Posted on 11/16/2012 6:47:24 AM PST by Kaslin
William F. Buckley once noted that he was 19 when the Cold War began at the Yalta conference. The year the Berlin Wall came down, he became a senior citizen. In other words, he explained, anti-Communism was a defining feature of conservatism his entire adult life. Domestically, meanwhile, the right was largely a "leave me alone coalition": Religious and traditional conservatives, overtaxed businessmen, Western libertarians, and others fed up with government social engineering and economic folly. The foreign policy battle against tyrannical statism abroad only buttressed the domestic antagonism toward well-intentioned and occasionally democratic statism at home.
The end of the Cold War gave way to what Charles Krauthammer dubbed the "holiday from history" of the 1990s and the "war on terror" in the 2000s. People forget that Bush was elected during the former and had the latter thrust upon him. But at the end of the 1990s, he was one of many voices on the right trying to craft a political rationale to deal with the changing electoral and demographic landscape. He campaigned on a "humble foreign policy" in 2000 and promised something very, very different than a "leave me alone" domestic policy.
He called his new approach to domestic policy "compassionate conservatism."
For years, I've criticized "compassionate conservatism" as an insult to traditional conservatism and an affront to all things libertarian.
Bush liked to say that he was a "different kind of Republican," that he was a "compassionate conservative."
I hated -- and still hate -- that formulation. Imagine if someone said, "I'm a different kind of Catholic (or Jew, or American, etc.): I'm a compassionate Catholic." The insinuation was -- by my lights, at least -- that conservatives who disagreed with him and his "strong-government conservatism" were somehow lacking in compassion.
As a candidate, Bush distanced himself from the Gingrich "revolutionaries" of the 1994 Congress, and he criticized social conservatives like Robert Bork for his admittedly uncheery book, "Slouching Towards Gomorrah." He talked endlessly about how tough a job single mothers have and scolded his fellow conservatives for failing to see that "family values don't end at the Rio Grande." As president, he said that "when somebody hurts, government has got to move." According to compassionate conservatives, reflexive anti-statism on the right is foolish, for there are many important -- and conservative -- things the state can do right.
Compassionate conservatism always struck me as a philosophical surrender to liberal assumptions about the role of the government in our lives. A hallmark of Great Society liberalism is the idea that an individual's worth as a human being is correlated to his support for massive expansions of the entitlement state. Conservatives are not uncompassionate. (Indeed, the data show that conservatives are more charitable with their own money and more generous with their time than liberals). But, barring something like a natural disaster, they believe that government is not the best and certainly not the first resort for acting on one's compassion.
I still believe all of that, probably even more than I did when Bush was in office.
But, as a political matter, it has become clear that he was on to something important.
Neither critics nor supporters of compassionate conservatism could come to a consensus over the question of whether it was a mushy-gushy marketing slogan (a Republican version of Bill Clinton's feel-your-pain liberalism) or a serious philosophical argument for a kind of Tory altruism, albeit with an evangelical idiom and a Texan accent.
Some sophisticated analysts, such as my National Review colleague Ramesh Ponnuru, always acknowledged the philosophical shortcomings and inconsistencies of compassionate conservatism, but argued that something like it was necessary nonetheless. The evolving demographics of the country, combined with the profound changes to both the culture and the economy, demanded the GOP change both its sales pitch and its governing philosophy.
Compassionate conservatism increasingly faded from view after 9/11. Bush ran as a war president first and a compassionate conservative at best second in 2004. Still, it's worth remembering that Bush won a staggering (for a Republican) 44 percent of the Hispanic vote. Romney got 27 percent.
Moreover, according to exit polls, Romney decisively beat Obama on the questions of leadership, values and economic expertise, but was crushed by more than 60 points on the question of which candidate "cares about people like me."
I still don't like compassionate conservatism or its conception of the role of government. But given the election results, I have to acknowledge that Bush was more prescient than I appreciated at the time.
I will agree, but how do you articulate these beliefs when there is no real vehicle(i.e. the main stream media) to do so?
Wow - what an idea!
You do it in ads, and in the debates, and get away from these sterile answers designed not to offend.
You don’t run an entire campaign on the premise that Obama is “a nice guy who is simply over his head.” You don’t agree that he and biden merely “inherited a mess” and haven’t quite gotten out of us yet.
You tie all failures, over and over, in every message, to liberalism. You tie all sucesses, like bin Laden’s killing, over and over, to conservatism.
So you piss off our enemies a bit more? Who cares? All we have to do is flip about 1-2% of the undecideds - and dammit, I’m convinced it would be done.
All we have to do is change about 1-2% - to win elections we are now losing. That’s all. We don’t have to change the entire 51%. We have a huge weapon on our side - we happen to be right. With that, we can change 1-2%.
” Clearly articulating why conservatism itself WORKS, and therefore IS compassionate, would be something not tried in a long time.”
30 years
All we have to do is change about 1-2% - to win elections we are now losing. That’s all. We don’t have to change the entire 51%. We have a huge weapon on our side - we happen to be right. With that, we can change 1-2%.
In my voting lifetime, there were vestiges of conservatism articulated in 80, 84, 94 and 2010. Seems to me we did alright in all of those.
In 92, 96, 98, 2006, 2008, we ran from conservatism - and all were unmitigated disasters.
In 1988, 2000, 2004, there was sort of a mix, and we squeaked by.
In 2002, the Dems just ran so far left, we won big by defaut.
Seems to me history is clear: the wider the ideological chasm in an election year, the better we do. The narrower, the worse we do.
” You don’t run an entire campaign on the premise that Obama is “a nice guy who is simply over his head.” You don’t agree that he and biden merely “inherited a mess” and haven’t quite gotten out of us yet.”
NAILED it.
You also nailed Bush(for the right reasons) in your article.
Excellent post. I didn’t read it before my post #41. You are so right. You can articulate conservatism using everything from brilliant dissertations to pencil drawn stick figures and the majority won’t get it. Their political thought has almost become an uncontrolled reflex due to a lifetime of propaganda. If we do not wrestle back control of our schools and the media, any effort to promote conservative principles is futile and the country is finished. I hold little hope, because the lake of the electorate is being restocked with more liberal fish every day.
” In my voting lifetime, there were vestiges of conservatism articulated in 80, 84, 94 and 2010. Seems to me we did alright in all of those.”
Correct. Reagan was the last guy running for POTUS to say that government WAS the problem, and then go on to articulate it for the common man. Romney never articulated anything. If Romney had done what you suggested, he would have won.
Disagree, to a point. When will we start winning elections based on getting control back of education? 2075? Sorry, too late. We MUST figure out a way to flip 1-2% NOW - or there won’t be any America in 2075, or whenever.
I agree the long view should be taken, but the short view is also critical.
Reagan also knew how to bring Social Conservatives and Fiscal Conservatives together, no Republican has come close to doing that since.
Thank you, I am amazed at how often the GOP simply rubberstamps the lies put out by the left. It is time to stop worrying about who is offended and just tell the truth and let the chips fall wherever they feel like falling.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_s-Qk07KxA
Ignoring the fact that a lot of misery is the direct result of government *taking action*.
” Reagan also knew how to bring Social Conservatives and Fiscal Conservatives together”
Yes he did, and it wasn’t rocket science either.
RINOS don’t believe in conservatism, they run from it.
” You do it in ads, and in the debates, and get away from these sterile answers designed not to offend.
You don’t run an entire campaign on the premise that Obama is “a nice guy who is simply over his head.” You don’t agree that he and biden merely “inherited a mess” and haven’t quite gotten out of us yet.”
Why we lost.
It's not going to happen in the public schools. Now we have that Spielberg flick...
CC
Compassionate conservatism is just another name for mixed economy, political eclecticism, and pragmatism. It has no ideology, is pluralistic, and it has philosophical shortcomings and inconsistencies because it is a mixture of conservatism and statism.
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