Love Iowa'

VIDEO: Huckabee Wins GOP Iowa Caucuses

Economist Stephen Rose, defining the middle class as households with annual incomes between $30,000 and $100,000, says a smaller percentage of Americans are in that category than in 1979 -- because the percentage of Americans earning more than $100,000 has doubled from 12 to 24, while the percentage earning less than $30,000 is unchanged. "So," Rose says, "the entire 'decline' of the middle class came from people moving up the income ladder." Even as housing values declined in 2007, the net worth of households increased.

Huckabee told heavily subsidized Iowa -- Washington's ethanol enthusiasm has farm values and incomes soaring -- that Americans striving to rise are "pushed down every time they try by their own government." Edwards, synthetic candidate of theatrical bitterness on behalf of America's crushed, groaning majority, says the rich have an "iron-fisted grip" on democracy and a "stranglehold" on the economy. Strangely, these fists have imposed a tax code that makes the top 1 percent of earners pay 39 percent of all income tax revenues, the top 5 percent pay 60 percent, and the bottom 50 percent pay only 3 percent.

According to Edwards, the North Carolina of his youth resembled Chechnya today -- "I had to fight to survive. I mean really. Literally." Huckabee, a compound of Uriah Heep, Elmer Gantry and Richard Nixon, preens about his humble background: "In my family, 'summer' was never a verb." Nixon, who maundered about his parents' privations and wife's cloth coat, followed Lyndon Johnson, another miscast president whose festering resentments and status anxieties colored his conduct of office. Here we go again?

Huckabee fancies himself persecuted by the Republican "establishment," a creature already negligible by 1964, when it failed to stop Barry Goldwater's nomination. The establishment's voice, the New York Herald Tribune, expired in 1966. Huckabee says "only one explanation" fits his Iowa success "and it's not a human one. It's the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of 5,000 people." God so loves Huckabee's politics that He worked a Midwest miracle on his behalf? Should someone so delusional control nuclear weapons?

Speaking of delusions, Edwards seems unaware that the world market sets the price of oil. He says a $100-a-barrel price is evidence of -- surging demand in India and China? unrest in Nigeria's oil fields? No, "corporate greed." That is Edwards' explanation of every unpleasantness. Mitt Romney's versatility of conviction, although it repelled Iowans, has been a modest makeover compared to Edwards' personality transplant. The sunny Southerner of 2004 has become the angry paladin of the suffering multitudes, to whom he shouts: "Treat these people the way they treat you!" Presumably he means treat "the rich" badly -- an odious exhortation to one portion of Americans, regarding another.

Although Huckabee and Edwards profess to loathe and vow to change Washington's culture, each would aggravate its toxicity. Each overflows with and wallows in the pugnacity of the self-righteous who discern contemptible motives behind all disagreements with them, and who therefore think opponents are enemies and differences are unsplittable.

The way to achieve Edwards' and Huckabee's populist goal of reducing the role of "special interests," meaning money, in government is to reduce the role of government in distributing money. But populists want to sharply increase that role by expanding the regulatory state's reach and enlarging its agenda of determining the distribution of wealth. Populists, who are slow learners, cannot comprehend this iron law: Concentrate power in Washington and you increase the power of interests whose representatives are concentrated there.

Barack Obama, who might be mercifully closing the Clinton parenthesis in presidential history, is refreshingly cerebral amid this recrudescence of the paranoid style in American politics. He is the un-Edwards and un-Huckabee -- an adult aiming to reform the real world rather than an adolescent fantasizing mock-heroic "fights" against fictitious villains in a left-wing cartoon version of this country.

[KantianBurke]

“Huckabee aggressively repudiates the Madisonians.”

Huck’s simply mopping up the job Bush began.

[sourcery]

The GOP is composed of multiple factions, each with its own priorities. Unforntunately this election cycle, too many members of the various factions in our coalition are seeking their own faction’s ideal candidate, without regard to the opinions of other factions. The only result of such an attitude will be the destruction of the coalition that is the GOP.

We must unite behind a candidate that is at least acceptable to all the major factions, and who also has a reasonable chance to run an effective, winning campaign in the general election.

[advance_copy]

Under the doctrine that conservatives call "fusion," each faction has respected the other's agenda.

Back when the "other faction" thought it's media could stuff Giuliani down our throats, we were told time and again how we had to set aside our quaint little beliefs about the sanctity of life and marriage as you scolded us for our "intolerance" of "alternative lifestyles".

Well, Mr. Will, when the alternatives offered to us are in the form of Rudy McRomney who (no matter what he says now) is not pro-life and who still thinks the radical gay agenda is "chic", you should have expected the "fusion" to end. It was you, not us, who flushed the coalition. Aside from Mr. Huckabee, there is not one pro-life candidate running for President right now.

And, as we are the majority of voters in the GOP, watch what happens to your Georgetown cocktail circuit.

[Sherman Logan]

The way to achieve Edwards' and Huckabee's populist goal of reducing the role of "special interests," meaning money, in government is to reduce the role of government in distributing money.

Should be bumped, pinged and repeated frequently.

Government regulation inevitably makes capitalism less free market and more cronyish. As such, it is by definition is in the interest of large established businesses as compared to small upstarts.

[hellbender]

Edwards...says a $100-a-barrel price is evidence of... "corporate greed."

He's right! Without "corporate greed," oil would never have been discovered and brought to the market. No oil, therefore no high prices. Problem solved.

[hellbender]

Edwards, the North Carolina of his youth resembled Chechnya today -- "I had to fight to survive. I mean really. Literally."

Maybe he was picked on because he looked effeminate?

[ElkGroveDan]

As a firm member of both “groups” I resent the notion that Reagan conservatism was held together by some unsteady alliance between different thinking people. It’s a crock, and the Huckster is nothing more than a flash in the pan. He’ll be yesterday’s news in a few weeks.

[hellbender]

Aside from Mr. Huckabee, there is not one pro-life candidate running for President right now.

Balderdash. Hunter and Thompson are pro-life.

[Dumb_Ox]

God so loves Huckabee's politics that He worked a Midwest miracle on his behalf? Should someone so delusional control nuclear weapons?

I don't like Huckabee, but it's hysterical to see the GOP establishment start mouthing the same impieties of the Left, who said the same thing about Dubya.

[dforest]

This paragraph, I agree with.

Back when the "other faction" thought it's media could stuff Giuliani down our throats, we were told time and again how we had to set aside our quaint little beliefs about the sanctity of life and marriage as you scolded us for our "intolerance" of "alternative lifestyles.

However Thompson and McCain are pro life. Will has a tendency to just blame Huck, who, by the way, I do not like. Will forgets his bunch of aging dopes created him.

The answer? No one gets to have it just "their way" or we lose.

When I fought against Rooty tooth and nail, I sure didn't want a Huckster to emerge.People need to get over their hurt feelings and get on to a candidate we can all get behind.

[hellbender]

Reagan embodied all the strains of conservatism: the small-government one, the religious/social one, and the defense-hawk one. The whole spectrum has moved to the left since then, and many social conservatives (esp. Huck fans) are probably former independents and Democrats who could no longer stomach the extremism of a party which now condones atrocities like partial-birth abortion and gay marriage.

[Servant of the Cross]

I agree with several of your points. However, IMO Mike Huckabee certainly does not stand alone as the "one pro-life candidate". I think the National Right to Life Committee (along with a growing list of individual state RTL committees) would disagree with you too given their endorsement of Fred Thompson.

Regarding the fusion of the conservative factions, I've posted this little exercise (along with my ratings):

Social Conservatives (SC) – Abortion; pro-traditional marriage; conservative Judicial appointments; pro-free exercise of religion; school choice; enforcing borders; family values; 1st amendment; 2nd amendment; there’s more

National Security Conservatives (NS) – Strong foreign policy; Aggressive posture on war & interrogation methods; enforcing borders; tough on crime; there’s plenty more

Fiscal Conservatives (FC) – tax policy (cuts); spending curbs; smaller, not bigger government; immigration laws enforced; national health policy; social security policy; there’s plenty more

My numerical ranking (1 best, 5 worst) of the “top 5” (polling nationally):

SC NS FC

Huckabee

1 5 5

Romney

3 4 2

Thompson

1 1 1

McCain

4 1 3

Giuliani

5 1 4

So IMO, it’s Fred, hands down (and I need to go to the html sandbox).

(other rankings invited)

[donna]

...defining the middle class as households with annual incomes between $30,000 and $100,000, says a smaller percentage of Americans are in that category than in 1979 -- ... "the entire 'decline' of the middle class came from people moving up the income ladder."

Because, all the mothers in the country had to leave their kids in daycare and go to work.

That makes families feel poor.

[advance_copy]

True about Hunter, but is he even still running? Thompson opposes abortion, but believes based on federalism that a state should be able to provide medical licenses to those who kill unborn babies if they want. Still, he is better than any of the Rudy McRomney candidates.

[ModelBreaker]

He is the un-Edwards and un-Huckabee -- an adult aiming to reform the real world rather than an adolescent fantasizing mock-heroic "fights" against fictitious villains in a left-wing cartoon version of this country.

I disagree with this completely. Huckabee and Obama are the left and really left versions of the same phenomenon. They both are great speakers who seem to actually answer questions rather than regurgitate focus group pablum. They seem fresh and that they would actually shake things up.

Forget the substance. America has decided to try something really new this year. If you sound fresh and new, it almost doesn't matter what you say. The R's better figure this out. Stick a fork in Romney and Clinton for the general election. They're the most focus-grouped candidates in the whole bunch.

[Clemenza]

Unforntunately this election cycle, too many members of the various factions in our coalition are seeking their own faction’s ideal candidate, without regard to the opinions of other factions.

What I STILL don't understand is how does a meatball like Rudy become the "national security" candidate, when his foreign policy skills have been limited to ethnic festivals? Much as I have problems with Senator Queeg, he at least has experience and knowledge in that area. Plus, Rudy's advisors are the same West End Avenue Commentary Magazine Mafia that got us into the (latest chapter of) "making the world safe for Democracy" crusade to begin with.

Dump the Neocons on foreign policy and keep the snake handlers at bay.

[advance_copy]

However Thompson and McCain are pro life.

McCain, like Romney, is lying about it for political expediency. In 2000, he said that he does not want Roe v. Wade. He also said that it is ultimately the woman's "choice".

Thompson is pretty good on the issue, but would not support a federal ban on abortion due to his belief in federalism. Still, he'd appoint judges that overturn Roe v. Wade, and that is far more than you can say about McCain, Romney, or Giuliani.

The one thing people did not notice, but the voters in Iowa did notice, is that Mike Huckabee stood up for the sanctity of life at every campaign event. He is the only one who did that. That is why he won Iowa.

[advance_copy]

CORRECTION: McCain said in 2000 that he does not want Roe v. Wade overturned.

[Sherman Logan]

Huckabee fancies himself persecuted by the Republican "establishment," a creature already negligible by 1964, when it failed to stop Barry Goldwater's nomination.

Strawman argument.

It's pretty obvious that a new GOP "establishment" has developed since then, and that it really, really dislikes Huckabee.