The very model of a modern Movement Conservative

Anybody out there still falling for that hoary old chestnut that “Republican” = “conservative”?

(And yeah, I guess I am talking to you, Mr. or Ms. Reader in the rapidly-trending-Blue southwest metro, who may have wandered over here from the link in the Eden Prairie News blogroll)

If you still believe that George W Bush and the Republican party are “conservatives” in anything except the modern Movement Conservatism sense, then maybe what you need right now is a good slap in the face.

A bucket of cold water dumped over your head.

A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants.

No! No! Tempting, it’s true, but actually what you need on this rainy bleak Monday is to read Paul Krugman’s latest column:

SAME OLD PARTY

by Paul Krugman

Published: October 8, 2007

There have been a number of articles recently that portray President Bush as someone who strayed from the path of true conservatism. Republicans, these articles say, need to return to their roots.

Well, I don’t know what true conservatism is, but while doing research for my forthcoming book I spent a lot of time studying the history of the American political movement that calls itself conservatism - and Mr. Bush hasn’t strayed from the path at all. On the contrary, he’s the very model of a modern movement conservative.

For example, people claim to be shocked that Mr. Bush cut taxes while waging an expensive war. But Ronald Reagan also cut taxes while embarking on a huge military buildup.

People claim to be shocked by Mr. Bush’s general fiscal irresponsibility. But conservative intellectuals, by their own account, abandoned fiscal responsibility 30 years ago. Here’s how Irving Kristol, then the editor of The Public Interest, explained his embrace of supply-side economics in the 1970s:
He had a “rather cavalier attitude toward the budget deficit and other monetary or fiscal problems” because “the task, as I saw it, was to create a new majority, which evidently would mean a conservative majority, which came to mean, in turn, a Republican majority - so political effectiveness was the priority, not the accounting deficiencies of government.”

People claim to be shocked by the way the Bush administration outsourced key government functions to private contractors yet refused to exert effective oversight over these contractors, a process exemplified by the failed reconstruction of Iraq and the Blackwater affair.

But back in 1993, Jonathan Cohn, writing in The American Prospect, explained that “under Reagan and Bush, the ranks of public officials necessary to supervise contractors have been so thinned that the putative gains of contracting out have evaporated. Agencies have been left with the worst of both worlds - demoralized and disorganized public officials and unaccountable private contractors.”

People claim to be shocked by the Bush administration’s general incompetence. But disinterest in good government has long been a principle of modern conservatism. In “The Conscience of a Conservative,” published in 1960, Barry Goldwater wrote that “I have little interest in streamlining government or making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size.”

People claim to be shocked that the Bush Justice Department, making a mockery of the Constitution, issued a secret opinion authorizing torture despite instructions by Congress and the courts that the practice should stop. But remember Iran-Contra? The Reagan administration secretly sold weapons to Iran, violating a legal embargo, and used the proceeds to support the Nicaraguan contras, defying an explicit Congressional ban on such support.

Oh, and if you think Iran-Contra was a rogue operation, rather than something done with the full knowledge and approval of people at the top - who were then protected by a careful cover-up, including convenient presidential pardons - I’ve got a letter from Niger you might want to buy.

People claim to be shocked at the Bush administration’s efforts to disenfranchise minority groups, under the pretense of combating voting fraud. But Reagan opposed the Voting Rights Act, and as late as 1980 he described it as “humiliating to the South.”

People claim to be shocked at the Bush administration’s attempts - which, for a time, were all too successful - to intimidate the press. But this administration’s media tactics, and to a large extent the people implementing those tactics, come straight out of the Nixon administration. Dick Cheney wanted to search Seymour Hersh’s apartment, not last week, but in 1975. Roger Ailes, the president of Fox News, was Nixon’s media adviser.

People claim to be shocked at the Bush administration’s attempts to equate dissent with treason. But Goldwater - who, like Reagan, has been reinvented as an icon of conservative purity but was a much less attractive figure in real life - staunchly supported Joseph McCarthy, and was one of only 22 senators who voted against a motion censuring the demagogue.

Above all, people claim to be shocked by the Bush administration’s authoritarianism, its disdain for the rule of law. But a full half-century has passed since The National Review proclaimed that “the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail,” and dismissed as irrelevant objections that might be raised after “consulting a catalogue of the rights of American citizens, born Equal” - presumably a reference to the document known as the Constitution of the United States.

Now, as they survey the wreckage of their cause, conservatives may ask themselves: “Well, how did we get here?” They may tell themselves: “This is not my beautiful Right.” They may ask themselves: “My God, what have we done?”

But their movement is the same as it ever was. And Mr. Bush is movement conservatism’s true, loyal heir.

Paul Krugman, New York Times

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Thanks as always to Norwegianity for bringing the latest Krugman column to our attention.  The Wege adds his own pungent commentary of course:

The plain fact is that modern “movement” conservatives aren’t conservatives at all. Not unless your definition of conservative is someone who rushes to war then cowers beneath their urine-soaked bed, only emerging to attack others who disagree with them.

Demagoguery is reviled because demagogues are philosophically inconsistent, seizing upon hot button issues without regard to whether they’re consistent with their previous positions. That’s why Bush yammers about fiscal responsibility but then runs up massive deficits, just like Ronald Reagan did.

Contrast this with our piss poor media who call John Edwards a demagogue because he wants to give money to the poor despite the fact that he’s personally rich. That’s not demagoguery. Not unless Edwards proves to be a stealth movement conservative who’s lying on the campaign trail. I don’t think he is, and I don’t think there’s any proof to suggest that.

But there is ample proof that what Bush says today will not affect his actions tomorrow, and tomorrow’s actions will be forgotten by the time Bush again opens his mouth.

Congress needs to make this mouth-action disconnect permanent by taking away Bush’s powers. It’s called impeachment, and we’re well past the point where such action is justified.

Remove this son of a bitch now, before he starts a war with Iran.

Well said, Wege.

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