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.
GHWB, GWB Rove and Co. are the reason we are in the mess we are now electorally.
Minor repair : )
...actually, if you knew of my history with the show...even less....
: )
check this out, real real SOON:
www.gone2012book.com
Bush, unlike Rove, just went the heck a way and shut up.
That is the true test of a man and a leader.. at least for this round anyway, imo.
One sentence synopsis: In order to win elections, conservatives must become liberals.”
Maybe that’s true. Maybe.
But it might also be true that conservatives win elections when they become conservatives. Problem is, we don’t know enough about that possibility because we haven’t had a conservative run since 1984.
We’ve had one sort of to the right of the moderate pack run in 2000 and 2004. And he barely won twice. But all the other times, the moderate lost.
So I’m not sure that the moderate path is the winning one......
Compassionate Conservatism was code for Big Government. The entire Bush family owes the country an apology.
Exactly. And that is the attitude over at the once great NR.
He, Lowry and others are in full “bend over and take it” mode as long as they can “elect” moderate, spineless cowards.
Yeah, I guess it’s not that original of an idea. It probably depends on where you live whether you can implement it in your own state.
I have to disagree. As used, the term compassionate conservative IS based on using government for what “they” perceive to be “the good”.
How is that different from all out liberalism? Why do they think their ideas are superior if only “they” were in charge. Again, that’s how the left thinks.
And frankly, I don’t believe there are good, compassionate people on the left. They may delude themselves into thinking that but to me it’s the kind of “compassion” in where they burn down your house to kill the fleas because they felt sorry for your dog.
I think it's more the self-announcement or self-description, the "I'm not like the rest of them," than the actual political stance that rankles.
You can't be Ayn Rand and hope to win elections (and if you're in politics you probably shouldn't want to be Ayn Rand). You have to be more of a mensch than that.
But the more you say "Message: I care" (with people hearing "Message: you don't care" implied) the more it irritates people.
Leftists thrive on equivocation. If a phrase like "compassionate conservative" can have two meanings, they will use each meaning when it suits them, even in contexts where the other meaning actually applies.
One of the things conservatives need to do is fight for control of the language, and an essential part of that is to refuse to accept labels which have multiple meanings. If a politician is asked whether he's a "compassionate conservative", the correct response would be that he wants to help the poor become financially independent. He should neither admit to being a "compassionate conservative" (implying agreement with policies the left deems "compassionate") nor deny it (implying that he didn't care about the poor).
There's a substantial "Emperor's New Clothes" element at work too. Those who have taught themselves to see the emperor's raiment will regard as fools anyone who does not.
Additionally, many people believe that there is some fundamental limit as to how evil a person can be; if they are put in a situation where someone must either be telling the truth about something, or else be unimaginably evil, they will take the view that because the person cannot be unimaginably evil (implied by the fundamental limit above), the person must be telling the truth. The stronger the apparent evidence that the person must be evil, the more unimaginably evil the person would have to be, and thus the greater the impossibility of the person actually being that evil.
Totally spurious comparison. This is what you get when you let an adolescent skull full of mush, who has never done anything in the real world but write sophomoric columns, tell you about the real world.
Bush had a geographic history and family ties to the Hispanic community. He also ran against two of the most inept, totally white bread 'rats in political history.
Romney ran against a racist agitator and class warrior whose only job had ever been to stir up racial antipathy against (wealthy) whites. Romney could have been a righteous down for the struggle white guy but his goose was cooked before he got in to the ring.
Bunch of nonsense. His whole argument boils down to marketing. He conveniently overlooks how Dubya’s “compassion” and idiocy brought about Obama in the first place!
You really need to see a shrink who will help you over your Bush derangement symptom. You are very sick
And you need to stop pimping out Townhall hack articles. They can’t pay you THAT much to deal with their drek, can they?
No one forces you to read them.
And you can not tell me what sites I can post from. Get it?
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