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.
Bush was an open borders RINO who also never saw a spending bill he didn’t like. His lasting legacy will be his gift of the socialist Obama to the American people. No Obama if Bush had governed like a conservative. No Bush, no Obama. Never forget that fact. I am so tired of hearing the words Bush and Clinton. One in the same.
It comes down to this. Will we do for the truth, what the other side does for the lie: which is, repeat it and repeat it and repeat it.
It comes down to this. Will we do for the truth, what the other side does for the lie: which is, repeat it and repeat it and repeat it.
“Private schools? Tutoring? We need a solution to the poison being pumped into our children at school.”
I wonder if we can’t come up with some type of home schooling co-op. Get the like-minded conservatives in your area that want to home-school together, and share the burden. Each parent would only have to stay home to teach the kids once every week or two. That way, you could still have control over the curriculum and make sure your kids aren’t being brainwashed, but more people could participate because they wouldn’t have to give up working altogether.
Something similar has crossed my mind. There is a 'homeschool ping list' here at FR...I wonder if they know whether such a co-op is in existence yet...
Bull poop.
All the reasons he hated bush’s estrogenic “compassionate conservatism” were correct. The fact that idiots answering a forced poll question about who cares about “little people like me” chose Obama over Romney, whom they were told is rich and indifferent, has nothing to bear on George Bush’s liberal mush.
I think that, in order to win, conservatives must not allow liberals to paint them as heartless. I thought Bush was on to something when he referred to “the soft bigotry of low expectations”, showing how government hand-holding of the poor is patronizing them and limiting their futures. I thought “compassionate conservatism” was an effective pushback.
Your first two sentences are right on. But defining his own brand of “conservatism” as a compassionate kind effectively labels real conservatism mean.
A quick search reveals that there ARE such ‘co-ops’ out there already...
Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” cost us dearly, fiscally and politically.
...and Rush just agreed with you and I.....
Bingo, Kevkrom! Very true! Well said.
It’s called cognitive dissonance. The new information doesn’t match what they “know” to be true. When this happens there are only two choices in people’s brains. Either they have to clean out their old opinions and expand their view to include the new facts —— something rush Limbaugh has done for a lot of us personally, simply by being true and consistent over days, weeks, months, and years, or they cast out the new stuff even against all logic.
The mainstream and all of the individuals’ contacts help to keep people on the wagon of liberalism. Slight mocking a la Alinsky keeps them in check. No one wants to be made fun of.
When a lib listens to rush enough to have cognitive dissonance occur, he has to stand up to his spouse, friends, whomever, and the reason he becomes a new conservative is because rush is there the very next day and the guy realizes his friends are bamboozled. Truth wins every time it’s tried. We are created by Gd to seek truth.
The guy has to be listening alone in his car, finding himself nodding to what rush is saying. If he heard rush for the first time in a circle of libs at the office, they will likely all be laughing their heads off at the blowhard and his massive ego, missing the point entirely.
I use rush deliberately both because he made me a conservative and because he is doing what we wish to do to the general public. It’s a formula that works.
We can only teach through exposure to the truth, and steady repetition.
And we must realize that most media are our abject enemies.
Agree!!
We can only teach through exposure to the truth, and steady repetition.
There's so much to cut through...complicit media, liberals in public schools, almost 50% of the population are "takers", etc ....how do we begin this arduous task?
No surprise there.
” .how do we begin this arduous task? “
You run to WIN.
POST 57.
defining his own brand of “conservatism” as a compassionate kind effectively labels real conservatism mean.
There is probably a way around that, to bring out somehow that a strong thread of compassion has always been woven into the best conservative thinking, but now it is time to highlight it?
We need to think both short- and long-term.
In the short term, as noted on this thread, we only need to flip a few percent to start winning elections — I think it’s more than 1-2%, just to keep a clear margin from fraud, but the principle is correct. Hence why I said we need to retain our principles (and yes, even explain them better than we have), but to also tailor the appeal at the visceral/emotional level to counteract the cognitive dissonance.
In other words, we need to continue to be right and be able to back that up, but expand the messaging to draw an emotional response as well as a logical one.
In the long-term, preventing the perceptions that lead to the cognitive dissonance from forming would be the goal, but that’s a long job of discrediting and/or replacing the institutions driving it.
GWB Rove and Co. are the reason we are in the mess we are now electorally.
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